Antiracism Resources
#BlackLivesMatter
We are all learning about the disease of racism, an illness from which all Americans suffer. Since the election of 2016, I and a group of fellow readers and writers have dedicated our reading time to learning as much as we can from our Black brothers and sisters. In the name of helping each other in our attempts to get well, I have compiled the beginnings of a list of books, films, resources, and the curated lists of others which I have found helpful, transformative, enlightening. Please feel free to add your own in the comments below–this list is FAR from exhaustive! Where possible, we have linked to Black-owned bookshops.
BOOKS
Contemporary Civil Rights Issues
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Also, for Young Readers (though it’s so fabulous, I almost prefer it) Stamped, by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates–seminal for me.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin–this is so fantastic, and a must-read. It’s really just two long essays. Coates bases his letter to his son in Between the World.. on Baldwin’s “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”
Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America by Eugene Robinson
The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why by Jabari Asim
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel
The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues by Angela Y. Davis
Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice by Si Kahn
The House That Race Built edited by Wahneema Lubiano
Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century by Monique W. Morris
The Color of Law: a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect by Robert J. Sampson
The News: A User’s Manual by Alain De Botton
Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism by Jealous T. Ann
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Mat Taibbi
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise
Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race and How to Do It by Shelly Tochluk
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Ian Haney-Lopez
Memoir
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir by Michele Norris
High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris
March, Book 1 by John Lewis
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
At the Elbows of My Elders by Gail Milissa Grant
A Mighty Long Way by Liza Frazier Page & Carlotta Walls Lanier
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles Blow
Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice by Silvia Bell White
Novels and Stories Exploring Race
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
The Underground Railroad by Coleson Whitehead
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
A Taste of Honey by Jabari Asim
Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Native Son by Richard Wright
No No Boy by John Okada
King Hedley II by August Wilson
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison
All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color by Jina Ortiz
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
Policing and Incarceration
Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Losing Legitimacy by Gary Lafree
Mass Incarceration on Trial by Jonathan Simon
Suspicion Nation by Lisa Bloom
The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns
Arbitrary Justice by Angela J. Davis
Life in Prison by Stanley “Tookie” Williams
No Choirboy: Murder, Violence and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin
Why Are So Many Black Men in Prison? By Demico Boothe
Civil Rights History
Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy by Bruce Watson
Lynching of Cleo Wright by Dominic J. Capeci JR
The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell
The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by James T. Patterson
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan
A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls Lanier
Olivia’s Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes Behind Shelley V. Kraemer by Jeffrey S. Copeland
Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Chappell
Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation by Elizabeth Jacoway
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America by Elliot Jaspin
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 by William Tuttle
Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History by Joel Christian Gill, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn Sokol Jason
A Black Gambler’s World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics: William Thomas Scott of Illinois, 1839-1917 by Bruce Mouser, Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association by E. David Cronon
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James Loewen
FILMS
13th, 2016
FOR FURTHER READING ON “WRITING THE OTHER”
“There is No Secret to Writing About People Who Do Not Look Like You” – Brandon Taylor
“Writing the Other: Learn to write characters very different from you sensitively and convincingly”
“12 Fundamentals Of Writing “The Other” (And The Self)” – Daniel José Older
“Why Is Everyone Arguing About the Novel American Dirt?” – Rebecca Alter, Vulture. 07 Feb. 2020
“How to Unlearn Everything – When it comes to writing the ‘other,’ what questions are we not asking?” – Alexander Chee
“American Dirt’ Author Jeanine Cummins Answers Vocal Critics,” 24 Jan. 2020, NPR
“Unconscious Bias, Stereotypes, and Microaggressions: How to Prevent These Subtle Forms of Discrimination from Affecting Your Workplace.” Unlawful Harassment and Discrimination eBook, Brookhaven National Laboratory.
“J.K. Rowling’s latest Dumbledore comment feels like a cop-out.” – Holly Thomas, CNN, 24 March, 2019
“How microaggressions are like mosquito bites.” YouTube, uploaded by Fusion Comedy, 05 Oct. 2016
“Getting Called Out: How to Apologize.” YouTube, uploaded by Franchesca Ramsey, 06 Sept. 2013.
Read Audre Lorde’s “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” immediately.
Tell the story. Write a cultural comment and submit to journals and magazines you read like poet Danez Smith did in “Crying, Laughing, Crying at the George Floyd Protests in Minneapolis” for the New Yorker.
Blow the whistle on issues that need reform like young adult author L.L. McKinney did with the hashtag, #PublishingPaidMe
Buy, recommend, and gift books by Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) and share work by Black writers on all social media platforms like “George Floyd” a poem by Terrance Hayes
To be an ally implies action. Speak up and speak out. Donate to a bail fund to support protestors of injustice.
