Books
Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
Americans are slowly waking up to the dire effects of racial profiling, police brutality, and mass incarceration, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities of color. The criminal courts are the crucial gateway between police action on the street and the processing of primarily black and Latino defendants into jails and prisons. Crook County bursts open the courthouse doors and enters the hallways, courtrooms, judges' chambers, and attorneys' offices to reveal a world of punishment determined by race, not offense.
Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve spent ten years working in and investigating the largest criminal courthouse in the country, Chicago–Cook County, and based on over 1,000 hours of observation. We watch white courtroom professionals classify and deliberate on the fates of mostly black and Latino defendants while racial abuse and due process violations are encouraged and even seen as justified.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn't commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship--and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer's coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
Addition Credit: Bianca Schutz
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.
But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Addition Credit: Annaëlle Bilounga
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time. The Autobiography of Malcolm X stands as the definitive statement of a movement and a man whose work was never completed but whose message is timeless. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America.
Addition Credit: Indigo Witt
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published - perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.
Addition Credit: Indigo Witt
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.
Addition Credit: Indigo Witt
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
White Fragility by Robin J. DiAngelo
In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
Women, Race and Class by Angela Yvonne Davis
An in-depth study of women and race explores the complex relationship between racism and sexism, analyzes the role of women and race, and traces the historical connection between sexism, racism, and class consciousness
A powerful study of the women’s liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. From the widely revered and legendary political activist and scholar Angela Davis.
“As useful an exposition of the current dilemmas of the women’s movement as one could hope for.”–Los Angeles Times Book Review
Addition Credit: Annaëlle Bilounga
Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter by Multiple
Combining firsthand accounts from activists with the research of scholars and reflections from artists, Policing the Planet traces the global spread of the broken-windows policing strategy, first established in New York City under Police Commissioner William Bratton. It’s a doctrine that has vastly broadened police power the world over—to deadly effect.
With contributions from #BlackLivesMatter cofounder Patrisse Cullors, Ferguson activist and Law Professor Justin Hansford, Director of New York–based Communities United for Police Reform Joo-Hyun Kang, poet Martín Espada, and journalist Anjali Kamat, as well as articles from leading scholars Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Robin D. G. Kelley, Naomi Murakawa, Vijay Prashad, and more, Policing the Planet describes ongoing struggles from New York to Baltimore to Los Angeles, London, San Juan, San Salvador, and beyond.
Addition Credit: Hyison Payne
Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson
Short, emotional, literary, powerful―Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations will want to read.
As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man's voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop―a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
"The time is at hand for reckoning with the past, recognizing the truth of the present, and moving together to redeem the nation for our future. If we don't act now, if you don't address race immediately, there very well may be no future."
Addition Credit: Jubilee Soto
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Addition Credit: Jubilee Soto
The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
America’s foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid?Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin of Others. In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison’s fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books―Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy.If we learn racism by example, then literature plays an important part in the history of race in America, both negatively and positively. Morrison writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative. Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalization and the mass movement of peoples in this century.
Addition Credit: Jubilee Soto
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.
A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.
Addition Credit: Jubilee Soto
Brown Boy by Daphnie Glenn
Cities and neighborhoods where little brown boys and girls reside have unfortunately been the home to violence and senseless tragedies. From the Mike Browns, Trayvon Martins, and Tamir Rices, this book allows readers, (specifically brown boys, girls, and families) the ability to: - Create a conversation about what it means to be brown
- Comprehend past and present tragedies
- Understand their representation in society
- Create a barrier of love and protection for all children
This book is dedicated to the young brown boys who we have lost over the years to senseless tragedies. May they forever be in our hearts as we push forward to help younger generations have pride in the skin they are in.
Daphnie Glenn: “ [Brown Boy] is a children's book dedicated to helping parents and children have a much-needed conversation about being brown in today's society.”
Addition Credit: Daphnie Glenn
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Introduction to Radical Politics
Black and Marxist Feminism
Prison Abolition
Racial Capitalism
Critical Race & Class Studies
Afropessimism
Black Aesthetic Theories
Capitalism, Fascism, Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Settler-Colonialism
Revolution
Slavery
Whiteness/ Critical Race Studies
Gender, Sexuality, and Masculinities
Women’s Oppression, Through a Marxian and/or Black Feminist Lens
Disability Studies
- assata: autobiography
- angela davis an autobiography
- angela davis: freedom is a constant struggle
- huey p newton: revolutionary suicide
- what is marxism all about?
- beginners guide to marxism
- huey p newton: to die for the people, collected writings
- w.e.b du bois: w.e.b du bois speaks
- the autobiography of malcom x
- muammar gaddafi: the green book
- walter rodney: groundings with my brothers
- lenin: state and revolution
- kwame ture: stokely speaks, from black power to pan-africanism
- conversations with james baldwin
- walter rodney: the russian revolution: a view from the third world
- kwame ture & charles v. hamilton: black power; the politics of liberation in america
- malcom x speaks
- thomas sankara: women’s liberation and the african freedom struggle
- harry haywood: black bolshevik
- w.e.b. du bois: essay collection
- debunking anti-communism myths & propaganda
- karl marx & frederick engels: the communist manifesto
- joseph stalin: dialetical & historical materialism
- reading marx’s “capital” with david harvey
- marxism-leninism study guide
- basic marxism-leninism study plan
- paulo freire: pedagogy of the oppressed
- michael parenti: left anticommunism
Black and Marxist Feminism
- bell hooks: yearning; race, gender, and cultural politics
- oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: african women and feminism
Prison Abolition
- george jackson: blood in my eye
- soledad brother: the prison letters of george jackson
- angela davis: are prisons obsolete?
- angela davis: political prisoners, prisons, and black liberation
- paula c. johnson: voices of african american women in prison
- ruth wilson gilmore: golden gulag: prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing california
Racial Capitalism
- jackie wang: carceral capitalism
- e. franklin fraizer: black bourgeoisie
- robin d.g. kelley: hammer and hoe
- marxism, reparations and the black freedom struggle
- cedric j. robinson: black marxism
Critical Race & Class Studies
Afropessimism
- frank b.wilderson iii: red, white & black -- cinema and the structure of u.s. antagonisms
- jared sexton: amalgamation schemes -- antiblackness and the critique of multiracialism
- calvin l.warren: ontological terror -- blackness, nihilism, and emancipation
- frank b. wilderson: afro-pessimism and the end of redemption
- jared sexton: unbearable blackness
- jared sexton: all black everything
- calvin warren: black mysticism: fred moten’s phenomenology of (black) spirit
Black Aesthetic Theories
- fred moten: blackness and nothingness (mysticism in the flesh)
- fred moten: the case of blackness
- stefano harney & fred moten: the undercommons -- fugitive planning & black studies
- saidiya hartman: the end of white supremacy, an american romance
- david theo goldberg: dread: the politics of our time
- david theo goldberg: are we all postracial yet?
- david r. roediger: how race survived U.S. history, from settlement and slavery to the obama phenomenon
- patrick wolfe: traces of history; elementary structures of race
- walter rodney: the history of the guyanese working people, 1881-1905
- david roediger: class, race, and marxism
Capitalism, Fascism, Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Settler-Colonialism
- frantz fanon: the wretched of the earth
- edward said: orientalism
- robert sirvent & david haiphong: american exceptionalism and american innocence
- frantz fanon: a dying colonialism
- walter rodney: how europe underdeveloped africa
- eduardo galeano: open veins of latin america
- samir amin: eurocentrism
- v.i. lenin: imperialism the highest stage of capitalism
- kwame nkrumah: neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism
- edward w. said: the question of palestine
- edward w. said: culture and imperialism
- william blum: america's deadliest weapon
- william blum: freeing the world to death
- william blum: killing hope
- michael parenti: blackshirts & reds
- glen sean coulthard: red skin, white masks
- clr james: the black jacobins
- chris harman: a people’s history of the world
- “decolonization is not a metaphor”
Revolution
- frantz fanon: towards the african revolution
- v.i. what is to be done?
- thomas sankara: the heirs of the world’s revolution
- kwame nkrumah: africa must unite
- slavoj žižek: violence
- zahi zalloua: žižek on race: toward an anti-racist future
Slavery
- stephanie e. jones-rogers: they were her property
- david roediger: seizing freedom, slave emancipation and liberty for all
- daina ramey berry and leslie m. harris: sexuality & slavery
- frederick douglass: my bondage and my freedom
- saidiya v. hartman: scenes of subjection; terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-century america
- hortense j.spillers: black, white, and in color: essays on american literature and culture
Whiteness/ Critical Race Studies
- nell irvin painter: the history of white people
- theodore w allen: the invention of the white race volume I
- theodore w allen: the invention of the white race volume II
- david r. roediger the wages of whiteness
- david r. roediger: toward the abolition of whiteness ,
- david r. roediger: working toward whiteness
- david r. roediger: seizing freedom, slave emancipation & liberty for all
- karen brodkin: how jews became white folks & what that says about race in america
- dorothy roberts: fatal invention: how science, politics, and big business re-create race in the twenty-first century
Gender, Sexuality, and Masculinities
- c. riley snorton: black on both sides a racial history of trans identity
- dwight m. mcbride: why i hate abercrombie & fitch
- c. heike schotten: queer terror: life, death, and desire in the settler colony
- aliyyah abdur-rahman: against the closest, black political longing and the erotics of race
- hanne blank: straight, the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality
- out in culture: gay, lesbian, and queer essays on popular culture
- essex hemphill: ceremonies
- robert f. reid-pharr: black gay man, essays
- jeffrey q. mccune, jr.: sexual discretion, black masculinity and the politics of passing
- e. patrick johnson: no tea, no shade; new writings in black queer studies
- the lesbian and gay studies reader
- rainbow solidarity: in defense of cuba
- bell hooks: we real cool
- maria lugones: heterosexualism and the colonial modern gender system
- maria lugones: towards a decolonial feminism
- marlon m. bailey: butch queens up in pumps: gender, performance, and ballroom culture in detroit
- robert aldrich: colonialism and homsexuality
- eve kosofsky sedgwick: epistemology of the closet
- https://www.aaihs.org/excavating-black-queer-thought-a-pride-bibliography/
- “the roots of lesbian & gay oppression: a marxist view” by bob mccubbin
- afsaneh najmabadi: women with mustaches and men without beards: gender and sexual anxieties of iranian modernity
- anne mcclintock: imperial leather: race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial conquest
- oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: gender epistemologies in africa
- oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: the invention of women: making african sense of western gender discourses
- oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: african gender studies a read
- oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: the invention of women
- oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: what gender is motherhood?
Women’s Oppression, Through a Marxian and/or Black Feminist Lens
- audre lorde: sister outsider
- claudia jones: an end to the neglect of the negro woman!
- silvia federici: caliban and the witch
- audre lorde: i am your sister
- bell hooks: ain’t i a woman, black women and feminism
- adrienne rich: of woman born, motherhood as experience and institutions
- audre lorde: the uses of the erotic
- simone de beauvoir: the second sex
- the sexual liberals and the attack on feminism
- angela davis: modern motherhood, women and family in england
Disability Studies
- robert mcruer: crip theory; cultural signs of queerness and disability
- “the ruse of analogy:” blackness in asian american and disability studies
- disability studies
- leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha: care work: dreaming disability justice by leah
- mia mingus work on ugliness