Arnold, Jenna. Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc, 2020. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Jenna Arnold, director of strategic engagement for the historic 2017 Women's March, helps American white women (one of the most powerful demographics in the world-but too often passive) understand how their influence, power, and voice can better serve those most in need, and how you can take an active role in creating a better future"-- Provided by publisher.



Dumas, Henry. Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas. Second edition. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2021. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

 "Championed by Toni Morrison and Walter Mosley, Dumas's fabulist fiction is a masterful synthesis of myth and religion, culture and nature, mask and identity. From the Deep South to the simmering streets of Harlem, his characters embark on real, magical, and mythic quests. Humming with life, Dumas's stories create a collage of midcentury Black experiences, interweaving religious metaphor, African cosmologies, diasporic folklore, and America's history of slavery and systemic racism. Henry Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, in 1934 and moved to Harlem at the age of ten. He joined the air force in 1953 and spent a year on the Arabian Peninsula. Upon his return, Dumas became active in the civil rights movement, married, had two sons, attended Rutgers University, worked for IBM, and taught at Hiram College in Ohio and at Southern Illinois University. In 1968, at the age of thirty-three, he was shot and killed by a New York City Transit Authority police officer."--Amazon.com.



Eddo-Lodge, Reni. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. London, UK: Bloomsbury Circus, 2017. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

 "In 2014, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren't affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race'. Her words hit a nerve. The post went viral and comments flooded in from others desperate to speak up about their own experiences. Galvanised by this clear hunger for open discussion, she decided to dig into the source of these feelings. The result is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary examination of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today. Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism today. Full of clear, bold and keenly felt arguments, [this book] is a wake-up call to a nation in denial about the structural and institutional racism occurring at its heart. It is a timely, essential book by a vital new voice."--Jacket.



Harris, Michelle, Sherrill L Sellers, Orly Clerge, and Frederick W. Jr. Gooding, ed. Stories from the Front of the Room: How Higher Education Faculty of Color Overcome Challenges and Thrive in the Academy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"This book focuses on the boundaries which faculty of color encounter in everyday experiences on campus and presents a more complete picture of life in the academy - one that documents how faculty of color are tested, but also how they can not only overcome, but thrive in their respective educational institutions."



McMillan Cottom, Tressie. Thick: And Other Essays. New York ; London: The New Press, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"In these eight ... explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom--award-winning professor and ... author of Lower Ed--embraces her ... role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society"--Dust jacket flap.



Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, ed. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Fourth edition. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, this collection expores, as coeditor Cherrie Moraga writes, 'the complex confluence of identities–race, class, gender, sexuality–systemic to women of color oppression and liberation." - back cover.



Martínez, Elizabeth Sutherland. De Colores Mean All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1998. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Elizabeth Martinez's unique Chicana voice arises from over 30 years of experience in the movements for civil rights, women's liberation and Chicano/a empowerment. In De Colores Means All of Us, Martinez presents the radical Latina perspective on race, liberation, and identity. in these trenchant essays, Martinez describes the provocative ideas and new movements created by the rapidly expanding U.S. Latino community, as it confronts intensified exploitation and racism."



Lorde, Audre. Zami ; Sister outsider ; Undersong. Triangle classics. New York: Book of the Month Club, 1993. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is a 1982 biomythography by American poet Audre Lorde. It started a new genre that the author calls biomythography, which combines history, biography, and myth. " - Wikipedia.

"Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches is a collection of essential essays and speeches written by Audre Lorde, a writer who focuses on the particulars of her identity: Black woman, lesbian, poet, activist, cancer survivor, mother, and feminist." - Wikipedia.

"This volume [Undersong] contains a thorough revision of the author's early poems, 1950-1979, along with nine previously unpublished poems from that period, and an essay describing the revision process. Readers new to Lorde's work will meet here a major American poet whose concerns are international, and whose words have left their mark on many lives. Readers of "The Black Unicorn", "Sister Outsider", "The Cancer Journals", "A Burst of Light", and "Our Dead Behind Us", and the thousands who have attended her poetry readings and speeches, will recognize in this book the roots and the growing-points of a transformative writer. Never has a poet left so clear and conscious a track of artistic choices made in the trajectory of a life. Far from rewriting old poems to fit a changes historical moment, she has finely rehoned formal elements to illuminate the original poems. Throughout, Lorde's lifelong themes of love and anger, family politics, sexuality, and the body of the city can be seen gathering in power and clarity." - Google Books.



Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. 1st ed. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"As she bears witness to the sweeping corruption, dilapidated buildings and shameful legacy of Antigua's colonial past, Kincaid compels us to think about the people behind the beautiful landscape of this tiny island."



Willis, Morgan Mann, ed. Outside the XY: A Bklyn Boihood Anthology. Riverdale, NY: Riverdale Avenue Books, 2016. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

An anthology of more than 50 stories, memoirs, poems, ideas, essays and letters–all examining what it looks like, feels like, and is like to inhabit masculinity outside of cisgender manhood as people of color in the world.



Sullivan, Shannon. White Privilege. Cambridge: Polity, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Some embrace the idea of white privilege as an important concept that helps us to make sense of the connection between race and social and political disadvantages, while others are critical or even hostile. Philosopher Shannon Sullivan cuts through the confusion and cross-talk to challenge what 'everybody knows' about white privilege"–



Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. New York, NY: One World, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it -- and then dismantle it." Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it. In this book, Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society." -- Provided by publisher.



Oluo, Ijeoma. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. New York: Seal Press, 2020. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"In her new book, rather than tear down the statues of certain white men, Ijeoma Oluo casts her eye on the long view of a nation that, as a whole, has built a dominant identity for white men. Her book challenges what we value most in America, during a tumultuous time of upheaval as we painfully strive toward a more perfect union. With her signature sharp wit, Oluo exposes how white male identity not only blatantly marks our divided culture today, from presidential politics to popular culture, but it is insidiously embedded even in the history of apparent progress, from women entering the workforce, to rising access to higher education, to the work of white civil rights advocates and male feminists. Oluo relates the glorification of White male aggression behind Western Expansion, the disdain of women workers strengthening the Great Depression, the fear of racial integration driving the Great Migration, and more examples of how White male America was forged and reinforced-at a devastating cost. Far from arguing that all white men are mediocre, Oluo instead challenges a national narrative that for generations has defined success exclusively around white men. Status for white men is granted only in relation to others, and is separated from actual achievement. This is not a benign mediocrity; it is brutal for everyone who is erased. Deeply researched, passionate, and revelatory, Oluo's Mediocre argues that if we wish to move beyond the rancorous politics where only white men are created equal, if we wish to write better stories for the next generation of Americans, we first need upend everything we thought we knew about our founding stories"–



Perry, Imani. Breathe: A Letter to My Sons. Boston: Beacon Press, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"Explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love--finding beauty and possibility in life--and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition. Perry draws upon the ideas of figures such as James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ida B. Wells. She shares vulnerabilities and insight from her own life and from encounters in places as varied as the West Side of Chicago; Birmingham, Alabama; and New England prep schools. Breathe offers a broader meditation on race, gender, and the meaning of a life well lived and is also an unforgettable lesson in Black resistance and resilience"-- Provided by publisher.

 



Zinn, Howard. Howard Zinn on Race. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Howard Zinn on Race is Zinn's choice of the shorter writings and speeches that best reflect his views on America's most taboo topic. As chairman of the history department at all black women's Spelman College, Zinn was an outspoken supporter of student activists in the nascent civil rights movement. In "The Southern Mystique," he tells of how he was asked to leave Spelman in 1963 after teaching there for seven years. "Behind every one of the national government's moves toward racial equality," writes Zinn in one 1965 essay, "lies the sweat and effort of boycotts, picketing, beatings, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations." He firmly believed that bringing people of different races and nationalities together would create a more compassionate world, where equality is a given and not merely a dream. These writings, which span decades, express Zinn's steadfast belief that the people have the power to change the status quo, if they only work together and embrace the nearly forgotten American tradition of civil disobedience and revolution. In clear, compassionate, and present prose, Zinn gives us his thoughts on the Abolitionists, the march from Selma to Montgomery, John F. Kennedy, picketing, sit-ins, and, finally, the message he wanted to send to New York University students about race in a speech he delivered during the last week of his life"–



Brown, Jericho. The Tradition. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"Jericho Brown's daring new book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive. Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex--a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues--testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while reveling in a celebration of contradiction"--Goodreads.com.



Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

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"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."–Publisher's description.



Perkins, Nicole. Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be: Essays. First edition. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2021. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Pop culture is the Pandora's Box of our lives. Racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, inclusion, exclusion, and hope -- all of these intractable and unavoidable features course through the media we consume. Examining pop culture's impact on her life, Nichole Perkins takes readers on a rollicking trip through the last twenty years of music, media and the internet from the perspective of one southern Black woman. She explores her experience with mental illness and how the TV series Frasier served as a crutch, how her role as mistress led her to certain internet message boards that prepared her for current day social media, and what it means to figure out desire and sexuality and Prince in a world where marriage is the only acceptable goal for women. Combining her sharp wit, stellar pop culture sensibility, and trademark spirited storytelling, Nichole boldly tackles the damage done to women, especially Black women, by society's failure to confront the myths and misogyny at its heart, and her efforts to stop the various cycles that limit confidence within herself. By using her own life and loves as a unique vantage point, Nichole humorously and powerfully illuminates how to take the best pop culture has to offer and discard the harmful bits, offering a mirror into our own lives"-- Provided by publisher.



Rankine, Claudia. Just Us: An American Conversation. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2021. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"At home and in government, contemporary America finds itself riven by a culture war in which aggression and defensiveness alike are on the rise. It is not alone. In such partisan conditions, how can humans best approach one another across our differences? Taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy as a guiding light, Claudia Rankine explores a series of real encounters with friends and strangers - each disrupting the false comfort of spaces where our public and private lives intersect, like the airport, the theatre, the dinner party and the voting booth - and urges us to enter into the conversations which could offer the only humane pathways through this moment of division. Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, and to breach the silence, guilt and violence that surround whiteness. Brilliantly arranging essays, images and poems along with the voices and rebuttals of others, it counterpoints Rankine's own text with facing-page notes and commentary, and closes with a bravura study of women confronting the political and cultural implications of dyeing their hair blonde."--Publisher's description.



Dorgan, Byron L. The Girl in the Photograph: The True Story of a Native American Child, Lost and Found in America. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2019. Book @ Harvard LibraryAbstract

"Through the story of Tamara, an abused Native American girl, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan tells the story of the many children living on Indian reservations. On a winter morning in 1990, Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota picked up the Bismarck Tribune. On the front page, a small girl gazed into the distance, shedding a tear. The headline: "Foster home children beaten–and nobody's helping". Dorgan, who had been working with American Indian tribes to secure resources, was distressed. He flew to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to meet with five-year-old Tamara and her grandfather. They became friends. Then she disappeared. And he would search for her for decades until they finally found each other again. This book is her story, from childhood to the present, but it's also the story of a people and a nation. More than one in three American Indian/Alaskan Native children live in poverty. AI/AN children are disproportionately in foster care and awaiting adoption. Suicide among AI/AN youth ages 15 to 24 is 2.5 times the national rate. How have we allowed this to happen? As distressing a situation as it is, this is also a story of hope and resilience. Dorgan, who founded the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute, has worked tirelessly to bring Native youth voices to the forefront of policy discussions, engage Native youth in leadership and advocacy, and secure and share resources for Native youth. Readers will fall in love with this heartbreaking story, but end the book knowing what can be done and what they can do"– provided by publisher.

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