Books of the Month
Interested? It’s easy—we choose a new book (or two) every month. Pick one, and get your own copy (don’t buy from Amazon! Check out our Black-owned bookstores or local libraries resources to find one).
Then, find a local book club chapter, start an unofficial chapter, or join our monthly book club Zoom meetings.
Below you’ll find additional resources and questions for each book, so you can always read on your own.
Happy reading.
April
This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed
by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
Focuses:
Freedom
Civil Rights
Capitalism
by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
Focuses:
Freedom
Civil Rights
Capitalism
Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend's Montgomery, Alabama home as "an arsenal."
Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent" civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to selfprotection-yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr. describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s. In the Deep South, blacks often safeguarded themselves and their loved ones from white supremacist violence by bearing-and, when necessary, using-firearms. In much the same way, Cobb shows, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from black gun owners inthe regions where they worked. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these courageous men and women and the weapons they carried were crucial to the movement's success.
Giving voice to the World War II veterans, rural activists, volunteer security guards, and self-defense groups who took up arms to defend their lives and liberties, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the Second Amendment. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the civil rights movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb provides a controversial examination of the crucial place of firearms in the fight for American freedom.
Buy it local Join a book club
Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent" civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to selfprotection-yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr. describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s. In the Deep South, blacks often safeguarded themselves and their loved ones from white supremacist violence by bearing-and, when necessary, using-firearms. In much the same way, Cobb shows, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from black gun owners inthe regions where they worked. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these courageous men and women and the weapons they carried were crucial to the movement's success.
Giving voice to the World War II veterans, rural activists, volunteer security guards, and self-defense groups who took up arms to defend their lives and liberties, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the Second Amendment. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the civil rights movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb provides a controversial examination of the crucial place of firearms in the fight for American freedom.
Buy it local Join a book club
Cane
by Jean Toomer
Focuses:
Poetry
Culture
Racism
by Jean Toomer
Focuses:
Poetry
Culture
Racism
Jean Toomer's Cane is one of the most significant works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, and is considered to be a masterpiece in American modernist literature because of its distinct structure and style. First published in 1923 and told through a series of vignettes, Cane uses poetry, prose, and play-like dialogue to create a window into the varied lives of African Americans living in the rural South and urban North during a time when Jim Crow laws pervaded and racism reigned. While critically acclaimed and known today as a pioneering text of the Harlem Renaissance, the book did not gain as much popularity as other works written during the period.
Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane's lack of a wider readership was because it didn't reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature. For the first time in Penguin Classics, this edition of Cane features a new introduction, suggestions for further reading, and notes by scholar George Hutchinson, and National Book Award Foundation 5 Under 35 novelist Zinzi Clemmons contributes a foreword.
Buy it local Join a book club
Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes believed Cane's lack of a wider readership was because it didn't reinforce the stereotypes often associated with African Americans during the time, but portrayed them in an accurate and entirely human way, breaking the mold and laying the groundwork for how African Americans are depicted in literature. For the first time in Penguin Classics, this edition of Cane features a new introduction, suggestions for further reading, and notes by scholar George Hutchinson, and National Book Award Foundation 5 Under 35 novelist Zinzi Clemmons contributes a foreword.
Buy it local Join a book club
March
The Three Mothers
by Anna Malaika Tubbs
Focuses:
Black Motherhood
Injustice
by Anna Malaika Tubbs
Focuses:
Black Motherhood
Injustice
In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin.
Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them, who were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women.
Berdis, Alberta, and Louise passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning--from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.
These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America's racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families' safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers.
These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.
Buy it local Join a book club
Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them, who were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women.
Berdis, Alberta, and Louise passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning--from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.
These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America's racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families' safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers.
These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.
Buy it local Join a book club
How We Get Free
by Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor
Focuses:
Feminism
Liberation
by Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor
Focuses:
Feminism
Liberation
The Combahee River Collective, a group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the anti-racist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
Buy it local Join a book club
Buy it local Join a book club
February
The End of White World Supremacy
by Roderick D. Bush
Focuses:
Black Liberation
Capitalism
by Roderick D. Bush
Focuses:
Black Liberation
Capitalism
In The End of White World Supremacy, Rod Bush engages readers in a rich intellectual conversation, creating a quilt where each panel contains a story, a point, an example of its own, yet when one stands back, broader themes emerge. To benefit from the book, one needs to consider both the specifics of each conversation as well as the perspective of the whole discussion.
Bush, who died in 2013, was an activist as well as a scholar. In the 1970s, when he was a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Kansas, he became involved in the Black Liberation movement. He moved to California in 1979 to devote himself to community work. He later completed his doctorate in sociology at Binghamton University (at the Braudel Center), and then taught at Seton Hall and St. John’s Universities. In recent years, he was a member of the national council of the Black Radical Congress and the Executive Board of the Left Forum.
Buy it local Join a book club
Here I Stand
by Paul Robeson
Focuses:
Equality
Society
by Paul Robeson
Focuses:
Equality
Society
Robeson's international achievements as a singer and actor in starring roles on stage and screen made him the most celebrated black American of his day, but his outspoken criticism of racism in the United States, his strong support of African independence, and his fascination with the Soviet Union placed him under the debilitating scrutiny of McCarthyism. Blacklisted, his famed voice silenced, Here I Stand offered a bold answer to his accusers. It remains today a defiant challenge to the prevailing fear and racism that continues to characterize American society.
Buy it local Join a book club
Buy it local Join a book club
January
No Name In The Street
by James Baldwin
Focuses:
Racism
Injustice
by James Baldwin
Focuses:
Racism
Injustice
This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works. In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.
Buy it local Join a book club
Buy it local Join a book club
I Can’t Date Jesus
by Michael Arceneaux
Focuses:
Equality
LGBT
Identity
by Michael Arceneaux
Focuses:
Equality
LGBT
Identity
Equality for LGBT people has come a long way and all, but voices of persons of color within the community are still often silenced, and being black in America is…well, have you watched the news?
With the characteristic wit and candor that have made him one of today’s boldest writers on social issues, I Can’t Date Jesus is Michael Arceneaux’s impassioned, forthright, and refreshing look at minority life in today’s America. Leaving no bigoted or ignorant stone unturned, he describes his journey in learning to embrace his identity when the world told him to do the opposite.
Buy it local Join a book club
With the characteristic wit and candor that have made him one of today’s boldest writers on social issues, I Can’t Date Jesus is Michael Arceneaux’s impassioned, forthright, and refreshing look at minority life in today’s America. Leaving no bigoted or ignorant stone unturned, he describes his journey in learning to embrace his identity when the world told him to do the opposite.
Buy it local Join a book club
December
The Assassination of Fred Hampton
by Jeffrey Haas
Focuses:
Police Brutality
Racism
Injustice
by Jeffrey Haas
Focuses:
Police Brutality
Racism
Injustice
It’s around 7:00 A.M. on December 4, 1969, and attorney Jeff Haas is in a police lockup in Chicago, interviewing Fred Hampton’s fiancée. She is describing how the police pulled her from the room as Fred lay unconscious on their bed. She heard one officer say, “He’s still alive.” She then heard two shots. A second officer said, “He’s good and dead now.” She looks at Jeff and asks, “What can you do?”
The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.
Buy it local Join a book club
The Assassination of Fred Hampton is Haas’s personal account of how he and People’s Law Office partner Flint Taylor pursued Hampton’s assassins, ultimately prevailing over unlimited government resources and FBI conspiracy. Not only a story of justice delivered, the book puts Hampton in a new light as a dynamic community leader and an inspiration in the fight against injustice.
Buy it local Join a book club
1919
by Eve L. Ewing
Focuses:
Poetry
Segregation
Racism
by Eve L. Ewing
Focuses:
Poetry
Segregation
Racism
The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots that comprised the “Red Summer” of violence across the nation’s cities, is an event that has shaped the last century but is widely unknown. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of this event—which lasted eight days and resulted in thirty-eight deaths and almost 500 injuries—through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city. Ewing uses speculative and Afrofuturist lenses to recast history, and illuminates the thin line between the past and the present.
Buy it local Join a book club
Buy it local Join a book club
November
Class Struggle In Africa
by Kwame Nkrumah
Focuses:
Colonization
Imperialism
Africa
by Kwame Nkrumah
Focuses:
Colonization
Imperialism
Africa
Recent African history has exposed the close links between the interests of imperialism and neo-colonialism and the African bourgeoisie. This book reveals the nature and extent of the class struggle in Africa, and sets it in the broad context of the African Revolution and the world socialist revolution.
Buy it local Join a book club
Buy it local Join a book club
Our History Is The Future
by Nick Estes
Focuses:
Liberation
Culture
by Nick Estes
Focuses:
Liberation
Culture
How two centuries of Indigenous resistance created the movement proclaiming “Water is life”
In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anticolonial struggle would continue. In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.
Buy it local Join a book club
In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century. Water Protectors knew this battle for native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anticolonial struggle would continue. In Our History Is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance that led to the #NoDAPL movement. Our History Is the Future is at once a work of history, a manifesto, and an intergenerational story of resistance.
Buy it local Join a book club
October
Prison By Any Other name
by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
Focuses:
Judicial System Reform Prison Industrial
by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
Focuses:
Judicial System Reform Prison Industrial
Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data-driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But many of these so-called reforms actually widen the net, weaving in new strands of punishment and control, and bringing new populations, who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment, under physical control by the state.
As mainstream public opinion has begun to turn against mass incarceration, political figures on both sides of the spectrum are pushing for reform. But—though they’re promoted as steps to confront high rates of imprisonment—many of these measures are transforming our homes and communities into prisons instead.
Buy it local Join a book club
As mainstream public opinion has begun to turn against mass incarceration, political figures on both sides of the spectrum are pushing for reform. But—though they’re promoted as steps to confront high rates of imprisonment—many of these measures are transforming our homes and communities into prisons instead.
Buy it local Join a book club
September
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Alice Wong
Focuses:
Disability
Culture
Edited by Alice Wong
Focuses:
Disability
Culture
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture.
From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
Buy it local Join a book club
From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
Buy it local Join a book club
Capitalism & Disability
Selected writings by Marta Russell
Focuses:
Disability
Capitalism
Policy
Selected writings by Marta Russell
Focuses:
Disability
Capitalism
Policy
Spread out over many years and many different publications, the late author and activist Marta Russell wrote a number of groundbreaking and insightful essays on the nature of disability and oppression under capitalism. In this volume, Russell’s various essays are brought together in one place in order to provide a useful and expansive resource to those interested in better understanding the ways in which the modern phenomenon of disability is shaped by capitalist economic and social relations.
Buy it local Join a book club
Buy it local Join a book club
August
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
By Toni Morrison
Focuses:
Racism
Literature
By Toni Morrison
Focuses:
Racism
Literature
Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree—and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition.
Buy it local
Buy it local
The Vanishing Half
By Brit Bennett
Focuses:
Colorism
Identity
Family
By Brit Bennett
Focuses:
Colorism
Identity
Family
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Abolition Reading: Black August Booklist
A List of 14 Books Promoting Black Liberation
In the late 1970’s the observance and practice of Black August left the prisons of California and began being practiced by Black/New Afrikan revolutionaries throughout the country. Black August is a time to study history, particularly our history in the North American Empire. During the month, people wouldn’t use radios or television, would fast between sun up and sun down, and practice other measures of self-discipline.
Read along with us during Black August.
View the list
Read along with us during Black August.
View the list
July
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex
By Eric Stanley & Nat Smith
Focuses:
Prison Industrial Complex
Gender
By Eric Stanley & Nat Smith
Focuses:
Prison Industrial Complex
Gender
Pathologized, terrorized, and confined, trans/gender non-conforming and queer folks have always struggled against the prison industrial complex. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics for a new understanding of how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity. Through a politic of gender self-determination, this collection argues that trans/ queer liberation and prison abolition must be grown together.
Sample discussion prompt: In what ways has trying to end domestic violence hurt our communities and/or made the prison industrial complex stronger?
Buy it local Join a book club
Sample discussion prompt: In what ways has trying to end domestic violence hurt our communities and/or made the prison industrial complex stronger?
Buy it local Join a book club
Are Prisons Obsolete?
By Angela Davis
Focuses:
Prison Industrial Complex
Racism
By Angela Davis
Focuses:
Prison Industrial Complex
Racism
With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison.
Sample discussion prompt: If jails and prisons are to be abolished, then what will replace them?
Watch:
Our LA chapter facilitator Michael Anderson unpacks important themes and questions
Buy it local Join a book club
Sample discussion prompt: If jails and prisons are to be abolished, then what will replace them?
Watch:
Our LA chapter facilitator Michael Anderson unpacks important themes and questions
Buy it local Join a book club
June
Race Music: Black Cultures From Bebop to Hip-Hop
Dr. Guthrie Ramsey
Focuses:
Music
American Culture
Black Identity
Dr. Guthrie Ramsey
Focuses:
Music
American Culture
Black Identity
This powerful book covers the vast and various terrain of African American music, from bebop to hip-hop. Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., begins with an absorbing account of his own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago, evoking Sunday-morning worship services, family gatherings with food and dancing, and jam sessions at local nightclubs. This lays the foundation for a brilliant discussion of how musical meaning emerges in the private and communal realms of lived experience and how African American music has shaped and reflected identities in the black community.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Let the homie pick: Shakira
Blood In My Eye
George Jackson
Focuses:
Prison Industrial Complex
Racism
George Jackson
Focuses:
Prison Industrial Complex
Racism
Blood In My Eye was completed only days before its author was killed. George Jackson died on August 21, 1971 at the hands of San Quentin prison guards during an alleged escape attempt. At eighteen, George Jackson was convicted of stealing seventy dollars from a gas station and was sentenced from one year to life. He was to spent the rest of his life -- eleven years-- in the California prison system, seven in solidary confinement. In prison he read widely and transformed himself into an activist and political theoretician who defined himself as a revolutionary.
Buy it local
Buy it local
May
Assata: An Autobiography
Assata Shakur
Focuses:
Police Brutality
Judicial System
Racism
Assata Shakur
Focuses:
Police Brutality
Judicial System
Racism
This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials
Buy it local
Buy it local
April
War Against All Puerto Ricans
Nelson Antonio Denis
Focuses:
Puerto Rico
Colonization
Revolution
Nelson Antonio Denis
Focuses:
Puerto Rico
Colonization
Revolution
Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, War Against All Puerto Ricans tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico’s history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Mean
Myriam Gurba
Focuses:
Sexual assault
Racism
Coming-of-age
Myriam Gurba
Focuses:
Sexual assault
Racism
Coming-of-age
True crime, memoir, and ghost story, Mean is the bold and hilarious tale of Myriam Gurba’s coming of age as a queer, mixed-race Chicana. Blending radical formal fluidity and caustic humor, Gurba takes on sexual violence, small towns, and race, turning what might be tragic into piercing, revealing comedy. This is a confident, intoxicating, brassy book that takes the cost of sexual assault, racism, misogyny, and homophobia deadly seriously.
Buy it local
Buy it local
March
Love WITH Accountability
Aishah Shahidah Simmons
Focuses:
Child Sexual Abuse
Healing
Community
Aishah Shahidah Simmons
Focuses:
Child Sexual Abuse
Healing
Community
Love WITH Accountability features compelling writings by child sexual abuse survivors, advocates, and Simmons’s mother, who underscores the detrimental impact of parents/caregivers not believing their children when they disclose their sexual abuse. This collection explores disrupting the inhumane epidemic of child sexual abuse, humanely.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Let the homie pick: Dawud, facilitator for SCI Coal Township prison chapter
As Black As Resistance
Zoé Samudzi & William C. Anderson
Focuses:
Black liberation
Politics
Anarchism
Anticapitalism
Zoé Samudzi & William C. Anderson
Focuses:
Black liberation
Politics
Anarchism
Anticapitalism
Over the course of United States history, resistance against oppression and the gains made from various struggles for everyone's equality have often been Black led. However, liberal politics and the lack of strong leftist political power are two problems impeding the continued progress of Black America. Expanding on their original essay The Anarchism Of Blackness, Samudzi and Anderson make the case for a new program of transformative politics for Black Americans, one rooted in an anarchistic framework likened to the Black experience itself. This is not a compromising book that negotiates with intolerance. As Black as Resistance is a declaration for everyone who is ready to continue progressing towards liberation for all people.
Buy it local
Buy it local
February
Sister Outsider
Audre Lorde
Focuses:
Intersectional feminism
Racism
US imperialism
Audre Lorde
Focuses:
Intersectional feminism
Racism
US imperialism
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.
These landmark writings are, in Lorde’s own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . ”
Buy it local
These landmark writings are, in Lorde’s own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . ”
Buy it local
Magical Negro
Morgan Parker
Focuses:
Black experience Womanhood
Morgan Parker
Focuses:
Black experience Womanhood
Magical Negro is an archive of black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. They connect themes of loneliness, displacement, grief, ancestral trauma, and objectification, while exploring and troubling tropes and stereotypes of Black Americans. Focused primarily on depictions of black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics―of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience. In Magical Negro, Parker creates a space of witness, of airing grievances, of pointing out patterns. In these poems are living documents, pleas, latent traumas, inside jokes, and unspoken anxieties situated as firmly in the past as in the present―timeless black melancholies and triumphs.
Buy it local
Buy it local
January
Die Nigger Die!
Jamil Al-Amin
Focuses:
Revolution
Militarism
60s Civil Rights movement
Jamil Al-Amin
Focuses:
Revolution
Militarism
60s Civil Rights movement
More than any other black leader, H. Rap Brown, chairman of the radical Black Power organization Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), came to symbolize the ideology of black revolution. This autobiography—which was first published in 1969, went through seven printings and has long been unavailable—chronicles the making of a revolutionary. It is much more than a personal history, however; it is a call to arms, an urgent message to the black community to be the vanguard force in the struggle of oppressed people. Forthright, sardonic, and shocking, this book is not only illuminating and dynamic but also a vitally important document that is essential to understanding the upheavals of the late 1960s.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Sabrina & Corina
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Focuses:
Family
Latina experience
Trauma
Coming-of-age
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Focuses:
Family
Latina experience
Trauma
Coming-of-age
Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force.
In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.
Buy it local
In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.
Buy it local
December 2019
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon
Focuses:
Colonization
Marxism
Oppression
Frantz Fanon
Focuses:
Colonization
Marxism
Oppression
The Wretched of the Earth is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation. Bearing singular insight into the rage and frustration of colonized peoples, and the role of violence in effecting historical change, the book incisively attacks the twin perils of postindependence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites on the one hand, and intertribal and interfaith animosities on the other. Fanon’s analysis, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, has been reflected all too clearly in the corruption and violence that has plagued present-day Africa.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Persepolis
(The Story of a Childhood)
Marjane Satrapi
Focuses:
Islamic Revolution
Coming-of-age
Family
(The Story of a Childhood)
Marjane Satrapi
Focuses:
Islamic Revolution
Coming-of-age
Family
In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.
Buy it local
Buy it local
November 2019
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler
Focuses:
Dystopian fiction
American society
Survival
Octavia E. Butler
Focuses:
Dystopian fiction
American society
Survival
When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith... and a startling vision of human destiny.
Buy it local
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith... and a startling vision of human destiny.
Buy it local
Let the homie pick: Kehlani
How to Cure a Ghost
Fariha Róisín
Focuses:
Relationships
Self-love
Identity
Fariha Róisín
Focuses:
Relationships
Self-love
Identity
Following in the footsteps of such category killers as Milk and Honey and Whiskey Words & a Shovel I, Fariha Róisín’s poetry book is a collection of her thoughts as a young, queer, Muslim femme navigating the difficulties of her intersectionality. Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Róisín and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities.
Buy it local
Buy it local
October 2019
Faces & Masks (Memory of Fire, Vol. 2)
Eduardo Galeano
Focuses:
History of the Americas
Colonization
Eduardo Galeano
Focuses:
History of the Americas
Colonization
The second volume of Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy, Faces and Masks is an astonishing Latin American-eye view of the New World in the making. Here is the tangled, cataclysmic history of our hemisphere from the 1700s up to the dawn of our present century, told through characters as resonant and compelling as Simon Bolívar, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Billy the Kid. With its brilliant and imaginative blend of journalism, scholarship, and political passion, Faces and Masks is a panoramic interpretation of the Americas no work of history has previously imagined.
Buy it local
Buy it local
Let the homie pick: Earl Sweatshirt
Faces in the Crowd
Valeria Luiselli
Focuses:
Nonlinear storytelling
Mexican experience
Valeria Luiselli
Focuses:
Nonlinear storytelling
Mexican experience
In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet. And in Philadelphia, Gilberto Owen recalls his friendship with Lorca, and the young woman he saw in the windows of passing trains. Valeria Luiselli's debut signals the arrival of a major international writer and an unexpected and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.
Buy it local
Buy it local
September 2019
Don’t Call Us Dead
Danez Smith
Focuses:
Sexuality
Police Brutality
Racism
Danez Smith
Focuses:
Sexuality
Police Brutality
Racism
Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality―the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood―and a diagnosis of HIV positive. “Some of us are killed / in pieces,” Smith writes, “some of us all at once.” Don’t Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America―“Dear White America”―where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.
Buy it local
Buy it local
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Michael W. Twitty
Focuses:
Southern cuisine
Slavery
Memory
Michael W. Twitty
Focuses:
Southern cuisine
Slavery
Memory
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.
Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who “owns” it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.
Buy it local
Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who “owns” it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.
Buy it local
August 2019
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire
Focuses:
Education
Poverty
Liberation
Paulo Freire
Focuses:
Education
Poverty
Liberation
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is one of the foundational texts in the field of critical pedagogy, which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate.
The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Buy it local
The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Buy it local
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Samantha Irby
Focuses:
Memoir
Relationships
Comedy
Samantha Irby
Focuses:
Memoir
Relationships
Comedy
Whether Samantha Irby is talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets; explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette (she’s “35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something”); detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes; sharing awkward sexual encounters; or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms (hang in there for the Costco loot!); she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
Buy it local
Buy it local
