Recommended resources for those seeking to understand current events, learn more, and take action.
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
The story begins in 1619--a year before the Mayflower--when the White Lion disgorges "some 20-and-odd Negroes" onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity.
Surviving the White Gaze
A powerful memoir from black cultural critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her painful struggle to overcome a completely white childhood in order to forge her identity as a black woman in America.
The Hill We Climb
A collection of poetry by presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman Including "The Hill We Climb," the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, this collection of the same name reveals an energizing and unforgettable new voice in America poetry.
White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America
The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures?
Highway Of Tears: A True Story Of Racism, Indifference And The Pursuit Of Justice For Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Girls
A searing and revelatory account of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls of Highway 16, and an indictment of the society that failed them.
Islamophobia: What Christians Should Know (and Do) about Anti-Muslim Discrimination
This book argues that Christians, not Muslims, should be at the forefront of efforts to end Islamophobia. While focusing largely on American Islamophobia, the author also discusses the issue's international and historical roots and its connection to Christianity.
A Mind Spread Out On The Ground
A personal meditation on trauma, legacy, oppression and racism in North America. In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America.
Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada
A look at systemic racism in Canadian health care in cases involving Indigenous people, children in particular, and the medical establishment's role in colonial genocide.
Chiru Sakura — Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter's Journey Through Racism, Internment And Oppression
Grace Eiko Thomson recounts her and her mother's lives as Japanese Canadians, including internment during the Second World War and the restrictions placed on their lives in the years following.
The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Hatred of Muslims
This is a disturbing account of the campaign to promote fear and hatred of Muslims in the United States and Europe, from the 'War on Terror' to Trump's travel ban.Nathan Lean takes us through a world of conservative bloggers, right-wing talk show hosts, evangelical religious leaders and politicians, united in their efforts to demonize Muslims.
Eloquent Rage A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting.
Talking To Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don't Know
A powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong.
A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Gathers material from reports produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to present a concise history and legacy of residential schools in Canada.
This is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism
As America’s only Black prime-time anchor, Lemon takes on racism and antiracism, the failures of the US leaders, and America’s systemic flaws. In this urgent, deeply personal, riveting plea, Lemon shows us all how deep our problems lie, and what we can do to begin to fix them.
Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy
Do Better addresses anti-racism from a intersectional and spiritually-aligned perspective. This guidebook illustrates how to engage in the mindfulness-based practices that racial justice educator Rachel Ricketts has developed to fight white supremacy from the inside out, in our personal lives and communities alike.
Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice
This inspirational memoir serves as a call to action from prison reform activist Yusef Salaam, of the Exonerated Five, that will inspire us all to turn our stories into tools for change in the pursuit of racial justice.
Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm
Building on the groundwork laid in White Fragility, DiAngelo explores how a culture of niceness inadvertently promotes racism. Good intentions are not enough to break the cycle of racism.
Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, And Hard Truths In A Northern City
Award-winning investigative journalist Tanya Talaga delves into the deaths of seven Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay, illustrating Canada's long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities.
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma And The Pathway To Mending Our Hearts And Bodies
In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.
Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race
Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge has written a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary examination of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today.
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work For Racial Justice
This fourth edition of Uprooting Racism offers a framework around neoliberalism and interpersonal, institutional, and cultural racism, along with stories of resistance and white solidarity. It provides practical tools and advice on how white people can work as allies for racial justice, engaging the reader through questions, exercises, and suggestions for action.
Policing Black Lives: State Violence In Canada From Slavery To The Present
Delving behind Canada's veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.
Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, And Imprisonment
Explores and critiques the many ways the criminal justice system impacts the lives of African American boys and men at every stage of the criminal process from arrest through sentencing.
The End of Policing
Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.
Rise Of The Warrior Cop: The Militarization Of America's Police Forces
Radley Balko is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about civil liberties, police, prosecutors, and the broader criminal justice system.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes myths about de facto segregation in American cities.
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race
National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History Of Racist Ideas In America
In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history.
White Rage: the Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Explores historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by oppositione in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud.
Between the World and Me
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.
Just Mercy: A Story Of Justice And Redemption
The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.
Blindspot: Hidden Biases Of Good People.
Writing with simplicity and verve, Banaji and Greenwald question the extent to which our perceptions of social groups--without our awareness or conscious control--shape our likes and dislikes and our judgments about people's character, abilities, and potential.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations.
Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics
In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.
Citizen: An American Lyric
A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media.
Sister Outsider: Essays And Speeches
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.
White Privilege: Essential Readings On The Other Side Of Racism
Essays exploring the ways in which some people or groups actually benefit, deliberately or inadvertently, from racial bias.
The Fire Next Time
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement.
Me And White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change The World, And Become A Good Ancestor
Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey of how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, And You
For teens. A primer to Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning exploring racism in America.
The Skin We're In: A Year Of Black Resistance And Power
A bracing, provocative and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy and inspire activists.
How To Be An Antiracist
This New York Times Bestseller offers a "groundbreaking" (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves.
Until We Are Free: Reflections On Black Lives Matter In Canada
Some of the very best writing on the hottest issues facing the Black community in Canada. It describes the latest developments in Canadian Black activism, organizing efforts through the use of social media, Black-Indigenous alliances, and more.
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard To Talk To White People About Racism
The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.
So You Want To Talk About Race
A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.
Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong
From The Guardian's Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed--through the author's own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black.
Biased: Uncovering The Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, And Do
From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias come stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time.
We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, And The Art Of Survival
Insightful and searing essays that celebrate the vibrancy and strength of black history and culture in America.
When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
A meaningful, empowering account of survival, strength, and resilience.
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment,
A provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state.
Heavy: An American Memoir
Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about the physical manifestations of violence, grief, trauma, and abuse on his own body.
The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity, Creed, Country, Color, Class , Culture
An incandescent exploration of the nature and history of the identities that define us. It challenges our assumptions about how identities work.
On The Other Side Of Freedom: The Case For Hope
Drawing from his own experiences as an activist, organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible.
