Anti-Racist Reading List
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Women, Race, & Class
by Angela Davis is a powerful read of the women’s liberation movement in the US that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders.
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture
by Angela Davis Revelations about US policies and practices of torture and abuse have captured headlines ever since the breaking of the Abu Graib prison story in April 2004. It is within this context that African-American intellectual Angela Davis gave a series of interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics, and prison. She talks about her own incarceration as well as her experience as an ‘enemy of the state’ and about having been put on the FBI’s most-wanted list. Davis returns to her critique of a democracy that has been compromised by its racist origins.
Are Prisons Obsolete?
by Angela Y. Davis Since the 1980s prison construction and incarceration rates in the U.S. have been rising exponentially, evoking huge public concern about their proliferation, their recent privatization, and their promise of enormous profits. But these prisons house hugely disproportionate numbers of people of color, betraying the racism embedded in the system, while studies show that increasing prison sentences has had no effect on crime. Here, esteemed civil rights activist Angela Davis lays bare the situation and argues for a radical rethinking of our rehabilitation programs.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today’s struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “Freedom is a constant struggle.”
The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.
When They Call You a Terrorist: Book Tour – Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele as they tell their story. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.
Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?
Mumia Abu-Jamal This collection of short meditations, written from a prison cell, captures the past two decades of police violence that gave rise to Black Lives Matter while digging deeply into the history of the United States. This is the book we need right now to find our bearings in the chaos.”
A People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn A People’s History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn presented what he considered to be a different side of history from the more traditional “fundamental nationalist glorification of country”
Haymarket Books Against Policing & Mass Incarceration
Haymarket Books stands in solidarity with all those resisting police violence, mass incarceration, and the racist carceral system. Haymarket Books Against Policing & Mass Incarceration reading list is currently 30% off. Get a free Ebook (where available) and free shipping on orders over $25 inside the US.
Sister Outsider
by Audre Lorde is a collection of essays and speeches that discuss sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class.
The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Marc Lamont Hill This collection of conversations between celebrity intellectual Marc Lamont Hill and famed political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is a shining example of African American men speaking for themselves about the many forces impacting their lives. Covering topics such as race, politics, hip-hop culture, education, mass incarceration, and love, their discussions shine a spotlight on some of the most pressing issues in 21st century African American life.
Uprooting Racism 4th Edition
Paul Kivel It provides practical tools and advice on how white people can work as allies for racial justice, directly engaging the reader through questions, exercises.
Witnessing Whiteness
Witnessing Whiteness invites readers to consider what it means to be white, describes and critiques strategies used to avoid race issues, and identifies the detrimental effect of avoiding race on cross-race collaborations
Stamped from the Beginning
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America is a 2016 non-fiction book about race in the United States by Ibram X. Kendi that won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Towards the “other America”: Anti‑racist Resources for White People Taking Action
Chris Crass calls on all of us to join our values to the power of love and act with courage for a world where Black lives truly matter. A world where the death culture of white supremacy no longer devours the lives of Black people and no longer deforms the hearts and souls of white people.
Towards Collective Liberation: Anti-Racist Organizing, Feminist Praxis, and Movement Building Strategy
for activists engaging with dynamic questions of how to create and support effective movements for visionary systemic change. Chris Crass’s collection of essays and interviews presents us with powerful lessons for transformative organizing through offering a firsthand look at the challenges and the opportunities of anti-racist work in white communities, feminist work with men, and bringing women of color feminism into the heart of social movements. Drawing on two decades of personal activist experience and case studies of anti-racist social justice organizations, Crass insightfully explores ways of transforming divisions of race, class, and gender into catalysts for powerful vision, strategy, and movement building in the United States today.
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces
Featuring Radley Balko, Author, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, Senior Writer, Huffington Post; and Mark Lomax, Executive Director, National Association of Tactical Officers; moderated by Laura Odato, Director of Government Affairs, Cato Institute.
The Meaning of Freedom
by Angela Y. Davis; Robin D. G. Kelley (Introduction by)
In this collection of twelve searing, previously unpublished speeches, Davis confronts the interconnected issues of power, race, gender, class, incarceration, conservatism, and the ongoing need for social change in the United States. With her characteristic brilliance, historical insight, and penetrating analysis, Davis addresses examples of institutional injustice and explores the radical notion of freedom as a collective striving for real democracy—not a thing granted by the state, law, proclamation, or policy, but a participatory social process, rooted in difficult dialogues, that demands new ways of thinking and being.
Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism
Angela Y. Davis I want to suggest to you that rape bears a direct relationship to all of the exiting power structures in a given society. This relationship is not a simple mechanical one, but rather involves complex structures reflecting the complex interconnectedness of race, gender, and class oppression which characterizes that society.–Angela Davis
Women, Culture and Politics
Angela Y. Davis A collection of her speeches and writings which address the political and social changes of the past decade as they are concerned with the struggle for racial, sexual, and economic equality.
If They Come in the Morning
The trial of Angela Yvonne Davis in connection with the prisoner revolt by three black prisoners on August 7, 1970 at the Marin County Courthouse will be remembered as one of America’s most historic political trials, and no one can tell the story better than Miss Davis herself. This book is also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of that increasingly important symbol — the political prisoner.
Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities: A Reading List
Me and White Supremacy
by Layla F. Saad originally started as an Instagram challenge, and was officially published as a book this year. Me and White Supremacy “leads readers through a journey of understanding their white privilege and participation in white supremacy, so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on black, indigenous and people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.”
Ella Baker: A Leader Behind the Scenes by Shyrlee Dallard was posted on the Instagram feed of Lexx Valdez.
Between the World and Me
by Ta-Nehisi Coates is written as a letter to the author’s son about being a Black man in America.
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism
by 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).
How to Be an Antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi 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. Instead of working with the policies and system we have in place, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
So You Want to Talk About Race
by Ijeoma Oluo In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America
How To Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
by Crystal M. Fleming A unique and irreverent take on everything that’s wrong with our “national conversation about race”—and what to do about it
Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representations by Neferti X. M. Tadiar (Editor); Angela Davis
This book explores the importance of visual images in the identities and material conditions of women of color as they relate to social power, oppression, and resistance. The goal of the collection is to rethink the category of visual theory through women of color. It also explores the political and social ramifications of visual imagery for women of color, and the political consciousness that can emerge alongside a critical understanding of the impact of visual imagery. The book begins with a general exploration of what it means to develop a women of color criticism (rather than an analysis of women of color), and goes on to look specifically at topics such as 90s fashion advertisements, the politics of cosmetic surgery, and female fans of East LA rock bands.
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Y. Davis
“Jazz, it is widely accepted, is the signal original American contribution to world culture. Angela Davis shows us how the roots of that form in the blues must be viewed not only as a musical tradition but as a life-sustaining vehicle for an alternative black working-class collective memory and social consciousness profoundly at odds with mainstream American middle-class values. And she explains how the tradition of black women blues singers – represented by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday – embodies not only an artistic triumph and aesthetic dominance over a hostile popular music industry but an unacknowledged proto-feminist consciousness within working-class black communities. Through a close and riveting analysis of these artists’ performances, words, and lives, Davis uncovers the unmistakable assertion and uncompromising celebration of non-middle-class, non-heterosexual social, moral, and sexual values.”
The Angela Y. Davis Reader by Joy James (Editor)
The Angela Y. Davis Reader presents eighteen essays from her writings and interviews which have appeared in If They Come in the Morning, Women, Race, and Class, Women, Culture, and Politics, and Black Women and the Blues as well as articles published in women’s, ethnic/black studies and communist journals, and cultural studies anthologies. In four parts – “Prisons, Repression, and Resistance”, “Marxism, Anti-Racism, and Feminism”, “Aesthetics and Culture”, and recent interviews – Davis examines revolutionary politics and intellectualism.
Other recommended authors: Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Y. Davis, Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison.