Jill RussellMission and Social JusticeComments are off for this post

By the Reconciliation Ministry

Striving toward the goal of racial equity and evolution towards anti-racism, we at Hope Church seek education, information, and inspiration by asking “What do you recommend?” Our faith group of readers, learners, and activists turned to the Reconciliation Ministry with the task of curating a list of contemporary books, podcasts, and videos, which quickly generated a lengthy list.

Where does one start to meaningfully organize this list? Conduct an internet search, of course! After just a few minutes, one article repeatedly rose to the top. Reading it, I wondered if this task was all for naught.

Dr. Lauren Michele Jackson teaches in the Departments of English and African American Studies at Northwestern University. Jackson’s article What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List for? was published June 4, 2020, in Vulture, a component of New York Magazine. (NOTE: A version of this article is also available in the June 8, 2020, issue for those who subscribe to the New York Magazine.) References to her work continued to appear in others’ articles and subsequent interviews, such as the NPR podcast The limitations of an anti-racist reading list. Jackson’s piece challenges us to consider what we are doing. I would like to think that we at Hope strive to continue our work, as she states we must “get down to the business of reading.” Thus, we want to generate a list. But Jackson warns not to place all black authors into one category under the anti-racist heading and acknowledges the flaws in organizing a list where “Aside from the contemporary teaching texts, genre appears indiscriminately: essays slide against memoir and folklore, poetry squeezed on either side by sociological tomes.” She asserts we should read Toni Morrison’s work as novels, because she is a great novelist. Read The Warmth of Other Suns for its historical value. Read works on race, power, and capital.

Review the nonfiction and fiction list below of books (memoirs with essays) and explore the additional resources at the bottom to find more. Also included are resources for children’s titles. At the very bottom are some podcasts that have also been highly recommended.

Nonfiction

  • Mumia Abu-Jamal, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?
  • Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
  • Carol Anderson, White Rage, The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
  • Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
  • James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
  • Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald, Eric Martin, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
  • Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?
  • Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
  • Austin Channing Brown, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
  • Aaron Dixon, My People are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain
  • Robin DiAngelo and M.E. Dyson, White Fragility
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States
  • Lenny Duncan, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US
  • Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop
  • Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race
  • Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation
  • Cathy Parks Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
  • Mira Jacob, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
  • Tiffany Jewell, This Book Is Anti-Racist
  • Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be an Antiracist
  • Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bendele, When They Call You a Terrorist
  • Ruth King, Mindful of Race
  • Wesley Lowery, They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement
  • Ijeoma Olue, So You Want to Talk about Race
  • Paul Ortiz, An African-American and Latinx History of the United States
  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
  • Jason Reynolds, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
  • Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
  • Layla Saad, Me and White Supremacy
  • Annaka Sikkink, The Education of a Novice Ally: Learning to be a Middle Class Ally in the Work to End Poverty
  • Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy
  • Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
  • Keeanga-Yamahtta Tayor, How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
  • Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin
  • Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race
  • Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
  • Damon Young, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker

Fiction

  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
  • James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer
  • Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
  • Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
  • Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
  • Toni Morrison, Beloved and The Bluest Eye
  • Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
  • Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad
  • Jacqueline Wood, Brown Girls Dreaming

General Resources

Young Adult and Children’s Reading

Video and Audio

Jill Russell

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