Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas inhabits her main character Starr Carter’s voice in The Hate U Give. Starr is an African American teen living in a rough neighborhood. But her life is so much more than that. She’s got two younger brothers, plus a mom and dad who work their fingers to the...Book Review: The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
We know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his nonfiction, but his fictional debut, The Water Dancer, is just as stupendous as his previous books. He builds the details of his world drop by drop, layer by layer. By the end, I felt fully immersed, although in some ways I was...Book Review: How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram X. Kendi covers a lot of ground in How to be an Anti-Racist. I believe we all are his intended audience, no matter our race, color, sexual or gender identities, political affiliation, or any other segmentation you might consider. He makes it clear that this...Book Review: Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari
Johann Hari did so much more than enlighten me in his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. I met all the players in this war, from the government officials to the cartels and dealers, to those on the global leading edge of...Book Review: White Rage by Carol Anderson, Ph. D.
Carol Anderson, Ph.D tells a lot of hard truths in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. I believe her one hundred percent, partly because a solid half of this book is scholarly footnotes. And partly because of all the other social justice reading I’ve...Book Review: The View From Flyover Country by Sarah Kendzior
Sarah Kendzior has been blogging, writing, and working as a journalist since the early 2010s. Her book, The View from Flyover Country, gained prominence after the 2016 election because of her insightful tweets about the rise of the 45th President. Clearly, I’m just...Book Review: Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Jewell Parker Rhodes mixes hard, cold reality with imagination in her middle-grade novel, Ghost Boys. It’s the story of a young African American boy, just 12 years old. And he dies by the gun of a police officer. So, going in I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy...Book Review: The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye
In The Paragon Hotel, Lyndsay Faye brings us a character nicknamed Nobody. She’s actually Alice James, but is skilled at disappearing into the corner of a room or a street. She uses some disguise, but mostly changes voices and attitudes to blend in. It’s a skill she...Book Review: There There by Tommy Orange
There There by Tommy Orange wasn’t the book I’d hoped it would be. Where Heart Berries was a deep dive in one woman’s psyche, There There is a shallow dip into the lives of many, many characters. That they both center on the varied experiences of Native Americans in...Book Review: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Richard Rothstein makes complex government-sanctioned segregation eminently clear in The Color of Law. Although he’s a researcher and academic, his writing is easy to read. It’s the content—the actions he describes—that made me angry enough to throw things. But I’m...Book Review: Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson
Michael Eric Dyson tells it like it is in Tears We Cannot Stop. Subtitled A Sermon for White America, it is just that. In both structure and tone, Dyson combines his experience as both pastor and professor. It is a moving and emotional book. But it’s also exquisitely...Book Review: A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes
Chris Hayes believes that the United States has a Colony living in the borders of a Nation, which is another way of saying that some of us are treated markedly different than others. This is essentially a book about policing and imprisonment practices in the U.S. It...Bookshop.Org Affiliate
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