by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 27, 2020 | RESIST: Feminism, RESIST: Social Justice
When Mikki Kendall published Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot in early 2020, the situation was dire. Today, not even six months later, it’s even worse. The shooting of Breonna Taylor by police in her own home is just one reason. Countless...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 25, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
Brittany K. Barnett tells a series of moving and disturbing stories in her new memoir, A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom. If you read social justice books like The New Jim Crow or Locking Up Our Own, you must get your hands on a copy of this...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 16, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
James Forman combines relevant experience and the ability to organize and present recent history. His 2017 book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America is an exposition of origins and consequences of policing and legal decisions. In fact, he divides...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 16, 2020 | RELAX: Memoir, RESIST: Social Justice
With The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, I claim completion of the Ta-Nehisi Coates canon. (Not counting his work on Black Panther graphic novels.) Now I want to go back and re-read some of his later books with the perspective I...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 11, 2020 | RELAX: Historical Fiction, RESIST: Social Justice
The Nickel Boys is the third Colson Whitehead book I’ve read. It’s a joy to watch his skill as a writer improve each time. Of course, two of the three won Pulitzer Prizes, so I’m not the only one noticing. And this book evoked a range of emotions from cheers to jeers...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jun 29, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
Mychal Denzel Smith crafted a group of stunning essays in his new book, Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream. These essays are so spot on and relevant to current events as to be fully prescient. When in fact, they’re discussing complex conditions that have...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 23, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
Tressie McMillan Cottom tells it like it is in Thick: and Other Essays. This one sentence from the titular essay encapsulates her perspective for me. “I do not paint ethereal black worlds where white people can slip into our narratives and leave unscathed by judgment...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Apr 10, 2020 | RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Oct 8, 2019 | RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 30, 2019 | RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 8, 2019 | LEARN: Everything Else, RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Aug 28, 2019 | RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 21, 2019 | RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Mar 9, 2019 | RESIST: Social Justice
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...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Sep 29, 2018 | RESIST: Social Justice
John Lewis creates an incredibly compelling historical memoir in Walking with the Wind. It’s one man’s experience, but it also chronicles the experience of a whole community. While it was written in 1996, so many parts ring true for today’s turbulent world. If you...
by Barbara the Bibliophage | Jul 25, 2018 | RESIST: Social Justice
Katherine Boo won the 2012 Nonfiction National Book Award for Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Subtitled Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, it is an intensely challenging book. Beautiful Forevers tells the story of a select group of slum dwellers. They live in...
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