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The Trayvon Generation : Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow by Elizabeth AlexanderOriginally published in the New Yorker, one of the great literary voices of our time shares her celebrated and moving reflection on the challenges facing young Black America, illuminating our nation’s unresolved problem with race.
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Southbound : Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change by Anjali EnjetiThe twenty essays in Enjeti's collection, tackle white feminism at a national feminist organization, the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the South, voter suppression, gun violence and the gun sense movement, the whitewashing of southern literature, the 1982 racialized killing of Vincent Chin, social media's role in political accountability, evangelical Christianity's marriage to extremism, and the rise of nationalism worldwide.
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Good Talk : A Memoir in Conversations by Mira JacobPresents a graphic novel memoir about American identity as it has shaped her interracial family in the aftermath of the 2016 elections.
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How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi A best-selling author, National Book Award-winner and professor combines ethics, history, law and science with a personal narrative to describe how to move beyond the awareness of racism and contribute to making society just and equitable.
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The Sum of Us : What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather C. McGheeMcGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Mississippi to Maine, tallying up what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm--the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she collects the stories of white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams and their shot at a better job to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country--from parks and pools to functioning schools--have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. It's why we fail to prevent environmental and public health crises that require collective action. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee also finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to the benefit of all involved
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I Take My Coffee Black : Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America by Tyler MerrittTyler tells hilarious stories from his own life as a black man in America. He talks about growing up in a multi-cultural community and realizing that he wasn't always welcome. He shares how he quit sports for musical theater (that's where the girls were), to how Jesus barged in uninvited and changed his life forever (it all revolved around a Triple Fat Goose jacket), to how he ended up at a small Bible college in Santa Cruz because he thought they had a great theater program (they didn't). Throughout his stories, he also seamlessly weaves in lessons about privilege and the legacy of lynching and sharecropping and why you don't cross black mamas, teaching readers about the history of encoded racism that still undergirds our society today.
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So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma OluoA Seattle-based writer, editor and speaker tackles the sensitive, hyper-charged racial landscape in current America, discussing the issues of privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word.
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Sure, I'll be Your Black Friend : Notes From the Other Side of the Fist Bump by Ben PhilippeIn the biting, hilarious vein of What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life comes Ben Philippe's candid memoir-in-essays, chronicling a lifetime of being the Black friend (see also: foreign kid, boyfriend, coworker, student, teacher, roommate, enemy) in predominantly white spaces. From cheating his way out of swim tests to discovering stray family members in unlikely places, he finds the punchline in the serious while acknowledging the blunt truths of existing as a Black man in today's world.
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Just Us : An American Conversation by Claudia RankineA collection of essays, poems, and images examine the power of whiteness in everyday interactions and urges readers to begin the conversation and discover what it takes to breach the silence and violence.
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Caste : The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel WilkersonIdentifies the qualifying characteristics of historical caste systems to reveal how a rigid hierarchy of human rankings, enforced by religious views, heritage and stigma, impacts everyday American lives.
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