Some Timely Reading

Part of being a reader and writer is trying to see the world through someone else's eyes. Here are some of the books that helped educate me about systemic racism and white privilege.

Nonfiction:

Carol Anderson One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America

bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism 

Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns

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Fiction:

Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
An unwilling time traveler is trapped in the slave era, forced to protect the white "master" who will one day become her ancestor. This book is a tour de force examination of what oppression does to both the oppressor and oppressed. Rufus starts as a friendly, open-hearted child who will "never" be like his abusive father. But the temptation of power is too much.

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
A family trying to move to a white neighborhood encounters soft-spoken racism that comes through loud and clear.

Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
A teen watches in horror as a police officer shoots her friend at a traffic stop - and the media puts the dead boy on trial.