For my community book club this month we decided to better educate ourselves on the issues of race around us. I’m really proud of this group of people, because we always discuss deep (and shallow) topics with respect and curiosity, but I don’t think we’ve ever tackled something so current and visceral. I am proud of us for wanting to learn more, to listen, and to change.

I’m obviously a big fan of books, but I truly think they’re underrated in their ability to teach us sensitive topics in a variety of ways. I think I probably learned more about modern racism reading The Hate U Give than any Facebook post or opinion piece on the New York Times–and it’s fiction. Books have a magic that you won’t find elsewhere, and I believe they can reach people in ways that the internet and even in-person discussion cannot. Because in books we are safe to explore new thoughts and learn new things without asking dumb questions or getting embarrassed. We don’t feel the need to craft a counter-argument, because the person isn’t there in real time. We can process slowly, sentence by sentence, and page by page, to understand something larger than ourselves.

Our book club is going to do a PYOB (pick your own book) for this theme of racism, and then come together and allow everyone to give a quick pitch of what their book takeaways were. So basically it’s like we’re gonna read 20 books on race this month and become much more sensitive and compassionate people. I put like 5 of these titles on hold and finally got my first one – White Fragility. Hopefully I get to read a few more before the month is out.

Here’s a decent list of everything that was suggested to me by friends and fellow readers, so if you’re looking for a way to learn more about racism in our country today you can’t go wrong with one of these! (I have only read the bolded titles–I’ve got my work cut out for me.)

Reads on Racism

• How to Be an Anti Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
• White Fragility by Robin diAngelo
• I’m Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper
• Why are the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum
• Between the World and Me by Tah-nehisi Coates
• This Book is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewel
• How to Be Less Stupid About Race by Crystal Fleming
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
• Open Season by Ben Crump
• Stamped by Jason Reynolds
• Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
• The Ethnic Project by Vilna Bashi Treitler
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Race & Racisms: A Critical Approach by Tanya Golash Boza
• Stamped from the Beginning Ibram X. Kendi
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• Racist America by Joe Feagin
• Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal
• If you Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• All American Boys by Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely
• Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King
• Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond by Marc Lamont Hill
• Good Talk by Mira Jacob
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
• The New Jim Crowe by Michelle Alexander
• Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
• White Rage by Carol Anderson
• Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Black Americans by Alphonso Pinkney
• Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
• Two-Faced Racism by Leslie Picca & Joe Feagin
• New Kid by Jerry Craft
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Black Wealth/White Wealth by Melvin Oliver & Thomas Shapiro
• Blackballed by Lawrence by Lawrence Ross
• Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington
• America’s Original Sin by Jim Wallis
• Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
• The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton
• Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine (more children’s books on race here)
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter
• Blindspot by Mahzarin R. Bamako
• Code of the Street by Elijah Anderson
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
• The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward
• Dying of Whiteness by Jonathen Metzl
• A Different Mirror by Ronald Takiki
• The Hollywood Jim Crow by Maryann Erigha
• When They Call You A Terrorist: a Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrise Kahn-Cullors
• An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz
• Citizen by Claudia Rankine
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Mindful of Race by Ruth King
• Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Dyson
• A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler
• The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
• The Burning House by Anders Walker
• The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
• The Condemnation of Blackness by Khalil Muhammad
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
• Killing Rage by Bell Hooks
• The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Woodson

If you’ve read a particularly great book about race please let me know so I can add and update! I truly believe reading and sharing these books can change the world and I know we can do it. <3