The best books to examine the complexity of identity and to challenge racism at its root

Reading Caste: The Origins of our Discontents was one of the most enlightening, affirming, and motivating experiences of my life. Caste is one of the first books in which the contrast in my experience growing up as the daughter of a white, Jewish American father versus my experience as the brown-skinned, biological mother of a son presumed to be white was reflected. Caste allowed me to understand why. Wilkerson never uses the terms “white supremacy,” “anti-blackness,” or “systemic racism” in her book. Rather, she uses the terms “dominant and subordinate caste”, and “casteism.” She illuminates for the reader that in the United States, there is an unspoken caste system, one that privileges, protects, and empowers whiteness while marginalizing, criminalizing, and disenfranchising blackness and brownness. Caste transformed my approach to antiracism.

Without having read Between The World And Me, I would have never written my own book. I taught Ta-Nehisi Coates’s son, Samori, in middle school, which made reading this book even more impactful. Between The World And Me is just as much about challenging systemic racism and being the change one wishes to see, as it is about the profound love that exists between parent and child. Becoming a parent is one of the most transformative experiences one can have and in Between The World And Me, Coates’s love for his son, and his desire for his son to know he can change the world, is palpable. It was a powerful read both as a mother, and as an individual deeply invested in examining, understanding, and challenging systemic racism.

I read Invisible Man in one sitting my freshman year of college. I was enraptured with its sensitive, poignant portrayal of being rendered invisible by racism. Despite not being a Black man, I understand the experience of being rendered invisible, and how much effort it takes to demand to be seen and heard when others attempt to erase you. Although there are many sad and infuriating moments in this book, ultimately it is a book about resilience and survival. I am deeply moved by the use of the metaphor of invisibility to examine and understand the devastation systemic racism leaves in its wake. It is one of the most powerful novels I have ever read, and certainly the only book I have ever read in one sitting. A beautiful book. 

I read Dreams From My Father in 1995, before Barack Obama was Senator or President. I have always been drawn to stories about living between cultures, and Dreams From My Father resonated with me for that very reason. I was fascinated to read about Obama’s self-conceptualization and worldview. Despite the difference in the details of our lives, there is a universal experience when one belongs to more than one world. You are forever staking your claim in each of them. My senior year of high school, I had Obama’s younger sister, Maya, as a student teacher in my English class, and I will never forget her reaction upon learning I had read her brother’s book. I am forever grateful to Obama for writing a book that affirmed my lived experience.   

I read Life on the Color Line as a junior in high school. I was amazed by William’s intimate account of having lived, first as a white boy in America, and then, as a Black boy in America. His life story illuminates not only the fiction that “race” is biological and immutable, but the powerful reality of white supremacy. Little did I know when reading Williams’s book that I would one day give birth to a son this society deems to be white. This is, in many ways, a painful book, but it is also one about the power of love and community. The love and community Williams found is what led him to share his story, which is a necessary and crucial reminder to challenge racism at its root.