98 books like Community as Rebellion

I have guru-phobia, so I had avoided this book because so many people I knew were declaring it one of the best books ever and that Robin Wall Kimmerer was wonderful. Stupid, right?! But then I read it and could understand.

More than reading and listening to it, I met the author at a literary festival and was even more impressed by her gentle wisdom. She writes about the importance of reciprocity—about the rest of life being just as important as we are. Her work merges wonderfully with Jane Goodall’s, and I would recommend reading them in tandem. 

I was introduced to bell hooks only later in my teaching career—after I had taught for 10 years.

And I read hooks immediately after reading Paulo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 

This is a book on pedagogy, especially within a classroom with students from diverse social backgrounds. This is the book on critical pedagogy, I would say.

The training of economists will significantly benefit from engaging with the work of hooks.

Although her father died when she was only nine, the great scholar of African American life and literature, Farah Jasmine Griffin has never forgotten his admonition to her: “Read until you understand.” In this beautiful book, Professor Griffin guides us to an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, Malcolm X, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder, the artist Romare Bearden, and writers as different as the enslaved 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. As educators, we have read and re-read and read again. Every read reveals a new level of understanding and we are grateful for the journey on which Professor Griffin leads us.

This gorgeous book by microbiologist Dr. Beronda L. Montgomery is as beautiful to read as it is to hold—in your hands, in your heart. We can’t stop thinking about Montgomery’s key lesson: if you have a plant that is struggling, you figure out what environmental changes it needs to thrive—more or less water or sunlight, better soil. When people fail to flourish, we’re quick to blame the individual. As an African American woman, Montgomery makes us think about society and how we approach problems (do we compete or do we build a collaborative effort for a holistic solution?). Humans have much to discover from our photosynthesizing world: how plants learn—from their own kin, their friends, and their foes—and Montgomery helps us to understand the nature (literally) of teaching and learning.

Beyond Retention is a non-fiction title that has the same narrative as my novel Resilience. Through various stories of lived experience, this title brings to light all the issues of race and gender inequality in higher institutions. What makes this book special is that it doesn't focus only on faculty but deals with administrators as well. Every woman who is interested in a career in academia should have and read Beyond Retention, as it offers ways through which one can thrive and not just survive in higher education.

US elite universities are both an engine of inequality and an environment where inequality is particularly evident. 

In this book Harvard professor Abraham Jack explores how low-income students fare when accepted to a prestigious and expensive college.

The book distinguishes between the “privileged poor” who attended private high schools before arriving to campus and the “double disadvantaged” which come from underfunded, state schools. 

Through many interviews and everyday examples, Abraham Jack shows how inequality is both about income and social capital and demonstrates the complexity of creating a more just society in a country like the United States. 

Although the book is less relevant to understand other countries, this is social science at its best.

This book does a fantastic job of illustrating something that I explore in my own work: pro-slavery (and anti-Black) white Americans were not the only obstacles facing abolitionists in the fight for racial equality.

The abolitionist movement itself was often divided along racial lines. Black abolitionists pushed for radical, egalitarian change in all aspects of American life. When push came to shove, however, many of their white counterparts had a limit as to how far they would go.

Bell shows how this dynamic played out at progressive colleges like Oberlin before, during, and after the Civil War. The implications of this book, however, stretch far beyond those campuses–and far beyond that time.

Christy Harrison, host of one of my favorite podcasts Food Psych, explores the history of diet culture and the multi-billion dollar diet and beauty industries that profit from it. She clearly lays out all the ways in which diet culture robs us of our time, money, health, and happiness. You’ll learn how to recognize all the sneaky forms of diet culture – including all the ways in which it now infiltrates the health and wellness world. Backed by strong scientific research and filled with stories from people who’ve reclaimed their bodies, minds, and lives. 

I love this book because it tears apart any idea of objectivity in the law’s treatment of race and citizenship in US history. It argues that law plays a crucial role in creating racial categories. Far from fixed and predetermined, notions of race were constructed by courts throughout US history to determine whether persons were white enough to be included in the polity.

While this book does not specifically address Mexican immigration it is, nevertheless, immensely important to the study of US immigration history because of how it treats the law as a contested space. The law is not an aloof arbitrator in disputes over race and citizenship, but rather a central player in determining the contours of the nationality of a people. The book appears in many bibliographies, and is a foundational text of Critical Race Theory.

This book persuaded me that the “woke” movement (which McWhorter calls “Third Wave antiracism”) is not a political movement but a religion in the fullest sense of the term.

It has articles of faith and a common language, and it goes after heretics with the vengeance of the Spanish Inquisition. Since it’s a religion we can’t defeat it with arguments or reason. It’s also dangerous; as McWhorter writes: “Make no mistake: these people are coming after your kids.”

But he isn’t fatalistic or pessimistic. He gives specific, sensible suggestions for defeating the new religion and for better ways of moving forward on racial equality. Two things make this book unique: McWhorter’s writing is a joy to read, and because he’s Black and politically liberal, he can’t be easily dismissed.