Here are 100 books that Just Us fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was born and raised in Nyack, New York, and all of my degrees are from colleges and universities in New York. I have always been interested in race relations in America and understanding their causes and consequences. Hope and despair are two themes that run through the experiences of people of African ancestry in America. The books I selected include fiction and nonfiction works that highlight promises made and promises unfulfilled.
I think WEB DuBois is one of the greatest scholars ever to live. I recommend this book because DuBois eloquently tackles some of American society's greatest challenges. I like that DuBois is not satisfied with contemporary explanations about racial inequities. I am grateful to DuBois for encouraging American society to explore the roles of race and racism and explaining the experiences of people of African ancestry in America.
The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is a 1903 work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African-American literature.
The book contains several essays on race, some of which had been published earlier in The Atlantic Monthly. To develop this work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works…
I’m a writer and a Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar who’s always been intrigued by the invisible, artificial race-based boundaries in our world. I love analyzing the lives of literary characters and seeing how they can serve as mirrors for us along lines of gender, mental health, and more. My critical interests are informed by the fact that I grew up in a predominantly Black/Latino low-income neighborhood and attended an affluent, predominantly white private school from the sixth to twelfth grade. My adolescent experiences with inclusion/exclusion dynamics required me to reflect on race, for example, so I could understand and navigate the kinds of socio-cultural dynamics that affect us all.
I love this book because Fleming offers necessary socio-historical correctives and demystifies many myths that people believe about race, racism, and stereotypes.
The writing is punchy, pithy and humorous. As such, it is entertainingly educational and scholarly while presenting facts in a way that is accessible to general readers.
I also love this book because it is incredibly useful both to those who are “stupid about race,” so to speak, and those who aren’t. For the former, I think this is a great book to start with on one’s journey toward becoming more race-conscious and more educated about race.
A unique and irreverent take on everything that's wrong with our “national conversation about race”—and what to do about it
How to Be Less Stupid About Race is your essential guide to breaking through the half-truths and ridiculous misconceptions that have thoroughly corrupted the way race is represented in the classroom, pop culture, media, and politics. Centuries after our nation was founded on genocide, settler colonialism, and slavery, many Americans are kinda-sorta-maybe waking up to the reality that our racial politics are (still) garbage. But in the midst of this reckoning, widespread denial and misunderstandings about race persist, even as…
I grew up in an immigrant household where success was defined by how much money you made and your individual progress. But I’ve always been fascinated by social change as the measure of collective success. As a former business journalist, I was most inspired by leaders who were creating opportunities for overlooked communities. I now advise organization leaders on how to create more inclusive and diverse organizations by rethinking the measure of success purely from the profit perspective. That’s why I wrote Inclusion on Purpose. These books have helped me transform my definition of success. I hope you’re catalyzed to action by these books!
Dr. Blackstock’s advocacy for equity and access during the COVID-19 pandemic made her a hero in my eyes, and I was eagerly awaiting her memoir! I read it in one weekend. It’s compelling, heartbreaking, and, in parts, deeply devastating when you’re shown firsthand the huge health disparities in this country.
It’s tragic to see how some people are given immediate access to health care while others are systematically denied it on the basis of their skin color. The racism Dr. Blackstock has to navigate in her career as a Black physician and academic doctor is heartbreaking, but the overall story is one of triumph and resilience.
Dr. Blackstock is an incredibly inspiring character, but the ultimate heroine is their late mother, whose training at Harvard Medical School led to her twin daughters becoming the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school. This book reminded me that success doesn’t come from…
“This book is more than a memoir—it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women.” —Essence
One of NPR’s 11 Books to Look Forward to in 2024
One of Good Morning America’s 15 New Books to Read for the New Year
“Legacy is both a compelling memoir and an edifying analysis of the inequities in the way we deliver healthcare in America. Uché Blackstock is a force of nature.” —Abraham Verghese, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Covenant of…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
I’m a writer and a Shakespeare and critical race studies scholar who’s always been intrigued by the invisible, artificial race-based boundaries in our world. I love analyzing the lives of literary characters and seeing how they can serve as mirrors for us along lines of gender, mental health, and more. My critical interests are informed by the fact that I grew up in a predominantly Black/Latino low-income neighborhood and attended an affluent, predominantly white private school from the sixth to twelfth grade. My adolescent experiences with inclusion/exclusion dynamics required me to reflect on race, for example, so I could understand and navigate the kinds of socio-cultural dynamics that affect us all.
I love this satirical book because, through humor, it generated productive discomfort within me and thus attached valuable lessons to my emotional responses. The book even stirred up childhood memories for me and forced me to reflect on my past, on my life experiences. In other words, I haven’t forgotten what I learned from this book. And I won’t.
I never thought I could laugh so hard while absorbing hard truths about race and racism until I encountered this provocative book. I love that the book includes striking historical information. Overall, I appreciate how the authors present their position in such a way that kept the book on my mind even when it was not in my hands.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS FINALIST
"Hilarious yet soul-shaking." —Black Enterprise
The fearless comedy legend—one of the “Original Kings of Comedy”—hilariously breaks down the wisdom of white people, advice that has been killing black folks in America for four hundred years and counting.
200 years ago, white people told black folks, “‘I suggest you pick the cotton if you don’t like getting whipped.” Today, it’s “comply with police orders if you don’t want to get shot.” Now comedian/activist D. L. Hughley–one the Original Kings of Comedy–confronts and remixes white people’s “advice” in this “hilarious examination of…
My professional work has always been inspired by the personal journey I've gone on–which means that my interest in religious trauma stems from my own healing as well as client work and research. Previous research and therapeutic interventions have suggested atheism as a cure for religious trauma which is often unhelpful and can create just as much rigidity as someone experienced in a high control religion. I approach religious trauma as trauma–which means that resolving religious trauma can occur in the same ways that we use to resolve other trauma. Understanding religious trauma this way opens the door for a decrease in shame, more compassion towards self, and ultimately living a whole life.
Resmaa’s book is one of the more influential books for me.
Though his focus is on racialized and generational trauma, he begins by helping the reader understand where biases, fears, and oppression become lodged in the nervous system–generations before us–and how this shapes the way we interact with anyone who is different than us.
Mixed in with excellent content are effective practices for the reader to find a sense of grounding and safety in their current surroundings which is key in being able to resolve the trauma that is living in our bodies.
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee or freeze and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. In this ground-breaking work, therapist, Menakem, examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centred psychology. He argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all American bodies. This collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans - the police.
I write about race and technology, and specifically the histories of Black folks as they influence online activities, from memes and community-building to care networks and activist efforts. I use theory, research, and most importantly lived experiences to tell the story of Black digital practices. The books I choose here represent how diverse my thinking is when it comes to this topic: from fiction to non-fiction, these works are as fluid yet meaningful as I think identity is, on and offline.
Everyone has that one book that is the I-can’t-put-this-down book. Race After Technology was that book for me.
Ruha Benjamin writes in a way that is so down to earth, tackling heavy subjects like algorithms, systemic racism, and more in a way that is somehow accessible, scholarly, and whippingly smart all in one.
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.
Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the "New Jim Code," she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by…
When Lara was four years old, her father moved from Rochester, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska, a distance of over 4,000 miles. She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket.
I was an angry girl, railing against the difference between the expectations and restrictions on me and my younger brother. I was also the child of survivors and victims of the Armenian genocide, and I grew up in 1950 when my immigrant family didn’t fit the representations of “Americans” as they were then depicted. And I was white. I wanted to change myself, the world and learn why there was so much injustice in the U.S. I went back to school at UMass, got connected to faculty in the Afro-American Studies Department, and joined the group that was creating the Women’s Studies Program. I am still learning and trying to change the world.
Anderson’s book is based on prodigious research, but is written for a general audience.
She argues that when Black people make any gains, whites respond by working, mostly successfully, to deny those advances through local, state, and federal legislation and violence.
The book begins by documenting the thorough destruction of the rights Black people gained through the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and brings her analysis forward to the present. This book gives you the historical background to understand what is happening now.
After reading it you will no longer be surprised by what the right wing has been doing since the gains of the civil rights movement to undo those rights won through struggle and incredible courage, the rights every American deserves.
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year A Boston Globe Best Book of 2016 A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016
From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America--now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson.
As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to…
Christia Spears Brown is an author, researcher, and professor of Developmental Psychology. She is also the Director of the Center for Equality and Social Justice at the University of Kentucky. She earned her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. Brown began her academic career on the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles. Her research focuses on how children develop gender and ethnic stereotypes, how children understand gender and ethnic discrimination, and how discrimination and stereotypes affect children and teens’ lives. As part of her research on discrimination, she also examines the perpetration and acceptance of sexual harassment and how children understand politics, public policies, and societal inequalities.
This classic book, which has been recently updated, is a must-read for all parents or people who work with children. Tatum does an excellent job of describing how children think about race and the role race plays in their lives. She describes how racial identity develops for Black children, for White children, and for mixed-race children and clearly identifies why it is important for all children. By using lots of quotes and conversations with children and teens, this accessible read leads to “Aha!” moments in every chapter.
This well-balanced book, written in lively prose, brings new insights and a fresh perspective to this frequent query and the issue of racial identity development.. There is a moment when every child leaves color-blindness behind and enters the world of race consciousness. At that moment, there are two roads parents, educators, and therapists can take: they can follow the status quo, internalizing racial expectations, and becomeconsciously or unconsciouslypart of the problem. Or, they can question stereotypes, and, actively work against racism to become part of the solution. This book provides the tools we all need to become part of the…
I remember when I saw the photograph of the lynching of Rubin Stacy, his corpse surrounded by white girls in their Sunday best dresses. For me the immediate question was, why would white parents take their children on an outing to this? What purpose is this memorial photograph serving? I have spent over twenty years exploring the answers, learning how cultures persist by teaching their dominant beliefs to the next generation, and considering the perpetuation of white supremacy from generation to generation.
In this academic work, Hale explores what she terms as “spectacle lynchings” and the shift from private to public violence. Hale considers how newspapers, photographs, and radio broadcasts brought news of these brutal scenes to an audience of tens of thousands. Through her careful examination, Hale lays out how the media shaped a national narrative that is relevant for both understanding conversations about racial violence and for considering how mass media shapes our current perspectives.
Making Whiteness is a profoundly important work that explains how and why whiteness came to be such a crucial, embattled--and distorting--component of twentieth-century American identity. In intricately textured detail and with passionately mastered analysis, Grace Elizabeth Hale shows how, when faced with the active citizenship of their ex-slaves after the Civil War, white southerners re-established their dominance through a cultural system based on violence and physical separation. And in a bold and transformative analysis of the meaning of segregation for the nation as a whole, she explains how white southerners' creation of modern "whiteness" was, beginning in the 1920s, taken…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
My own collusion with white supremacy and anti-Blackness is a lifelong journey I mitigate for my soul’s redemption. I am a Mississippi-born redneck, alcoholic, psychotherapist, San Francisco Bay Area queer, higher education administrator with a Critical Race Theory doctorate. I first learned democracy by watching my Mississippi parents risk their lives and mine in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Three-Fifths Magazine recently published “My First English: The Vernacular of the KKK.” My book, “Twelve Steps for White America” won the BookFest 1st Place Gold Medal for “Society and Social Sciences: Race Culture Class and Religion.” I work to live in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes.
Battalora’s teaching that whiteness was created in colonial America to divide the masses and ensure that white elites dominate is central to my Rigged Advantage Theory.
I love how rich this short book is for informing where “white” came from. Imagine if white people understood that King James (of Bible fame) was NOT white but that “white” was made up to prevent my 1st ancestor in the new world (an indentured servant) from ever aligning his potential for political power with enslaved people to VOTE in a multi-racial democracy. This drama persists!
Birth of a White Nation is a fascinating book on race in America that begins with an exploration of the moment in time when "white people," as a separate and distinct group of humanity, were invented through legislation and the enactment of laws. The book provides a thorough examination of the underlying reasons as well as the ways in which "white people" were created. It also explains how the creation of this distinction divided laborers and ultimately served the interests of the elite. The book goes on to examine how foundational law and policy in the U.S. were used to…
