100 books like Sister Outsider

Gloria Anzaldúa was born and raised in South Texas, growing up along the U.S.-Mexican border. For many years she lived in San Francisco, and then in Santa Cruz, California.

The first 113 pages of the book are stories and essays drawn from her life experiences as a woman of Mexican and Indian heritage, daily experiencing life at the physical border between the United States and Mexico.

She was raised in a strongly Catholic tradition, while also drawn to and inventing her own spirituality rooted in indigenous practices of harmony, balance, and reverence for the earth. She was a lesbian in a straight world that condemned her woman-loving sensibility.

Each of these is a “borderland” to be navigated and negotiated, and each of these borders is rich with insight, life, laughter, tears, violence, and love. The last 100 pages of the book is titled “Un Agitado Viento/ Ehécatl, The Wind.” It… show more.

If you want to get in touch with nature and are looking for a how-to book, not so much a prescription, but an experiential meditation, then look no further because Nan Shepherd is your gal, and her book, The Living Mountain, is your book.

Shepherd went about writing The Living Mountain in the 1940s by analyzing her fifty years of walkabouts and then synthesizing her experience into twelve chapters that move from hardscapes into the biosphere. The last few chapters are meditations on perception, the last entitled “Being.”

Ultimately, this book is a meditation on what Shepherd calls “bodily thinking,” or, in my words, a subconscious mainline to nature, and, in her words, “a life of the senses so pure, so untouched by any mode of apprehension but their own.”

It’s not a “deep cut” by any means, but I had to start this list with this book. It’s the book that made me fall in love with the graphic novel format and remains perhaps my favorite book of all time.

Bechdel weaves together her coming-of-age as a lesbian, her discovery of her father’s homosexuality, and rich literary allusions, all with beautiful, detailed artwork.

When I read this book for the first time as a closeted teenager, I was captivated not only by the queer representation but by the rich storytelling. The way Bechdel’s words and illustrations work together to create a whole that’s greater than the sum of their parts opened my mind to the magic and power of the comic medium. 

A landmark work by virtue of being the first book by a black woman to be published in Britain, this is a powerfully harrowing account of Mary’s own life as a slave in the Caribbean. Though only short, it supplies valuable testimony on the gruesome British exploitation of enslaved people over the centuries, and the many cruelties inflicted upon Mary personally by her brutal ‘owners’. Should be required reading for all those who think of the British Empire with nostalgia.

The canon of anti-colonial, anti-racism writing from and about Africa includes many authors whose passion and insights are sometimes muddied by turgid or masculinist prose. For me, Rodney stands out – and stands the test of time – by the way he so masterfully weaves history into a compelling narrative that utterly demolishes the lies and conceits about supposed Western benevolence toward the continent. Scales fell from my eyes the first time (of many) I read this book. And yes, Rodney is almost as androcentric in his language, sources, and arguments as was the norm in those days. But his acknowledgment of the dignity of African women is implicit, and his discussion of the regressive elements of the colonial economy and education for African women and girls presaged a field of scholarly enquiry and activism that still intrigues me.

This is the kind of book that all British historians should be trying to write: an honest, factual, detailed account of what British officials actually did in the service of the Empire. There is no scope for imperial nostalgia over this horrifying story of the brutal violence employed by Britain in the 1950s in an effort to hang onto its colony of Kenya in the face of the Mau Mau Rebellion. With concentration camps, collective punishments, and multiple judicial murders, British methods were among the worst. The ideal Christmas present for any Empire supporters among your friends & family.

A historical/legal/poetic examination of the way that African bodies were treated and disposed of in the context of transatlantic slavery and how the author simultaneously advances a process of reclamation. NourbeSe provides a meditation in which silence and space advance our understanding of the gravity and horror of the subject which in no way compares with what the unnamed victims experienced.  She recalls them and names them into existence.

The best book on the legal basis for reparations from the Caribbean’s foremost historian. It offers a historical examination of the justification for reparations for the cost and lost labor the British gained during enslavement and brings together African and indigenous people's rights.

This is a series of essays that examine the importance of bringing historical knowledge to the community and also providing concise accurate information on African history and Caribbean and African American assertions for moving beyond the imposed limitations. It is preceded by a timely introduction and followed by a series of essays which reflect on the contributions of one of the most important Caribbean historians of the African experience who lived a life which manifested the Caribbean radical-intellectual tradition.

Kamugisha, is an able representative of a new generation of scholars who offers a contemporary examination which presents some of the theoretical issues and ideas that inform Caribbean studies and history. The reader will get a good sense of some of the major historical contributors who have shaped Caribbean history, philosophy, and culture as they attempted to move “beyond” the colonial experience.