A U.S./Canadian Race & Racism Reading List
Some people are aware that I grew up in an activist family with a somewhat unique intellectual history, and that has given me a unique preparation for engaging in the discussion about race and feminism and more broadly the oppressive structures of the society we live within. But it is also the case that I have spent a lot of time on self-education, partly as a means of survival and partly to be an accomplice in the struggles of people who experience different but interlocking oppressive structures from me.
The following is a reading list of the books on race and racism in the U.S. and Canada that have been most influential for my husband (who is an Ethnic Studies scholar) and me, although I left most of the stuff about decolonization on my Decolonising Science Reading List. Some books appear on both the U.S. list and the Canada list because the border between these two colonially-produced countries is actually pretty porous. The Canada list is shorter in part because there is less scholarship on race coming out of Canada than the U.S. — in part because the Canadian academic establishment has traditionally been far less supportive of it, especially on Black topics, in part because Canadian population is 10x smaller than the U.S. — but also because my time there was much shorter, and I know less. You’ll notice that there is a lot of fiction and some poetry here. That is because our histories are not merely a collection of facts but also a matter of stories, and sometimes fiction is the best way to communicate the truth. I make no claims about completeness and will probably periodically edit the list, especially to include important articles such as Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article on intersectionality and James Baldwin’s On Being White. These are just the books that have influenced us inside and outside of the classroom and which we found to be net helpful, rather than harmful.
How to use this list: Every single book (or poem as the case may be) is linked to Amazon, not because I want to encourage you to buy from Amazon but because it is the website with the most comprehensive information about each title. I recommend opening every link, systematically, and reading about each and every title. This may take a couple of hours, depending on how quickly you read. However long it takes you, do it. If you decide to make a purchase, I strongly encourage you to buy these books from Teaching for Change or Powell’s City of Books. I also encourage you to push your local library to order a copy of anything they don’t have and/or to consider donating a copy if they will allow you. Finally, yes the list is not organized in any serious way because every organizing principle I thought of had a problem. I am still deciding what I want to do about that. 1/24/2016
United States
Roots, Alex Haley
Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, Juan Williams, intro by Julian Bond (also please see the documentary)
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, Kiese Laymon
Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Matthew Frye Jacobson
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, George Lipsitz
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Ronald Takaki
Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries, Vivian May
Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, Dean Spade
Native Son, Richard Wright
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
Cane, Jean Toomer
Atomik Aztex, Sesshu Foster
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill (also known as Someone Knows My Name for American readers)
Freedom With Violence: Race, Sexuality and the US State, Chandan Reddy
Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, Rebecca Walker
I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Langston Hughes
Racial Formation in the United States, Michael Omi and Howard Winant
All the Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men, But Some Of Us Are Brave, eds. Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, & Barbara Smith
Good Wives, Nasty Wenches & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia, Kathleen Brown
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (Ok, so technically this one is about the Caribbean, but it’s connected to how U.S. and Canadian fortunes were made.)
Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, Ronald Takaki
Einstein on Race and Racism, Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor
The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist, Fred Jerome
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, Eula Bliss
Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon
Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism, Noenoe K. Silva
Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, ed. Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu
Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, Mae M. Ngai
Indians in Unexpected Places, Philip J. Deloria
American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Long Walk, ed. Troy Johnson, Joanne Nagel, and Duane Champagne
Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Manning Marable
By Any Means Necessary, Malcolm X
Why We Can’t Wait, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, Ruth Wilson Gilmore
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In, C.L.R. James
Moby Dick: The Norton Critical Edition, Herman Melville
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color, eds. Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa
Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights, David S. Reynolds
The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance, ed. M. Annette Jaimes
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, Vivek Bald
Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, Adrienne Rich
The Burning of Paper Instead of Children (poem), Adrienne Rich
An Atlas of the Difficult World (poem), Adrienne Rich
Origins and History of Consciousness (poem), Adrienne Rich
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
Tropic of Orange, Karen Tei Yamashita
I Hotel, Karen Tei Yamashita
Black Anti-Semitism and Jewish Racism, eds. James Baldwin and Nat Hentoff
Southland, Nina Revoyr
Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, eds. Adrienne Maree Brown & Walidah Imarisha
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, C.L.R. James
Country of Origin, Don Lee
Yellow, Don Lee
Love Marriage: A Novel, V.V. Ganeshananthan
Any Known Blood, Lawrence Hill
Sex, Race and Class-The Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952–2011, Selma James
Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaii, eds. Candace Fujikane & Jonathan Y. Okamura
Strangers & Neighbors: Relations between Blacks & Jews in the United States, eds. Maurianne Adams and John H. Bracey, intro by Julian Bond
Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected, Lisa Marie Cacho
Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists, eds. Jasmine Myung Ja, Michael Allen Potter, & Allen L. Vance
Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, Craig Steven Wilder
The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, Jerome Karabel
Canada
The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal, Afua Cooper
Black, George Elliott Clarke
The Truth About Stories, Thomas King
The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
art on black, d’bi.young Anitafrika
A Short History of Indians in Canada {stories}, Thomas King
Funny You Don’t Look Like One: Observations from a Blue-Eyed Ojibway (but read the whole series), Drew Hayden Taylor
Black Canadians: History, Experience, Social Conditions, Joseph Mensah
Razing Africville: A Geography of Racism, Jennifer J. Nelson
Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam
Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King
Dead White Writer On The Floor (play), Drew Hayden Taylor
Any Known Blood, Lawrence Hill
Eyeing the North Star: Directions in African-Canadian Literature, George Elliott Clarke
Black Berry, Sweet Juice, Lawrence Hill
Porcupines and China Dolls, Robert Arthur Alexie
The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History and the Presence of the Past, Winfried Siemerling
Love Marriage, V.V. Ganeshananthan
Box of Treasures or Empty Box? Twenty Years of Section 35, eds. Ardith Walkem & Halie Bruce
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