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. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. My Grandmother’s Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

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“The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness–not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love.

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Founding members of the Combahee River Collective, which consisted of a group of radical black feminists, share their recollections and struggles—some of which continue to have an impact today.

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Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at the grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. Community-based approaches to preventing crime and repairing its damage have existed for centuries. However, in the punitive atmosphere of contemporary criminal justice systems, they are often marginalized and operate under the radar. Beyond Survival puts these strategies front and center as real alternatives to today s failed models of confinement and ‘correction’.

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A powerful and practical guide to help you navigate racism, challenge privilege, manage stress and trauma, and begin to heal. You can also check out this title as eBook or eAudio on Hoopla. 

Exploring a crucial topic seldom addressed in meditation instruction, this revered teacher takes to her pen to shine a compassionate, provocative, and practical light into a deeply neglected and world-changing domain profoundly relevant to all of us. King helps readers of all backgrounds examine with fresh eyes the complexity of racial identity and the dynamics of oppression. She offers guided instructions on how to work with our own role in the story of race and shows us how to cultivate a culture of care to come to a place of greater clarity and compassion. You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby. This title is also available as an eBook or eAudio on Hoopla. 

Efforts at colorblindness and antiracism have not been very effective in addressing racial tensions in the United States. Colorblindness ignores the realities of race and the history of injustice. On the other hand, antiracism centers racial concerns and in so doing often alienates people who need to be involved in the process. You can also check out this title as an eBook or eAudio on Hoopla. 

An exploration of how racism has inflicted substantial social, economic, and political costs on white Americans themselves, and how multiracial inclusivity can benefit all. You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby. 

Do Better is a revolutionary offering that addresses racial justice from a comprehensive, intersectional, and spirit-based perspective. This actionable guidebook illustrates how to engage in the heart-centered and mindfulness-based practices that will help us all fight white supremacy from the inside out, in our personal lives and communities alike.

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Smith takes the reader on a tour of monuments and landmarks integral to an understanding of the history of slavery in America, and examines how it has shaped the nation. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Overdrive/Libby and in eAudio on Overdrive/Libby.

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

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The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength.

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Examines the importance of joy preservation in Black lives as acts of self-healing and resistance.

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When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day.

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To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family”s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors–Indigenous, Black, and white–in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story–and the song–of America itself.

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The first short story collection by three-time Hugo award-winning Jemisin is a thrilling, impassioned introduction to her magical worlds infused with social commentary. Many stories feature characters resisting the powers that try to control them, from parasitic aliens to sinister faeries in the Jim Crow South.  

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A young woman becomes haunted by secrets and mysterious compulsions while serving on both the Titanic and the Britannic. You can also check out this title as eBook on Overdrive/Libby or as eAudio on Overdrive/Libby.

Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass–only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.

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Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, a novel of large beauty and power, creates a magical world out of four generations of black life in America, a world we enter on the day of the birth of Macon Dead, Jr. (known as Milkman), son of the richest black family in a mid-western town; the day on which the lonely insurance man, Robert Smith, poised in blue silk wings, attempts to fly from a steeple of the hospital, a black Icarus looking homeward…

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An unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from each other.

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A man’s decision to steal his dead co-worker’s identity ties together the stories in this novel that ranges from the cane fields in Jamaica to present day Harlem. You can also check out this title as eBook on OverDrive/Libby or as eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.

At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism.

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An impassioned account of the ways federal, state, and local government enabled and enforced racial segregation in American cities with policies and practices that still affect what our neighborhoods look like today.    

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Heal Your Way Forward is a seminal work in antiracism, guiding white and white-identifying folks to utilize activism for intergenerational healing.

Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is an essential, intimate history – and counter-narrative – of a resilient people in a transformative era.

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In Indigenous Continent, acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals.

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A practical, shame-free guide for navigating conversations across our differences at a time of rapid social change.

Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.

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Part memoir, part call to action, We’re Better Than This is the story of our modern-day democracy and the threats that we all must face together, as well as a retrospective on the life and career of one of our country’s most inspirational politicians.

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