biographies & memoirs

mandatory reading

• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde — In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to "never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is..."

• How To Be An Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi — In his memoir, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science — including the story of his own awakening to antiracism — bringing it all together in a cogent, accessible form. He begins by helping us rethink our most deeply held, if implicit, beliefs and our most intimate personal relationships (including beliefs about race and IQ and interracial social relations) and reexamines the policies and larger social arrangements we support.

• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon — In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.

• Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin — Told with Baldwin’s characteristically unflinching honesty, this collection of illuminating, deeply-felt essays examines topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society, and offers personal accounts of Richard Wright, Norman Mailer and other writers to unpack how the American identity is complicated by issues of racial division which run far deeper than mere prejudice, discrimination and cultural bias.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

• PDF: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

• PDF: Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon

• PDF: Assata: An Autobiography

• Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography by Audre Lorde 

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

• Redefining Realness by Janet Mock 

• The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass 

• Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life by Terrion L Williamson

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

• The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah M. Broom 

“BUT I HATE READING,” YOU SAY.