BOOKS & ARTICLES
RECOMMENDED READING
BOOKS
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi (For younger readers, check out Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You) — In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history, dismantling the claim that we're living in a post-racial society.
Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs — an anthology that centers mothers of color and marginalized mothers' voices — women who are in a world of necessary transformation. The challenges faced by movements working for anti-violence, anti-imperialist, and queer liberation, as well as racial, economic, reproductive, gender, and food justice are the same challenges that marginalized mothers face every day.
Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks. Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines a practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Tatum — Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for any teacher/educator seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.
We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain — first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust and hostile society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay and raise a child so she lives with dignity and joy?
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn — A beautifully layered portrait of motherhood, immigration, and the sacrifices we make in the name of love
The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah M. Broom — A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house’s entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina.
ARTICLES
It's My Job to Raise Children Who Are Not Only Not Racist But Actively Anti-Racist by Mandy Hitchcock
Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey
See also: How Not to Raise a Racist White Kid
Speak Up: Opening a Dialogue with Youth About Racism by USC Rossier School of Education
PBS: Teaching Your Child About Black History by Nefertiti Austin
Tip Sheet: Talking to Kids about Racial Stereotypes from Media Smarts
Teaching Young Children about Race: A Guide for Parents and Teachers by Julie Olsen Edwards
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
ARTICLES
The Racial Achievement Gap, Segregated Schools, and Segregated Neighborhoods: A Constitutional Insult by Richard Rothstein
Black is Beautiful by educator Kara Hinderlie, Rethinking Schools
Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected from the African American Policy Forum & Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies
How To Talk To Your Mixed Race Kids About Race by Black Mexican-American Sonia Smith-Kang
Being Biracial: Figuring Out Where is Home by Maya Gittelman
The Struggle To Define My Identity: Growing Up Biracial by Jolene Brantle
How to Talk To Your Kids About Race: Book and Resources That Can Help by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
How Well-Intentioned White Families Can Perpetuate Racism by Joe Pinsker
What White Children Need to Know About Race, Ali Michael and Eleonora Bartoli
Talking to Children after Racial Incidents from the Penn GSE Newsroom
10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children’s Books For Racism and Sexism, Council on Interracial Books for Children
Talking to kids about discrimination, from the American Psychological Association
Racism 101 Series by 100-Year Hoodie
BOOKS
Dear Ijeawele; or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response, containing fifteen invaluable suggestions — compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive — for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman.
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts — A black feminist anthem and a rallying cry to civil rights activists who have gone soft, Dorothy Roberts' Killing the Black Body exposes how recent legislation has restricted the reproductive rights of black people, particularly those who live in poverty. No discussion of reproductive or racial justice is complete without this book.
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon — 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.
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism & School Closings on Chicago’s Southside by Eve Ewing — Rejecting the impulse to see education as disconnected from American life and politics, Ewing links the struggles of Chicago public schooling with the city’s notoriously racist housing practices. She peels back the seemingly anodyne messaging of reform ('school choice') and its ostensibly objective standards ('test scores') to reveal the insidious assumptions lying beneath.
Anything by Angie Thomas
Choosing Homes, Choosing Schools by Annette Lareau and Kimberly Goyette
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
Simple Justice: The History of Brown V. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality by Richard Kluger
Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition by Paulo Freire
The Trouble with Black Boys: ...and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education by Pedro A Noguera
