ARTF Recommended Readings
BIOGRAPHY
BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, Ta-Nehisi Coates. 2015. A father’s letter to his 15-
year-old son.
WHITE LIKE ME; Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, Tom Wise, 2011. One
part memoir, one part polemical essay. Also video talk on Google.
SOCIOLOGY
JUST MERCY: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson, 2014. A UUA
Common Read by the founder of Equal Justice Initiative in prisons.
THE NEW JIM CROW, Michelle Alexander, 2012. Mass incarceration, inequality in the criminal justice system. Comprehensive examination of roots and effects from arrest to post-incarceration
UPROOTING RACISM; How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, Paul Kivel,
1996, revised 2011.
ESSAYS
NOTES FROM NO MAN’S LAND: American Essays, Eula Bliss, 2009.
CONSTRUCTION OF BIAS
WHISTLING VIVALDI: How Stereotypes Affect us and What We Can Do, Claude
Steele, 2010. Educators especially could gain by reading this.
FICTION
AMERICANAH, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, 2015. Nigerian immigrant experience.
July, 2016
FILMS
American History X
American Violet
Amistad
BoyZ N the Hood
Coach Cater
Color Purple
Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial; Inequality
Crash
Mississippi Burning
In the Still of the Night
Radio
Selma
10,000 Black Men Named George
The Great Debaters
The Help
Twelve Years a Slave
July, 2016
UUSO Library Holdings
Videos
Selma
ML King
Mississippi Burning
Rights worker murder
Free Indeed. (Tape)
White privilege
Crash, 2004
Racial tensions in LA
Amistad, 1997
Slavery
Race
The Jesse Owens movie
Bios
Black Profiles in Courage: A Legacy of African-American Achievement, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, 1996
Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Maya Angelou, 1993
The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou, 1981
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, 1969
Gather Together in My Name, Maya Angelou, 1974
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2015
In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, Alice Walker, 1983
Womanist Prose
The Same River Twice, Alice Walker, 1996
Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama, 1995
The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama, 2006
Mahalia, Roxanne Orgill
Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, W.E.B. Du Bois, 1940
Poetry, Plays
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water, Maya Angelou, 1971
Poetry
Blues for Mister Charlie, James Baldwin, 1964
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry, 1958
Sociology etc.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness; Michelle Alexander, 2012
Inequality in the criminal justice system
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, Carol Anderson, 2016
Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, 2014
The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race, Stanley Crouch, 1995
Race relation, politics
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, eds Cherrie Morgara, Gloria Anzaldua, 1981
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Toni Morrison, 1992
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1992
On the dangers of fragmentation and re-segregation
Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, Rich Benjamin, 2009
Race Matters, Cornel West, 1993
Social and political commentary
History
We Shall Overcome, Herb Boyd, 2004
Civil Rights Movement (with audio)
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, 2016
The Selma Awakening: How the Civil Rights Movement Tested and Changed Unitarian Universalism, Mark D. Morrison-Reed, 2014
Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, Mark D. Morrison-Reed, 1984
Black UUs
Jackson, 1964, Calvin Trillin, 2016
Novels
Americanah; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013
Nigerian immigrant experience
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, 1977
Jazz, Toni Morrison, 1992
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison, 1970
Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987
The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker, 1989
Now is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker, 2004
The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982
Meridian, Alice Walker, 1976
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, Alice Walker, 1967
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Walter Mosley, 1997
July, 2016
Mara Kern Children’s Library
DVDs
Selma : The Bridge to the Ballot
Picture Books
Grandaddy’s turn : a journey to the ballot box by Michael S Bandy and Eric Stein
Daddy, there’s a noise outside by Kenneth Braswell