As we continue to address systemic racism, white supremacy, and inequality in our community and nation, we can take steps to learn and listen. Here you’ll find resources–of fiction & non-fiction books, articles, film/TV, and podcasts. Some of these resources are faith-based, many are not. This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point.

We encourage you to shop at locally owned bookstores such as: Babycakes Bookstack; Birchbark Books & Native Arts; Boneshaker Books; Moon Palace Books; Next Chapter Booksellers; Red Balloon Bookshop; Storied Owl Books; Subtext Books; Wild Rumpus; or your favorite neighborhood bookstore!

Non-Fiction

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
• How To Be An Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
• Stamped from the Beginning,Ibram X. Kendi
• The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
• I am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin
• How Does It Feel to Be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America, Moustafa Bayoumi.
• I’m Still Here, Austin Channing Brown
• Between the World and Me,Ta-Nehisi Coates
• We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• White Fragility, Robin Diangelo
• Dear Church: A Love Letter From a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US, Lenny Duncan
• The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman.
• Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Alex Haley and Malcolm X
• Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race, Debby Iriving
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen
• Born a Crime, Trevor Noah
• So You Want to Talk about Race,Ijeoma Oluo
• Let Justice Roll Down, John Perkins
• The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein
• Me and White Supremacy, Layla F. Saad
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
• Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD
• How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Native America from 1890 to the Present, David Treuer.
• Race Matters, Cornel West
• A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn

Fiction

• The Sellout, Paul Beatty
• The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
• Kindred, Octavia Butler
• The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Dare
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
• Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
• Behold the Dreamers,Imbolo Mbue
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead

Children’s books

• Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice, Marianne Celano, Harietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard; Illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin
• Anti-Racist Baby, Ibram X. Kendi and Ashley Lukashevsky
• The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist, Cynthia Levinson and Vanessa Brantley-Newton
• All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman
• The Other Side, Jacqueline Woodson and E. B. Lewis

More recommendations at
Social Justice Books https://socialjusticebooks.org/
Lee and Low Books https://www.leeandlow.com/

Young Adult Books

• This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work,Tiffany Jewell and Aurélia Durand
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
• Black Brother, Black Brother, Jewell Parker Rhodes
• The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas

On Minnesota

• A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, Edited by Sun Yung Shin
• The Hiawatha, David Treuer
• Claiming the City: Politics, Faith, and the Power of Place in St. Paul, Mary Lethert Wingerd.
• The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, Kao Kalia Yang
• Somalis in Minnesota, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
• “When Minneapolis Segregated,” Greg Miller, CityLab, Jan 8, 2020, https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/01/minneapolis-history-housing-discrimination-mapping-prejudice/604105/.
• Mapping Prejudice, on racial housing covenants and segregation in the Twin Cities, https://www.mappingprejudice.org/what-are-covenants/index.html#what
• Redlining in the Twin Cities in 1934: 1960s and Today, Institute of Metropolitan Opportunity, University of Minnesota Law School, https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=8b6ba2620ac5407ea7ecfb4359132ee4
• Rondo Neighborhood & I-94: Overview, Minnesota Historical Society, Gale Family Library, http://libguides.mnhs.org/rondo?fbclid=IwAR1g74sM5A0e3PV_XmEKz6OCef32X4BLYMVODdJIMS6Vy_uYXkm4BIyUZwY
• Matt Reicher, “The Birth of a Metro Highway (Interstate-94),” mn, 10 Sept 2013, https://streets.mn/2013/09/10/the-birth-of-a-metro-highway-interstate-94/?fbclid=IwAR3jAD8T7dX5xQy5a-YgN1W6ZpyIXBtzuxnDmAMhV4lImpJQPz7gSJFrCD4#lightbox/1/

Articles

• Michelle Alexander, “America, This Is Your Chance,” The New York Times, 8 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/opinion/george-floyd-protests-race.html
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” The Atlantic, October 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
• Angela Denker, “Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People,” A Good Christian Woman,3 June 2020, https://agoodchristianwoman.blogspot.com/2020/06/paternalistic-racism-of-nice-white.html?spref=fb&m=1&fbclid=IwAR0nUUw_jrRI2M5wIN06zP8IdHeZdRKkWPYooEcQgB8gL63JRze1-r3UnFk
• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “How Do We Change America?” The New Yorker, 8 June 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-do-we-change-america?fbclid=IwAR1utSWA7PZEJ0ho6T_nryImzOmtN46__-yZ9–cZ86KfEoCrEyZ0W1kNJM
• Robert Allen Warrior, “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest, and Liberation Theology Today,” Christianity and Crisis, 1989, https://www.rmselca.org/sites/rmselca.org/files/media/canaanites_cowboys_and_indians.pdf

Film TV, and Video

• Bryan Stevenson, “We Need To Talk About An Injustice,” TED Talks, March 2012, https://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice?language=en
• 13^th (Netflix)
• Blindspotting (Hulu)
• Dear White People (Netflix)
• Happy Birthday Marsha (Amazon Prime)
• If Beale Street Could Talk (Hulu)
• Just Mercy (YouTube, Amazon Prime)
• Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas (YouTube)
• Selma (Amazon Prime)
• Sorry To Bother You (Hulu)
• Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement (BET)
• The Hate U Give (Hulu)
• When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Hulu)
• When They See Us (Netflix)

For Parents and Educators

• The Anti-Defamation League Books Matter page of children’s literature https://www.adl.org/education-and-resources/resources-for-educators-parents-families/childrens-literature?page=1
• Embrace Race. Teaching antiracism to children. https://www.embracerace.org/
• Teaching For Change: Building Social Justice Starting in the Classroom. https://www.teachingforchange.org/
• Raising Race-Conscious Children. http://www.raceconscious.org/
• Teaching Tolerance. https://www.tolerance.org/

Podcasts

• 1619, A Podcast by the New York Times
• In the Thick
• The Read
• Techish
• Us & Them
• What a Day
• Yo, Is This Racist?

 

*With thanks to Bethlehem Lutheran Church & Minnesota Annual Conference for many of these resources.