Reading List

Here is a list and brief synopses of the books we've read so far. If you're not comfortable or able to join the group but still want to learn more, any of these might be a good starting point.

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How to Be an Anti-Racist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. Part memoir, part history, and part practical solutions, this book makes a straightforward point that has come up consistently - where there is gross inequality, there are policies and structures that perpetuate that inequality. Being anti-racist means identifying those polices and structures and changing them.

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Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson is an attorney and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Through a combination of case stories and policy examination, Stevenson traces the inequality in our justice system, the corrections that have already happened, and the work that remains. If you want to learn more about the justice system and its connection to slavery and Jim Crow, the movie 13th is available for free on YouTube.

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Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. This book has perhaps the most challenging title and theme. Oluo traces the impact of a white male centered society through the history of our nation and its negative impact on people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. 

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Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God by Kaitlin Curtice. This book is a spiritual memoir written by a woman who is a member of the Potawatami Tribe through her father and European through her mother. She explores her own identity and spirituality through the lens of her Evangelical Christian upbringing and continued commitment to Christianity in spite of its racist history, and the Indigenous spirituality she came to embrace as well. 

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Two other books I would recommend that the group has not read are:

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Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. This book traces the history  of slavery and racism in this country. It is more detailed and is the background work for his book, How to Be an Anti-Racist.

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Waking Up White by Debbie Irving. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is skeptical that racism is an issue in this country or who is convinced that being not racist is enough. Irving is a white woman who always believed she was not racist. She displays great humility and vulnerability as she tells the story of her own awakening to racism's ugly past and how it continues to impact the present 

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The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. A saga of the Great Migration as told through the lives of three migrants. Masterful weaving of history and biography that tells the story of the migration of Black people to the north during the Jim Crow era and the effects it had on migrants, the north, and the south