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By Erin Kane, Rachael Devlin and Micki Luckey
Grid of fiction & non-fiction books featured in this essay.
A few years ago, SURJ BA posted a list of Racial Justice Books for White People. Two lists, really — one fiction, one non-fiction. The books on these lists were chosen through a vote by the chapter membership.
Recently, a few of us were trading comments on books we have loved. Out of these conversations grew a desire to shine a light on more Black voices in honor of Black History Month. It resulted in this addendum. Enjoy and discuss! FICTION
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 
In 1972, workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, found a skeleton at the bottom of a well. The identity and fate of the skeleton were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
This is a beautiful slice-of-life story which showcases the struggles of people who live on the margins of white, Christian America. When the truth is finally revealed about the part the town's white establishment played in what happened on Chicken Hill, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us.
THE GREAT CITIES DUOLOGY, BOOK #1 The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin 
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.
Every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
THE GREAT CITIES DUOLOGY, BOOK #2 The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin 
All is not well in the city that never sleeps. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.
In order to defeat him the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to protect their world from complete destruction.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 
Cora escapes from a cotton plantation in Georgia with another slave, Caesar, on the Underground Railroad. This Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop.
The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage--and a powerful meditation on the history we all share.
Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman 
This luminous poetry collection by presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers 
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the "Double Consciousness" every African American possesses in order to survive. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans, the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her enslaved great grandmother Pearl, Ailey Pearl Garfield understands Du Bois' words all too well.
To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors - Indigenous, Black, and white - in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story and the song of America itself.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris 
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. However, as events become uncomfortable and then sinister, Nella realizes that there's a lot more at stake than her career. Having joined Wagner Books to honor the legacy of two Black novelists, she had thought that this animosity was a relic of the past. Is Nella ready to take on the fight of a new generation?
THE GILDED ONES SERIES, BOOK #1 The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna 
On the day of her blood ceremony, sixteen-year-old Deka’s blood runs gold, telling her she will face a consequence worse than death. A mysterious woman offers her a chance to leave the village to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her, near-immortals with rare gifts. They are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.
When she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she discovers that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be—not even Deka herself.
THE GILDED ONES SERIES, BOOK #2 The Merciless Ones by Namina Forna 
It's been six months since Deka freed the goddesses in the ancient kingdom of Otera and discovered who she really is. Now war is waging across the kingdom, and the real battle has only just begun. A dark force is growing in Otera--a merciless power that Deka and her army must stop.
Hidden secrets threaten to destroy everything Deka has known. And with her own gifts changing, Deka must discover whether she holds the key to saving Otera or she is its greatest threat.
THE NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES, BOOK #1 Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor 
Sunny Nwazue, an American-born Nigerian girl, is part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But as she’s finding her footing, Sunny and her friends are asked by the magical authorities to help track down a career criminal who knows magic, too. Will their training be enough to help them combat a threat whose powers greatly outnumber theirs?
THE NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES, BOOK #2 Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor 
Sunny knows she must confront her destiny. With the support of her Leopard Society friends she will travel through worlds both visible and invisible to the mysteries town of Osisi, where she will fight a climactic battle to save humanity.
THE NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES, BOOK #3 Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor 
With the help of her friends, Sunny embarks on a mission to find a precious object hidden deep in an otherworldly realm. Defeating the guardians of the prize will take more from Sunny than she has to give, and triumph will mean she will be forever changed.
NON-FICTION
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi 
Ibram X. Kendi argues that racist ideas have a long and lingering history. He describes their power in this history through a focus on five major American intellectuals, starting with the Puritan Cotton Mather and going up to Angela Davis. Each section presents the times of each intellectual in details that make for fascinating reading, as well as convincing support for Kendi’s thesis.
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith 
Clint Smith takes us on a tour of places in this country where the history of slavery can be felt today, “places whose histories are inextricably tied to the story of human bondage.” And he describes the people he meets in these places who carry on the legacies. Places like the Whitney Plantation, Angola prison, Galveston TX where Juneteenth originated, and even Manhattan, where he follows a tour on the history of slavery. (This book is summarized in a SURJ Bay Area blog Today's Testimonials to Slavery.)
We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba 
This collection of essays and interviews of abolitionist Mariame Kaba presents chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition. In her call for collective action Kaba states, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo 
Ijeoma Oluo gives clear, constructive language to both black and white people for how talk about racial prejudice. Each chapter addresses a question that comes up in dialogues about racism dealing with intersectionality, police brutality, privilege, affirmative action, cultural appropriation, and more.
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart by Alicia Garza 
Called by Barbara Lee a “guidebook for building coalitions to bring about transformational change,” Alicia Garza writes about her experience and insight as a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. Garza analyzes the external and internal opponents that have marked the struggle for justice for Black people. She combines her personal memoir with political theory and strategic advice to inform us how change happens by people-power.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown
This guidebook leads us to be in right relationship with change to shape the futures we want to live. It offers a framework for resistance rooted in nature, in collective leadership and in personal and organizational transformation. Brown invites us to feel, map, assess and learn from the swirling patterns around us as we embrace the change that will come.
The Deeper the Roots: A Memoir of Hope and Home by Michael Tubbs 
You may know of Michael Tubbs as the first Black mayor of Stockton or the pioneer of Guaranteed Income programs. In his memoir he tells the pain of growing up Black and broke (with an incarcerated father) and how he got out with a scholarship to Stanford and earned a position in the Obama white house. His story will acquaint you with the de facto segregation in Stockton and what this young mayor tried to do about it.
Never in My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism by Belva Davis 
Born to a 15-year old Louisiana laundress during the Great Depression and raised in the overcrowded projects of Oakland, California, Belva Davis overcame poverty, abuse, racism, and sexism to become the first black female news anchor on the West Coast. She covered major stories such as the birth of the Black Panthers, the Jonestown massacre, and the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. As she fought to bring attention to stories of Black Americans, she met an amazing number of iconic people, including Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Mohammed Ali, to name a few.
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom 
As she says, “thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,” Tressie McMillan Cotom blends the personal with political as she writes on beauty, media, money and more. In the process she analyzes whiteness, Black misogyny and survival strategies as she investigates infant mortality, BBQ Becky and Trump rallies. Both painfully honest and gloriously affirming, Thick centers Black women experiences and asserts Black women wisdom.
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