With the Reading for Social Change reading list, our goal is to expand student’s understanding of current social issues by connecting powerful narratives with historical information and frameworks we believe are vital for being an active advocate and ally for social justice. Our syllabus move from present-day dynamics of police brutality into both the past and future, to reveal how race, ethnic, gender, sexual and economic discrimation are interconnected, not only with American society, but across the globe, and what actions we can take in the present to change the world for the better.
Our first book, All American Boys, explores police brutality, anti-blackness and white privilege. We follow with Invisible Man, which gives historical context for racism in American, detailing both how much and how little progress has been made. Currently, we are reading An Unkindness of Ghosts, a speculative fiction novel that presents a distant future in which the spectres of racial segregation have returned and details how gender and sexual difference further marginalizes the most vulnerable. Finally, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, introduces readers to the struggles of a young woman navigating a modern American divided by culture and class.
Each text builds on the next to give students a comprehensive view of how various markers of identity are related and encourages students, regardless of experience, to reflect on their own biases and learn how they can fight for the dignity of others.
We would be excited to have new members within the book club and invite you to join us during our next cycle.
Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely
June 26th - July 10th
In this Coretta Scott King Honor Award–winning novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.
Purchase on Amazon ($9)
Everett Maroon
July 17th - July 31st
Fifteen-year-old Jack Bishop has mad skills with cars and engines but knows he'll never get a driver's license because of his epilepsy. Agreeing to participate in an experimental clinical trial to find new treatments for his disease, he finds himself in a completely different body--that of a girl his age, Jacqueline, who defies the expectations of her era.
Julie Otsuka
August 7th - August 21st
On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert.
Purchase on Amazon ($10)
Sherman Alexie
August 28th - September 12th
Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
Purchase on Amazon ($8)
Ta-Nehisi Coates
June 26th - July 10th
Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men--bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Purchase on Amazon ($15)
James Baldwin
July 17th - July 31st
At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Purchase on Amazon ($8)
Rivers Solomon
August 7th - August 21st
Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.
Purchase on Amazon ($15)
Erika L. Sánchez
August 28th - September 12th
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian meets Jane the Virgin in this poignant but often laugh-out-loud funny contemporary YA about losing a sister and finding yourself amid the pressures, expectations, and stereotypes of growing up in a Mexican American home.
Purchase on Amazon ($15)
