Racial Issues Reading List for adults
A list for those who would like to learn more about the history and experiences of People of Color in America.
“Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.” – Thurgood Marshall
Fiction
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Black Enough by Ibi Zoboi
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Nonfiction & poetry
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman
Busted In New York by Darryl Pinckney
Chokehold by Paul Butler
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Dark Sky Rising by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Democracy in Black by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
No Ashes In the Fire by Darnell L. Moore
On the Other Side of Freedom by DeRay Mckesson
One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson
Race Matters by Cornel West
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
Stamped–Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
Survival Math by Mitchell S. Jackson
Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson
The Black and the Blue by Matthew Horace
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Things That Make White People Uncomfortable
by Michael Bennett and Dave Zirin
This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins
When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Kahn-Cullors & Asha Bandele