Recommendations based on "Appalachian Elegy Poetry and Place"

Real Friends Talk About Race is an essential guide for those who want to have stronger interracial relationships—whether it’s with friends, colleagues, or loved ones. Having conversations about race is uncomfortable. But for progress between individuals (and our communities) to happen, we need to be able to speak openly and honestly. Podcast hosts of The Kinswomen Yseult and Hannah use their own friendship and experiences from different racial backgrounds to offer guidance on navigating these layered conversations. In Real Friends Talk About Race, the duo share their two perspectives on the ways in which culture, history, and white supremacy have prevented us from having the skills to build trust and healthy relationships across race. Yseult and Hannah approach these topics with love and candor—calling readers in (not out) to confront hard realities and their own internalized biases, while also sharing prescriptive advice, encouragement, and a sense of community. Real Friends Talk About Race is a must-read for anyone looking to listen, learn, and feel empowered to have meaningful conversations about race.

Engaged audience: perfect for those who want a non-American perspective on race - readers of Akala, Reni Eddo Lodge, Sathnam Sanghera as well as novels like Assembly or Such a Fun Age

Winner of the W. D. Weatherford Award of the Appalachian Society, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award of the APSA, Lillian Smith Award of the Southern Regional Council, V.O. Key Award of the Southern PSA, and the Governor's Award from the Kentucky Historical Society

This crucial, empowering, #1 New York Times bestselling exploration of racism—and antiracism—in America makes critical ideas accessible for teen readers, adapted from Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning.This is NOT a history book.This is a book about the here and now.A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.A book about race.The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. Racist ideas are woven into the fabric of this country, and the first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America's racist past and present. This book takes you on that journey, showing how racist ideas started and were spread, and how they can be discredited.Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds with research from renowned author Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas—and on ways you can identify and stamp out racist thoughts, leading to a better future.Download the free educator guide here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Stamped-Educator-Guide.pdfNow available for younger readers: Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You

Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi, and featuring some of the most acclaimed bestselling Black authors writing for teens today—Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and Black in America. A selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List.Black is...sisters navigating their relationship at summer camp in Portland, Oregon, as written by Renée Watson.Black is…three friends walking back from the community pool talking about nothing and everything, in a story by Jason Reynolds.Black is…Nic Stone’s high-class beauty dating a boy her momma would never approve of.Black is…two girls kissing in Justina Ireland’s story set in Maryland.Black is urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more—because there are countless ways to be Black enough.Contributors:Justina IrelandVarian JohnsonRita Williams-GarciaDhonielle ClaytonKekla MagoonLeah HendersonTochi OnyebuchiJason ReynoldsNic StoneLiara TamaniRenée WatsonTracey BaptisteCoe BoothBrandy ColbertJay ColesIbi ZoboiLamar Giles

A profound book of essays from a celebrated master of the form.“Darkness is not empty,” writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanity—and witness the humanity of others—in a time of darkness. One of the most celebrated essayists of his generation, Cole here plays variations on the essay form, modeling ways to attend to experience—not just to take in but to think critically about what we sense and what we don’t.Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole’s writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about blackness and its numerous connotations. As he describes the carbon-copy process in his epilogue: “Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white sheet. Black transported the meaning.”

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS FINALIST"Hilarious yet soul-shaking." —Black EnterpriseThe fearless comedy legend—one of the “Original Kings of Comedy”—hilariously breaks down the wisdom of white people, advice that has been killing black folks in America for four hundred years and counting.200 years ago, white people told black folks, “‘I suggest you pick the cotton if you don’t like getting whipped.” Today, it’s “comply with police orders if you don’t want to get shot.” Now comedian/activist D. L. Hughley–one the Original Kings of Comedy–confronts and remixes white people’s “advice” in this “hilarious examination of the current state of race relations in the United States” (Publishers Weekly).In America, a black man is three times more likely to be killed in encounters with police than a white guy. If only he had complied with the cop, he might be alive today, pundits say in the aftermath of the latest shooting of an unarmed black man. Or, Maybe he shouldn’t have worn that hoodie … or, moved more slowly … not been out so late … Wait, why are black people allowed to drive, anyway?This isn’t a new phenomenon. White people have been giving “advice” to black folks for as long as anyone can remember, telling them how to pick cotton, where to sit on a bus, what neighborhood to live in, when they can vote, and how to wear our pants. Despite centuries of whites’ advice, it seems black people still aren’t listening, and the results are tragic.Now, at last, activist, comedian, and New York Times bestselling author D. L. Hughley offers How Not to Get Shot, an illustrated how-to guide for black people, full of insight from white people, translated by one of the funniest black dudes on the planet. In these pages you will learn how to act, dress, speak, walk, and drive in the safest manner possible. You also will finally understand the white mind. It is a book that can save lives. Or at least laugh through the pain.Black people: Are you ready to not get shot! White people: Do you want to learn how to help the cause? Let’s go!

An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winnerMorrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. Written with the artistic vision that has earned the Nobel Prize-winning author a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark is an invaluable read for avid Morrison admirers as well as students, critics, and scholars of American literature.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when America is being called to do the same.”—Time James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. What can we learn from his struggle in our own moment?   One of the Best Books of the Year: Time, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune • One of Esquire’s Best Biographies of All Time • Winner of the Stowe Prize • Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice   “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.”—James Baldwin   Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with America’s ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin’s “after times,” argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement’s call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism.   In these brilliant and stirring pages, Glaude finds hope and guidance in Baldwin as he mixes biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered Baldwin interviews—with history, memoir, and poignant analysis of our current moment to reveal the painful cycle of Black resistance and white retrenchment. As Glaude bears witness to the difficult truth of racism’s continued grip on the national soul, Begin Again is a searing exploration of the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hooks explores the confounding and sometimes controversial topics that teachers and students have urged her to address since the publication of the previous best-selling volumes in her Teaching series, Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community. The issues are varied and broad, from whether meaningful teaching can take place in a large classroom setting to confronting issues of self-esteem. One professor, for example, asked how black female professors can maintain positive authority in a classroom without being seen through the lens of negative racist, sexist stereotypes. One teacher asked how to handle tears in the classroom, while another wanted to know how to use humor as a tool for learning. Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today.