The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives by David Mura
The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and our American Narratives by David Mura should be required reading in all high school and college classrooms – and for all Americans. Mura presents a cohesive, comprehensive, and uncompromising look into how white stories about race erase our true historical narrative and foster racism in the present.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer
Living on the North Shore of Lake Superior, a mere twenty miles from the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, commonly known as the Grand Portage Anishinaabe, I have a responsibility to learn and understand more about the first people that inhabited this area. They are my friends and neighbors, and I often don’t verbalize the questions I have because I don’t want to say anything offensive or reveal my ignorance. Treuer’s book is a straightforward path through what could be a minefield, one that to be honest, creates anxiety and for me and impairs genuine connection and communication.
Opioid Reckoning - Love, Loss, and Redemption in the Rehab State by Amy C. Sullivan, PhD
Dr. Sullivan’s work on behalf of addiction and treatment is remarkable and Opioid Reckoning offers a glimpse into the faces of the epidemic. With heart and soul and considerable scholarship, Sullivan has written a book that offers hope and help for anyone affected by addiction.
There's a Revolution Outside, My Love, Letters from a Crisis, Edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman
The stories, poems, essays, and letters in this collection are a battle cry -- beaten down by a pandemic, police brutality, political divisiveness, and an armed insurrection – the writers question whether America has the stuff it takes to make the changes required. “As long as socio-racial segregation and discrimination persist, and as long as the presence of the state is limited to the increasingly armed police force, then neither the biggest smile nor the use of any hollow expressions of “American Nice” is going to remedy what for a very long time most people of color have lived as a daily experience of injustice in this country,” writes Sofian Merabet.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kimmerer writes lyrically, with the heart and eye of a poet, and the mind of a botanist. BRAIDING SWEETGRASS should be required reading. How do we get back the connections we have lost? Whatever it takes, I feel as though Robin Wall Kimmerer’s BRAIDING SWEETGRASS will be an element in that confluence, that coming together again, for me. The problem and the solution both laid out before us in this beautiful collection.
SOMEWHERE IN THE UNKNOWN WORLD, A COLLECTIVE REFUGEE MEMOIR by Kao Kalia Yang
“Life will teach you the strength of the human heart, not of its weakness or fragility,” Kao Kalia Yang’s father tells her. It is a lesson that Yang passes on to her children and one that she hopes will fortify the hearts of children everywhere, passed on through the stories in Somewhere in the Unknown World. The book is dedicated to “Refugees from everywhere – men, women, and children whose fates have been held by the interests of nations, whose rights have been contested and denied, whose thirst and hunger go unheeded and unseen.” Through this important work, we see them, Kalia, we see them.
