Still Life at Eighty, The Next Best Thing by Abigail Thomas
You won’t find the secret of life buried here among the sentences and paragraphs, what you will find, however, will be transparency and authenticity – you’ll find a woman who has come to terms with being referred to as elderly … because, frankly, Abigail Thomas’s eighty is nothing you’ve experienced before.
A Hundred Lives Since Then by Gail Rosenblum
Rosenblum’s collection of essays is a delightful way to end a day – with each essay encompassing a mere 2-3 pages, it’s the perfect nightcap to end a long day.
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.
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be by Shannon Gibney
Transracial adoption is never tidy, and cannot be encapsulated in an individual story, but Gibney does a masterful job of helping the reader understand the complexities of identity and the machinations of the adoption industrial complex. A writer with courage and heart, Gibney lays bare her experience for the benefit of us all.
We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, Edited by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura
At the dawn of summer 2020, with the world spinning from the Covid 19 pandemic, Minneapolis went into a nose dive after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. In the weeks and months that followed, Minneapolis became the epicenter of worldwide demands for justice. In a compelling new collection, WE ARE MEANT TO RISE, edited by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura, Indigenous writers and writers of color bear witness to one of the most unsettling years in the history of the United States.
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.
French Like Moi, A Midwesterner in Paris by Scott Carpenter
When Scott Carpenter moved his family from Minnesota to Paris, the cultural chasm was deep and wide. Never mind that he was fluent in her language and literature, there were certain proclivities of her nature that had to be experienced to be fully understood. Welcome to the hilarious world chronicled in Scott Carpenter's memoir, French Like Moi.
Tell Me Your Names and I will Testify by Carolyn Holbrook
Confronted by racism, both subtle and audacious, she persevered. She inspired students, regardless of their race, class, or age to write their own stories. As a mother, she helped her daughter leave an abusive relationship, stood by her son through his own years of incarceration, and as a grandmother envisioned a world where her granddaughters could develop a strong sense of self and personal freedom.
