7 Anti-Racist Books

In the last days, we've witnessed a terrible act of cruel violence against an African-American man. Sadly, this is just another episode in the long history of racism. As a way of support to African-Americans, I put here a list of 7 anti-racist books and their respective synopses...

• Between The World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. 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?

 Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder."

• The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin

"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. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhorts Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism."

• The Hate You Give, by Angie Thomas

"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life."

• The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

"Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change- in painful, devastating ways."

• A Long Walk To Freedom, Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

“Long Walk to Freedom” is the 1994 autobiography of Nelson Mandela, detailing his ascent from an anti-apartheid activist and Robben Island-jailed terrorist, to ANC leader and a cultural icon. The only memoir published during Mandela’s life, the book is a testament to the greatness of the first black president of South Africa."

• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Brian Stevenson

"Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption revolves around the case of an innocent man, Walter McMillian, a black man who had a white girlfriend in Monroe County, Alabama, framed by the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and convicted by a Jury for the murder of a clerk in a dry cleaner's shop. Condemned to die."

• To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

"To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee centers on Atticus Finch's attempts to prove the innocence of Tom Robinson, a black man who has been wrongly accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama."