Stories (both nonfictional and fictional) of lived experiences of racism
Opinion | You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument – The New York Times (nytimes.com), by Caroline Randall Williams – “The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?”
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, by Austin Channing Brown – An illuminating look at how white middle-class evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy and recognize God’s ongoing work in the world.
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, by Anthony Ray Hinton, Lara Love Hardin, and Bryan Stevenson (foreword) – A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit.
The Hate U Give – Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping story about one girl’s struggle for justice. Read the book by Angie Thomas and watch the movie.
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison – Morrison’s first novel 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.
They Can’t Kill Us All, by Wesley Lowery – Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Wesley Lowery describes the earliest days of #blacklivesmatter and brings to life the quest for justice in the murders by police of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray as well as an intimate, moving portrait of the activists working to dismantle systemic racism in America.
I Am Not Your Negro – A movie that imagines the book James Baldwin never finished, Remember This House. It is a journey into Black history that connects the Civil Rights movement to Black Lives Matter and that questions Black representation in Hollywood and beyond.
American Son – This movie, available on Netflix and starring Kerry Washington, was originally a play. It tells the story of a Black mom trying to get information about where her son is after a traffic stop with police.
