What to read and watch this month
Caste - The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. (Penguin Random House)
The Dead Are Arising. The Life of Malcom X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
This historic biography conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, Setting Malcolm’s life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century’s most politically relevant figures “from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary.” (W. W. Norton)
Thick - And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
a bold and genre-busting collection. McMillan Cottom has crafted a black woman's cultural bible, as she mines for meaning in places many of us miss and reveals precisely how―when you're in the thick of it―the political, the social, and the personal are almost always one and the same.
Heavy - An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse. (Schribner
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Time of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Michelle ALexander's stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.
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. National Book Award Winner 2015.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. (Penguin Random House)
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, A Lesson Before Dying is a deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a black youth on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. (Penguin Random House)
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom (Berkeley Alumna)
2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother’s struggle against a house’s entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. (Grove Atlantic)
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize - History.
In this remarkable biography, David Blight has drawn on new information held in a private collection that few other historians have consulted, as well as recently discovered issues of Douglass’s newspapers. Blight tells the fascinating story of Douglass’s two marriages and his complex extended family. Douglass was not only an astonishing man of words, but a thinker steeped in Biblical story and theology. (Simon & Schuster)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. (Penguin Random Housue)
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
First published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk remains both a touchstone in the literature of African America and a beacon in the fight for civil rights. Believing that one can know the “soul” of a race by knowing the souls of individuals, W. E. B. Du Bois combines history and stirring autobiography to reflect on the magnitude of American racism and to chart a path forward against oppression, and introduces the now-famous concepts of the color line, the veil, and double-consciousness.
Unapologetic - A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers
Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development.
When They See Us - Created by Ava DuVernay
Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park in 1989. This Netflix series created, co-written, and directed by Ava DuVernay is based on the true story.
13th - Directed by Ava DuVernay
An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality. " More African-American men are incarcerated, or on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, and the United States, which accounts for 5% of the world’s population, counts nearly a quarter of the world's incarcerated people." Time Magazine
The Black Power Mixtape 1967 - 1975
For three decades, the film canisters sat undisturbed in a cellar beneath the Swedish National Broadcasting Company. Inside was roll after roll of startlingly fresh and candid 16mm footage shot in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, all of it focused on the anti-war and Black Power movements. When filmmaker Goran Hugo Olsson discovered the footage, he decided he had a responsibility to shepherd this glimpse of history into the world.
Moonlight - Directed by Barry Jenkins
Academy Award Best Picture 2017. In this acclaimed coming-of-age drama,
a young man who grows up poor, Black, and gay in a rough Miami neighborhood tries to find his place in the world.
Chiron's epic journey to manhood is guided by the kindness, support, and love of the community that helps raise him.
The Gullah Way - Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi: Episode 4 (Hulu)
The Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina are fighting to preserve the traditions passed down from their ancestors, West Africans forced into slavery.
I Am Not Your Negro - Written by James Baldwin, Directed by Raoul Peck
Filmmaker Raoul Peck looks at James Baldwin's unfinished book 'Remember This House' and examines race in America through Baldwin's words and archival material. The film looks at black representation in Hollywood and beyond.
Hidden Figures - Directed by Theodore Melfi
The incredible untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe)-brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big." Rotten Tomatoes
The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution - Directed by Stanley Nelson
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature-length documentary to explore the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails. (PBS)
One Night in Miami - Directed by Regina King
One Night in Miami is a fictional account of one incredible night where icons Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown gathered discussing their roles in the civil rights movement and cultural upheaval of the 60s.
Black Klansman - Directed by Spike Lee
Ron Stallworth is the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a name for himself, Stallworth bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan.
12 Years a Slave - Directed by Steve McQueen
Based on an incredible true story of one man's fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender), as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) will forever alter his life.
If Beale Street Could Talk - Directed by Barry Jenkins
In the early 1970s, Harlem, daughter, and wife-to-be Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt, who goes by the nickname Fonny. Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together, but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit.