English YA+ White Supremacy Complicity Unconscious Bias White Feminism Jessie Daniels summary “No amount of positivity, light, and love will help us defeat the patriarchy if white feminists can’t tolerate being criticized” (8). If you’re a white lady, you should be reading this book. If you’re a “nice” liberal white lady, you should be reading…
Category: Young Adult
Castaway Mountain: Love and Loss Among the Wastepickers of Mumbai
English & Marathi YA & Up Indian Culture & Identity Waste Non-fiction Saumya Roy summary Castaway Mountain is an extremely detailed book that follows 4 families living on the outskirts of Mumbai, making a scant living by picking through the refuse that’s trucked in infinitely from the city. It’s a fascinating combination of a look…
The Dire Days of Willoweep Manor
English 12+ Tropes Breaking the Fourth Wall Gothic Romance Stories Sci-Fi Heroines Shaenon K. Garrity & Christopher Baldwin summary I love a good self-aware book, and Willoweep (a graphic novel) has this in spades. It begins with our main character dramatically reading her book report, much to her stern teacher’s dismay. She’s ordered to explore…
Antiracist Family Book Club: The Kidnapping Club & Call and Response
English MG & Up Racism BLM History Historical Figures Activism Protest summary I’m back with another pairing for the #AntiracistFamilyBookClub that y’all seemed to enjoy the first installment of! The first book I want to share with you was recommended to me by a colleague of Lee’s named Daryl! The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery,…
Peace, Love, and Pasta: A Celebration of Family
English All Family Cooking Chosen Family Bilingual Books Turkish summary Pasta, food of the masses. Delightful, buttery, easy to share (sometimes). Diving into Scott Conant’s most recent book Peace, Love, and Pasta (from Abrams Books) made one thing clear: he values family above all else. This got me thinking about all types of family, chosen…
Antiracist Family Book Club: the OTHER talk & Deep Diversity
English MG & Up Antiracism White Privilege Action Accountability Unlearning Implicit Bias Social Change Community Organizing summary In an ongoing effort to help facilitate discussions, consider this the first installment of the Antiracist Family Book Club. My goal is to try and pair a book for MG/YA readers with a book for grownup readers (educators,…
When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during WWII
English & Japanese YA Japanese Internment/Incarceration History Nonfiction Racism Oppression Personal Narrative Susan H. Kamei summary Meticulously researched and fastidiously detailed personal narration fill this historic book. Susan Kamei has done a marvelous job in describing the intricacies of the political events and racism that led to the incarceration of the Japanese American population following…
Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall
English YA Historical Figures WWII Spy French Resistance Disability Feminism Heather Demetrios summary Okay so uhh Virginia Hall is the most badass person I’ve ever read about. Not only is being a spy pretty much the coolest (& most dangerous) job I could think of having, but Virginia accidentally shot her own ding dang foot…
Good Girls Don’t Make History
English MG & Up Suffrage Graphic Novels History Historical Figures Activism Legislative Change Elizabeth Kiehner, Keith Olwell, Kara Coyle, Micaela Dawn, & Mary Sanche summary We’ve all seen a quote that says something along the lines of “rights for others don’t mean less for you, it’s not cake”. Which is entirely true, but the Patriarchy…
The Teen Guide to Global Action: How to Connect with Others (Near & Far) to Create Social Change
English 12+ Youth Activism Community Organizing Global Community Barbara A. Lewis summary For #SweetsAndSocialJustice this week, I want to get to the heart of a matter (…see what I did there?) that is meaningful to the work that I do both on and off-line. And that’s resources to help empower youth to get involved in…