A Reading List To Help Students Begin To Grapple With Race
by Terry Heick
Ed note: This post was written in 2014–thus the Ferguson, Missouri references. I went in and updated the list a little to better fit with a broader reading list of books about race and race relations in the United States
Because that’s what it is–grappling.
Anything involving something as far-reaching and historically-entrenched as race is more or less resistant to ‘quick looks’ or even mere discussions. We can hope to be ‘dialogic’ and ‘come to terms’ with what we feel or what they said or who, in fact, ‘they’ are, but race is, if nothing else, a logical, ethical, and political puzzle–or rather a human one with logical, ethical, and political perspectives.
Which is where the following list comes in. I teach English, so in light of the events in Ferguson (update: and now national protest in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota) I thought it might be useful to share a reading list that might help students (probably those in grades 7-12, now that I look at the list) begin to make sense of race relations in the United States between ‘whites’ and ‘blacks.’
Some of these–in fact most, probably–are pretty obvious.
Some aren’t directly about race–Howl and The Wasteland, for example–but rather human expression, folly, angst, and survival.
Most are books or poems, but I also have a speech and a couple of songs. And all can be accessed in some way, shape, or form through digital media.
You personally may not like some of the selections–that’s okay. This is all subjective.
Some of it has some rough language and may not be useful to anyone outside of a university. Caveat emptor. The world isn’t as clean as academia seeks to stay.
Some of the links aren’t to the media itself, but an article about the media. (If you’re a teacher, I trust you can hunt down an actual licensed copy of said work that won’t get your librarian in an uproar.)
If you want to read a white man’s struggle to come to terms with his own sense of race/racism, start with “The Hidden Wound,” by Wendell Berry.
If you have any you’d like to add, leave a note in the comments below. I considered opening this list to all races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, etc. (“The House On Mango Street,” for example), but as Ferguson is (at least most immediately) related to the ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ (here are two more terms that probably need washing from our vernacular), I thought we could start there. If this kind of curricula-style content is useful, we can do more, no?
I purposefully left out the “how and why you should teach this” part for each title. I can add it if that’s helpful.
Books About Race In The United States: A Reading List For Students
1. A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes
2. The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry
3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
4. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
5. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
6. By The Time I Get To Arizona by Public Enemy (explicit language)
7. Howl by Alan Ginsberg
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8. Black Rage by Lauryn Hill
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9. The House Negro & The Field Negro by Malcolm X
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10. I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.
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11. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
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12. We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
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13. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
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14. Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr.
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15. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
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16. The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling
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17. Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt
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18. The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
Form: Poem
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19. Los Angeles Notebook by Joan Didion
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20. F*ck The Police by NWA (explicit language)
Form: Hip-Hop song
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21. West Indian Immigrants: A Black Success Story? by Susan Model
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22. King Lear by William Shakespeare
Form: Play/Drama
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23. Towards the Other America: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter by Chris Crass
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24. Barn Burning by William Faulkner
Form: Short story
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25. We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain
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26. I, Too, Sing America by Langston Hughes
Form: Poem
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27. American Lynching by Ashraf H.A. Rushdy
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28. Decoded by Jay-Z
Form: Non-Fiction/Creative Non-Fiction
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“Compelling . . . provocative, evocative . . . Part autobiography, part lavishly illustrated commentary on the author’s own work, Decoded gives the reader a harrowing portrait of the rough worlds Jay-Z navigated in his youth, while at the same time deconstructing his lyrics.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
29. The Negro Artist And The Racial Mountain by Langston Hughes
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“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” Hughes wrote nearly 100 years ago. “We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.” We are all imperfectly human, and these imperfections are also markers of human equality.
30. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
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31. Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins
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32. Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin
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33. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting Of Medgar Evers by Frank X Walker
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34. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
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