We have received inquiries about the materials we have available in our collections by Black authors and/or on the topic of race relations. In the spirit of expanding public dialogue, the staff has put together the following partial list of titles in our collections, which is in no particular order.
Click on the title and be directed to the record of the book in our online catalog. From there you may click on “Place Hold,” (at no charge) while signed into your account, in order to request the book through our Books to Go program.
On the topic of diversity among authors, please see recent blog posts, Books for Teens Explore Social Injustice, as well as Books from Diverse Authors Help to Build Compassion, Understanding, and Discover New Voices in Poetry, each of which discusses some of these titles.
Streaming video service Kanopy, located in our eLibrary, is currently featuring films about racial and social injustice. Inspiring documentaries, like “The Talk: Race in America,” “P.S. I Can’t Breathe,” and many others, can also help contribute to a more open dialogue about race relations in modern America.
Adult Fiction & Nonfiction
- Of Poetry & Protest: Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, Philip Cushway, editor
- Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires, by Shomari Wills
- Thick: And Other Essays, by Tressie McMillan Cottom
- They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
- Don’t Call Us Dead, by Danez Smith
- New People, by Danzy Senna
- We Were Eight Years In Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
- An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones
- This Will Be My Undoing, by Morgan Jerkins
- Me and White Supremacy, Layla F. Saad
- The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin (audio book)
- Collected Essays (includes The Fire Next Time), by James Baldwin
- An African American and Latinx History of the United States, by Paul Ortiz
- Chokehold: Policing Black Men, by Paul Butler
- What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays, by Damon Young
- The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- I am not your Negro, by James Baldwin
- Felon, by Reginald Dwayne Betts
- The Tradition, by Jericho Brown
- How We Fight For Our Lives, by Saeed Jones
- What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America, by Michael Dyson
- So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Olou
- How To Be An Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi
- Breathe: A Letter To My Sons, by Imani Perry
- Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Stamped From the Beginning, Ibram X Kendi
- The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
- They Can’t Kill Us All : Ferguson, Baltimore, and a new era in America’s racial justice movement, by Wesley Lowery
- Busted in New York and other essays, by Darryl Pinckney
- Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, by James Forman
- Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education, by Mychal Denzel Smith
- Our Black Sons Matter: Mothers Talk About Fears, Sorrows, and Hopes, George Yancy, editor
- Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
- The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, Jesmyn Ward, editor
- Black is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, by Emily Bernard
- Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin, by Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin
- The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement, by Andrew G. Ferguson
- The burning : massacre, destruction, and the Tulsa race riot of 1921, by Tim Madigan
- Riot and remembrance : the Tulsa race war and its legacy, by James S. Hirsch
- Charleston syllabus : readings on race, racism, and racial violence, by Chad Louis Williams
- Black origins in the Inland Empire, by Byron Richard Skinner
Children (YRR) / Young Adult (YA)
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- The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (YA)
- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (YA)
- Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson (YRR)
- Ghost Boys, by Jewell Parker Rhodes (YRR)
- Dear Martin, by Nic Stone (YA)
- All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds (YA)
- Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds (YA)
- Just Mercy: Adapted for Young Adults: A True Story of the Fight for Justice, by Bryan Stevenson (YA)
- Unpunished murder : massacre at Colfax and the quest for justice, by Lawrence Goldston (YA)
- Because They Marched : the People’s Campaign for Voting Rights that Changed America, by Russell Freedman (YA)
- Stolen Justice : the Struggle for African-American Voting Rights, by Lawrence Goldstone (YA)
- This is My America by Kim Johnson (YA)
- Home Home by Lisa Allen-Agostini (YA)
- All the Things We Never Knew by Liara Tamani (YA)
- Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro (YA)
- Grown by Tiffany Jackson (YA)
- The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed (YA)
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