READING TO SAVE OUR SOULS

Several times this week I sat down to finish a post about reading.  This was to be my long-delayed Part II to an earlier post.  But it had been a terrible week, and I couldn't settle to it.  I couldn't get the image of that white cop with his knee on the neck of a black man out of my mind.  I couldn't stop seeing that white woman in Central Park going off on a black man for asking her to leash her dog in an area where leashes were required.  I kept asking myself - How is it possible that a black man was arrested for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill and the white man with his knee on the black man's neck wasn't restrained by the cops who were with him?  And why wasn't the cop who kept his knee on the black man's neck after said black man had lost consciousness taken into custody immediately?  Let's go over that again:  A black man arrested (and killed) after allegedly trying to pass a fake $20 bill and a white man allowed to walk away after causing the black man's death.

Whose thumb is on the scale of justice?

Yes, I know the cop has now been charged, but the other three cops who stood by have not.  And why wasn't the woman in Central Park charged for making a false police report?  There should be consequences for white people who call the police because a person of color is conducting his or her life within their sight.

So, getting back to the post I was trying to write - I couldn't finish it.  It felt frivolous in the face of these events.  And then it occurred to me that reading (and writing about reading) isn't frivolous.  While reading can be pure entertainment, it can also open otherwise unseen worlds for us.

Books can teach us if we are willing to learn.

And so, I have put aside my unfinished post for the time being, and will approach reading from a different perspective right now.

A while back, I wrote a post about race relations.   There, I addressed women of color to see if we could find a way to talk.  To see how white women could be of help in the fight for racial justice.  Now, I think it is much more important for me to address white women (and white men).  Black people have enough on their plates.

So, because I can't think of anything else to do with my anger and sorrow right now, I'm going to tell you about the books that have helped to open my eyes to the effects of systemic racism in America.

But first let me admit that these books were not front and center in my reading life until recently.

I began my life reading that which was fed to me.  I don't remember reading any books by or about black people in high school.  I read dozens of books - fiction and non-fiction - in my years as a college English major, most of them written by dead white men about issues of concern to white men.  (There was nothing wrong with most of these books in and of themselves.  What was wrong was the dearth of books written from other perspectives.) I did read Malcom X and Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, but not for any class. In the years after that, I read more and more books by and about women. A few, but not many, of these books were by or about people of color.

It wasn't until three or four years ago that I began to seek out books about the experiences of black and brown people in America.**  Some of these I read with my book group and some on my own. I would like to use this post to share a list of some of these books. I do not share this list by way of self-congratulation. I share it because we cannot break down systemic racism unless we understand it.  I hope you will consider reading some of these important books, if you have not already done so, and that you will share your book suggestions in the comments. (Most of these are  newish books; some are older books that I have recently read.)

FICTION

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Sula by Toni Morrison

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (prose-poem)

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Bluest Eye by Tone Morrison

NONFICTION

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (a black man's letter to his son, describing racism in America)

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates (a collection of articles written during Barack Obama's presidency)

Stamped From the Beginning:  The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X Kendi

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (Baldwin's essays about growing up in Harlem)

Becoming by Michelle Obama (autobiography)

The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette 
Gordon-Reed (the story of Thomas Jefferson's "other family")

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (about author's remarkable work representing death-row inmates)

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (the story of the migration of African-Americans from the Jim-Crow south to northern cities)


Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash

** I shared this quote from Maya Angelou in an earlier post and I will share it again now:  "Do the best you can until you know better.  Then when you know better, do better."