This is a resource for all of the Windsor High School learning community to engage in creating a better understanding of racism and also celebrate black lives. So many of our great educators have been sharing resources during the uprising in our country. We wanted everything to be in one place so it is accessible to all without having to go search for it. Like a lot of our research guides, this is a living document. It is incomplete and needs all of you to share any resources you feel would be beneficial to our learning community. Please find the link below to the resources provided in the equity workshop given by Nicole Martinez-Jones, Felicia Hamilton, and Andrea Chudzik:
Equity Training: Fostering Safe Spaces and Facilitating Safe Conversations
There have seen so many anti-racist resource lists shared freely for people over the years including THIS by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein, THIS by Ibram X. Kendi, THIS by Jon Greenberg, THIS by Victoria Alexander, and THIS by Dr. Shay-Akil McLean. These compiled lists are indispensable to anti-racist learning.
We don’t want to just give you another list or a syllabus, or pathway to anti-racism. The resources in the lists above are valuable as we all seek to educate ourselves. The honest truth is it is on all of us to craft our own path through this journey to understand how white supremacy works. This does not mean we are alone in our journey to increase our understanding. In fact, it is essential that we discuss our understanding with each other as we interrogate and critically engage in material we are reading. This guide is meant to support that work.
Please, click into the included lists and compile questions you have about racial injustice, including checking in with yourself to interrogate how you know what you know. What is most important is we engage critically with the material shared in these lists and commit ourselves to understand the power structures we exist in and ACT to create a better world for ourselves, our students, and our future students.
Teaching for Black Lives: Dyan Watson
From Rage to Hope: Crystal Kuykendall
Tell Me Who You Are: Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo
Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Paulo Freire
Teaching to Transgress: bell hooks
The Conversation We Must Have with Our White Children by Courtney E. Martin
The White Problem (Part I); How White People Got Made (Part II) by Quinn Norton
No Selves to Defend edited by Mariame Kaba
Da Art of Storytellin' by Kiese Laymon
Emmitt Till and Tamir Rice: Sons of the Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
The Rocky Unpaved Roads of Good Intentions by Ibi Zoboi
Is Prison Necessary? by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
White Men by Sara Ahmed
How Race and Gender Intersect to Shape Inequality by Dr. Shay-Akil McLean
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Tochi Onyebuchi
The End of White Supremacy, An American Romance by Saidiya Hartman
Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police by Mariame Kaba
Another thing often missing from these shared lists is fiction. Publishing has always been white dominated and continually centers white experiences. Over the last decade there has been a shift in publishing and more and more books are out in the world centering black characters, and other characters of color. Although publishing still has a massive equity problem that must change (88% of publishing executives are white), there are so many great stories centering black lives and lives of so many other groups who have traditionally been pushed out of publishing. It is imperative for us to read fiction by black authors and other authors of color. Read fiction that calls out racism, and also read books with black and brown characters that center black and brown joy and excellence. Read about black LIVES. Demand more from our publishing industry.
*Note: you will find interspersed in the following lists, many science fiction and fantasy books. Some of the best writing today is coming from authors publishing within these genres. These authors are building worlds different than our own. They are speculating on worlds we may not be imagining. This is essential to anti-racism.
Sister Outsider: Audre Lorde
Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison
Beloved: Toni Morrison
Them: Nathan McCall
The Bluest Eye: Toni Morrison
Kindred: Octavia Butler
A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry
Color: Countee Cullen
Dhalgren: Samuel Delaney
Mumbo Jumbo: Ismael Reed
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf: Ntozake Shange
Native Son: Richard Wright
Go Tell it on the Mountain: James Baldwin
The Color Purple: Alice Walker
Not Without Laughter: Langston Hughes
Through the Ivory Gate: Rita Dove
If Beale Street Could Talk: James Baldwin
Amiable with Big Teeth: Claude McKay
Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe
Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston
These are the tip of the iceberg. Read anything by the above authors. You will not be disappointed.
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
X: A Novel: Ilyashah Shabazz, Kekla Magoon
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
Watch Us Rise: Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan
Black Enough: ed. Ibi Zoboi
PET by Akwaeke Emezie
Hold tight, Don't Let Go: a Novel of Haiti: Wagner, Laura Rose
Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
American Street by Ibi Zoboi
Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson
Shadowshaper: Daniel Jose Older
Children of Blood and Bone: Tomi Adeyemi
War Girls: Tochi Onyebuchi
A Blade So Black: L.L. McKinney
Little and Lion: Brandy Colbert
Monday’s Not Coming: Tiffany Jackson
The Belles: Dhonielle Clayton
Felix Ever After: Kacen Callendar
The Beauty that Remains: Ashley Woodfolk
The First Part Last: Angela Johnson
The Hate U Give: Angie Thomas
Midnight Robber: Nalo Hopkinson
Miracle’s Boys: Jacqueline Woodson
The Poet X: Elizabeth Acevedo
The Sun is Also a Star: Nicola Yoon
Fly Girl: Sherri L. Smith
How it Went Down: Kekla Magoon
Tyrell: Coe Booth
The Summer Prince: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Redemption in Indigo: Karen Lorde
Opposite of Always: Justin Reynolds
I’m Not Dying with You Tonight: Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal
Who Put this Song On?: Morgan Parker
Solo: Kwame Alexander
Tyler Johnson Was Here: Jay Coles
A Song Below Water: Bethany Morrow
Kingdom of Souls: Rena Barron
Genesis Begins Again: Genesis Williams
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them: Junauda Petrus
Akata Witch: Nnedi Okorofor
Bronx Masquerade: Nikki Grimes
Pinned: Sharon G. Flake
Tears of a Tiger: Sharon Draper
Monster: Walter Dean Myers
Calling My Name: Liara Tamani
All Boys Aren’t Blue: George M. Johnson
Black Girl Unlimited: Echo Brown
Legendborn: Tracy Deonn
Raybearer: Jordan Ifueko
Who Put This Song On?: Morgan Parker
Again, read any of these authors books.
Homegoing: Yaa Gyasi
What is Not Yours, Is Not Yours: Helen Oyeyemi
The Fifth Season: NK Jemisin
Freshwater: Akwaeke Emezie
Redwood and Wildfire: Andrea Hairston
Loving Day: Mat Johnson
We Cast a Shadow: Maurice Carlos Ruffin
The Nickel Boys: Colson Whitehead
Between the World and Me: Te-Nehisi Coates
An American Wedding: Tayari Jones
An Unkindness of Ghosts: Rivers Solomon
Who Fears Death: Nnedi Okorofor
Wild Seed: Octavia Butler
Queenie: Candace Carty-Williams
Salvage the Bones: Jesmyn Ward
The Yellow House: Sarah M. Broom
White Teeth: Zadie Smith
The Turner House: Angela Flournoy
The Ballad of Black Tom: Victor LaValle
Riot Baby: Tochi Onyebuchi
The Black God’s Drums: P. Djeli Clark
A Brief History of Seven Killings: Marlon James
Rosewater: Tade Thompson
Everfair: Nisi Shawl
The Vanishing Half: Brit Bennett
Read. These. Authors!
Journal Articles (Some are available in our library databases, some are not. Ms. Green or Mr. McGee can get them for you by request if desired):
Bonds, Anne. "Beyond White Privilege: Geographies of White Supremacy and Settler
Colonialism." Progress in Human Geography, vol. 40, no. 6, 1 Dec. 2016.
DiAngelo, Robin. "White Fragility." International Journal of Critical Pedagogy,
vol. 3, no. 3, 2011, libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116.
Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey M.R. "Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing
Roses in Concrete." Harvard Educational Review, vol. 79, no. 2, Summer
2009, pp. 181-94.
Guess, Teresa. "The Social Construction of Whiteness: Racism by Intent, Racism
by Consequence." Critical Sociology, vol. 32, no. 4, 2006, www.cwu.edu/
diversity/sites/cts.cwu.edu.diversity/files/documents/constructingwhiteness.pdf.
Leonardo, Zeus. "The Color of Supremacy: Beyond the discourse of ‘white
privilege‘." Educational Philosophy & Theory 36, no. 2 (April 2004):
137-152. Professional Development Collection.
Levine-Rasky, Cynthia. "Intersectional Theory Applied to Whiteness and
Middle-Classness." Social Identities, vol. 17, no. 2, Mar. 2011.
Mills, Charles. "An Illuminating Blackness." The Black Scholar, vol. 43, no. 4,
2013.
"The Social Construction of Race." Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge.
Originally published in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, edited by
Richard Delgado, Philadelphia, Temple UP, 1995, pp. 191-203.
Tuck, Eve. "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor." Decolonization: Indigeneity,
Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-40.
Winant, Howard. "Race and Race Theory." Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 26,
Aug. 2000, p. 169.
Wolfe, Patrick. "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native."
Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, Dec. 2006, pp. 387-409.
Woods, Tryon P. "The Implicit Bias of Implicit Bias Theory." Drexel Law Review,
vol. 10, 4 June 2018, pp. 631-72.
Research starts with what YOU bring to it. A great question to always begin with is:
Some other great questions to come equipped with during research:
These are not the only questions to ask when doing research but it is important that you learn to keep these questions handy so you start to understand how you interact with information.
Log in to Destiny Discover to access these sources:
username: your ID#
password: your first name (all lowercase) (ie. kevin)
Our Catalog: Come visit us to check out books if you are able to!
Our E-Books: If you are not able to make it the library.
*CHECK YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY*
Purchasing (Beyond Amazon):
Order from BLACK-OWNED BOOKSTORES!