Here are the books I will read and post on in 2013 – among others. The last four are books I promised to do. The others are based on which books got the most commenter recommendations:
Michelle Alexander & Cornel West: “The New Jim Crow” (2012) – the mass incarceration of black men in America.
Melissa V. Harris-Perry: “Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America” (2011) – the American stereotypes about black women and how black women are affected by them.
Steven Pinker: “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” (2011) – on how and why violence has become less common in the Western world.
Louis DeCaro Jr.: “On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X” (1997) – Malcolm X as a religious leader. The relationships between Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, Islam and Black America.
Lillian Smith: “Killers of the Dream” (1949, revised 1961) – growing up white in the American South in the early 1900s. “White identity as something inflicted on children as a form of psychological and emotional abuse,” says Macon D.
Lawrence Hill: “Someone Knows My Name: A Novel” (2007) – also known as “The Book of Negroes”. A novel about the life story of Aminata Diallo in the 1700s. It follows her from freedom in West Africa to slavery in South Carolina to the American Revolution to Manhattan to “freedom” in Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone (she sees slaves going the other way!) to England.
Gloria Naylor: “1996” (2005) – Naylor, as a black writer in America, falls under the close watch of the government. Among their measures: mind-control. Her own private 1984 hell. But is it all true or did Naylor just suffer from a nervous breakdown?
Percival Everett: “Erasure” (2001) – Thelonius “Monk” Ellison hates how books of stereotyped black life succeed in America, not serious ones. He writes a satire of Richard Wright’s “Native Son” (1940) and Sapphire’s “Push” (1996) and has a hit on his hands – but everyone misses the satire!
Chris Cleave: “Little Bee: A Novel” (2009) – also known as “The Other Hand”. A novel about a British magazine editor and Nigerian refugee whose lives cross in the Niger Delta and years later in England. About British asylum policy, colonialism and globalization, among other things.
Ayana Mathis: “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” (2012) – a novel about the Great Migration of blacks from the American South to the North in the 1900s as told through the story of one family. An Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection.
Kola Boof: “Diary of a Lost Girl” (2007) – Growing up in Sudan, Egypt and America in the 1900s.
Rebecca Skloot: “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2011) – Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in 1951 but her seemingly immortal cells live on in medical research labs all over the world, saving countless lives. Did John Hopkins take advantage of her? Did Rebecca Skloot?
Francis Cress Welsing: “Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors” (1991) – understanding white racism.
Jill Lepore: “New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan” (2005) – the 1741 slave uprising in Manhattan.
– Abagond, 2013.
See also:
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome should be
LikeLike
Abagond,
I thought you already read ‘The New Jim Crow’. My mistake.
LikeLike
This is a good list. A lot of these books are on my book list.
LikeLike
Put down the Isis Papers. Pick up “In Miserable Slavery” or “The Negro Family”
LikeLike
I like your list. 1996 and Henrietta Lacks are unforgettable.
LikeLike
Abagond, thanks for this list. I will be stealing most of your book list for my own. I just got a Kindle for my birthday and plan to go to town.
LikeLike
Oh, also if you haven’t read this book you should: Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream
Leonard Zeskind
LikeLike
Throwing black males in prison at the rates they are thrown in prison seems like it is an attempt to reduce the level at which black people would naturally reproduce by preventing black males from marrying black females. In other words it is an attempt at population control it seems.
LikeLike
@seed
I don’t think it’s that deep and I also don’t think anyone is “throwing” black men in prison. Why is the criminality happening in the first place? To me, that’s where it starts. There’s some responsibility there on the part of black men and the community. There’s definitely a “path to prison” that’s happening and it needs to be short-circuited before anyone goes there. What this society has done is a factor, but individual black males are also engaging in behavior that is landing them in prison.
LikeLike
Awesome list, anxious to read your posts on every one of them.
LikeLike
poetess, you really, really should read The New Jim Crow, or at least some summaries and reviews of it.
LikeLike
“Killers of the dream” is a winner . I’ll grab it if i can find an ebook version. As early as the fifties, a white author seems to ask the right questions about whiteness. So rare that it seems too good to be true.
LikeLike
I enjoyed Erasure. There were some funny moments in that book (reminded me of the movie ‘Bamboozled’) I’ve read about 1/4 of the list. More to add to my own list for 2013.
LikeLike
Ya took my suggestion!!! Yeeeboiy!!
LikeLike
You have given me some great reading ideas here! Of your list, I’ve already read “The Book of Negros” (it’s title in Canada) and loved it. One of the most beautiful books I’ve read in the past couple years.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did you read Isis Papers finally ? I’d like to know your analysis if you posted it.
LikeLike