Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Dance, D. (2002). From My People: 400 years of African American Folklore. New York, NY: Norton.
Knowledge is power, and this anthology holds centuries of knowledge and wisdom that Black people have creatively offered one another in order to share and educate the following generation. Truth about Blackness and Black History has been hard to come by in school textbooks and curriculum, in my experience. The first people to tell me that public school textbooks were biased against Black Folk was my family members. Many of us learned our first lessons on Black history from the mouths of a parent, auntie or, elder, commenting on “what really happened” back in the day, and how that affects us as a community today. Black Folklore finds its origins from times when literacy was more severely and immediately restricted to the white elite, and so, orally-communicated Song and Story served as tools for community and survival. I would argue that oral tradition isn’t just a tool of the past, it is a living breathing current day form of community and survival in the Black community. As I have grown I’ve sought out additional documentation of my ancestor’s folklore, ever seeking to find truthful accounts and representations of the lives of the people I come from. I’ve found this anthology to be a wonderful collection and reference for offering just such a truth. |
Shin, S. (2016). A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press.
This book is the first piece I have seen published regarding current day race in Minnesota truthfully, and the Twin Cities’ unique flavor of systemic racism. This book is a collection of stories and essays by multiple local writers of color, offering their experiences in the cold Minnesota dominant culture through story and essay form. This book contributes to a dialogue about my home that I have been desperately seeking out for years, as I grew up in this environment of MN! I could really only speak with my family and close friends of color about this growing up. I could not rely on institutions to own their role in perpetuating MN racism each day--like schools whose curriculum is basically just white-washed narrative. The Twin Cities are a fairly “liberal” couple of cities. This means that the majority of white people believe acting “colorblind” to race is the best way to treat “all people”. As this book speaks to, this particular brand of racism (where you lie to yourself about your racial bias existing) may be even more marginalizing and dehumanizing, as it socializes people, and creates policies in institutions, which operate on erasure of information that would otherwise explain or validate racial inequity and oppression. So, to a place as backward and wanting as the cultural environment of Minnesota, this book has been offered to you. What a gift to society to speak truth. |
Davis, A. (2010). Are prisons obsolete?. New York: Seven Stories Press.
My family didn’t speak of prison very often growing up, so a lot of my education on the subject was (by default) through media and limited and consistent images of criminality in shows. This meant that I learned the dominant narrative regarding crime and consequence which teaches that those who “deserve” punishment go to prison. This is a tidy understanding of the way this country works, and it requires little questioning of the status quo. When I was fifteen years old my basic understanding of prisons was interrupted when I read this tiny little book by Angela Davis. My sister brought it over one day and told me it was me “next assignment”. In a few short chapters I found that Davis teaches of the horrors and history of the modern day prison system, particularly for people in women’s prisons, and additionally introduces the concept of the prison industrial complex, which can track its direct lineage back to slave labor and the Convict Lease System, which immediately replaced slave labor. This book was the first exposure I had to how this country benefits financially off of the bodies of Black people--who are disproportionately represented in prisons --and helped me to begin to increase my understanding of the way in which the education system, police departments, and the criminal justice system participate and collude in placing people of color into prisons. |
DeGruy, Ph.D., J. (2017). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. joy degruy publications inc.
The wealth and power that the United States holds internationally today comes directly from stolen land and forced labor. Our current day reality was built on the existence of Slavery. Despite this, there is difficulty in speaking openly about the trauma of Slavery today. The dominant culture often dismisses Slavery as “over” and “irrelevant”. As a community, however, we as Black people need to address how we have been impacted by Slavery--and not just in a historical sense. The incredible research told by Dr. Joy DeGruy in her book offers to the Black community information and theory to help us to face and understand our own generational trauma inflicted by centuries of harsh chattel enslavement. This book is extremely enlightening and validating to read, and it helped me to understand how we as a people are still culturally haunted by unaddressed impacts of those generations spent in bondage. When trauma occurs, methods of survival are utilized. Once the threat ends, though they are no longer necessary, those survival methods are many times still utilized and this is what is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When centuries of egregious assaults are done time and time again on an entire people as a way of life, those aforementioned methods of survival become a part of Culture. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome in the Black community is the collective lasting response to the trauma of Slavery, where we continue to perpetuate parts of our culture that no longer help us to survive outside of the context of Slavery. Inherently, we are incredibly powerful souls to have survived all that this system has pressed on us. I am of this community, and to know my past helps me to understand how together we can heal and grow. |
Cohen, H. S., & Lipman, M. (Directors). (2016). Arc of Justice: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of a Beloved Community [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.arcofjusticefilm.com/
This incredible and poignant documentary film follows the story of a Black married couple and their intrepid activism for Black farmers in southwestern Georgia. Throughout their entire adult lives Mr. and Mrs. Sherrod have been fighting for the land rights of the Black community. They started back with the early days of the Black Panther Party in seeking representation in government for Black people to be able to own land safely. Today they are a part of a Black land ownership cooperative which successfully bought an old slave plantation, and together they grow food, continuing to work against such ridiculous and powerful oppression. Just as Food and Land have been structural and institutional means of oppression for Black people, they are also opportunities for resistance. Land ownership offers us freedom and economic independence. On that land we grow food which offers us health and wellness. The film teaches of the rates of Black land loss throughout the country, especially in rural areas. This has been achieved through direct initiatives against Black land owners such displacement, red-lining, devaluing land, halting crop growth through poison, forcing landowners to sell or go bankrupt, etc. Land has historically been, and continues to be, a main form of generational wealth in this country. How can wealth consistently be passed down when this country holds down Black people year after year by taking away our land, credibility, wealth, and health? Because of this I have become very grateful and able to appreciate the land that my grandparents were able to pay off and pass down to us, and for the knowledge of the land that my grandfather had as he grew incredibly nutritious and delicious food on that land. Seeking health through food, and working to own land, are two incredible forms of resistance against Anti-Black oppression, and I look up to Mr. and Mrs. Sherrod for all the work that they do. I hope to participate in both of these forms of activism and movement! |
Allen, W., & Wilson, C. (2013). The good food revolution: growing healthy food, people, and communities. New York, NY: Gotham Books.
Healing and Wellness, at a community level, are my life purpose. Will Allen’s model for Growing Power, his organization, is something I hope to learn from, and to apply to my own city as I engage with Food Justice efforts where I live. Will Allen believes, as his book and organization profess, that reconnecting people to growing food and interacting with the land can help historically oppressed communities take ownership of their own health and wellness. In truth, Black communities have been displaced time and again from land. As land has been taken from us we have simultaneously been worked into systems where we are barred from nutrition and wellness as well. Connecting with the land, plunging hands into fresh soil, working to offer nutrients and life to plants that then offer nutrients and life to you; these are healing and incredibly healthy parts of being human. Having grown up the child of a Black farmer, Will Allen draws on these forms of connection from his childhood in writing his book, and he speaks about the systemic oppression that ensues when people are cut away from the land. His approach to empowering community through urban agriculture, and small scale farming, is absolutely magical to me. It is a wonderful model, and builds off of ways Black people have sought to grow and survive for over a century! It is a bottom-up, grass-roots approach to community health and community justice, helping us as a whole to grow stronger. |