Read for Justice Book List

Social Justice & Activism

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock – Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Demystifying Disability – Emily Ladau

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the 21st Century – Alice Wong (ed.)

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change – Angela Garbes

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women a Movement Forgot – Mikki Kendall

Its Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women of Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race – Mariam Khan (ed.)

Our Work is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer & Trans Resistance – Syan Rose

Read This to Get Smarter: about Race, Class, Gender, Disability & More – Blair Imani

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together – Heather McGee

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color – Ruby Hamad

Memoirs and Biography

American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland – Marie Matsuki Mockett

Beautiful Country – Qian Julie Wang

Busses are Comin’: Memoir of a Freedom Rider – Charles Person

Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land – Toni Jensen

The Community – N. Jamiyla Chisholm

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?: A Memoir – Séamas O’Reilly

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest – Suzanne Simard

House of Sticks: A Memoir – Ly Tran

How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir – Saeed Jones

White Magic – Elissa Washuta

Science & Health

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis – Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katherine K. Wilkinson (eds.)

Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis – Samantha Montano

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime and Dreams Deferred – Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive – Phillip Dettmer

The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease – Daisy Hernández

Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health – Leana Wen

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story – Michael Lewis

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters – Steven Pinker

Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead and the Small Things in Between – Joseph Osmundson

Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret – Catherine Coleman Flowers

History & Society

America for Americans: A history of Xenophobia in the United States – Erika Lee

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human Centered Planet – John Green

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 – Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (eds.)

Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age – Annalee Newitz

Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns – Gregg Colburn & Clayton Page Aldern

How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going – Vaclav Smil

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness – Kristen Radtke

Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope – Nicolas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn

The Undocumented Americans – Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Poetry

Black Girl, Call Home – Jasmine Mans

Call Us What We Carry – Amanda Gorman

How to Not Be Afraid of Everything – Jane Wong

The Hurting Kind – Ada Limón

The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak – Grace Lau

Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First People’s Poetry – Joy Harjo (ed.)

Playlist for the Apocalypse – Rita Dove

Postcolonial Love Poem – Natalie Diaz

Yellow Rain – Mai Der Vang

You Better Be Lightning – Andrea Gibson

Fiction

The City We Became – N.K. Jemison

The Far Field: A Novel – Madhuri Vijay

Hana Khan Carries On – Uzma Jalaluddin

Inheritance: A Visual Poem – Elizabeth Acevedo

Little Big Bully – Heid E. Erdrich

Love after Love: A Novel – Ingrid Persaud

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel – Kim Stanley Robinson

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories – Lydia Conklin

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere: Stories – Sindya Bhanoo

Yerba Buena: A Novel – Nina LaCour