Suggested readings
This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are probably excellent books on your own bookshelves, and there are still things that can be learned from books, especially after unlearning all the untruths we’ve been snowed with in a blizzard of lies. I’ve found these helpful.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, 2010.
Anderson, Carol. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Bloomsbury, 2016.
______. One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. Bloomsbury, 2018, 2019.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.
Baldwin, James. Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. American Library, 1998.
Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Basic Books, 2014.
Benjamin, Rich. Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. Hyperion Books, 2009.
Benjamin, Ruha. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Browne-Marshall, Gloria J. Race, Law, and American Society. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2013.
Burns, Sarah. The Central Park Five. Vintage Books, 2012. (Also a documentary movie.)
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.
______. The Message. One World, 2024.
Complete works of Hazrat Inayat Khan. Various publishers at different times.
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Desmond, Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Broadway Books, 2016.
______. Poverty, by America. Crown, 2023.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Bantam Books, 1989.
______. Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Douglas-Klotz, Neil. The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways of the Heart for the Modern Dervish. Penguin Compass, 2005.
Eagleman, David. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Vintage Books, 2012.
______. The Brain: The Story of You. Vintage Books, 2017.
Eshowsky, Myron. Peace with Cancer: Shamanism as a Spiritual Approach to Healing. Shoshanna Publications, 2009
Ford, Clyde W. The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa. Bantam Books, 1999/2000.
Galeano, Eduardo. The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Monthly Review Press, 1971. (Originally published in Spanish as Las venas abiertas de América Latina.)
Glaude, Eddie S., Jr. Democracy in Black. Broadway Books, 2016.
Gonzales, Laurence. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2004.
______. Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things. W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2008.
______. Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience. W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2015.
Gwaltney, John Langston. Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America. The New Press, 1993.
Hannah-Jones, Nikole, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein, eds. The 1619 Project. One World, 2021.
Harriot, Michael. Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America. Dey Street Books, 2023.
Helms, Janet E., ed. Black and White Racial Identity: Theory, Research, and Practice. Greenwood Press, 1990.
Hill, Jess. See What You Made Me Do: The Dangers of Domestic Abuse That We Ignore, Explain Away, or Refuse to See. Sourcebooks, 2020.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. The New Press, 2016.
Ingerman, Sandra. Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner’s Guide. Sounds True, 2008.
Isenberg, Nancy. White Trash. The 400-Year-Old Untold History of Class in America. Viking, 2016.
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women Slave Owners in the American South. Yale University Press, 2019.
Katz, Richard. The Straight Path: A Story of Healing and Transformation in Fiji. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993.
Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. W.W. Norton, 2005.
Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books, 2016.
_____. How to Be an Anti-Racist. One World, 2019.
Killens, John Oliver. Youngblood. Dial Press, 1954.
King, Ruth. Mindful of Race. Sounds True, 2018
Kornfield, Jack. The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace. Bantam Books, 2002.
Laymon, Kiese. Heavy: An American Memoir. Scribner, 2018.
Lazare, Daniel. The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996.
Leary, Joy DeGruy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Uptone Press, 2005.
Leroux, Darryl. Distorted Descent: White Claims to Indigenous Identity. University of Manitoba Press, 2019.
Lewis, Jacqui. Fierce Love. Harmony Books, 2021.
MacLean, Nancy. Democracy in Chains. Viking Press, 2017.
McBride, James. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. Penguin Group, 1995.
McGhee, Heather. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. One World, 2021.
Menakem, Resmaa. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press, 2017.
Metzl, Jonathan. Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland. Basic Books, 2019.
Meyer, Wali Ali, Bilal Hyde, Faisal Muqaddam, and Shabda Kahn. Physicians of the Heart: A Sufi View of the Ninety-Nine Names of Allah. Sufi Ruhaniat International, 2011.
Miller, Alice. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983/2002.
Noah, Trevor. Born a Crime. Spiegel & Grau, 2016.
Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk About Race. Seal Press, 2018.
_____. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. Seal Press, 2020.
Ortner, Nick. The Tapping Solution. Hay House, Inc., 2013.
Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. W.W. Norton, 2010.
Parry, Glenn Aparicio. Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature. North Atlantic Books, 2015.
Pollan, Michael. How to Change Your Mind. Penguin Press, 2018. (Also a documentary series.)
______. This Is Your Mind on Plants. Penguin Press, 2021.
Press, Eyal. Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Prettyman, Alfred E. National Civics in a Mosaic Democracy. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995.
_____. “Civil Smother: Folkways of Renewed Racism in the United States,” in Pragmatism and the Problem of Race, ed. Bill E. Lawson and Donald F. Koch. Indiana University Press, 2004, 177–87.
Radcliffe, Kenneth L. Applying Alcoholics Anonymous Principles to the Disease of Racism. Xlibris, 2012.
Roberts, Julie, Ph.D. Change Works with CLEAR. Change Works, 2009.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso, 2018.
Rosenthal, Caitlin. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. Harvard University Press, 2018.
Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corp., 2017.
Ruffin, Amber, and Lacey Lamar. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey. Grand Central Publishing, 2021.
_____. The World Record Book of Racist Stories. Grand Central Publishing, 2022.
Safi, Omid. Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. Yale University Press, 2018.
_____. Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters. HarperOne, 2009.
Salaam, Yusef. Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice. Grand Central Publishing, 2021.
Sarsour, Linda. We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance. 37INK, 2020.
Schaef, Anne Wilson. When Society Becomes an Addict. HarperCollins Publishers, 1988.
Smith, Clint. How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America. Little, Brown and Company, 2021.
Thrasher, Steven W. The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. Celadon Books, 2022.
Villarosa, Linda. Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of our Nation. Doubleday, 2022.
Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor Books, 2006.
_____. A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind. Little, Brown Spark, 2019.
Wells, Spencer. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns. Random House, 2010.
_____. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Random House, 2020.
Wise, Tim. White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Soft Skull Press, 2005.
_____. Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama. City Lights Books, 2009.
Woodall, James, and Mark Ellingson. Wired for Racism? How Evolution and Faith Move Us to Challenge Racial Idolatry. New City Press, 2022.
Wrangham, Richard, and Dale Peterson. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Mariner Books, 1996.
Other resources
crossculturalsolidarity.com/mlk-speeches-sermons-essay
www.emofree.com/nl/eft-tutorial/tapping-basics/how-to-do-eft.html
onbeing.org/programs/ruby-sales-where-does-it-hurt
“Michael Harner: Shamanic Journey – 15 Minutes solo drumming” is available on YouTube.
Helpful talks by Dr. Shirley Turcotte can also be found on YouTube.
Recordings of Charlie Kreiner’s workshops can be found at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/11/23/18870976.php and https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2001/12/08/1117031.php
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