Reading/Listening/Watching List
This list will be updated regularly.
Compiled by Natajia Sconiers, Jamie Hafner and Charlotte Northeast.
Please email [email protected] with suggestions, corrections, questions.
If you wish to pass along/post, please do!
History, Overview, Political
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander
The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
America’s Original Sin - Jim Wallis
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans - John Hope Franklin
Contending Forces - Pauline Hopkins
Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay
We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass
Angela Davis: An Autobiography - Angela Davis
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X and Alex Haley
For White People - Educate Yourself
How to be an Anti-Racist - Ibram X. Kendi
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
Your Silence Will Not Protect You - Audre Lorde
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do - Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Raising White Kids - Jennifer Harvey
So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You - Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
Women, Race and Class - Angela Davis
Contemporary
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Angel Davis
When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir - Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement - Wesley Lowery
Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That The Movement Forgot - Mikki Kendall
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism - bell hooks
Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People - Ben Crump
Here for It, or, How to Save Your Soul in America - R. Eric Thomas
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde
Fiction
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf - Ntozake Shange
The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Passing - Nella Larsen
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
An American Marriage - Tayari Jones
The Mothers - Brit Bennett
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Kindred - Octavia Butler
The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin
How it Went Down - Kekla Magoon
Well-Read Black Girl - Glory Edim
Talma Gordon - Pauline Hopkins (written in 1900’s - the first African American mystery story)
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Emergency Skin - N.K. Jemisin
Deacon King Kong - James McBride
The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward
Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon
Real Life - Brandon Taylor
Books for Kids
The Colors of Us - Karen Katz
Let’s Talk About Race - Julius Lester
The Skin I’m In: A First Look at Racism - Pat Thomas
Sesame Street's We're Different, We're the Same - Bobbi Jane Kates
Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice - Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
I Am Enough - Grace Byers
Happy in Our Skin - Fran Manushkin and Lauren Tobia
Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement - Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes
Daddy Why Am I Brown?: A healthy conversation about skin color and family - Bedford F. Palmer
A Terrible Thing Happened - Margaret Holmes
Antiracist Baby - Ibram X. Kendi
If the Shoe Fits - Cary Soto
Books for teens
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
Harbor Me - Jacqueline Woodson
Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson
This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work - Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand
Dear White People - Justin Simien
First look for sameness - Kristen Bell
Dear Martin - Nic Stone
Contemporary Plays by Black Playwrights
Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities - Anna Deavere Smith
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 - Anna Deavere Smith
Notes from the Field - Anna Deavere Smith
Topdog/Underdog - Suzan Lori-Parks
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World - Suzan Lori-Parks
The America Play - Suzan Lori-Parks
Colorstruck - Zora Neale Hurston
Blue-Eyed Black Boy - Georgia Douglas Johnson
The Purple Flower - Marita Bonner
Underground Railroad Game - Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard
Fairview - Jackie Sibblies Drury
What to Send Up When It Goes Down - Aleshea Harris
Pass Over - Antoinette Nwandu
The River Niger - Joseph A. Walker
Fences - August Wilson
Jitney - August Wilson
Two Trains Running - August Wilson
The Colored Museum - George C. Wolfe
Kill, Move, Paradise - James Ijames
An Octoroon - Brandan Jacobs-Jenkins
Barbeque - Robert O’Hara
Slave Play - Jeremy O. Harris
Ain’t No Mo - Jordan E. Cooper
Flyin' West - Pearl Cleage
Skeleton Crew - Dominque Morriseau
Intimate Apparel - Lynn Nottage
74 Seconds to Judgment - Kash Goins
Classic Plays by Black Playwrights
Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad - Pauline E. Hopkins
Rachel* - Angela Grimke (special thanks to Quintessence Theatre Group)
A Sunday Morning in The South - Georgia Douglas Johnson
The Heart of A Woman - Georgia Douglas Johnson (Book of poetry)
Aftermath* - Mary Burrill
Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
In Splendid Error* - William B. Branch
The Toilet - Amiri Baraka (nee Leroi Jones)
Baptism and Dutchman - Amiri Baraka (nee Leroi Jones)
Black Nativity - Langston Hughes
Trouble in Mind - Alice Childress
* denotes these scripts are available in our Script Library
Please also check out this list, compiled by National Speech and Debate, compiled in partnership with Wiley College
Podcasts
#TellBlackStories
Code Switch
About Race
Seeing White
Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast
The Diversity Gap
Intersectionality Matters!
The Stoop
Still Processing
Instagram Accounts to Follow
Ava DuVernay - @Ava
Rachel Elizabeth Cargle - @rachel.cargle
Cleo Wade - @cleowade
Lindsay Peoples Wagner - @lpeopleswagner
Zeba Blay - @zebablay
Austin Channing Brown - @austinchanning
Michelle - @michellesaahene
Documentaries/Film
13th
Eyes on the Prize
The Central Park Five
The Kalief Browder Story
Whose Streets?
I Am Not Your Negro
Giving Voice
Freedom Riders
Slavery by Another Name
John Lewis: Good Trouble
16 Shots
Soundtrack for a Revolution
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War
When They See Us
Do The Right Thing
Black KkKlansman
Mudbound
Sorry to Bother You
All In: The Fight for Democracy
537 Votes
Not Done: Women Remaking America
Selma and The Voting Rights Act of 1965
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Slay the Dragon
How to Write to Your Representatives
Finding Reps/Elected Officials
Philadelphia City Council (Local Reps)
PA Find My Rep: (State Reps and Senators)
NJ Find My Rep: (State Reps and Senators)
Federal Reps: Find My U.S. Reps
Best Way to Get to People?
Write your own letter.
Campaigns, offices, and staff pick up on the constant use of templates and will begin to ignore.
A strong mixture of template emails/letters and individually written emails/letters is the strongest method of contacting elected officials.
Letter/Email Writing Tips and Assistance:
https://guides.library.unt.edu/gic-politics-elected-officials/Letter
https://www.apa.org/advocacy/guide/letter-email
https://www.aclu.org/writing-your-elected-representatives
https://resist.bot/news/2017/10/18/how-to-write-your-representatives
Philadelphia Arts Specific Ways to Help:
https://notozero.art/testify-at-a-public-hearing/
https://notozero.art/petitions/
https://notozero.art/contact/
This list will be updated regularly.
Compiled by Natajia Sconiers, Jamie Hafner and Charlotte Northeast.
Please email [email protected] with suggestions, corrections, questions.
If you wish to pass along/post, please do!
History, Overview, Political
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander
The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
America’s Original Sin - Jim Wallis
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans - John Hope Franklin
Contending Forces - Pauline Hopkins
Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay
We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass
Angela Davis: An Autobiography - Angela Davis
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Malcolm X and Alex Haley
For White People - Educate Yourself
How to be an Anti-Racist - Ibram X. Kendi
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
Your Silence Will Not Protect You - Audre Lorde
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do - Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Raising White Kids - Jennifer Harvey
So You Want to Talk About Race - Ijeoma Oluo
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You - Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
Women, Race and Class - Angela Davis
Contemporary
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Angel Davis
When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir - Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement - Wesley Lowery
Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That The Movement Forgot - Mikki Kendall
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism - bell hooks
Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People - Ben Crump
Here for It, or, How to Save Your Soul in America - R. Eric Thomas
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Audre Lorde
Fiction
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf - Ntozake Shange
The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Passing - Nella Larsen
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
An American Marriage - Tayari Jones
The Mothers - Brit Bennett
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Kindred - Octavia Butler
The Fifth Season - N.K. Jemisin
How it Went Down - Kekla Magoon
Well-Read Black Girl - Glory Edim
Talma Gordon - Pauline Hopkins (written in 1900’s - the first African American mystery story)
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Emergency Skin - N.K. Jemisin
Deacon King Kong - James McBride
The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward
Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi
An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon
Real Life - Brandon Taylor
Books for Kids
The Colors of Us - Karen Katz
Let’s Talk About Race - Julius Lester
The Skin I’m In: A First Look at Racism - Pat Thomas
Sesame Street's We're Different, We're the Same - Bobbi Jane Kates
Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice - Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard
I Am Enough - Grace Byers
Happy in Our Skin - Fran Manushkin and Lauren Tobia
Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement - Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes
Daddy Why Am I Brown?: A healthy conversation about skin color and family - Bedford F. Palmer
A Terrible Thing Happened - Margaret Holmes
Antiracist Baby - Ibram X. Kendi
If the Shoe Fits - Cary Soto
Books for teens
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
Harbor Me - Jacqueline Woodson
Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson
This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work - Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand
Dear White People - Justin Simien
First look for sameness - Kristen Bell
Dear Martin - Nic Stone
Contemporary Plays by Black Playwrights
Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities - Anna Deavere Smith
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 - Anna Deavere Smith
Notes from the Field - Anna Deavere Smith
Topdog/Underdog - Suzan Lori-Parks
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World - Suzan Lori-Parks
The America Play - Suzan Lori-Parks
Colorstruck - Zora Neale Hurston
Blue-Eyed Black Boy - Georgia Douglas Johnson
The Purple Flower - Marita Bonner
Underground Railroad Game - Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard
Fairview - Jackie Sibblies Drury
What to Send Up When It Goes Down - Aleshea Harris
Pass Over - Antoinette Nwandu
The River Niger - Joseph A. Walker
Fences - August Wilson
Jitney - August Wilson
Two Trains Running - August Wilson
The Colored Museum - George C. Wolfe
Kill, Move, Paradise - James Ijames
An Octoroon - Brandan Jacobs-Jenkins
Barbeque - Robert O’Hara
Slave Play - Jeremy O. Harris
Ain’t No Mo - Jordan E. Cooper
Flyin' West - Pearl Cleage
Skeleton Crew - Dominque Morriseau
Intimate Apparel - Lynn Nottage
74 Seconds to Judgment - Kash Goins
Classic Plays by Black Playwrights
Peculiar Sam, or the Underground Railroad - Pauline E. Hopkins
Rachel* - Angela Grimke (special thanks to Quintessence Theatre Group)
A Sunday Morning in The South - Georgia Douglas Johnson
The Heart of A Woman - Georgia Douglas Johnson (Book of poetry)
Aftermath* - Mary Burrill
Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
In Splendid Error* - William B. Branch
The Toilet - Amiri Baraka (nee Leroi Jones)
Baptism and Dutchman - Amiri Baraka (nee Leroi Jones)
Black Nativity - Langston Hughes
Trouble in Mind - Alice Childress
* denotes these scripts are available in our Script Library
Please also check out this list, compiled by National Speech and Debate, compiled in partnership with Wiley College
Podcasts
#TellBlackStories
Code Switch
About Race
Seeing White
Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast
The Diversity Gap
Intersectionality Matters!
The Stoop
Still Processing
Instagram Accounts to Follow
Ava DuVernay - @Ava
Rachel Elizabeth Cargle - @rachel.cargle
Cleo Wade - @cleowade
Lindsay Peoples Wagner - @lpeopleswagner
Zeba Blay - @zebablay
Austin Channing Brown - @austinchanning
Michelle - @michellesaahene
Documentaries/Film
13th
Eyes on the Prize
The Central Park Five
The Kalief Browder Story
Whose Streets?
I Am Not Your Negro
Giving Voice
Freedom Riders
Slavery by Another Name
John Lewis: Good Trouble
16 Shots
Soundtrack for a Revolution
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War
When They See Us
Do The Right Thing
Black KkKlansman
Mudbound
Sorry to Bother You
All In: The Fight for Democracy
537 Votes
Not Done: Women Remaking America
Selma and The Voting Rights Act of 1965
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Slay the Dragon
How to Write to Your Representatives
Finding Reps/Elected Officials
Philadelphia City Council (Local Reps)
PA Find My Rep: (State Reps and Senators)
NJ Find My Rep: (State Reps and Senators)
Federal Reps: Find My U.S. Reps
Best Way to Get to People?
Write your own letter.
Campaigns, offices, and staff pick up on the constant use of templates and will begin to ignore.
A strong mixture of template emails/letters and individually written emails/letters is the strongest method of contacting elected officials.
Letter/Email Writing Tips and Assistance:
https://guides.library.unt.edu/gic-politics-elected-officials/Letter
https://www.apa.org/advocacy/guide/letter-email
https://www.aclu.org/writing-your-elected-representatives
https://resist.bot/news/2017/10/18/how-to-write-your-representatives
Philadelphia Arts Specific Ways to Help:
https://notozero.art/testify-at-a-public-hearing/
https://notozero.art/petitions/
https://notozero.art/contact/
