If you’re interested in getting active in the fight for racial justice, a good place to start is to do your reading.

Here is a selection of books and articles that have been instrumental in helping to shape my understanding of the racial injustice that defines our world.

The list includes poetry, articles, novels, and non-fiction. None of the links below are affiliated and all recommendations are my own. They are arranged in roughly the order that I read them.

This list is incomplete and will expand as I continue my own education, so check back often for more suggestions!

The Woke Villager Reading List

• Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People by Nikki Giovanni
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
• “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates for the Atlantic
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
• Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis (PDF available here)
• Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
• Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis
• From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

What I’m Currently Reading

• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Coming Up Next

• Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence by Kevin Alexander Gray (Author), JoAnn Wypijewski (Editor), and Jeffrey St. Clair (Editor)
• Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton
• “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” And Other Conversations about Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D.
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
• White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, Ph.D.

What are your racial justice and oppression must-reads? What kind of information are you looking for? Become a part of the Woke Village and join the discussion!