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Race & Social Equity Books for Adults Archive
Processing Request
Beautiful Life: A Focus on Identity
Beautiful Life: A Focus on Identity
Books featuring BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) in which race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, culture, im/migration, and/or religious, sacred, or origin stories are central to the story. These books explicitly focus on the diverse expressions of human experience, depending on these elements to drive the storyline. source: https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo
Three generations of women from one immigrant family trying to reconcile the home they left behind with the life they're building in America.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives.
Libby -- E-Book
hoopla -- E-Audiobook
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Told through the author's own evolving understanding of the subject over the course of his life comes a bold and personal investigation into America's racial history and its contemporary echoes.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman
A collection of poems that includes the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States.
Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith
Smith's unflinching poetry addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity.
Hoopla -- E-Audiobook
Earth Keeper: reflections on the American land by N. Scott Momaday
A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet celebrates the oral tradition of his Native American culture as he recalls the stories of his childhood, passed down for generations, and their profound and sacred connection to the natural world.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Hoopla -- E-Audiobook
Footnotes: the Black artists who rewrote the rules of the great white way by Casseen Gaines
Footnotes is the story of how Sissle and Blake, along with comedians Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, overcame poverty, racism, and violence to harness the energy of the Harlem Renaissance and produce a runaway Broadway hit that launched the careers of many of the twentieth century's most beloved Black performers.
Libby -- E-Book
Four Hundred Souls: a community history of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X Kendi and Keisha N Blain
2019 marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas - and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain, editor of The North Star. They've gathered together eighty black writers from all disciplines - historians and artists, journalists and novelists - each of whom has contributed an entry about one five-year period to create a dynamic multivoiced single-volume history of black people in America.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
Libby -- E-Book
How the Word Is Passed: a reckoning with the history of slavery across America by Clint Smith
How the Word Is Passed Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
A stereotyped character actor stumbles into the spotlight before uncovering surprising links between his family and the secret history of Chinatown.
Libby -- E-Audiobook
Minor Feelings: an Asian American reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
An award-winning poet and essayist offers a ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged exploration of the psychological condition of being Asian American.
Libby -- E-Book
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
In early 1900s Korea, prized daughter Sunja finds herself pregnant and alone, bringing shame on her family until a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and move with her to Japan, in the saga of one family bound together as their faith and identity are called into question.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Sing, Unburied, Sing: a novel by Jesmyn Ward
Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip of danger and hope.
Libby -- E-Book
Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris -- (Book on CD)
In the waning days of the Civil War, two freed brothers are hired to work on the farm of a husband and wife who are grieving the loss of their son in the war.
Libby – E-Book
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different.
Libby -- E-Book
The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim
In early twentieth century Korea, Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. Smart and headstrong, she is encouraged by her mother, but her stern father is determined to maintain tradition. When her father seeks to marry Najin into an aristocratic family, her mother defies generations of obedient wives and instead sends her to serve in the king's court as a companion to a young princess.
Hoopla -- E-Book
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Committed follows the unnamed Sympathizer as he arrives in Paris in the early 1980s with his blood brother Bon. The pair try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures by engaging in capitalism in one of its purest forms: drug dealing.
Libby -- E-Book
Hoopla -- E-Book
The Kindest Lie: a novel by Nancy Johnson
Needing to reconnect with the baby she gave up for adoption years earlier, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer uncovers devastating family secrets before her bond with a young white misfit scandalizes her racially torn community.
Libby -- E-Book
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Twin sisters, inseparable as children, ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Book on CD
Large Print
Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Anaya Mathis
The story of an African American family held together with a mother's grit and monumental courage.
Libby -- E-Book
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage, his mother was sold away and he was robbed of all memory of her, but gifted with a mysterious power that saves his life years later when he almost drowns in a river. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion, and so begins a journey into the war on slavery. It begins a journey that takes him from the corrupt Deep South to dangerous movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram resolves to rescue the family he left behind.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
White Ivy: A Novel by Susie Yang
Years after she is sent away from Boston to China for shoplifting, a conflicted Chinese-American woman reconnects with her golden-boy childhood crush before a ghost from the past threatens her ambitions.
Libby -- E-Book
Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou
A collection of short essays includes personal reminiscences, hard-won wisdom, and inspirational ideas.
Biography/ Autobiography
Biography/ Autobiography
Narrative nonfiction books about the life of a particular person or group of people from a historical or contemporary perspective. source: https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
The Three Mothers: how the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin shaped a nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs
Celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin.
Libby -- E-Book
Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Friend: notes from the other side of the fistbump by Ben Phillipe
In the biting, hilarious vein of What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life comes Ben Philippe's candid memoir-in-essays, chronicling a lifetime of being the Black friend in predominantly white spaces. From cheating his way out of swim tests to discovering stray family members in unlikely places, he finds the punchline in the serious while acknowledging the blunt truths of existing as a Black man in today's world.
Libby -- E-Book
My Broken Language: a memoir by Quiara Alegria Hudes
This is an inspired exploration of home, family, memory, and belonging, narrated by the obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Eloquent Rage: a Black feminist discovers her superpower by Brittany Cooper
A leading young black feminist illuminates how organized anger, friendship and faith can be powerful sources of positive feminist change, explaining how targeted rage has shaped the careers of such African-American notables as Serena Williams, Beyoncé and Michelle Obama.
hoopla -- E-Audiobook
Dear America: notes of an undocumented citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker and immigration-rights activist presents a memoir about how he unknowingly entered the United States with false documents as a child.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Hoopla -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
All You Can Ever Know: a memoir by Nicole Chung
A Korean adoptee who grew up with a white family in Oregon discusses her journey to find her identity as an Asian American woman and a writer after becoming curious about her true origins.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Minor Feelings: an Asian American reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
An award-winning poet and essayist offers a ruthlessly honest, emotionally charged exploration of the psychological condition of being Asian American.
Libby -- E-Book
Buses are a Comin’: Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person
A surviving original Freedom Rider recounts his firsthand experiences with the South's historical and ongoing resistance to racial equality, sharing insights into what is required for progressive change to become possible in America.
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang
A memoir about Wang's years living undocumented after immigrating with her parents from China to New York City in 1994.
Libby -- E-audiobook
Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan
A heart-rending immigrant memoir and a uniquely intersectional coming-of-age story of a life lived in duality and the in-between, and how one navigates through race, gender, and the search for love.
Libby -- E-book
Crying in H Mart: a memoir by Michelle Zauner
The Japanese Breakfast indie pop star presents a full-length account of her viral New Yorker essay to share poignant reflections on her experiences of growing up Korean-American, becoming a professional musician and caring for her terminally ill mother.
Libby -- E-book | E-audiobook
Cross Group: Relationships Across Difference
Cross-Group: Relationships Across Difference
Books portraying relationships between main or secondary characters across racial or cultural difference, including but not limited to those depicting peer group and cross-generational friendships. The interactions depicted may be positive, negative, or resolving. source: https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
America Is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo
Three generations of women from one immigrant family trying to reconcile the home they left behind with the life they're building in America.
Blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
Libby -- E-Book
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
In early 1900s Korea, prized daughter Sunja finds herself pregnant and alone, bringing shame on her family until a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and move with her to Japan, in the saga of one family bound together as their faith and identity are called into question.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Friend: notes from the other side of the fistbump by Ben Phillipe
In the biting, hilarious vein of What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life comes Ben Philippe's candid memoir-in-essays, chronicling a lifetime of being the Black friend in predominantly white spaces. From cheating his way out of swim tests to discovering stray family members in unlikely places, he finds the punchline in the serious while acknowledging the blunt truths of existing as a Black man in today's world.
Libby -- E-Book
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin Channing Brown "had to learn what it means to love blackness," a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker, and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.
The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person by Frederick Joseph
Presents race-related anecdotes from the author's past, weaving in his thoughts on why they were hurtful and how he might handle things differently now, in hopes of bringing more race awareness to Americans.
Folklore
Folklore
Books featuring tales, proverbs, songs, or legends/myths that transmit the values, knowledge, traditions, practices/rituals of a people. These do not include religious, foundational, or origin stories, or indigenous traditional or scared stories. source: https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
Love in Color by Bolu Babalola
A debut anthology reimagines cultural folk and love stories from West Africa, Greek mythology and Middle East legend, from the tale of an unappreciated Nigerian goddess to the story of a powerful Ghanaian spokeswoman's fateful decision.
Libby -- E-Book
Informational: Factual Content
Informational: Factual Content
Narrative books, with or without a storyline, presenting factual information; may be encyclopedic. BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) are depicted but race/culture is not always central to the content. source:https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
An epic history covering the period from the end of World War I through the 1970s chronicles the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West through the stories of three individuals and their families.
Libby -- E-Book
The Broken Heart of America: St Louis and the violent history of the United States by Walter Johnson
A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie inescapably at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis.
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should—and could—be taught to American students.
Libby -- E-Book
hoopla-- E-Book
El Norte: the epic and forgotten story of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson
A sweeping saga of the Spanish history and influence in North America over five centuries.
Hoopla -- E-Book
Central America’s Forgotten History: revolution, violence, and the roots of migration by Aviva Chomsky
Places Central American migration to the United States in the context of the region's history of conquest, colonialism, revolution, and neoliberalism, looking especially at the revolutionary experiments of the 1980s and their aftermath.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Presents the history of the United States from the point of view of those who were exploited in the name of American progress.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
hoopla-- E-Book | E-Audiobook
A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry
A Black Women's History of the United States is a critical survey of black women's complicated legacy in America, as it takes into account their exploitation and victimization as well as their undeniable and substantial contributions to the country since its inception.
Stony the Road: reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr
The NAACP Image Award-winning creator of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross presents a revisionist chronicle of America's post-Civil War struggle for racial equality and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated black Americans throughout the 20th century.
Libby -- E-Book
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization and gene mapping.
Libby -- E-book | E-audiobook
Oppression, Injustice, & Resilience
Oppression, Injustice, and Resilience
Books about group based injustice and struggles for justice. These include stories about BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) who experience and/or resist enslavement, internment, imprisonment, or violent conflict; persecution in or forced displacement from their homelands; or barriers to basic freedoms such as land, food, housing, education, health & wellness, and bodily autonomy. source: https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage, his mother was sold away and he was robbed of all memory of her, but gifted with a mysterious power that saves his life years later when he almost drowns in a river. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion, and so begins a journey into the war on slavery. It begins a journey that takes him from the corrupt Deep South to dangerous movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram resolves to rescue the family he left behind.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
The Sun Does Shine: how I found life and freedom on death row by Anthony Ray Hinton
A man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he did not commit describes how he became a victim of a flawed legal system, recounting the years he shared with fellow inmates who were eventually executed before his exoneration.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
The Black and the Blue: a cop reveals the crimes, racism and injustice in America's law enforcement by Matthew Horace
A CNN contributor, and former law-enforcement himself, offers a personal account of the racism, crimes and color lines that challenge America's law enforcement, sharing insights into high-profile cases, the Black Lives Matter movement and what is needed for change.
Stony Road: reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr
The NAACP Image Award-winning creator of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross presents a revisionist chronicle of America's post-Civil War struggle for racial equality and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated black Americans throughout the 20th century.
Libby -- E-Book
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
When a pregnant Tish's boyfriend Fonny, a sculptor, is wrongfully jailed for the rape of a Puerto Rican woman, their families unite to prove the charge false
Libby -- E-Book
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
Libby -- E-Book
Evicted: poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew Desmond
A Harvard sociologist examines the under-represented challenge of eviction as a formidable cause of poverty in America, revealing how millions of people are wrongly forced from their homes and reduced to cycles of extreme disadvantage that are reinforced by dysfunctional legal systems.
Libby -- E-Book
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should—and could—be taught to American students.
Libby -- E-Book
hoopla-- E-Book
Central America’s Forgotten History: revolution, violence, and the roots of migration by Aviva Chomsky
Places Central American migration to the United States in the context of the region's history of conquest, colonialism, revolution, and neoliberalism, looking especially at the revolutionary experiments of the 1980s and their aftermath.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Told through the author's own evolving understanding of the subject over the course of his life comes a bold and personal investigation into America's racial history and its contemporary echoes.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
Examines how systematic racism impacted both the life and death of the 46-year old black man who was murdered in broad daylight outside a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin.
Exit West: a novel by Mohsin Hamid
Presents the story of two young lovers whose furtive affair is shaped by local unrest on the eve of a civil war that erupts in a cataclysmic bombing attack, forcing them to abandon their previous home and lives.
Libby -- E-book | E-audiobook
March. Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; Art by Nate Powell
A first-hand account of the author's lifelong struggle for civil and human rights spans his youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movemen
Libby -- E-book | Hoopla -- E-audiobook
Race/Culture Concepts: Examining Difference and Commonalities
Race/Culture Concepts: Examining Difference and Commonalities
Books that explore and/or compare specific aspects of human difference, inviting readers to consider varying perspectives relating to race, ethnicity, culture, or tribal affiliation. source:https://diversebookfinder.org/our-categories/
A Beginner's Guide to America : for the immigrant and the curious by Roya Hakakian
This book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like.
Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
hoopla -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
This book tackles the sensitive, hyper-charged racial landscape in current America, discussing the issues of privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
Examines race issues from the past half century through essays, poems and memoir pieces by some of her generation's most original thinkers and writers.
Analyzes defensive moves that white people make when racially challenged, how these actions protect racial inequality, and presents strategies for engaging more constructively in these conversations.
Libby -- E-Book | E-Audiobook
An essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson.
Libby -- E-Book
The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person by Frederick Joseph
Presents race-related anecdotes from the author's past, weaving in his thoughts on why they were hurtful and how he might handle things differently now, in hopes of bringing more race awareness to Americans.
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo
Shows how white male supremacy has wrought devastating consequences for people of color, women, nonbinary people, and white men themselves, and imagines the possibilities for a new white male identity, free from racism and sexism.
Libby -- E-book
Exit West: a novel by Mohsin Hamid
Presents the story of two young lovers whose furtive affair is shaped by local unrest on the eve of a civil war that erupts in a cataclysmic bombing attack, forcing them to abandon their previous home and lives.
Libby -- E-book | E-audiobook