BLACK LIVES MATTER
Below I have put together various resources I've discovered over the past couple of weeks in light of the recent Black Lives Matter protests. I wouldn't know about much of this or be able to compile this list without the tireless work of the black community. I made this post for myself as much as anyone else to compile a lot of the information I’ve seen so that I can refer back to it - not to take away from those people who have put the work in over the past couple of weeks (and many, many years) putting this stuff out there in the first place. It is for that reason that this is a sort of masterlist of lists. I know this can be overwhelming; I encourage my white followers to set yourself a few daily/weekly/monthly goals to help continue good allyship long past this moment. This includes action on and offline. I will be doing this myself, and I will be adding and editing this post as and when I find new stuff. Edited/added items in bold.
Like I say in this video, I was originally going to put together my reading list of books by black authors that might help you begin your journey to becoming more informed (and you can see a little disclaimer below about that), but then it occurred to me that my voice was not important in this moment. So if you are looking for good reading - and I believe reading is an essential starting point along with the other practical things you can do - I urge you to look to black content creators, who are continuously underrepresented and under-appreciated as it is. Having said that, I have put my own list together down at the bottom of this post because these creators are not obliged to curate lists to teach you; I wanted to help do what I can to help educate my white followers. My own education continues.
Helpful Resource Lists
BLACK LIVES MATTER CARD (links to petitions/places to call/donate) - I've not included many petitions below if they are included on here so it is a good place to start
An incredible resource list with links and a schedule of reading/podcasts/video so that you can actively educate yourself in the month of June by Autumn Gupta and Bryanna Wallace
The Anti-Racism Guide by Nova Reid - Nova also runs courses on anti-racism and white privilege
Practical ways to support BLM from the UK: A To Do List by Nandini Mitra
Academic resources (including PDFs of articles/audio resources/video) put together by Hettie McIntyre
A fantastic reading list about police abolition/prison abolition
A huge list of resources and petitions by @ambivalcnt
By the Stacks’ Anti-Racist Reading List
Ideal Bookshelf’s Anti-Racist Reading List
Black Booktubers/Bookstagrammers
It's important to acknowledge that if you are white and you are interested in learning more about race and racism, the accounts and people linked below are not here to educate you on how to be an antiracist. Please do not overwhelm them with questions regarding this. Instead I encourage you to watch, listen, engage and actually read their recommendations. Many of them focus specifically on reading authors of colour, but not all. All of them deserve more recognition for what they do, including from me. I need to do more to support my fellow black content creators and I have only just started to follow many of these people, which is entirely my fault. This is a beginning that has come far too late.
@henajbryan (also known as Bookish Babe on YouTube)
YouTube
myonna reads - Myonna also put together this playlist of black booktubers, not all of whom are mentioned below
Bowties & Books (also on instagram here)
Petitions
Many petitions are linked in the resource lists above so I have not included them here
Justice for Belly Mujinga, who was assaulted at London Victoria and subsequently died of COVID-19
Places to Donate (US)
Split a donation between 70+ community bail funds, mutual aid funds, and racial justice organisers
A fantastic Twitter thread of bail relief funds across the US that have been vetted to ensure credibility - pick one near you
National Police Accountability Project (by the National Lawyers Guild)
Communities United Against Police Brutality
American Civil Liberties Union
Marsha P. Johnson Institute (protecting and defending the rights of black transgender people)
Places to Donate (UK)
Exist Loudly Fund to Support Queer Black Young People
Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust
Help fund this short film on black maternal mortality
Black Minds Matter UK - supporting black individuals and families’ mental health
Podcasts (many great audio/visual resources are linked in the lists above)
I have not listened to these podcasts yet but am adding them to my subscriptions
About Race - Reni Eddo-Lodge
Code Switch - NPR
1619 - New York Times
Not Another Book Podcast - PostColonialChild, BooksAndRhymes and BookShyBooks
Good Ancestor Podcast with Layla Saad
Reading List: Fiction and Poetry
I hope I don't have to say that black writing and black culture is not a homogenous block. I'm well aware that grouping these authors - who are diverse in their subjects, writing styles and places of origin - contributes to the idea that black writing is uniform in some way that white writing isn't. Also, this article makes some interesting points about the intentions of the 'anti-racist reading list'. I want to write this list so that those of us who are less educated on issues of race can learn and listen, but I simultaneously want to celebrate black voices because they are simply fantastic. Many of my favourite authors - N. K. Jemisin, Toni Morrison, Jamaica Kincaid - are black. And I don't use their work to learn necessarily, but because they are great. In the process comes learning. If your reading is not already diverse now is the time to make it so; if you feel like you need more education in how race upholds our systems of power, then reading more is integral. I will be joining you. But it is also important to read books by black authors that are not directly about race, or about slavery or other forms of trauma, but also books that are about the full scope of black life, and of life. First there are books that I've read and can attest are fantastic, and then books that are on my TBR. Some address race more directly than others; they are not all here to teach you. But all are remarkable in a myriad of ways.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Broken Earth series by N. K. Jemisin
How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N. K. Jemisin
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
Tales of Nevérÿon by Samuel R. Delany
The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Patternist series by Octavia Butler
Parable series by Octavia Butler
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
My To-Read:
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Paradise by Toni Morrison
Sula by Toni Morrison
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
Native Son by Richard Wright
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Rosewater by Tade Thompson
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie
The World Doesn't Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
The Son of the House by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
To-Read Poetry:
Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
Reading List: Nonfiction
Academic Reading
A lot of these readings address race theoretically and historically, and also the ways race intersects with other issues like postcolonialism, capitalism and feminism. Unsurprisingly, these things are inextricably linked. Not all are black authors but all are by people of colour. I am concerned that a lot of these texts will be very expensive or not available to those of you who don't have an institutional or alumni login for academic resources; I'm going to look into ways that that can be changed. I feel very strongly that these resources should be more widely available, especially because they are so easily accessed if you are at university. If I could find PDFs I have linked them, and there is a list with PDFs under 'Academic Reading Lists' below.
There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack by Paul Gilroy [I can’t seem to link it because you have to download it, but if you google the name of this book + ‘pdf’ you can read the first chapter online]
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy
The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
I Am a Man: Black Masculinity in America by bell hooks
Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices ed. by Stuart Hall
The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left by Stuart Hall
Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity by Alexander G. Weheliye
Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human by Alexander G. Weheliye
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
'Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammer Book' by Hortense Spillers
Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe [link to an article as opposed to the book]
'Race and/as Technology; or How to Do Things With Race’ in Camera Obscura, 24 (2009) by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering and Queer Affect by Mel Chen
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. du Bois
Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman
The Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul
Crisis, Austerity, and Everyday Life by Gargi Bhattacharyya
The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability by Jasbir Puar
Academic Reading Lists
A fantastic and pared down reading list by @PosiMann (graphic)
Academic resources (including PDFs of articles/audio resources/video) put together by Hettie McIntyre
My To-Read:
Racial Capitalism by Gargi Bhattacharyya
Women, Race, & Class by Angela Davis
Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race ed. by Jesmyn Ward
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People To Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala
Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsh
Me And White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla
End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
Reading List: Other
I have mostly focussed on books so far in my research and less on articles and other bits. I will keep updating this as and when I find more (and there are many great ones out there).
What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?
We Need To Talk About Police Brutality in the U.K.
Genetics is not why more BAME people die of coronavirus: structural racism is
A fantastic reading list about police abolition/prison abolition
Black Owned Business
As well as donating to good causes, it's important to make a habit of buying from more black-owned businesses. This is something I have so far not researched enough so I will be adding to this.
Bustle's Black-Owned UK Businesses To Buy From
Vogue's Black-Founded Fashion Brands