anti-racism

“May We Forever Stand” by Imani Perry

July 15, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: A History of the Black National Anthem

Recommended to me by: Jesse the K

The author Dr. Imani Perry was at the time of publication in 2018 the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Wikipedia says that in addition to a Ph.D., she has a J.D. from Harvard Law School. As of 2023, she is now a professor at Harvard.Her book is a carefully researched and engagingly written in-depth historical study of the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” as it has been intertwined with Black Americans’ creation of a rich community life and struggles for civil rights.

The song was written by brothers James Weldon Johnson (lyrics) and John Rosamond Johnson (music) in 1900 in Jacksonville, Florida. The song spread among the many Black formal and informal community associations and was soon named the Black National Anthem.

It was sung at all-Black schools as part of nurturing the pride and sense of self of the students. It was woven into plays created to educate children and adults alike about the struggles and achievements of Black Americans. It created solidarity and hope.

The book contains enough content for a semester course on Black American History from the end of the Civil War through to the 1980s, with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” tying it all together.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“brown girl dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson

January 31, 2024 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Reading Jaqueline Woodson’s children’s book The Day You Begin

In spare, elegant poetry with each word exactly as it needs to be, Jacqueline Woodson takes us back before her birth in her family history, and then slowly forward in time. She shares her sensory experiences as a young child in Ohio and then in the South, and later after her family moved to Brooklyn, NY. The writing is lyrical, gripping, joyous, painful.

Life is dangerous for a Black family in the 60s and 70s, and she grieves for relatives as they die, at the same time as she struggles with reading in school and bonds with a neighbor girl as Forever Friends. She is aware of the struggle for civil rights, and participates as much as she can.

Highly recommended! Every word is worth reading, through the acknowledgements and end notes all the way to the photographs of family members as children at the very end.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Day You Begin” by Jacqueline Woodson and Rafael López

December 30, 2023 by Sonia Connolly 1 Comment

Spanish title: El Día En Que Descubres Quién Eres! (The Day You Discover Who You Are!)

Recommended to me by: the Little Free Library down the street

What a gorgeous, loving picture book. “There will be times when you walk into a room, and no one there is quite like you.” Full of colorful flowers and multi-cultural children, the illustrations contrast their inner liveliness with their feelings of disconnection at school.

On the cover, a brown-skinned girl with tightly curled hair emerges through a partly opened door that is marked like a ruler. Later, a Korean girl protects her “too strange” lunch from the other children’s stares at a cafeteria table that is also a ruler. A boy excluded from playground games leans against a tree drawn with ruler markings. When two of the children make friends, they swing from a tree drawn with bark.

Highly recommended for children who might not quite fit in, and for adults who remember that experience. It made me cry, both times I read through it, and I’m taking it right back to the Little Free Library for someone else to find.

Available at bookshop.org.

“White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better” by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao

July 2, 2023 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: With a Guide to Start the Unlearning
Recommended to me by: Third Eye Books giveaway

On International Women’s Day in March 2023, I heard that Third Eye Books was giving away an anti-racist book for white women. I clicked on the link to receive one. After a few weeks, I realized it never arrived and looked back at their website. They had received 50,000 orders! I thought they would only send books to the first few (hundred) people who ordered, but just in time for Juneteenth 2023, the book arrived.

From the introduction:

“Race2Dinner was founded in 2019 as a dinner experience with Regina Jackson, a Black woman; Saira Rao, an Asian woman; and eight-to-ten white women. […] These dinners require white women to participate in direct, difficult conversations. It is not for the faint of heart.”

The preface speaks directly to white women.

“You know what you’re doing. But you pretend not to. […] So yes, we’ll explain to you how you’re racist. Even though we’re pretty sure you already know, whether you’re ready to admit it or not. […]

“White men may be on the throne. But you white women are shining it, fluffing the cushions, catching the coins that fall from their laps. […]

“YES. ALL. WHITE. WOMEN”

I kept reading with my eyebrows raised. A whole book of being yelled at did not sound pleasant or educational, no matter how true or justified the message. After the extended preface, the book shifts to tell the story of several of their dinner parties, and the way the conversations get derailed the same way over and over, all over the country. No wonder they’re yelling.

Saira Rao describes growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants in a white community, aspiring to the perfection that white womanhood requires, but undermined from the start by her brown skin. The need for perfection and the endless backbiting and judgment undermine the white women around her as well. Anti-racism is only possible when mistakes are allowed, because unlearning racism and white supremacy is a difficult, mistake-ridden process.

White fragility, white tears, white allies, white saviors, white violence. They emphasize that silence is violence. Silently witnessing racism makes us an accomplice to it. We need to stand up and name what we see and speak against it, even though we are shamed and punished for breaking step with white supremacy.

Recommended as a refresher if you have already done a lot of anti-racist work. I don’t think this book would be palatable to someone just starting out.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Pahua and the Soul Stealer” by Lori M. Lee

September 19, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Recommended to me by: Marissa Lingen

A delightful adventure story based on Hmong legends and spirituality with two eleven-year-old Hmong girls as the heroes, Pahua and Zhong. Pahua can see all spirits, which is unusual even for shamans (does the Hmong culture use the word shaman?) and has a companion spirit in the shape of a black kitten, named Miv, which means cat. Zhong is on assignment from her shaman school. There are battles, but no lives tossed away casually. Compassion and successful negotiation get them further than fighting.

The glossary at the end includes pronunciation of Hmong terms used in the story, and the afterword shares Lori Lee’s history as a Hmong refugee who resettled in the US and struggled to fit in, as Pahua does.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Big Friendship” by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

June 14, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: How We Keep Each Other Close

Recommended to me by: Body Impolitic

Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman name the difficulties of putting words to their friendship, and then as the professional writers they are, they go ahead and do it. I was worried that this book would be superficial or didactic, or both, but instead it is an engagingly told story with depth and detail, along with engagingly presented research into maintaining friendships.

They name Big Friendship, Shine Theory (invest in helping people shine rather than competing with them), and the friendweb they create together. They don’t shy away from discussing the hard parts of an interracial friendship.

They talk about stretching to maintain a friendship, and the difficulties of evaluating when stretch becomes strain, and what to do when the stretch feels unequal or too much.

They talk about Deborah Tannen’s term “complementary schismogenesis” (originally from Gregory Bateson) when two people get further and further apart as they try to model what they want from the other person, like one person talking louder and louder and the other talking quieter and quieter rather than asking the other person to speak up or speak more softly.

They reference For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend by Pat Parker.

Ultimately they went to couple’s counseling and learned to talk about their differences as well as the ways they are the same.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.