On the Fourth of July, Juneteen, whether you celebrate both or not, if you believe in racial justice and equality, let these books encourage you to seek your independence.
“What, for the slave, is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass was asked at an anti-slavery conference on July 5, 1852, in Rochester, Corinthian Hall, New York (you can hear James Earl Jones read the full speech here). In this nearly 170 years, this question is still true to many of us who are technically free, but still to Americans without rights, to any celebration of America’s emancipation … complicated, to say the least.
Although many black Americans have proclaimed Juneteenth as our Independence Day, our search for our ongoing equality should never be left to a single day, month, movement, or conversation. Nor should it be left to the whims, graces, biases, and inherent failures of the white gaze, or the predominantly white elect.
Covers: Mint Editions; Macmillan; Haymarket books
“At the same time we can talk about what this nation owes us (to consider, it’s a lot) and how [there are] things we need to do internally,” author-activist Kimberly Jones said in an interview with Grio. this year. “[At the same time] we need to do how they affect us … but that doesn’t change. We need to start having internalized conversations. We need to start talking about healthy, healthy families within the community. We need to start using resources among the community to raise the least of them.
“Literature is a delicious way to nurture empathy,” Jones later added. “The most revolutionary thing any of us can do is self-improvement.”
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of recommended readings this July 4th to reinforce your independence and intentions, rather than any day of the year.
How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That’s Rigged, Kimberly Jones (Macmillan, 2022)
At the age of nine, Kimberly Jones made headlines for offering her unforgiving opinion on the policies and influence of then-President Ronald Reagan. In 2020, Jones was back in the headlines when a sudden and emotional speech he made on the streets of Atlanta went viral, calling it not only a “racial account” of several American cities and communities, but also a detrimental consequence of intra-racial classism. a policy of respectability, and long-standing apathy.
Using the trend of “research for my quest” in 2022, Jones brought his activist sensibilities and deep historical knowledge to his third book, How We Can Win. This may interest you : Travel July Fourth weekend can be ugly. Here are 5 ways to prepare.. Reflecting on the short “patches of history,” where things were really improving for black Americans — economically, socially, and politically — Jones, in his words, proposes a “Reconstruction 2.0”.
Just Us: An American Conversation, Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press, 2020)
In 2014, poet and academic Claudia Rankine won a bestseller and numerous awards for her book of poems and essays Citizen: An American Lyric. In 2020, he seemed to have made almost a prediction with Just Us: American Conversation, a sour racism (often covered in liberalism), symbolism, micro-aggression, and even his marriage, in this medium-sized offer that is reduced to the core. How racial injustice is rooted in American culture.
All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: Hope—and Hard Pills to Swallow—About Fighting for Black Lives, Andre Henry (Convergent Books, 2022)
No, we don’t suggest getting rid of your white friends; many are both beautiful and quite supportive and helpful when given the opportunity. But as many of us have learned in the wild, some white friends can’t handle the truth about racism, even if it exists. See the article : Library of Surplus Library Register Councilor David Cicilline. Henry takes us on his difficult journey to excavate these weak bonds — and, in some cases, to eradicate them — as he finds a path that Blackness constantly places as his North Star.
The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto, Charles Blow (HarperCollins, 2021)
The best-selling author and journalist Charles M. Blow never reduces words, but in The Devil You Know, he makes an unexpected proposal to hack the American electoral system. See the article : Eight candidates for the 2022 UMaine Hall of Fame. Question asked: Should the descendants of the Great Migration retrace the steps of their ancestors with the goal of reclaiming the South and historically turning the red states into blue? For many born and raised in the North — or historically “free” states — the idea may seem absurd, but as always, Blow, himself a reverse migrationist, makes an intriguing argument that reduces it to the core of what it means to be free. , and what Black power can really be like.
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, ed. by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Haymarket Books, 2018)
All the praise goes to the acclaimed professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, but it’s likely that without discussing the Combahee River Collective she can’t be the first to talk about intersectionality. At the end of the twentieth century, a black, lesbian and socialist feminist organization based in Boston called for a second wave of feminist and civil rights movements to ignore the specific oppression suffered by women of color and / or queer communities until all of this is understood. we are free, none of us can be. Reading is a part of the Black Canon that should be necessary for all.
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, Frederick Douglass (Mint Editions―Black Narratives, 2021)
Much has changed since Frederick Douglass advocated the abolition of real estate slavery. Not too much more. The transcript of his now classic lecture not only reminds us of how far we’ve come, but how far we still have to go until the so-called “American Dream” becomes available to all Americans.
Maiysha Kai is the editor of The Gray’s lifestyle, and she collects all the black and beautiful things. Her work has depended on two decades of fashion and entertainment, excellent books and aesthetics, and the brilliance of Black culture. He is also the editor-in-chief of the book Body (Words of Change series).
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