What's on my Reading Stack?
Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions, Priscilla B. Hayner. “This second edition is fully updated and expanded, including twenty new commissions formed in the last ten years, analyzing new trends, and offering detailed charts that assess the impact of truth commissions.”
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them Joshua Greene “Greene, a philosopher and scientist, draws on research in psychology and neuroscience to explore the roots of morality, particularly the tragedy of commonsense morality, when people of apply it from different perspectives in whose differences lie the roots of conflict. Us-versus-them conflicts date back to tribal life. Greene analyzes the structure of modern moral conflicts on a wide spectrum of issues, from global warming to Obamacare to economic policy, and also the structure of our “moral brains.” |
Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, edited by Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha. “… first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia's Brood span genres - sci fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism - but all are united by an attempt to experiment with new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be.”
Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces Davina Cooper "Cooper ...draws from firsthand observations and interviews with participants to argue that utopian projects have the potential to revitalize progressive politics through the ways their innovative practices incite us to rethink mainstream concepts including property, markets, care, touch, and equality." |
Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life
Karen E. Fields "Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call "racecraft." And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed." |
Missing Class: How Seeing Class Cultures Can Strengthen Social Movement Groups
Betsy Leondar-Wright "Many activists worry about the same few problems in their groups: low turnout, inactive members, conflicting views on racism, overtalking, and offensive violations of group norms. But in searching for solutions to these predictable and intractable troubles, progressive social movement groups, overlook class culture differences. Leondar-Wright uses a class-focused lens to show that members with different class life experiences tend to approach these problems differently. This perspective enables readers to envision new solutions that draw on the strengths of all class cultures to form the basis of stronger cross-class and multiracial movements." |
White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race
Matthew Hughey "Hughey spent over a year attending the meetings, reading the literature, and interviewing members of two white organizations--a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group. Though he found immediate political differences, he observed surprising similarities. Both groups make meaning of whiteness through a reliance on similar racist and reactionary stories and worldviews." |
A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen
Liel Leibovitz "More than just an account of Cohen’s life, A Broken Hallelujah is an intimate look at the artist that is as emotionally astute as it is philosophically observant. Delving into the sources and meaning of Cohen’s work, Leibovitz beautifully illuminates what Cohen is telling us and why we listen so intensely." |
African Struggles Today: Social Movements Since Independence
Peter Dwyer and Leo Zeilig "Three leading Africa scholars investigate the social forces driving the democratic transformation of postcolonial states across southern Africa. Extensive research and interviews with civil society organizers in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Swaziland inform this analysis of the challenges faced by non-governmental organizations in relating both to the attendant inequality of globalization and to grassroots struggles for social justice. |
Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism
Shannon Sullivan "Sullivan untangles the complex relationships between class and race in contemporary white identity and outlines four ways this orientation is expressed, each serving to establish one’s lack of racism: the denigration of lower-class white people as responsible for ongoing white racism, the demonization of antebellum slaveholders, an emphasis on colorblindness...and the cultivation of attitudes of white guilt, shame, and betrayal. To move beyond these distancing strategies, Sullivan argues, white people need a new ethos that acknowledges and transforms their whiteness in the pursuit of racial justice rather than seeking a self-righteous distance from it." |
Belinda's Petition: A Concise History of Reparations For The TransAtlantic Slave Trade
Raymond A Winbush "Winbush compiles the most important cases of reparations made for the Transatlantic Slave Trade, highlighting Belinda’s Petition, the earliest attempt by an American African to seek payment for her 50 years of enslavement in the early United States. Africans 550-year struggle seeking to repair the long-term economic and mental damage of slavery is presented in this powerfully compelling book." |
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Paradise Built in Hell: The Extrordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Rebecca Solnit "A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local. Surveying disasters from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, she shows that the typical response to calamity is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid..." |