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*All American boys
by Jason Reynolds
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend.
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Audio available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*American street
by Ibi Zoboi
When Fabiola's mother is detained upon their arrival to the United States, Fabiola must navigate her loud American cousins, the grittiness of Detroit's west side, a new school, and a surprising romance all on her own.
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Audio available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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An African American and Latinx history of the United States
by Paul Ortiz
"Paul Ortiz delivers us the history of the United States from the viewpoint of black and brown people, from Crispus Attucks and José Maria Morelos to César Chávez and Martin Luther King Jr. The result is simultaneously invigorating, embarrassing, and essential to anyone interested in what the revolutionaries of years past can teach us about struggles for freedom, equality, and democracy today.” —William P. Jones, author of The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Set in post-Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has withstood savagery and not gone mad.
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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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.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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*Dear Martin
by Nic Stone
Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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*Dreamland burning
by Jennifer Latham
Alternating chapters explore how race relations have changed in the past century, as Rowan Chase investigates a murder committed during the Tulsa race riot in 1921.
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Book available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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Go tell it on the mountain
by James Baldwin
Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle toward self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understood themselves.
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*He said, she said : a novel
by Kwame Alexander
Staging a civil protest at school, football star Omar T-Diddly Smalls and politically minded Claudia Clark overcome respective differences to work together and then discover an unexpected attraction. A first young adult novel by the author of Indigo Blume and the Garden City.
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Book available on eReadIllinois |
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Hood feminism : notes from the women that a movement forgot
by Mikki Kendall
An award-winning writer and frequent guest speaker presents a compelling critique of today’s black feminist movement that argues that modern activism needs to refocus on health care, education and safety for all women instead of a privileged few.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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How dare the sun rise : memoirs of a war child
by Sandra Uwiringiyimana
The author shares the story of her survival during the Gatumba massacre, despite losing her mother and sister, and how after moving to America she found healing through art and activism.
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Audio available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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How I resist : activism and hope for a new generation
by Maureen Johnson
Featuring contributions by such high-profile individuals as Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Javier Muñoz and Rosie O'Donnell as well as many of today's most popular young-adult writers, an all-star collection of essays about activism and hope reveals how today's young people can make a difference in the face of discrimination.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*How it went down
by Kekla Magoon
When sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson is shot to death, his community is thrown into an uproar because Tariq was black and the shooter, Jack Franklin, is white, and in the aftermath everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events agree.
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Book available on Overdrive |
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How to be an antiracist
by Ibram X. Kendi
A best-selling author, National Book Award-winner and professor combines ethics, history, law and science with a personal narrative to describe how to move beyond the awareness of racism and contribute to making society just and equitable.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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I can't breathe : a killing on Bay Street
by Matt Taibbi
On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. This book describes law enforcement procedures, systemic issues, and the individual life of Garner, as well as his death, and the influence on Black Lives Matter.
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Book available on Overdrive |
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*I'm not dying with you tonight
by Kimberly Jones
Told from two viewpoints, Atlanta high school seniors Lena and Campbell, one black, one white, must rely on each other to survive after a football rivalry escalates into a riot.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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Just mercy : a story of justice and redemption
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.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
Dana, a black woman, finds herself repeatedly transported to the antebellum South, where she must make sure that Rufus, the plantation owner's son, survives to father Dana's ancestor.
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Graphic novel adaptation available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*Long way down
by Jason Reynolds
As fifteen-year-old Will sets out to avenge his brother Shawn's fatal shooting, seven ghosts who knew Shawn board the elevator and reveal truths Will needs to know.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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*Look both ways : a tale told in ten blocks
by Jason Reynolds
A whimsical exploration of the role detours play in life follows a group of students who become so engaged in everyday activities while taking 10 different routes home from school that they fail to notice a school bus that has dropped from the sky. By the award-winning author of Ghost.
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Book available on eReadIllinois |
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Book available on eReadIlllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*Monday's not coming
by Tiffany D. Jackson
When her friend Monday Charles goes missing and Monday's mother refuses to give her a straight answer, Claudia digs into her disappearance.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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*Monster
by Walter Dean Myers
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*Patron saints of nothing
by Randy Ribay
When seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero learns his Filipino cousin and former best friend, Jun, was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, he flies to the Philippines to learn more.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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*Piecing me together
by Renée Watson
Tired of being singled out at her mostly-white private school as someone who needs support, Jade would rather participate in the school's Study Abroad program than join Women to Women, a mentorship program for at-risk girls.
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Book available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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Purple hibiscus
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Growing up in a wealthy Nigerian home with a tyrannical father, Kambili and her brother, find happiness during a visit to their Aunty Ifeoma, but as Kambili enjoys her freedom and falls in love, the country begins to fall under a military coup.
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*Slay
by Brittney Morris
An honors student at Jefferson Academy, seventeen-year-old Keira enjoys developing and playing Slay, a secret, multiplayer online role-playing game celebrating black culture, until the two worlds collide.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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So you want to talk about race
by Ijeoma Oluo
A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide. In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment, Ijeoma Oluo, offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the "N" word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don't dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*Stamped : racism, antiracism, and you
by Jason Reynolds
A timely reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s National Book Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America while explaining their endurance and capacity for being discredited.
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Book available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America
by Michael Eric Dyson
As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man's voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop―a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
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Audio available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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The bluest eye : a novel
by Toni Morrison
The Nobel Prize-winning author relates the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old Black girl growing up in an America that values blue-eyed blondes, and the tragedy that results because of her longing to be accepted.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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The book of unknown Americans
by Cristina Henríquez
Moving from Mexico to the United States when their daughter suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras confront cultural barriers, their daughter's difficult recovery, and her developing relationship with a Panamanian boy.
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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The color purple
by Alice Walker
The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.
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Book available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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The fifth season
by N. K Jemisin
A first entry in a new trilogy by the award-winning author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms finds the sole continent of the earth threatened by murder, betrayal, a super-volcano and overlords who use the planet's power as a weapon.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin
The powerful evocation of a childhood in Harlem that helped to galvanize the early days of the civil rights movement examines the deep consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*The hate u give
by Angie Thomas
After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughter's memories and feelings.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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The namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake, the Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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The new Jim Crow : mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness
by Michelle Alexander
Former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Follows the life of a girl of mixed black and white heritage, around the beginning of the 20th century.
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Audio available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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There there
by Tommy Orange
A novel—which grapples with the complex history of Native Americans and a plague of addiction, abuse and suicide—follows 12 characters, each of whom has private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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They can't kill us all : the story of the struggle for Black lives
by Wesley Lowery
.A behind-the-scenes account of the #blacklivesmatter movement shares insights into the young men and women behind it, citing the racially charged controversies that have motivated members and the economic, political, and personal histories that inform its purpose.
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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*Tyler Johnson was here
by Jay Coles
When Marvin Johnson's twin brother, Tyler, is shot and killed by a police officer, Marvin must fight injustice to learn the true meaning of freedom.
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Book and audio available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive |
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*Watch us rise
by Renée Watson
Fed up with gender imbalances at their progressive NYC high school, two friends start a women's rights club and post poems, essays and videos online until their work goes viral, compelling the principal to shut them down. Co-written by the Newbery Honor-winning author of This Side of Home.
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Book available on Overdrive |
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We are not yet equal : understanding our racial divide
by Carol Anderson
From the end of the Civil War to the tumultuous issues in America today, an acclaimed historian reframes the conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America.
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Book available on Overdrive |
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When they call you a terrorist : a black lives matter memoir
by Patrisse Khan-Cullors
A lyrical memoir by the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement urges readers to understand the movement's position of love, humanity and justice, challenging perspectives that have negatively labeled the movement's activists while calling for essential political changes. Co-written by the award-winning author of The Prisoner's Wife.
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Book available on eReadIllinois, book and audio available on Overdrive |
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Book and audio available on Overdrive |
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If you are having trouble unsubscribing to this newsletter, please contact the West Chicago Public Library District at 630-231-1552, 118 W. Washington St. West Chicago, IL 60185. |
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