SUMMER READS 2021
Street Roots’ picks
Kids’ picks
Advocacy leaders’ picks
Vendors’ picks
Bookseller’s picks
We asked Street Roots staff, vendors, contributors, volunteers and their kids, as well as local advocacy leaders, to recommend their favorite recently published books. And, being that this is a Street Roots reading list, the books listed here have a social or environmental justice theme.
Here are the advocacy leaders' picks. All of these books are available through local booksellers and the Multnomah County Library system.
Note: Synopses are from the books’ publishers and edited only for length.
As Long as the Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
by Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)
“From redefining environmental injustice to taking a hard look at the role the environmental movement has played in perpetuating it, this book offers historical context and specific examples to learn from. It’s an accessible and important read that helped me expand and shift my perspective on how settler colonialism and capitalist systems have imposed and perpetuated environmental injustices on Native people and cultures.”
– Chandra LeGue, Western Oregon field coordinator at Oregon Wild
From Beacon Press: Through the unique lens of “Indigenized environmental justice,” Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows
gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America
by Ijeoma Oluo (2020)
“In Mediocre, Ijeoma Oluo (widely respected author of So You Want to Talk About Race) examines how the system of white male supremacy in America has caused and continues to cause violence to all of us — not ‘only women, nonbinary people, and people of color — but also white men.’ She asks us ‘to have the bravery to look at ourselves and see our complicity in the violence of white male supremacy’ so that we can reimagine and create a world of care, equity, and justice for all people.”
– Sandy Chung, executive director at ACLU of Oregon
From Seal Press: What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments?
Through the last 150 years of American history — from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics — Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism.
The Sword and Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
by Peniel E. Joseph (2020)
“This book offers important insights into how that it is not possible to understand the true importance of Dr. King and Malcolm X without first understanding their ideas and visions together and as symbiotic, and within the context of the founding value system of the United States, white supremacy. Importantly, the popular history of both of these individuals is muddled, riddled with misconception and mythology, often framing them as advocating for competing visions or conflicting goals. This book is one of many starting to revise this history and surface the true contributions of both of these revolutionary minds while deconstructing these false narratives. This book helps to forward an analysis that will allow us to better confront racial injustice today.”
– Bobbin Singh, executive director at Oregon Justice Resource Center
From Basic Books: To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, Black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for Black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement’s militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.
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