SUMMER READS 2021
Street Roots’ picks
Kids’ picks
Advocacy leaders’ picks
Vendors’ picks
Bookseller’s picks
Summer is here, and with it comes plenty of opportunities to relax among Oregon’s many spectacular outdoor spaces. And what better way to do that than with a good book in hand?
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, whether nonfiction or fiction, have a social or environmental justice theme.
They are also all available through local booksellers and the Multnomah County Library system, unless otherwise noted.
STREET ROOTS NEWS: How Third Eye Books and other indie bookstores have weathered the pandemic
Now, go get your summer reading on — and expand your understanding of the complex world in which we live while you’re at it!
Note: Synopses are from the books’ publishers and edited only for length.
NONFICTION
The Secret Life of Groceries
by Benjamin Lorr (2020)
“At its core, it’s a deeply reported examination of the grocery supply chain and all the problems that it causes. But what makes it great is Lorr’s commitment to building relationships with, and providing a voice for, the people abused by the system, as well as his personal reflection on excess in our country.”
– Nick Bjork, Street Roots Board member
From Avery: What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience and efficiency? In this alarming exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry.
The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
by Heather McGhee (2021)
“Using brisk yet compelling storytelling, McGhee investigates what systemic racism and the ‘zero sum’ paradigm that supports it has and continues to cost everyone — including white Americans. At a moment when the need for our government to address nationwide problems — from crumbling infrastructure to policing to housing shortages — could hardly be higher, McGhee tackles the question hovering in the minds of so many Americans: ‘Why can’t we have nice things?’”
– Henry Latourette Miller, Street Roots columnist
From One World: Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy — and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism.
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
by Michelle Zauner (2021)
“This resonated so deeply with me because my identity as an Asian American is so closely linked to my mother and my relationship to her. What I know about being Filipino comes from my mother in a similar way that Zauner’s Korean identity leans so heavily on what she learned from her late mother. I’ll be thinking about this memoir for years to come.”
– Celeste Noche, Street Roots photojournalist
From Knopf: In this exquisite story of family, food, grief and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of Life
by Ruby McConnell (2020)
“The author beautifully weaves her scientific expertise into descriptive stories of human experiences. Her personal essays are captivating, enlightening and sobering.”
– Monica Kwasnik, Street Roots editorial producer
The cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May, 1980, marked the start of a decades-long struggle over resources, land use and economics that would leave the Pacific Northwest forever changed. Beginning at that pivotal moment and written with the critical eye of a seasoned earth scientist, Ground Truth is an extended eulogy to a rapidly changing land and population awakening to the realities of climate change, land use and pollution. Part natural history, part memoir-in-essays, Ground Truth is a moving portrait of the forces and landscapes that have shaped a region and the people who live there.
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
by Alicia Garza (2020)
“Alicia Garza shares why and how she helped form Black Lives Matter in 2013 and offers her vision of the future that can help guide us more than a year removed from the murder of George Floyd.”
– Jay Parasco, Street Roots board secretary
From One World: In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she called “a love letter to Black people” on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote: Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.
With the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter became the hashtag heard ’round the world. But Garza knew even then that hashtags don’t start movements — people do.
Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing. The lessons she offers are different from the “rules for radicals” that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the American civil rights movement. She reflects instead on how making room amongst the woke for those who are still awakening can inspire and activate more people to fight for the world we all deserve.
Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money
by Zephyr Teachout (2020)
“I am recommending this book because it helps us to envision a world that celebrates economic diversity and outlines a way to get there.”
– Julia Smith, Street Roots volunteer
From All Points Books: Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google and Bayer, resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we’ve seen since the Gilded Age. They are evolving into political entities that often have more influence than the actual government, bending state and federal legislatures to their will and even creating arbitration courts that circumvent the U.S. justice system. How can we recover our freedom from these giants? Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout has the answer: Break ‘Em Up.
This book is a clarion call for liberals and leftists looking to find a common cause. Teachout makes a compelling case that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issues that today’s progressives care about; they drive economic inequality, harm the planet, limit the political power of average citizens and historically disenfranchised groups bear the brunt of their shameful and irresponsible business practices.
Becoming Supernatural: How Common People are Doing the Uncommon
by Dr. Joe Dispenza (2019)
“The type of energy healing work that I do, Dr. Bradley Nelson’s the Emotion and Body Code, directly correlates to Dr. Joe’s discoveries. We are spiritual beings in human bodies, we are limitless, and knowing that all is energy (quantum physics) the universe becomes our playground.”
– Heather Stadick, Street Roots board treasurer
From Hay House Inc.: Becoming Supernatural marries some of the most profound scientific information with ancient wisdom to show how people like you and me can experience a more mystical life.
Readers will learn that we are, quite literally supernatural by nature if given the proper knowledge and instruction, and when we learn how to apply that information through various meditations, we should experience a greater expression of our creative abilities; that we have the capacity to tune in to frequencies beyond our material world and receive more orderly coherent streams of consciousness and energy; that we can intentionally change our brain chemistry to initiate profoundly mystical transcendental experiences; and how, if we do this enough times, we can develop the skill of creating a more efficient, balanced, healthy body, a more unlimited mind and greater access to the realms of spiritual truth.
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
by Cathy Park Hong (2020)
“Hong so beautifully writes about what it’s like being Asian in America — the complexities, the contradictions, the generational trauma. Hong’s storytelling reaffirmed my personal experiences and gave me tremendous insight into the history of my ancestors.”
– Carly Ng, Street Roots board member
From One World: Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous and provocative — and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
Transgender Rights: From Obama to Trump
by Susan Gluck Mezey (2020)
“I found the way this books examines the struggle for Transgender equality over the last decade, exploring the policies of both the Obama and Trump Administrations, to be enlightening.”
– Raven Drake, Street Roots Ambassador Program manager
From CRC Press: This book examines the transgender community’s struggle for equality over the last decade, comparing the Obama and Trump administrations’ stance on transgender rights policies. Transgender rights claims have assumed an important place on the nation’s policymaking agenda as society has increasingly become aware that transgender individuals are subject to discrimination because they do not conform to the norms of the gender identity they were assigned at birth. With Congress virtually absent from the policymaking process, the executive branch and the federal courts have been chiefly responsible for determining the parameters of transgender rights policies.
*This book is not available through the library.
Plastic: An Autobiography
by Allison Cobb (2021)
“Allison Cobb is an important writer to me: I read everything she writes. She makes unlikely connections, plumbs every word, threading together chemical atom and political power and poetry. The daughter of a nuclear scientist from Los Alamos, Cobb now lives in Portland. ‘One of the greatest problems with plastic — originally touted as one of its greatest benefits — is it lasts forever,’ Cobb writes. And yet, in an industry’s pursuit of profit, it is treated as disposable. When a plastic car part shows up in her Portland yard, Cobb begins a journey of tracing its origins, all the while writing a lyrical personal and political exploration.”
– Kaia Sand, Street Roots executive director
From Nightboat Books: In Plastic: An Autobiography, Allison Cobb’s obsession with a large plastic car part leads her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposes the interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies, and racism. Using a series of interwoven narratives ― from ancient Phoenicia to Alabama ― the book bears witness to our deepest entanglements and asks how humans continue on this planet.
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
by Austin Channing Brown (2018)
“It’s the author’s memoir that I particularly found powerful. Brown talks about her parents purposely giving her a name that is commonly identified as a white man in order to level up her professional success.”
– Veronica Ruth, Street Roots Jesuit Volunteer
From Convergent Books: Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools and churches, Austin writes, “I had to learn what it means to love blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion.
In a time when nearly every institution claims to value diversity in its mission statement, Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice. Her stories bear witness to the complexity of America’s social fabric — from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.
The Body is Not an Apology
by Sonya Renee Taylor (2018; second edition with workbook, 2021)
“Although it looks like any other self-help book, Taylor really connects everything back to a larger system analysis that requires dismantling all systems of oppression through and by radical self-acceptance and compassion.”
– Stacey Heath, Street Roots board chair
From Berrett-Koehler Publishers: Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.
The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable and compassionate world — for us all.
Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts
edited by Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek (2021)
“This book provides valuable and relatable tips for finding humility in our day-to-day interactions. With 20 essays from a wide variety of perspectives, readers are likely to find an entry that resonates deeply with them.”
– Emily Green, Street Roots managing editor
AUTHOR Q&A: The art of listening in an era of shameless self-promotion
From Belt Publishing: What does humility mean and why does it matter in an age of golden escalators and billionaire entrepreneurs? How can the cultivation of humility empower us to see success in failure, to fight against injustice, to stretch beyond our usual ways of thinking, and to foster a culture of listening in an age of digital shouting? With contributions from renowned scholars as well as psychologists, artists, and many others, Radical Humility: Essays on Ordinary Acts offers guidance. Having witnessed the personal and civic costs of narcissism and arrogance, these and other writers consider humility as a valuable process — a state of being — with the power to impact institutions, systems, families and individuals, and give voice to the ways in which humility is practiced in many ordinary but extraordinary actions.
*This book is not available through the library.
As the World Burns: The New Generation of Activists and the Landmark Legal Fight Against Climate Change
by Lee van der Voo (2020)
“The book tells a profound story of a generation fighting for all of our lives and should be basic reading as we confront the most pressing issues in the history of our species. The appendix alone (breaking down each plaintiff and his/her/their experience) says a lot about this moment in history.”
– Tom Henderson, Street Roots correspondent
AUTHOR Q&A: The landmark legal fight against climate change
From Timber Press: Do our children have a right to inherit a livable planet? Is the government obliged to protect it? Twenty-one young people from across America have sued the federal government over climate change, charging that actions promoting a fossil fuel economy violate their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property. Their trial could be the civil rights trial of the century, but the government has used arcane legal tactics to stymie its progress at every turn.
As the World Burns follows the plight of the young plaintiffs, chronicling their legal battle as their childhoods are consumed by another year of drought and wildfire, floods and hurricanes, and the most tumultuous political season in modern history.
The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech
by William Deresiewicz (2020)
“Art for art’s sake is a fine ideal, but art is also work, and artists need to eat. In the digital age, it’s harder than ever for artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers and other performers to make a living, which also means that art and culture is a bastion of the privileged. ‘The less money there is the arts overall, the more they become a rich man’s game,’ Deresiewicz, who interviewed roughly 140 people for this book, writes. ‘And wealth correlates with race and gender. If you care about diversity, you need to care about economics.’”
– Jason Cohen, Street Roots correspondent
From Henry Holt and Co.: There are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age. One comes from Silicon Valley. There’s never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you’ve got a laptop, you’ve got a recording studio. If you’ve got an iPhone, you’ve got a movie camera. And if production is cheap, distribution is free: it’s called the Internet. Everyone’s an artist; just tap your creativity and put your stuff out there.The other comes from artists themselves. Sure, it goes, you can put your stuff out there, but who’s going to pay you for it? Everyone is not an artist. Making art takes years of dedication, and that requires a means of support. If things don’t change, a lot of art will cease to be sustainable.
So which account is true? Since people are still making a living as artists today, how are they managing to do it? William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions.
The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. … a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.
FICTION
While Justice Sleeps
by Stacey Abrams (2021)
“Yes, the Stacey Abrams, who should be governor of Georgia, has published a fast-paced, political thriller with a complex and contemporary plot. But don’t worry, you can just enjoy the ride, watching her protagonist, a super-smart, level-headed, young Black woman from a challenging background, run circles around ruthless villains, who will lose despite all their power and resources.”
– Mary King, Street Roots columnist
From Doubleday: Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together — excelling in an arduous job with the court while also dealing with a troubled family.
While Justice Sleeps is a cunningly crafted, sophisticated novel, layered with myriad twists and a vibrant cast of characters. Drawing on her astute inside knowledge of the court and political landscape, Stacey Abrams shows herself to be not only a force for good in politics and voter fairness but also a major new talent in suspense fiction.
The Ministry for the Future
by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020)
“It is a powerful and exciting book that makes the climate crisis real and immediate and, most importantly, helps us imagine how a movement for planetary survival might grow and succeed.”
– Martin Hart-Landsberg, Street Roots columnist
From Orbit: The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us — and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
It is a novel both immediate and impactful; desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.
Empire of Wild
by Cherie Dimaline (2020)
“This fantasy novel is about a badass Indigenous woman from a displaced Métis community in Canada who finds her lost husband in a tent revival — only he doesn’t remember her or his past life. I devoured this book; Dimaline’s writing is a feast for the senses and a powerful (and scary!) First Nations story.
– Sarah Hansell, Street Roots correspondent
From William Morrow: Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year — ever since that terrible night they’d had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Métis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways ... until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan.
Sharks in the Time of Saviors
by Kawai Strong Washburn (2020)
“Partly set in Portland, this is a generational story of a Hawaiian family as they strive to balance traditional ways and founding myths with the ragged realities of American-style capitalism and resulting economic inequality. Insightful, tragically realistic, unexpectedly hopeful.”
– Kathleen McFall, Street Roots volunteer copy editor
From MCD: In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, 7-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends.
Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods.
When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawaii — with tragic consequences — they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.
Scorched Earth (The Halo Trilogy Book 2)
by Kathleen McFall and Clark Hays (2021)
“Fans of the first in the Halo Trilogy, Gates of Mars, can pick up with Crucial Larsen as he dodges the all-seeing eye and stumbles into the hope of a better future.”
– Joanne Zuhl, Street Roots executive editor
From Pumpjack Press: The year is 2188 and the Earth — long-ago abandoned for Mars by the plutocrats — is scorched by poverty, disease and environmental collapse. Meanwhile, the red planet is a flourishing playground for the Five Families who, thanks to Halo — an advanced AI — control everything and everyone on Earth, including Crucial Larsen, a disillusioned labor cop.
Blending science fiction with a classic, hard-boiled detective story, Scorched Earth is the second book in The Halo Trilogy, an irreverent series set in post-colonial Mars.
*This book is not available through the library.
The Ancient Hours
by Michael Bible (2020)
“A fictional, but all too real, account of an arson fire in a Baptist Church in Harmony, North Carolina, ties together the victims and the racist history to reveal truths about the South.”
– Mark Oldani, Street Roots volunteer copy editor
From Melville House: Its history echoes with lynchings and shootings; mob violence and vigilante justice. But those are just whispers of a past lost to time. The summer of 2000 was different. Iggy in the Baptist church. Gasoline and a match. Twenty-five people dead. This, Harmony couldn’t forget.
Told in a kaleidoscope of timelines and voices, Michael Bible examines every dimension of a tragic but all-too-American story in The Ancient Hours. The victims, witnesses, perpetrators and condemned commingle and evolve as the passage of time works its way through their lives. What emerges is a fable of the American South in the highest tradition: soaring, tragic and eternally striving for redemption.
CHRIS HEDGES’ PICKS: 8 books to help activists understand the state of America (from 2018)