Reading List

Dear Friends,

I was lucky to choose the path of Urban Education for my personal and professional journeys. In this path, I was "required" to take a Critical Race Theory class or three. This journey has shaped how I work with students, teach, learn, and how I see the world and walk this Earth.

It is baffling to me that in a country with the history of oppression and legalized racism, we have not made Critical Pedagogy and Race Theory a required class in high school, college, and beyond. Nor have we required public school curriculum K-12 to center the history of different stakeholders and perspectives as the Zinnproject.org has courageously done.

Here is a growing reading list for your journey in critical consciousness of the oppressed and awareness of your role as oppressor and oppressed. Having said that, I am still learning how to dismantle my constructs as an oppressor of Native Americans and Indigenous populations. I am a work in progress. Aren't we all!

Bon Voyage!

PS: I encourage you to get these books at local independent book stores but I have linked them here to Amazon as I know that 1) having a bookstore close is a privilege 2) you might want to read reviews and see what other books are linked to this book. I live above an indie bookstore and feel guilty linking these to Amazon, but alas its messy as I am. :)


Books Nonfiction:

Stamped from the Beginning - Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

How to be an Anti-Racist - Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Paulo Freire

Education for Critical Consciousness - Paulo Freire

We Want to do More Than Just Survive - Dr. Bettina L. Love

Teaching to Transgress - bell hooks

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander

Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson

Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington

The Warmth of Other Suns  - Isabel Wilkerson

Other People's Children - Lisa Delpit

Culturally Responsive Classroom - Geneva Gay

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together at the Cafeteria: And other conversations about race - Beverly Daniel Tatum

Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Angela Y. Davis

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley

Florence "Flo" Kennedy - By Sherie M. Randolph

Anything by James Baldwin

Anything by Cornel West

Books Fiction

Miles Morales Spider Man  - Jason Reynolds

As Brave as You - Jason Reynolds

Brown Girl Dreaming - Jacqueline Woodson

Another Brooklyn - Jacqueline Woodson


Resources/Websites:

The Zinn Project - the history you were deprived of in school:  https://zinnedproject.org/

Teaching for Change - http://www.teachingforchange.org/
Teaching for Change Booklist -  http://www.teachingforchange.org/


The Brown Bookshelf - https://thebrownbookshelf.com/2016/11/14/a-declaration-in-support-of-children/

Yes We Code - http://www.yeswecode.org/

Dream Corps - http://www.thedreamcorps.org/

Courageworks - http://www.courageworks.com/ - Brené Brown's work is powerful self-compassion and vulnerability work which is good because this is messy and courageous work and requires us to embrace the messiness in ourselves so we can have the courage to show up to do this work.