Anti-Black Racism Reading Recommendations

Our Future is Tied to Abolition
Here we are in April 2021, as COVID surges in its third wave across our province. Ontario community-based HIV/AIDS organizations, their staff, peers and volunteers continue with the profoundly fundamental work of supporting the over-policed working-class, and impoverished Black, Indigenous,...

We Can’t Talk about That at Work! A Guide for Bold, Inclusive Conversations
Politics, religion, race - we can't talk about topics like these at work, right? But in fact, these conversations are happening all the time, either in real life or virtually via social media. And if they aren't handled effectively, they can become more polarizing and divisive, impacting...

21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality
Based on a viral article, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is the essential guide to understanding the legal document and its repercussion on generations of Indigenous Peoples, written by a leading cultural sensitivity trainer.Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has shaped,...

Black Fatigues: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and the Spirit
This book, designed to illuminate the myriad dire consequences of "living while Black," came at the urging of Winters's Black friends and colleagues. Winters describes how in every aspect of life--from economics to education, work, criminal justice, and, very importantly, health outcomes--for the...

Inclusive Conversations: Fostering Equity, Empathy and Belonging Across Differences
This guide is comprehensive for anyone who wants to break down the barriers that separate us and facilitate discussions on potentially polarizing topics.Effective dialogue across different dimensions of diversity, such as race, gender, age, religion, or sexual orientation, fosters a sense of...

A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants 1858-1914
"We are not strong enough to assimilate races so alien from us in their habits … We are afraid they will swamp our civilization as such". – Nanaimo Free Press, 1914 A White Man’s Province examines how British Columbians changed their attitudes towards Asian immigrants from one of...

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.From...

Black History: Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas
This textbook explores early African history, including Africa as the birthplace of humanity and early African civilizations. The resource scrutinises the oppression and resistance of Black people in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America on their march toward freedom....

Black Writers Matter
An anthology of African Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and pressing issues with beautiful, sometimes raw, prose. As Whitney French says in her introduction, Black Writing...

Queer Returns: Essays On Multiculturalism, Diaspora and Black Studies
"Queer Returns returns us to the scene of multiculturalism, diaspora and queer through the lens of Black expression, identity and the political. The essays question what it means to live in a multicultural society, how diaspora impacts identity and culture and how the categories of queer and Black...

The Hanging of Angélique
Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death. In a powerful retelling of Angélique's story — now supported by...

Sister Outsider
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of...

THICK: and Other Essays
In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically “thick”: deemed “thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,” McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away...

The Body is Not an Apology
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...

Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada
Until We Are Free contains some of the very best writing on the hottest issues facing the Black community in Canada. It describes the latest developments in Canadian Black activism, organizing efforts through the use of social media, Black-Indigenous alliances, and more."Until We Are Free busts...

Angry Queer Somali Boy
Kidnapped by his father on the eve of Somalia's societal implosion, Ali was taken first to the Netherlands by his stepmother, and then on to Canada. With its promise of freedom, opportunity and multiculturalism, his new home seemed to offer a new lease on life. But unable to fit in, he turned to...

Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada From Slavery to the Present
Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of...

The Essentials of Theory U
A useful pocket guide for practitioners that distills all of the research and materials found in Otto Scharmer's seminal texts Theory U and Leading from the Emerging Future. The new developments into a short handbook that focuses on three essential components; the core principles of Theory U, the...

White Fragility: Why it’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that...

How To Be an Antiracist
"Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of...

The Skin We’re In
“Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from...

Me and White Supremacy
"This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better,...
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