Here’s a thread of books I’ve read over the last few years that have helped me understand my role as a white person in both perpetrating and dismantling racism. I’m begging y’all to take the time to read them. None of the work you do matters if you don’t start with listening.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The Known World by Edward P Jones

Home going by Yaa Gyasi

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

You Can’t Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B Tyson

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The Fire This Time ed. by Jesmyn Ward

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele

Waking Up White by Debby Irving

Policing the Black Man ed. by Angela Davis

Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr

Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates Jr

How We Get Free ed. by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour by Peniel E Joseph

The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

The Condemnation of Blackness by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Charged by Emily Bazelon

Biased by Jennifer L Eberhardt

American Like Me ed. by America Ferrera

The Race Beat by Gene Roberts

One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson

The Son Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton

The Half Hs Never Been Told by Edward E Baptist

American Prison by Shane Bauer

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper

This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

Jubilee by Margaret Walker

The Color of Water by James McBride

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

The Yellow House by Sarah M Broom