So with everything that’s happening in the world recently, we decided to talk together about books we’ve read that have helped us explore the experiences of others. Specifically, the experiences of African Americans.
This conversation was, honestly, a pretty awkward one for us to have since none of us are African American, and we didn’t want it to be perceived as “three white people helping you understand the African American experience.”
That’s not how we roll, and it’s not something any of us are qualified to do anyway. Instead, we’re sharing about books we’ve read and advice we’ve been given that have been helpful in our desire to be good learners and good neighbors in our community. In this episode you’ll hear:
- A few of the books we’ve found helpful so far
- Reading recommendations from our listeners
- Why it’s important not just to read about the African American experience, but to read good African American authors
As promised in the episode, here are a couple of articles we found particularly helpful in processing the events of the last three weeks:
- Speaking My Blackness by Devin Cornelius
- What Can I do? by Shaq Hardy
A few of the books we mentioned this week
- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jordan & Roslyn M. Jordan
- Life is Not an Accident by Jay Williams
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