Over the past several days, we have received many queries about specific books regarding anti-racism, as well as requests for further recommendations. The following list includes bestsellers and staff recommendations from history to essays to theory, as well as fiction and poetry by Black creators. Reading is not enough to address the systemic issues facing our society—it must be coupled with action—but engaging with the ideas in these titles is an important step of the process.

Please consider these reads, and add more suggestions in the comments! You may also check out our similar list, anti-racist reading for young readers.

History, Current Events, and Criticism

• How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis
• Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis
• White Fragility by Robin Diangelo
• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
• This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa
• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi 
• Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
• A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross
• Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
• We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
• White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
• Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? edited by Joe Macaré, Alana Yu-Lan Price, and Maya Schenwar
• A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota edited by Sun Ying Shin
• The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda V. Magee
• Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
• White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad
• The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

Memoir and Essays

• Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
• How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
• You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson
• Heavy by Kiese Laymon
• They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
• The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins
• When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele

Recent Fiction and Poetry

• Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
• The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Citizen by Claudia Rankine
• American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
• Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
• We Want Our Bodies Back by jessica Care moore
• 1919 by Eve Ewing

We know many of these titles are extremely in demand, and are currently out of stock and on backorder, but many are available in audiobook or e-book versions from our partners Libro.fm and My Must Reads.