Books like What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young

Alice Walker's 1982 novel, The Color Purple, won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, exploring the lives of black women in the South and their experiences of abuse and struggle for independence.

Between the World and Me is a memoir‑essay in letter form, where Ta‑Nehisi Coates addresses his teenage son about the history, violence, and ongoing reality of being Black in America.

James Baldwin’s 1963 essay collection, written as two letters for the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, confronts America’s racial injustices and urges both black and white citizens to confront the legacy of racism.

Ibram X. Kendi’s *How to Be an Antiracist* explains racism as a powerful system that creates false hierarchies and offers a guide—drawing on ethics, history, law, and science—to help readers confront and dismantle racial injustice in society and themselves.

Ibram X. Kendi examines the long history of anti‑black racist ideas in America, revealing how intellectuals have shaped and justified racial inequality.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a non‑fiction study of the Great Migration, tracing the journey of nearly six million African Americans from the South to northern and western cities between 1915 and 1970.

A collection of essays by Kiese Laymon that explore family, race, violence, celebrity, music, writing, and other facets of contemporary American life.

Jonathan Eig’s biography offers an extensive, first unauthorized portrait of Muhammad Ali, drawing from over 500 interviews and newly released FBI files to chronicle the life of the legendary boxer.

A compiled transcript of Raoul Peck’s documentary "I am Not Your Negro," featuring James Baldwin’s unpublished writings, interviews, and letters that examine racism in America.

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today. In an effort to grasp the magnitude of the repose to Michael Brown's death and understand the scale of the problem police violence represents, Lowery speaks to Brown's family and the families of other victims other victims' families as well as local activists. By posing the question, "What does the loss of any one life mean to the rest of the nation?" Lowery examines the cumulative effect of decades of racially biased policing in segregated neighborhoods with failing schools, crumbling infrastructure and too few jobs. Studded with moments of joy, and tragedy, They Can't Kill Us All offers a historically informed look at the standoff between the police and those they are sworn to protect, showing that civil unrest is just one tool of resistance in the broader struggle for justice. As Lowery brings vividly to life, the protests against police killings are also about the black community's long history on the receiving end of perceived and actual acts of injustice and discrimination. They Can't Kill Us All grapples with a persistent if also largely unexamined aspect of the otherwise transformative presidency of Barack Obama: the failure to deliver tangible security and opportunity to those Americans most in need of both.

The book recounts the August 7, 1930 lynching in Marion, Indiana, where two African‑American teenagers were murdered after being accused of a crime, and examines how the town's black and white residents responded to the tragedy.

John Thompson’s autobiography reveals the impact of a former basketball coach on American history and race relations.