Books like Tell Me Who You Are by Winona Guo

During World War II, a foster girl in Nazi Germany steals books to share with neighbors and a hidden Jewish man, proving literature’s power to nourish the soul amid darkness.

The Hate U Give tracks 16‑year‑old Starr Carter, a Black teenager from a poor Bronx neighborhood who attends an elite private school, as she confronts police violence, social media battles, and community turmoil after witnessing her friend’s shooting.

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.

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.

Ijeoma Oluo’s guide gives Americans—and people of color—clear, practical tools to discuss race, privilege, police brutality, and micro‑aggressions, making the complex racial landscape accessible and actionable for all readers.

A 1981 nonfiction work by Tracy Kidder that follows a computer‑engineering team building the Data General Eclipse MV/8000—a high‑speed minicomputer—under intense deadline pressure.

In a tense sixty seconds, a young boy faces a choice that will determine whether he seeks revenge for his brother’s death or walks away from violence.

Francine Prose shows how studying great writers—from Dostoyevsky to Joyce—reveals the craft of storytelling, urging readers to analyze language and technique in order to improve their own writing.

Explores the evolution of racist and antiracist ideas in America, tracing their European origins to contemporary society.

An anthology of 96 pages, featuring original art and prose by fifty diverse creators, that gives children a voice against racism and prejudice.

Many mid 20th century American government programs created to help citizens survive and improve ended up being heavily biased against African-Americans. Katznelson documents this white affirmative action, and argues that its existence should be an important part of the argument in support of late 20th century affirmative action programs.

James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. In our own moment, when that confrontation feels more urgently needed than ever, what can we learn from his struggle? “In the midst of an ugly Trump regime and a beautiful Baldwin revival, Eddie Glaude has plunged to the profound depths and sublime heights of Baldwin’s prophetic challenge to our present-day crisis.”—Cornel West We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude Jr., in a moment when the struggles of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. From Charlottesville to the policies of child separation at the border, his administration turned its back on the promise of Obama’s presidency and refused to embrace a vision of the country shorn of the insidious belief that white people matter more than others. We have been here before: For James Baldwin, these after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair. In the story of Baldwin’s crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography—drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews—with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude’s endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.

"In just a few years, diversity has become America's most visible cultural ideal. Corporations alter their recruitment and hiring policies in the name of a diverse workforce. Universities institute new admissions procedures in the name of a diverse student body. Presidents choose their major appointees in the name of a diverse cabinet. And what diversity proponents have in mind, Peter Wood argues, is not the dictionary meaning of the word - variety and multiplicity - but a new and often narrow kind of conformity." "Whether as prescribed numerial outcome or as the celebration of cultural difference, diversity, according to Wood, is now a deadening force in American life, a cliche that promotes group stereotypes and undermines any real diversity of ideas and individuals.". "In this learned and entertaining book, Wood has undertaken nothing less than the biography of a concept. Drawing on classic texts of history and anthropology, science and religion, he shows that - contrary to the self-flattering assumptions of our time - Americans of earlier eras often met diversty open-mindedly, with a combination of awe, delight and curiosity."--BOOK JACKET.

How real is race? What is biological fact, what is fiction, and where does culture enter? What do we mean by a “colorblind” or “postracial” society, or when we say that race is a “social construction”? If race is an invention, can we eliminate it? This book, now in its second edition, employs an activity-oriented approach to address these questions and engage readers in unraveling—and rethinking—the contradictory messages we so often hear about race. The authors systematically cover the myth of race as biology and the reality of race as a cultural invention, drawing on biocultural and cross-cultural perspectives. They then extend the discussion to hot-button issues that arise in tandem with the concept of race, such as educational inequalities; slurs and racialized labels; and interracial relationships. In so doing, they shed light on the intricate, dynamic interplay among race, culture, and biology.

Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” Half American is American history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, who was at the forefront of the years-long fight to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; James Thompson, the 26-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign; and poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.

Examines the economic conditions faced by African Americans in the United States and argues for free-market solutions over political allocation.

Explores the concept of white privilege and its impact on race relations in the United States.

A scholarly study revealing how white women across the South sustained segregation from the 1920s to the 1970s through grassroots politics, media, and community influence.