| 2025 Reading List | |||||||
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Fiction Titles in Pink - Favorites in Bold
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Author | Genre/Subject | Year | fiction | shorts | read | rec |
| Ours: A Novel | Phillip B. Williams | historcal fiction | 2024 | Fiction | 0 | 1 | FALSE |
| The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters | Priya Parker | NA | 2018 | Non-Fiction | NA | 0 | FALSE |
| Smoke Kings | Jahmal Mayfield | NA | 2024 | Fiction | NA | 0 | FALSE |
| The Whale Rider | Witi Ihimaera | historical fiction | 1987 | Fiction | 0 | 0 | FALSE |
Fiction
- Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (2015) edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha
- Ceremony (1986) by Leslie Silko
- The Patternist Series (1976-1984) by Octavia Butler
- A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers (2019) edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) by Robert A. Heinlein
- Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) by Octavia Butler
- Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology (2023) edited by Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
- Kindred (1979) by Octavia Butler
- Annie Bot (2024) by Sierra Greer
- Broken Earth series (2015-2017) by N. K. Jemisin
- Teixcalaan series (2019-2021) by Arkady Martine
Non-fiction
Movement Building and Analysis
- An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World (2021) by Patrisse Cullors
- Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017) by adrienne maree brown
- What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World (2024) by Prentis Hemphill
- If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (2023) by Vincent Bevins
- How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (2012) edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
- How Nonviolence Protects the State (2007) by Peter Gelderloos
- Women, Race & Class (1981) by Angela Davis
- Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm (2020) by Kazu Haga
- Loving Corrections (2024) by adrienne maree brown
- How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community (2020) by Mia Birdsong
- Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019) written and gathered by adrienne maree brown
- American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress (2023) by Wesley Lowery
History
- Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion (2021) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States (2015) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America (2023) by Michael Harriot (fantastic audiobook!)
- A Disability History of the United States (2018) by Kim E. Nielsen
- Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership (2024) by Brea Baker
- By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land (2024) by Rebecca Nagle
Aboliton
- We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (2021) by Mariame Kaba
- From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (2017) by Elizabeth Hinton
- Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (2013) by Radley Balko
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition (2010/2020) by Michelle Alexander
- Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) by Angela Davis
- Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (2020) by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
- An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World (2021) by Patrisse Cullors
- Imagination: A Manifesto (2024) by Ruha Benjamin
- Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021) by Harsha Walia
Disability Justice
- The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs (2022) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha - disability justice frameworks and “cripping radical spaces” with a variety of pieces in different formats
- Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (2020) by Sasha Costanza-Chock - a great primer on how design choices include and exclude people and how design can radical change the world (free open access online)
- A Disability History of the United States (2012) by Kim E. Nielsen - nice quick overview of disability history, great for getting acquainted with disabled communities past and present
- How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom (2024) by Johanna Hedva - I don’t even know how to sum up this book but you must read it! life changing…from the inside cover: “How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” (lots of punk, metal, kink, etc, relatable essays)
- The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love (2018) by Sonya Renee Taylor - essential and super accessible for anyone with a body (also lots of videos available around this text)
- Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019) edited by adrienne maree brown - this is for reminding you that pleasure is essential and how radical it is to know and pursue pleasure in all its forms
- Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (2024) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs - for when you need to remember why surviving is so important
- Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety (2023) edited by Cara Page and Erica Woodland - so many strategies for healing and caring for ourselves and our community, we all need care and we can only build a better world if we know how to care and be cared for
- Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire (2024) edited by Alice Wong - diverse collection of disabled perspectives on all things intimate, in the broadest definition
- Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023) by Ashley Shew - amazing take down of the “tech will save us” ideology and how to think about disability not as something to fix or overcome, but something that is and figuring out what really helps you fulfill your goals instead of ableist ideals
- Medical Gaslighting: How to Get the Care You Deserve in a System that Makes You Fight for Your Life (2024) by Ilana Jacqueline - if you currently or ever have presented as a woman in a doctor’s office, this is required reading!
- Imagination: A Manifesto (2024) by Ruha Benjamin - this one has nothing to do with disability directly, but it was amazing and not too long and really rounds out the ideas in all of these books
Technology
- Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines (2023) by Dr. Joy Buolamwini
- Also see her documentary on Netflix Coded Bias
- Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018) by Virginia Eubanks
- Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (2018) by Meredith Broussard
- Algorithms of Oppression (2018) by Safiya Umoja Noble
- More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (2024) by Meredith Broussard
- Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (2020) by Sasha Costanza-Chock (open access)
- Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023) by Ashley Shew
Mental Health, Relationships, and Survival
- Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2019) by Robert Whitaker
- The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation by Cathy O’Neil (author of the groundbreaking book, Weapons of Math Destruction)
- The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004) by bell hooks
- An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World (2021) by Patrisse Cullors (I know this is on several lists, but it is really good and applicable to so many facets.)
- Medical Gaslighting: How to Get the Care You Deserve in a System that Makes You Fight for Your Life (2024) by Ilana Jacqueline
Memoirs, Biographies, and Essay Collections
- Assata (1998) by Assata Shakur
- A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (1992) by Elaine Brown
- Belonging: A Culture of Place (1990) by bell hooks
- When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018) by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele
- Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land (2020) by Toni Jensen
- Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (2024) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
- The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs (2022) by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
- Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (2021) by Da’Shaun L. Harrison
- The Message (2024) by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom (2024) by Johanna Hedva
