books

Every so often I would like to share some books I have been reading and compile them to the menu bar at the top of my blog. These are a few of the books that I read lately that has helped to open my mind. Please comment if you have read any of these or others that has helped that shape your understanding of race.

Tatoos On The Heart By Gregory Boyle

This book has taught me so much about Christ's boundless love for everyone.

Favorite Quotes:

"If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives.

Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness.


Kinship– not serving the other, but being one with the other. Jesus was not “a man for others”; he was one with them. There is a world of difference in that.


God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.


The God, who is greater than God, has only one thing on Her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold the One who can't take His eyes off of you. Marinate in the vastness of that."



The Proper Care and Keeping of You

I have recently started reading this with Sophie and we have both loved it. We have had some great conversations started from this book. I love that the illustrations include girls of all skin colors in it! Really informative and age appropriate!

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

This book was full of interesting and complex characters and a very realisitic storyline. This book is full of examples of implicit bias, explicit bias and racism.

Some of my favorite quotes:

"Equality is treating everyone the same. But equity is taking differences into account, so everyone has a chance to succeed.


Active racism is telling a nurse supervisor that an African American nurse can’t touch your baby. It’s snickering at a black joke. But passive racism? It’s noticing there’s only one person of color in your office and not asking your boss why. It’s reading your kid’s fourth-grade curriculum and seeing that the only black history covered is slavery, and not questioning why. It’s defending a woman in court whose indictment directly resulted from her race…and glossing over that fact, like it hardly matters.


You say you don’t see color…but that’s all you see. You’re so hyperaware of it, and of trying to look like you aren’t prejudiced, you can’t even understand that when you say race doesn’t matter all I hear is you dismissing what I’ve felt, what I’ve lived, what it’s like to be put down because of the color of my skin."


The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

A riveting realistic fiction about a teenage girl whose best friend got shot by a cop. This book discusses grief, navigating friendships, sticking up for yourself, and the injustice within the justice system. I could not put down this book. Super quick read! It was interesting to read a book from this girl's perspective. Even though I am a white woman who has so much privilege, I could relate to how this young girl had to find her voice and learn how to stick up for herself and the people around her.


Quotes from the book:

" Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.

That's the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?


I’ve seen it happen over and over again: a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve Tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed every petition out there. I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down.

Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak.

People like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right.


Funny. Slave masters thought they were making a difference in black people’s lives too. Saving them from their “wild African ways.” Same shit, different century. I wish people like them would stop thinking that people like me need saving.


To every kid in Georgetown and in all “the Gardens” of the world: your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter. Be roses that grow in the concrete.

Right. Lack of opportunities," Daddy says. "Corporate America don't bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain't quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don't prepare us well enough. That's why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don't get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It's easier to find some crack that it is the find a good school around here.

"Now, think 'bout this," he says. "How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking 'bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don't know anybody with a private jet. Do you?"
"No."
"Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they're destroying our community," he says. "You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can't get jobs unless they're clean, and they can't pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That's the hate they're giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That's Thug Life."



Born a Crime by Trevor Noah


Trevor Noah tells his story about growing up during the apartheid in South Africa. Many stories he shares are similar to things going on in America.

Quotes from the book:

People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing

I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.

But the real world doesn't go away. Racism exists. People are getting hurt. And just because it's not happening to you, doesn't mean it's not happening. And at some point you have to choose; black or white, pick a side. You can try to hide from it. You can say, oh I don't take sides, but at some point, life will force you to pick a side.

You want to live in a world where someone is good or bad. Where you either hate them or love them. But that's not how people are.

Autobiography of Fredrick Douglas

All I can say is go to your library or click on the link and read one of his autobiographies. I know there are a few out there varying in length.  What an influential man Fredrick Douglas was! 

Quotes from Fredrick Douglas: 

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."


Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing follows to African sisters and their offspring throughout a few generations. One sister is forced to be a slave and come to America, the other sister stays in Africa.

Quotes from the book:

We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.

here should be no room in your life for regret. If in the moment of doing you felt clarity, you felt certainty, then why feel regret later?

You want to know what weakness is? Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.




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