Critical Reads: Race and Racism

We are proud to partner with the Seminary Co-op, whose series “Reading is Critical” proposes:

Reading is critical, in both senses of the word. Crucial, of course, insofar as it is a cornerstone of communication, a primary means by which we receive information. But it is also an active form of resistance, a tactic in the struggle against ignorance, misinformation, and manipulation. To read is to become knowledgeable; to become knowledgeable is to become powerful.

With Seminary staff, we’ve curated some highlights from their Reading is Critical Series to address some of the big questions underpinning the 2019 theme, Power.

In 2014, the acclaimed author and journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article for The Atlantic entitled, “The Case for Reparations,” about racist housing policies in Chicago. The article and the city have become the seat of a national conversation about the need for reparations paid to the African American community for crimes of slavery and their persisting ramifications. Like Coates, the following authors offer a powerful framework for understanding race in Chicago and across the country. These Critical Reads challenge us to confront Chicago’s complicity, while calling upon residents to help create a racially equitable world. These authors consider important questions such as: What is restorative justice and why is it important? How can we reckon with and make reparations for America’s history of racism? And why are conversations about race powerful?

“I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Citing important works in critical race theory like Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, legal scholar James Froman Jr.’s Critical Reads offer an entry point into understanding race, crime, police, and prisons from the Jim Crow South pre-civil rights movement to the “new Jim Crow” of mass incarceration.

“We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.” —Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Interested in issues of identity and prejudice in pre-Civil War America? Historian Anna-Lisa Cox’s bibliography cites books like Toni Morrison’s A Mercy that tell the stories of “America’s black pioneers,” who took a stand for equality and freedom despite racist backlash.

“Punishment will never create peace.” —Ryan Lugalia-Hollon

Author and organizer, Ryan Lugalia-Hollon’s suggested reading interrogates policing, mass incarceration, and the effects of “surviving crime and violence” due to systemic and generational poverty. Lugalia-Hollon urges us to transform “how we think about investing in urban communities.”

We are proud to partner with the Seminary Co-op as our bookselling partner.

Header Image by Simone Montgomery