We are at a critical moment in American history, with a long-present and swiftly-growing mass movement dedicated to eradicating racism and enacting criminal justice reform impacting all spaces of American life. Many Americans are hungering to educate themselves about the topics of race, racism, and inequity. Booksellers are unable to meet the demand for books such as Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be Anti-Racist and Ijeoma Oluo’s  So You Want to Talk About Race.

Lists of anti-racist reading materials are circulating widely and writer Lauren Michel Jackson asks us to examine how we plan to engage with these materials. Here are just a handful:

• 16 Books on Race and White Privilege that Will Show You What’s Happening in America Right Now [Business Insider]
• Anti-racism reading resources, a document “for white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work,” compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker, Alyssa Klein [self-published]
• An Antiracist Reading List by Ibram X. Kendi [New York Times]
• Do the Work: An Anti-racist Reading List by Layla F. Saad [The Guardian]

In the UVM Libraries, we recognize the strong interest many people have now in reading and learning, and we want to help you connect with the resources in our collection, particularly at a time when they are hard to come by elsewhere. We’ll be featuring books, articles, videos and more in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.

For UVM affiliates, here are some resources you can access now:

Available online:

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-first Century by William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen

The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege by Ken Wytsma

Available for curbside pickup at the Howe Library (as of 6/8/2020):

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum

The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward

Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement with a foreword by Cornel West ; edited by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, Kendall Thomas

How We Fight White Supremacy edited by Akiba Solomon + Kenrya Rankin

Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making all Black Lives Matter by Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith

The Making of Black Lives Matter by a Brief History of an Idea by Christopher J. Lebron

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

To find resources in the Libraries’ collections, use our CATQuest search and discovery tool and experiment with keywords and subject headings such as black lives matter movement, racism, racial disparity, and racial discrimination. Experiment with filtering tools to refine your results (you can limit results to online resources, for example). And as always, let us know how we can help!