Month: June 2020

The Norma Marion Alloway Library presents our new series The Love of Reading to encourage us to expand our minds.

This week we recognize the importance in standing up and speaking against racism.  We need to educate one another and do the work together to dismantle unjust power structures that oppress BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) communities and work towards justice, love and fellowship (Amos 5:15).

Below is a small selection of ebooks  on the subject, “anti-racism“; click on the link for more information. To find additional titles in this subject area, simply enter the subject term into the Library OneSearch box and then refine your search by selecting “ebooks“. Note, you will need to sign on using your TWU login.

We also encourage you to spend time and become informed of  Black issues and history; see recommended material from Black History Month Must Reads (vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, and vol. 4).

Black and White: Disrupting Racism One Friendship at a Time /Hadra, Teesha and John Hambrick.
The core message of this title is that racism can be disrupted by relationships, by forging friendships with those who do not look like you, and result in changing the way you see the world. This title provides practical advice, and exploration of the systems of racism to motivate you to consider your own role in change.

Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism /Sullivan, Shannon.
This title argues for the necessity of a new ethos for middle-class white anti-racism and identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that the author sums up as “white middle-class goodness,” an orientation they critique for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege.

New Framings on Anti-Racism and Resistance: Volume 1 – Anti-Racism and Transgressive Pedagogies /Abdulle, Ayan, Anne Nelun Obeyeskere, and George J. Sefa Dei.
This collection of essays generates important enquiries into the teaching and practice of anti-racism education, presented by a diverse group of women committed to social justice work. Contemporary educational issues are situated within personal-political, historical and philosophical conversations, which work to broach the challenges and possibilities for students, educators, staff, administrators, policy makers, and community members who engage in critical anti-racism education. Be sure to check out the other volumes in this series.

Power Interrupted: Antiracist and Feminist Activism Inside the United Nations /Falcón, Sylvanna M.
This title redirects the conversation about UN-based feminist activism toward UN forums on racism. Based on the author’s analysis of UN antiracism spaces, in particular the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. The author situates contemporary antiracist feminist organizing from the Americas’ specifically the activism of feminists of color from the United States and Canada, and feminists from Mexico and Peru, alongside a critical historical reading of the UN and its agenda against racism.

White Self-Criticality Beyond Anti-racism: How Does It Feel to Be a White Problem? /Yancy, George.
This title emphasizes the significance of humility, vulnerability, anxiety, questions of complicity, and how being a “good white” is implicated in racial injustice. This collection sets a new precedent for critical race scholarship and critical whiteness studies to take into consideration what it means specifically to be a white problem rather than simply restrict scholarship to the problem of white privilege and white normative invisibility.