Hi! I am a member of a race education group in my school (11 to 18) and we are creating a reading list for the library. Our library isn’t very diverse right now (most books are written by white people about the West) and we need books on race education (privilege, discrimination, etc.) and on the history (precolonial, colonial and postcolonial, could be on neocolonialism too) and culture of underrepresented people.

Please keep in mind that these books should be acceptable by the school and approachable by students who would be unlikely to accept or read very progressive material, so themes that strongly (just strongly) contradict Western narratives should be avoided.

For example, a book on the colonisation of Palestine that exposes the oppressive nature of Zionism is mostly fine, but a book presenting Hamas as a liberation group would not be accepted (and actually illegal in my country).

You can reply with books or other reading lists that we could then review and add. I’ll finish this post with some examples of books on the reading list (keep in mind that it was for Black History Month, so all of the examples are on black people):

African Empires by Lyndon, Dan
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation In America by Carmichael, Stokely; Hamilton, Charles V
I Heard What You Said by Boakye, Jeffrey
The Assassination of Lumumba by Witte, Ludo de.
White privilege: the myth of a post-racial society by Bhopal, Kalwant

Thanks in advance!

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Major Taylor was one of the first big international sporting celebrities of any human race in a much more deeply troubled time, before cars were a thing anyone around would have owned. It really contrasts how Europe was at the time versus how backwards the United States was at the time and shines a light on how things have or have not changed. It is a genuinely good read too.

    image of the book "Major" by Todd Balf

    • temp_acc@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      Thanks! I don’t think we have any books on sports on the reading list, so I’ll definitely be adding this one.