Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters, by Helena Andrews-Dyer and R. Eric Thomas
Reclaiming Her Time renders Representative Waters’s extraordinary career in penetrating detail and with razor-sharp wit. Andrews-Dyer and Thomas have created a beautiful celebration of Waters’s great vision, wisdom, and heart.
Say It Louder!: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy, by Tiffany D. Cross
Say It Louder! shows, precisely, how white narratives, political campaigns, and voter suppression have combined to diminish the power of Black voters. But this is not a despairing book. Through it all, Cross brilliantly and poignantly foretells the power of Black voters—and their role in saving American democracy. This farsighted book portended the 2020 election.
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, by Alicia Garza
“Black lives matter” was Alicia Garza’s love letter read around the world. The Purpose of Power is another love letter that should be read around the world. It speaks to all that molded Garza, all that molds organizers, all that molds movements.
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, by Martha S. Jones
Jones is the leading political historian of African American women. And this book is the commanding history of the remarkable struggle of African American women for political power. The more power they accumulated, the more equality they wrought. All Americans would be better off learning this history and grasping just how much we owe to equality’s vanguard.
Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot, by Mikki Kendall
Hood Feminism paints a brutally candid and unobstructed portrait of mainstream white feminism: a narrow movement that disregards the needs of the overwhelming majority of women. In the storied tradition of Black feminism stretching back to Maria Stewart, Kendall persuasively contends that women’s basic needs are feminist issues. The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women.
The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide, by Zerlina Maxwell
Just as I can listen to Maxwell all day long, I can read her political analysis all day long. The End of White Politics is a clear-eyed critique of the racism and sexism corroding American politics, including the Democratic Party. To read this book is to understand the unifying and democratic path forward for the American people.
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, by Ijeoma Oluo
Trumpism—and its mission to maintain white male supremacy at all costs—is hardly a new phenomenon in American politics. Oluo adeptly historicizes the brutal effects of white male supremacy on people of color, white women, and white men. In charting a new white masculinity free of racism and sexism, Mediocre is a liberatory book. Liberatory for white men. Liberatory for us all.