Books About Social Justice and Inequity

An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom. “An absolute must-read; tell your friends; buy it for your family; sit with it on your own. This is storytelling we need” (Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad).

From a pioneering advocate for LGBTQ youth, a gripping, impassioned account of how an unhoused queer youth’s murder compelled him to create the nation’s largest housing program for homeless LGBTQ teens.

In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.  McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.

A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life and legacy — from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing — telling the story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.

The Stonewall uprising — during which police raided the gay-friendly establishment Stonewall Inn and riots ensued, sparking the LGBTQ+ rights movement — is a pivotal moment in 20th-century American history, and The Stonewall Reader, curated by the New York Public Library, is an excellent primer and celebration of the brave souls who fought and changed everything.

A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic. When Crack Was King is a crucial reevaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.

Over the course of less than twenty-four hours in the spring of 1921, Tulsa’s infamous “Black Wall Street” was wiped off the map — and erased from the history books. Official records were disappeared, researchers were threatened, and the worst single incident of racial violence in American history was kept hidden for more than fifty years. But there were some secrets that would not die. Both a forgotten chronicle from the nation’s past and a story ripped from today’s headlines, The Ground Breaking is a page-turning reflection on how we, as Americans, must wrestle with the parts of our history that have been buried for far too long.

In this Pulitzer Prize-finalist book, award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and contributor to The 1619 Project tells the story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.

In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War.

An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer.

In this brilliantly argued and deeply personal work, Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using her own story as a starting point for an exploration of the rights, liberties, and protections that are traditionally associated with American citizenship. Weaving together her experiences with an examination of the place of nonwhites in the broader American culture, Lalami illuminates how conditional citizens are all those whom America embraces with one arm and pushes away with the other.

Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol’s devastating critique of America’s public school system, was the result of two years of investigating. His earth-shattering exposé unequivocally demonstrated the enormous inequities between wealthy and poor schools. A tragic and vital document, Kozol’s book shocked America with its unprecedented look at how race and class determine our children’s educations and, subsequently, their futures.

A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family. A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it is also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.

In Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. A work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott’s Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality — told through the crucible of one remarkable girl.

One of the most important works of criticism in the 20th century, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time contains two essays: one on race in American history; the other on race and religion. Baldwin’s inimitable writing and his scathing intelligence made this 1963 book a landmark in American literature in particular and literature in general.

In his first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, #1 bestselling author John Grisham and Centurion Ministries Founder Jim McCloskey share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions. Impeccably researched and grippingly told, Framed offers an inside look at the injustice faced by the victims of the United States criminal justice system.