Reading Matters
A non-exhaustive list of some of my favorite reads because literacy is revolutionary (and it's been highly requested)
Though most of the titles shared here are from Bookshop.org, I receive no commission from your purchases if you do so through them— using one site just proved to be more efficient when scourging up the titles.
Personally, I’m partial to Haymarket Books
Ideally, you can find some of these books online for free or you’re able to loan these texts from the library and if unable to, I urge you to support indie bookstores! These are all books within my personal library but they alone are not a representation of my politic or worldview, it’s all cumulative so take what you can digest and be critical of it all. Neither I, nor these authors are infallible and that should be top of mind.
One of my favorite videos on the internet is almost 20 years old. It’s an animated “parody”1 music video simply titled Read A Book2. You should give it a watch, it’s not a waste of time I promise. Anyway, the existence of that video and the fact that it’s imparted on my brain shows how impactful it was to me.
I was already a voracious reader 17 years ago when it dropped (she’s aging herself), so it served as affirmation more than inspiration. However, in light of the growing literacy crisis we’re in, over 54% of US adults are functionally illiterate and read below a 6th grade level3, and rise in generative AI that’s not only polluting finite clean drinking water sources4, but also draining your cognitive skills the more task you offload to it5… It bears repeating how important reading is not just to me, but to the world. As my friend Ismatu has reminded us time and time again in their essays6, imagining and partaking in new world making requires access to literacy. Reading is a tool of revolution.
So in that spirit, and considering I’m frequently asked for the titles that fill my shelves, I’ve compiled non-exhaustive lists (I literally own hundreds, perhaps thousands of books we’d be here all day) grouped in a way that makes sense to me and will attempt to update periodically. You’ll only get the email/notification once, but I’ll try to remind folks when I fill it up more. Enough talk, let’s get into the books!
Black Shit
(Afropessimism, fabrications of race and it’s social, cultural & economic function)
Slavery & The Social Death- Orlando Patterson
Black Ghost of Empire - Kris Manjapra
Blood In My Eye - George Jackson
Afropessimism - Frank B. Wilderson
Negroes with Guns - Robert F. Williams
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Lose Your Mother - Saidiya Hartman
Scenes of Subjection - Saidiya Hartman
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
Not "A Nation of Immigrants" - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Belly of the Beast - Da'shaun L. Harrison
Black Women Writers at Work- Claudia Tate
This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed - Charles E. Cobbs Jr.
Force and Freedom - Kellie Carter Jackson
Black on Both Sides - C.Riley Snorton
Racecraft - Barbara J. Fields & Karen Fields
Tip of the Spear - Orisanmi Burton
Black Scare / Red Scare - Charisse Burden-Stelly
Medical Apartheid - Harriet A. Washington
Working the Roots - Michele Elizabeth Lee
Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Angela Davis
Bad Fat Black Girl - Sesali Bowen
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
Organizing
(for labor and beyond)
We Do This 'Til We Free Us - Mariame Kaba
Resisting Borders & Technologies of Violence - Edited by Aizeki, Schuper & Mahmoudi
No More Police - Mariame Kaba & Andrea Ritchie
We Will Not Cancel Us - Adrienne Marie Brown
Reconsidering Reparations - Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Fresh Banana Leaves - Jessica Hernandez
Freedom Dreams - Robin D.G. Kelley
The Devil is Here in These Hills - James Green
There is Power in a Union - Philip Dray
At the Hands of Persons Unknown - Philip Dray
Abolish Rent - Tracey Rosenthal & Leonardo Vichis
Let This Radicalize You - Mariame Kaba & Kelly Hayes
We Grow the World Together - edited by Maya Schenwar & Kim Wilson
Back to Black - Kehinde Andrews
Decolonial Marxism - Walter Rodney
Left of Karl Marx - Carol Boyce Davies
Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Border Crossed Us - Justin Akers Chacon
The Nation of No Map - William C. Anderson
Country Queers - Rae Garringer
Radicalism at the Crossroads - Dayo F. Gore
A Soldier's Story - Kuwasi Balagoon
The Colored Conventions Movement - Foreman, Casey & Patterson
Sex
(its work, politic and function)
Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts - Kate Lister
Saving Our Own Lives - Shira Hassan
A Curious History of Sex - Kate Lister
Revolting Prostitutes - Molly Smith & Juno Mac
Playing the Whore - Melissa Gira Grant
Not Your Rescue Project - Chanelle Gallant, Elene Lam & Robyn Maynard
Sex at Dawn - Calcida Jetha & Christopher Ryan
How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex - Samantha Cole
Sexual Justice - Alexandra Brodsky
All Our Trials - Emily L. Thuma
The Perfumed Garden - Sheik Nefzawi
What Pornography Knows - Kathleen Lubey
The Soft City - Terry Williams
For the Love of Men - Liz Plank
A Taste for Brown Sugar - Mirielle Miller-Young
Come As You Are - Emily Nagoski
Lower Than the Angels - Diarmaid MacCulloch
Caliban and the Witch - Silvia Federici
Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialsim - Kristen R. Ghodsee
A Lover's Pinch - Peter Tupper
Preppy Shit
(For those of us preparing for the end… whatever it looks like)
The Forager's Harvest - Samuel Thayer
The Backyard Homestead - Carleen Madigan
The Urban Prepper's Guide - Jim Cobb
The Healing Garden - Juliet Bankenspoor
If you can believe it, this is still not the entirely of my library or total sum of books I greatly enjoy. I limited this list to non-fiction because I find the info more cogent in this form, especially in regards to conceptualizing both the means at which you’re oppressed and the blueprint towards your liberation. As I’ve been putting this together in the last few weeks, I frequently grew tearful and I couldn’t articulate why at first. It wasn’t until now, the day this list goes out that it dawned on me: reading saved my life.
Whether it was my days at the dining table every Sunday afternoon as a child, writing reports on Black radical thought my mother required we digest to increase our survival into adulthood, or the fiction novels I escaped into for hours at a time making the poverty, the violence and abuse I experienced distant in mind while lost in those stories or the emails ripe with opportunities to feed myself well and be securely housed for another month if I accepted this booking— the written word, communication at large saved my life. And as I’ve aged, I’ve always hoped I could pay it forward through my own writings and teachings and fellowship. That dream felt impossible for many years but today, it feels closer than ever.
And I have you to thank for it.
Parody is being used loosely here
For your viewing & listening pleasure
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-statistics-2024-2025-where-we-are-now
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-accelerating-the-loss-of-our-scarcest-natural-resource-water/
https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025
https://www.threadings.io/
This has been reiterated across various writings of theirs and you should read all of them, I’m not joking. Ismatu is brilliant and so very hungry for liberation.
Thank you for making all the knowledge you provide so readily accessible. I "thought" I understood afro-pessimissim until I watched your latest tiktok. Now I have a more fuller understanding of it than I ever did and the gears in my head have been turning ever since.
Thank you so much for the list❤️. Out of curiosity what are your thoughts on Fanon? I rarely see his work mentioned anymore