The team who brought you our all-congregation conversations about race this past year has compiled recommendations for summer reading and viewing to aid our continued learning. Ask yourself where you are on your anti-racism journey and which topic might spur your understanding, compassion or contribution to the work ahead. Look for “top picks” in June, July & August, and please refer to fccfaithful.org/anti-racism for a longer list of valuable material.
An ordained pastor with thirty years of experience promoting racial reconciliation uses the story of Esther to challenge herself and us to answer the call for justice. For anyone who ever asked, "Who, me?"
A powerful exploration of inequality that shows how American racism affects each of us. The NY Times book review states “The Sum of Us” is predicated on the idea that little will change until white people realize what racism has cost them too. It’s a self-defeating form of exclusion, a determination not to share resources even if the ultimate result is that everyone suffers.”
This book enables us to understand and know what to do about the racial wealth gap: Darity says, “The average black household has a net worth that is $840,000 less than the average white household.”
If summer makes you want to read a novel, this stunning book follows eight generations descending from two Ghanian half-sisters and lived from the Gold Coast of Africa to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Through story, the author “illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.”
