Below are some examples of good books to learn from and educate yourself about a number of issues around race. 

 

BOOKS

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Girl, Woman, Other

Bernardine Evaristo

Kaleidoscopic in theme and incandescent in tone, Evaristo’s panorama of modern black womanhood resounds with an astonishing diversity of voice and character as seen across a changing century. Tracking the lives and loves of a dozen British women through generations and social classes, Girl, Woman, Other weaves a distinctive, illuminating tapestry of modern British life.

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Queenie

Candice Carty-Williams

Caught between the Jamaican British family who don’t seem to understand her, a job that’s not all it promised and a man she just can’t get over, Queenie Jenkins’ life seems to be steadily spiralling out of control in Candice Carty-Williams luminous debut. By turns hilariously funny, dramatic and tender, with a heroine to root for, Queenie is one of the most exciting debuts in years.

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Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Reni Eddo-Lodge

A charged and necessary wake-up call to pervasive, institutionalised racism, Eddo-Lodge’s searing polemic reconstitutes the frame of the argument around race, removing it from the hands of those with little experience of its resonances. From ambient and lazy cultural stereotyping to open hostility, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race is a clarion call of understanding.

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Natives

Akala

Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.

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Me and White Supremacy 
Layla Saad, Robin DiAngelo

Packed with practical exercises and enlightening socio-political context, the book of Saad's pioneering blog offers numerous ways of transforming the discourse surrounding systemic racism.

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Black and British 

David Olusoga

The definitive history of Britain’s troubled history with the people of Africa and the Caribbean, Olusoga’s account begins in the Roman era and takes in Elizabethan ‘blackamoors’ and the horrors of the slave trade as well as the author’s own childhood memories of racism and prejudice. Enthrallingly written and endlessly enlightening, Black and British is absolutely essential reading.

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They Can't Kill Us All
Wesley Lowery

A blistering slice of contemporary reportage, Wesley Lowery’s account of Black Lives Matter tracks the formation of the movement in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin and the political ramifications of mass protest. Filled with heart-breaking personal testimony of those who have suffered police violence or have lost loved ones to it, They Can’t Kill Us All is a raw, empowering book.

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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings 
Maya Angelou 

One of the most magnificently perceptive memoirs of growing up a Black woman in twentieth century America, the first of Angelou’s seven volumes of autobiography is a spellbinding combination of intense joy and extreme suffering. Recounting her youth in the Deep South of the 1930s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a milestone in the history of life-writing and a key work on racial injustice.

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Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Framed as a letter to his son, Coates pursues the question of how to live free within a black body in a country built on the idea of race, a falsehood most damaging to the bodies of black women and men.

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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X

Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-white citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.