Dawson Women's Shelter

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Black Futures Reading List

Dawson Women's Shelter

February is Black Futures Month.

What’s on your reading list this month?

Drop by DWS to borrow any of these books!

Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present
By RobYn Maynard

Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.

While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates.

Women, Race, and Class
By Angela Y. Davis

Have we mentioned Women, Race, and Class before? Yes. We will keep talking about what an INCREDIBLE book this is? YES!

Ranging from the age of slavery to contemporary injustices, this groundbreaking history of race, gender and class inequality by the radical political activist Angela Davis offers an alternative view of women’s struggles for liberation.

Tracing the intertwined histories of the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements, Davis examines the racism and class prejudice inherent in so much of white feminism, and in doing so brings to light new pioneering heroines, from field slaves to mill workers, who fought back and refused to accept the lives into which they were born.

Ain’t I A Woman
By bell hooks

Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar's bookshelf.

"…an absorbing delineation of the American black woman’s mark(s) of oppression at the hands of racist, misogynist, imperialist, capitalist patriarchy….Feminists must read this book…" —Cheryl Clarke, Off Our Backs

"Ain’t I a Woman is one of the most interesting, lucid books dealing with the subject of Feminism. The book can be recommended wholeheartedly to anyone who is interested in black history, in women’s history, or in that much-overlooked connection between the two." —Maria K. Mootry Ikerionwu, Phylon

Me and White Supremacy
By Layla F. Saad

When Layla F. Saad began an Instagram challenge called #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, she never predicted it would spread so quickly.

Using a step-by-step reflection process, she encouraged people with white privilege to examine their racist thoughts and behaviors. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and more than ninety thousand people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook. Since then, the work has spread to families, book clubs, educational institutions, nonprofits, corporations, event spaces, and more.

Based on the original workbook, Me and White Supremacy leads readers through a journey of understanding their white privilege and participation in white supremacy, so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on Black, Indigenous and People of Color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too. The book goes beyond the original workbook by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and includes expanded definitions, examples, and further resources.


Questions for Ada
By Ijeoma Umebinyuo

The artistry of Questions for Ada defies words, embodying the pain, the passion, and the power of love rising from the depths of our souls. Ijeoma Umebinyuo’s poetry is a flower that will blossom in the spirit of every reader as she shares her heart with raw candor. From lyrical lushness to smoky sensuality to raw truths, this tome of transforming verse is the book every woman wants to write but can’t until the broken mirrors of their lives have healed. In this gifted author’s own words—“I am too full of life to be half-loved.” A bold celebration of womanhood.

(Highly recommend checking out Ijeoma Umebinyuo’s store, where you can get some kick ass stuff!)

The Bluest Eye
By Toni Morrison

Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison powerfully examines our obsession with beauty and conformity—and asks questions about race, class, and gender with her characteristic subtly and grace.

In Morrison’s bestselling first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).

Kindred
By Octavia Butler

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
By Brittney Cooper

Far too often, Black women’s anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. Black women’s eloquent rage is what makes Serena Williams such a powerful tennis player. It’s what makes Beyoncé’s girl power anthems resonate so hard. It’s what makes Michelle Obama an icon.

Eloquent rage keeps us all honest and accountable. It reminds women that they don’t have to settle for less. When Cooper learned of her grandmother's eloquent rage about love, sex, and marriage in an epic and hilarious front-porch confrontation, her life was changed. And it took another intervention, this time staged by one of her homegirls, to turn Brittney into the fierce feminist she is today. In Brittney Cooper’s world, neither mean girls nor fuckboys ever win. But homegirls emerge as heroes. This book argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one's own superpowers are all we really need to turn things right side up again.


Pointe
By Brandy Colbert

I'm a woman of colour in my 30s, and there were so many memories the author mentioned that reminded me of growing up. The uncomfortable Civil War discussions at school, wearing a wrap to bed, how some guys at kind of objectify you because to them you're "exotic" because there's zero diversity in your school. The subtle descriptions made the story jump off of the page, and formed vivid characters, settings, and emotions. This story exceeded my expectations, and I don't want to say too much that might give away anything.

  • From an Amazon review


Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body
By Jessamyn Stanley

I wrote this book for every fat person, every old person, and every exceptionally short person. I wrote it for every person who has called themselves ugly and every person who can’t accept their beauty. I wrote it for every person who is self-conscious about their body.

I wrote it for every human being who struggles to find happiness on a daily basis, and for anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by the mere act of being alive. I’ve been there. We all have.

Yoga is for everybody and EVERY BODY. You don’t have to be thin and you don’t have to be fat. You don’t have to be a specific color or commit to a specific diet. You don’t have to earn (or have access to) a certain amount of money.

You don’t have to embody anything other than your truest and most honest self in order to practice yoga. You don’t have to omit the sadness, the anger, and all of the other “ugly” emotions that flavor our lives. You don’t have to be anyone other than yourself. And I think it’s high time that someone shouted it loud enough so everyone can hear.

Lots Lots Lots Lots More Lists

We’re not the first folks to make a reading list. Check out all these other great books on great lists:

February is Black Futures Month.

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