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On Display: Noname's Book Club

by Zia Davidian on 2020-07-07T12:00:00-04:00 in Fun Reading, On Display, Popular Culture | 0 Comments

Almost exactly a year ago, Chicago rapper Noname spontaneously started a book club via Twitter. The community has grown to over 144k followers on Twitter, almost 100k on Instagram, and even has six local chapters that meet in-person. The book club often features two books per month: one fiction and one nonfiction. The club is dedicated to highlighting the voices of writers of color, and urges members to get their books from libraries and independent bookstores

To make it easier for you to join the conversation, or just discover some new titles, we've compiled links to Noname's Books of the Month from the past 6 months. In a few cases we don't have ebook access to the title, but we've provided a link to something else by the same author, or on a similar topic. 

 

July

Cover ArtCaptive Genders by Eric Stanley; CeCe McDonald (Foreword by); Nat Smith (Editor)
Since first published in 2011, Captive Genders, a groundbreaking account of trans and genderqueer people within the prison industrial complex, has become a highly regarded resource and valuable touchstone for incarcerated LGBTQ people and their allies. The first book of its kind, it has been highly praised by gender theorists and prison abolitionists alike, including Angela Davis. 

Cover ArtAre Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

***Access is available through the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service. You MUST log in with your umich uniqname and password***

Since the 1980s prison construction and incarceration rates in the U.S. have been rising exponentially, evoking huge public concern about their proliferation, their recent privatization and their promise of enormous profits. But these prisons house hugely disproportionate numbers of people of color, betraying the racism embedded in the system, while studies show that increasing prison sentences has had no effect on crime. Here, esteemed civil rights activist Angela Davis lays bare the situation and argues for a radical rethinking of our rehabilitation programs.
 

 

June

Cover ArtRace Music by Guthrie P. Ramsey
This powerful book covers the vast and various terrain of African American music, from bebop to hip-hop. Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr., begins with an absorbing account of his own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago, evoking Sunday-morning worship services, family gatherings with food and dancing, and jam sessions at local nightclubs. This lays the foundation for a brilliant discussion of how musical meaning emerges in the private and communal realms of lived experience and how African American music has shaped and reflected identities in the black community. Deeply informed by Ramsey's experience as an accomplished musician, a sophisticated cultural theorist, and an enthusiast brought up in the community he discusses, Race Music explores the global influence and popularity of African American music, its social relevance, and key questions regarding its interpretation and criticism.
 

Cover Art

Soledad Brother by George Jackson
***Recommended in place of Blood In My Eye by George Jackson***
A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

 

May

Cover ArtAssata by Assata Shakur; Angela Davis (Foreword by)

In 2013 Assata Shakur, founding member of the Black Liberation Army, former Black Panther and godmother of Tupac Shakur, became the first ever woman to make the FBI's most wanted terrorist list. Assata Shakur's trial and conviction for the murder of a white state trooper in the spring of 1973 divided America. Her case quickly became emblematic of race relations and police brutality in the USA. While Assata's detractors continue to label her a ruthless killer, her defenders cite her as the victim of a systematic, racist campaign to criminalize and suppress black nationalist organizations. This intensely personal and political autobiography reveals a sensitive and gifted woman, far from the fearsome image of her that is projected by the powers that be. With wit and candor, Assata recounts the formative experiences that led her to embrace a life of activism. With pained awareness she portrays the strengths, weaknesses and eventual demise of black and white revolutionary groups at the hands of the state. A major contribution to the history of black liberation, destined to take its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou.

 

 

April

Cover ArtWar Against All Puerto Ricans by Nelson A. Denis
The powerful, untold story of the 1950 revolution in Puerto Rico and the long history of U.S. intervention on the island, that the New York Times says "could not be more timely." In 1950, after over fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico staged an unsuccessful armed insurrection against the United States. Violence swept through the island: assassins were sent to kill President Harry Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burned down. In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens. Nelson A. Denis tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Pedro Albizu Campos, who served as the president of the Nationalist Party. A lawyer, chemical engineer, and the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard Law School, Albizu Campos was imprisoned for twenty-five years and died under mysterious circumstances. By tracing his life and death, Denis shows how the journey of Albizu Campos is part of a larger story of Puerto Rico and US colonialism. Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, War Against All Puerto Ricans tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico's history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.

 

Cover ArtDahlia Season:  by Myriam Gurba
***Recommended in place of Mean by Myriam Gurba***

 

March

Cover ArtViolence in the Lives of Black Women by Carolyn West
***Recommended in place of Love With Accountability by Aishah Shahidah Simmons. This collection includes an essay by Aishah Shahidah Simmons***

 

Cover ArtAs Black As Resistance by William C. Anderson; Mariame Kaba (Foreword by); Zoé Samudzi
The essay 'The Anarchism of Blackness' appeared in issue #5 of ROAR Magazine in April 2017 where it made a splash and was reposted and shared widely, on both sides of the Atlantic. The authors have now expanded that essay into a book, with the passion of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, the raw truth of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, and the fervour of Emma Goldman's timeless essays.

February

Cover ArtSister Outsider by Audre Lorde
The leader of contemporary feminist theory discusses such issues as racism, self-acceptance, and mother- and woman-hood.

 

Cover ArtThe Tradition by Jericho Brown

***Recommended in place of Magical Negro by Morgan Parker***

 

 

***

Search for more e-books and audiobooks: https://libguides.umflint.edu/ebooks/atoz

How to search for and use e-books [video tutorials]

 


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