The Thompson Library & Archives Blog

On Display: Common Read 2024

Have you enjoyed reading this year's Common Read, No Ashes in the Fire by Darnell Moore? Maybe you caught Moore's visit on February 4 and want to explore some of the themes he discussed? Then check out the library's ongoing display of read-alike memoirs and books with themes of activism, coming of age, education, LGBTQIA+, blackness, and masculinity.

Check out these books (and more) from our physical display.

The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Call Number: F 189 .B153 C63 2009

With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father's generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.

Colours of Pride: Collections by Xzavier Simon

Call Number: HQ 75.16 .F6 C668 2020 v.1 - 3

Xzavier V. Simon & The Modern Queer Magazine present: From Flint, Michigan and across the U.S. comes together people of colour from the queer community to share pieces of their stories.

The Fire This Time by Jesmyn Ward

Call Number: E 185.615 .F526 2016

These groundbreaking essays and poems about race--collected by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and written by the most important voices of her generation--are "thoughtful, searing, and at times, hopeful."

Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Call Number: HQ 76.27 .Y68 K63 2019

Started as a way to explain to Kobabe's family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

Practicing New Worlds by Andrea Ritchie

Call Number: HM 831 .R58 2023

Explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.

Salvation by bell hooks

Call Number: E 185.86 .H739 2001

Written from both historical and cultural perspectives, Salvation takes an incisive look at the transformative power of love in the lives of African Americans.

If you are more an ebook or audiobook reader, check out our collection on the Libby app.