Anti-Racist Book Donations for WCPL

October 1, 2020

uploaded photo for registry

We’ve made it easy to donate black-themed and anti-racist books to the Wayne County Public Library! People can educate themselves about these important issues and you can help by providing the resources to do so! This website compiles our list of gift requests, but does not sell the gifts. We coordinated this list with the collections development staff of Wayne County Public Library, which is why you might see different numbers of books requested.
- When you've chosen the title that you'd like to donate, click on the 'Give this gift' button.
- Then, you can follow our instructions on how or where to give the gift. We have linked to each book's page on bookshop.org to purchase, and we chose that site because they donate a portion of each sale to independent bookstores.
- Please be sure to ship your donations to:
Rachel Fichter - Donation Coordinator
702 E Bowman St.
Wooster, OH 44691
Thank you!

image for This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell
This Book Is Anti-Racist by Tiffany Jewell

Author Tiffany Jewell, an anti-bias, anti-racist educator and activist, builds solidarity beginning with the language she chooses--using gender neutral words to honor everyone who reads the book. Illustrator Aurélia Durand brings the stories and characters to life with kaleidoscopic vibrancy.

After examining the concepts of social identity, race, ethnicity, and racism, learn about some of the ways people of different races have been oppressed, from indigenous Americans and Australians being sent to boarding school to be "civilized" to a generation of Caribbean immigrants once welcomed to the UK being threatened with deportation by strict immigration laws.

Find hope in stories of strength, love, joy, and revolution that are part of our history, too, with such figures as the former slave Toussaint Louverture, who led a rebellion against white planters that eventually led to Haiti's independence, and Yuri Kochiyama, who, after spending time in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during WWII, dedicated her life to supporting political prisoners and advocating reparations for those wrongfully interned.

Learn language and phrases to interrupt and disrupt racism. So, when you hear a microaggression or racial slur, you'll know how to act next time.

This book is written for EVERYONE who lives in this racialized society--including the young person who doesn't know how to speak up to the racist adults in their life, the kid who has lost themself at times trying to fit into the dominant culture, the children who have been harmed (physically and emotionally) because no one stood up for them or they couldn't stand up for themselves, and also for their families, teachers, and administrators.

With this book, be empowered to actively defy racism and xenophobia to create a community (large and small) that truly honors everyone.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
2
Given
2
image for The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S."

Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
6
Given
6
image for Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You by Jason Reynolds Ibram X. Kendi
Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You by Jason Reynolds Ibram X. Kendi

This is NOT a history book.
This is a book about the here and now.
A book to help us better understand why we are where we are.
A book about race.
The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.
Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
8
Given
8
image for Black Brother Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Black Brother Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Framed. Bullied. Disliked. But I know I can still be the best.
Sometimes, 12-year-old Donte wishes he were invisible. As one of the few black boys at Middlefield Prep, most of the students don't look like him. They don't like him either. Dubbing him "Black Brother," Donte's teachers and classmates make it clear they wish he were more like his lighter-skinned brother, Trey.
When he's bullied and framed by the captain of the fencing team, "King" Alan, he's suspended from school and arrested.
Terrified, searching for a place where he belongs, Donte joins a local youth center and meets former Olympic fencer Arden Jones. With Arden's help, he begins training as a competitive fencer, setting his sights on taking down the fencing team captain, no matter what.
As Donte hones his fencing skills and grows closer to achieving his goal, he learns the fight for justice is far from over. Now Donte must confront his bullies, racism, and the corrupt systems of power that led to his arrest.
Powerful and emotionally gripping, Black Brother, Black Brother is a careful examination of the school-to-prison pipeline and follows one boy's fight against racism and his empowering path to finding his voice.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
7
Given
7
image for A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramee
A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramee

Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. (Oh, and she'd also like to make it through seventh grade with her best friendships intact, learn to run track, and have a cute boy see past her giant forehead.)

But in junior high, it's like all the rules have changed. Now she's suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she's not black enough. Wait, what?

Shay's sister, Hana, is involved in Black Lives Matter, but Shay doesn't think that's for her. After experiencing a powerful protest, though, Shay decides some rules are worth breaking. She starts wearing an armband to school in support of the Black Lives movement. Soon everyone is taking sides. And she is given an ultimatum.

Shay is scared to do the wrong thing (and even more scared to do the right thing), but if she doesn't face her fear, she'll be forever tripping over the next hurdle. Now that's trouble, for real.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
6
Given
6
image for Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson
Becoming Muhammad Ali by Kwame Alexander and James Patterson

Before he was a household name, Cassius Clay was a kid with struggles like any other. Kwame Alexander and James Patterson join forces to vividly depict his life up to age seventeen in both prose and verse, including his childhood friends, struggles in school, the racism he faced, and his discovery of boxing. Readers will learn about Cassius' family and neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky, and how, after a thief stole his bike, Cassius began training as an amateur boxer at age twelve. Before long, he won his first Golden Gloves bout and began his transformation into the unrivaled Muhammad Ali.
Fully authorized by and written in cooperation with the Muhammad Ali estate, Becoming Muhammad Ali dynamically captures the budding charisma and youthful personality of one of the greatest sports heroes of all time.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
Secondhand
Requested
1
Given
1
image for So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of Black Americans--has put a media spotlight on racism in our society. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
1
Given
1
image for White Rage by Carol Anderson
White Rage by Carol Anderson

Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America's first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal.
Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
1
Given
1
image for Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel
Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel

In 2016, the president-elect of the United States openly called for segregation and deportation based on race and religion. Meanwhile, inequalities in education, housing, health care, and the job market continue to prevail, while increased insecurity and fear have led to an epidemic of scapegoating and harassment of people of color. Yet, recent polls show that only thirty-one percent of white people in the United States believe racism is a major societal problem; at the same time, resistance is strong, as highlighted by indigenous struggles for land and sovereignty and the Movement for Black Lives.

Completely revised and updated, this fourth edition of Uprooting Racism offers a framework around neoliberalism and interpersonal, institutional, and cultural racism, along with stories of resistance and white solidarity. It provides practical tools and advice on how white people can work as allies for racial justice, engaging the reader through questions, exercises, and suggestions for action, and includes a wealth of information about specific cultural groups such as Muslims, people with mixed heritage, Native Americans, Jews, recent immigrants, Asian Americans, and Latino/as.

Previous editions of Uprooting Racism have sold more than 50,000 copies. This accessible, personal, supportive, and practical guide is ideal for students, community activists, teachers, youth workers, and anyone interested in issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
2
Given
2
image for Raising Race Questions by Ali Michael
Raising Race Questions by Ali Michael

Conversations about race can be confusing, contentious, and frightening, particularly for White people. Even just asking questions about race can be scary, because we are afraid of what our questions might reveal about our ignorance or bias. Raising Race Questions invites teachers to use inquiry as a way to develop sustained engagement with challenging racial questions and to do so in community so that they learn how common their questions actually are. It lays out both a process for getting to questions that lead to growth and change, as well as a vision for where engagement with race questions might lead. Race questions are not meant to lead us into a quagmire of guilt, discomfort, or isolation. Sustained race inquiry is meant to lead to antiracist classrooms, positive racial identities, and a restoration of the wholeness of spirit and community that racism undermines.

Book Features:

New insights on race and equity in education, including the idea that a multicultural curriculum is not sufficient for building an antiracist classroom.
Case studies of expert and experienced White teachers who still have questions about race.
Approaches for talking about race in the K-12 classroom.
Strategies for facilitating race conversations among adults.
A variety of different resources useful in the teacher inquiry groups described in the book.
Research with teachers, not on teachers, including written responses from each teacher whose classroom is featured in the book.

Purchase from Bookshop.org

Type of gift
New
Requested
1
Given
1