As acknowledged in Vol. 1 of this sequence, everyone knows there are far more than 5 books with the facility to utterly change your life. Therefore, we’re doing this ongoing sequence type, with this text serving as Vol. 2.
The 5 books beneath definitely possess the potential to open you/me/us to untold new data and insights. Nonetheless, together with studying them, I’m encouraging you to share any books you consider ought to be included in future volumes by sending these titles and authors to me at aswad@defendernetwork.com.
Till then, get pleasure from.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Some view Butler because the Queen Mom of Afrofuturism (of Black Speculative Artwork). However no matter label you affix to Butler, upon studying this e-book and the subsequent one within the sequence (Parable of the Abilities), you’ll know she’s a bonafide genius, seer and prophet. Revealed in 1993, you’d suppose the occasions specified by the e-book had been written by somebody residing in 2023. The e-book is simply that related to our present actuality. Actually, in 2021, it was picked by readers of the New York Instances as the highest science fiction nomination for the most effective e-book of the final 125 years. And if that’s not sufficient to persuade you to select up this basic, perhaps the synopsis will:
“When world local weather change and financial crises result in social chaos within the early 2020s, California turns into stuffed with risks, from pervasive water scarcity to lots of vagabonds who will do something to dwell to see one other day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated neighborhood along with her preacher father, household, and neighbors, sheltered from the encircling anarchy. In a society the place any vulnerability is a threat, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ feelings. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren should make her voice heard with a purpose to shield her family members from the upcoming disasters her small neighborhood stubbornly ignores. However what begins as a struggle for survival quickly results in one thing rather more: the delivery of a brand new religion… and a startling imaginative and prescient of human future.”
White Rage: The Unstated Fact of Our Racial Divide by Dr. Carol Anderson
Right here’s the lengthy model of why you will need to learn Anderson’s e-book: “Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Modification, each time African Individuals have made advances in direction of full participation in our democracy, white response has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their features. The top of the Civil Conflict and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court docket’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Schooling resolution was met with the shutting down of public colleges all through the South whereas taxpayer {dollars} financed segregated white personal colleges; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded however highly effective response, the so-called Southern Technique and the Conflict on Medication that disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of African Individuals whereas propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White Home.”
The quick model: each time whites thought Blacks loved features in society (whether or not we did or not), whites reacted with violence (bodily or policy-wise) to “put us again in our place” and block us from these features since we had been deemed by them to be undeserving. This e-book is critically necessary proper now as a result of this “white rage” is actually on steroids as we converse, and guarantees to supply extra violence to return.
African Origins of Civilization: Fable or Actuality by Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop
There are numerous books that greater than counter the BS insanity of those that struggle tooth and nail to distort, destroy and low cost Black/Pan-African historical past. However why not begin off (or proceed your African historical past journey) with a e-book written by one of many world’s best students of all time—the brother who the data and know-how of 5 Ph.D.s (in physics, African historical past, Egyptology, linguistics and anthropology) to show emphatically that the traditional Egyptians (people from Kemet) had been Black.
The concept argued by DeSantis & nem in Florida that slavery was a jobs coaching program that benefitted Black folks is among the most egregious and insulting ideas ever pushed. However what’s simply as dangerous is our kids (and fogeys) strolling round oblivious to the historical past that exhibits that place to be a lie.
Black Christian Nationalism: New Instructions for the Black Church by Rev. Albert. B. Cleage Jr.
Cleage, thought-about the “Father of Black Liberation Theology,” argues that as Black folks we consider improper about God, humanity, salvation and the position of faith—indoctrinated by a “slave theology,” a theology given to us by those that enslaved and brutalized us. The aim of this “slave theology:” to persuade Black folks to go together with our oppression and second-class standing; to simply accept our struggling on this facet of the grave as the value to pay for incomes our reward in heaven after dying; to persuade us that the facility to alter our actuality exists outdoors of us and never inside us; and to maneuver us from our communal/group (I’m as a result of we’re) connection to a spotlight solely upon our particular person selves, the well-being of our sisters and brothers be damned.
Cleage argues that this “slave theology” survived long gone the “Emancipation Proclamation” and exists to this present day, as Black preachers have hardly ever strayed from the foundational message preached on the plantation. Cleage provides “New Instructions for the Black Church” by way of a liberating theology (a brand new/historic means of believing about God, humanity, salvation and the position of faith). He contends this new/historic means of believing is crucial as a result of as many historic spiritualists have taught for eons, our ideas/beliefs/worldview dictate our actions. Therefore, a “slave theology” produces from us actions that perpetuate our enslavement, whereas a theology of liberation will assist Blackfolk break away from the “slave theology” matrix and boldly stroll in new and liberating instructions that demand we tear down any constructions or beliefs that search to disclaim our full Black humanity.
The Unapologetic Information to Black Psychological Well being by Dr. Rheeda Walker
This e-book, by the internationally-acclaimed College of Houston professor Dr. Rheeda Walker, is described as “an unapologetic exploration of the Black psychological well being disaster—and a complete street map to getting the care you deserve in an unequal system.” And we sho-nuff are within the midst of a Black psychological well being disaster, with suicides rising at an alarming fee (particularly amongst Black youth). And too usually we both search no assist in any respect or go in search of assist/love in all of the improper locations, i.e. with psychological well being professionals who low cost our distinctive experiences as Black folks present in an anti-Black society. Walker is talking on to, for and about us!
