News & Views from the CMU Libraries

At CMU, our Black students, faculty, and staff have experienced discrimination and injustice on campus and in the community. You can learn more about the experiences of Black students, faculty, staff, and alumni at Stop Racial Injustice and Bias at CMU and about the experiences of students of color through the video, It Takes an Open Mind.

One way we can learn about our country’s history of racism and how to become antiracist is to read about it. Reading is a great beginning point that can lead to reflection, discussion, and action.

In an interview with Booklist, Ibram X. Kendi said, “I’ve been transformed by literature and books. Being able to write books that do the same for other people inspires me.” Dr. Kendi’s writings, and the writings of other Black authors, give us a vocabulary for understanding and discussing antiracism.

To expand the CMU Libraries’ antiracism resources and provide more users with access to these resources, we recently purchased the materials listed below. Depending upon the specific item, we added e-book formats where we previously only had print books, converted single-user e-book licenses to multi-user licenses where possible, and added print books where e-book formats were not available for libraries.

We hope these resources will inspire you, challenge you, and help us help create a more inclusive and welcoming community for our Black students, faculty, and staff.

You can find more titles about antiracism, racism, and other topics by searching our collections. We welcome your suggestions of other books and media we could add to our collections.

Database:

• Historic archives of The Michigan Chronicle, a Michigan-based Black newspaper. Includes newspaper issues published between 1936 and 2010. Students and faculty exploring African American studies and the history of race relations in Michigan will find this new resource useful for course assignments, scholarly activities, and beyond.

E-books (multi-user licenses): 

• Antiracism: An Introduction by Alex Zamalin
• Chokehold: Policing Black Men by Paul Butler
• Cold War Civil Rights by Mary L. Dudziak
• Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts
• Healing Racial Trauma by Sheila Wise Rowe
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
• My Midnight Years by Ronald Kitchen
• Reproductive Injustice by Dana-Ain Davis
• The Condemnation of Blackness by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• The Racial Healing Handbook by Anneliese A. Singh
• Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett

E-books (three-user licenses per e-book): 

• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
• Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

E-books (single-user licenses): 

• A More Beautiful and Terrible History by Jeanne Theoharis
• Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Democracy in Black by Eddie S. Glaude
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow
• From #Blacklivesmatter To Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
• I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
• The Inner Work of Racial Justice by Rhonda V. Magee
• North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 By Leon F. Litwack
• One Person, No Vote: How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally by Carol Anderson
• The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue
• The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon
• Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Our Movement by Charlene Carruthers
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
• White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

Print books:

You can borrow print books using our contactless book pickup service, and we will ship books to students who live outside the Mount Pleasant region.

• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy by Mary L. Dudziak
• Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower by Brittney Cooper
• From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Kai Hinton
• Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman
• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman
• No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America by Darnell L. Moore
• North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 by Leon F. Litwack
• On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by DeRay Mckesson
• Overcoming Everyday Racism Building Resilience and Wellbeing in the face of Discrimination and Microaggressions by Susan Cousins
• Reconstruction, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
• Roots by Alex Haley
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Solitary Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement: My Story of Transformation and Hope by Albert Woodfox
• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
• Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
• The Black and the Blue: A Copy Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement by Matthew Horace
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
• The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
• This Book Is Anti-racist by Tiffany Jewell
• This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jerkins
• Too Heavy A Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 by Deborah G. White
• What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays by Damon Young
• When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America by Paula Giddings
• When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum