Act to Increase Diversity in Books

On my first Movement for Black Lives call (8/14 evening), I volunteered to organize an action of some sort in my local community on the one week anniversary of the protests by white supremacists in Charlottesville. The leaders reminded us that we need to focus a light on local symbols and institutions that support/celebrate white supremacy to show what side we are on…to show we support/need POC and other marginalized groups...to show white supremacy is not the world that we want.

I decided to focus on books. We need more diversity in books! Here are great resources that explain why, give us suggestions of what to do, how we can help, and reading suggestions:

• 3 Ways Readers Can Increase Diversity in Publishing

• Diversity: What Can We Do About It? from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators

• Children’s Book Council

• We Need Diverse Books

Please comment below if you will do some action on your own on 8/19...and you can comment on what you will do/did. It can include contacting your town library's head librarian and asking her/him to buy more books by authors of color. It can include buying a book that centers on the experience of POC (People of Color). It can include reading a book to your child that centers on the experience of children of color. You get the idea. Do something new that you haven't tried yet. And then let us know about it. Okay?

I hope this helps us start/continue a trend that will continue every day we use and think about books.

Here is my list of favorite books for adult readers who want to learn more about racial justice:

• Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist

• The New Jim Crow (Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness) by Michelle Alexander

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson