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Racial Injustice

They Called Us Enemy

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They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
Format: Graphic Novel
Who it’s for: Teens and Adults

What did the Japanese Internment Camps look like from a kid’s eye view? George Takei, well known for his role as Lieutenant Sulu in the original Star Trek series, was a 5 year old boy living in California in 1942 when his family was taken from their home and sent to live in a series of faraway Internment Camps for the duration of World War II.

The graphic novel is a great format for this biography that allows you to simultaneously see this story from the point of view of a child, his parents, and you the outside observer. You’ll get insight into life in the camps, the effects such an experience has on people for the rest of their lives, and the questions we must all ask ourselves about human rights, patriotism, and justice.

If you haven’t tried a graphic novel before, let this one be the first!

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The Hate U Give

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Format: Book, eBook, Audiobook, eAudiobook.  Movie version available DVD or Blu-Ray
Who it’s for: Adults, Teens

Sixteen year old Starr is living a double life.  One Starr lives in a black, lower income neighborhood and feels like she doesn’t quite fit in.  The other Starr attends a private, mostly white school and feels like she can never quite be herself.
One night, Starr is riding in a car with her childhood friend Kahlil when they get stopped by police. After a short but tense exchange, Kahlil is fatally shot leaving Starr as the only witness.
A whirlwind of events send Starr’s two worlds crashing into each other so she is left with no choice but to find her voice and decide who her one true self is and what she stands for.

 

The audiobook was amazing and the movie was a very good adaptation of the book although they did have to condense some characters.  I read the book first and it helped to better understand some parts of the story that I might have missed otherwise.

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Born a Crime

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Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Format: Book and Audio Book on CD
Who it’s for: Adults, Teens (Young Readers version also available)

What is it like for your very existence to be against the law?  Although it might sound like a plot from a dystopian novel, this is the real life story of Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Trevor Noah’s crime at birth was that he had a black mother and white father at a time when the laws of South Africa made this a severely punishable offense.
Noah gives a frank, sometimes serious, sometimes funny account of growing up as a mixed race child in a racially stratified and oppressive society. We see through this collection of short stories all the particular challenges he had to face but we can also relate to those things that we all have in common growing up. Noah also takes the opportunity to explain the history of Apartheid laws and the underlying causes of racial unrest but does so in an engaging way that flows along with his entertaining stories.
The first story ends with his mom throwing him out of a moving bus when he was nine years old.  Don’t worry, it was really just to save his life and he obviously lived to tell about it! Check out this great collection of stories from a South African childhood.
This autobiography is now also available in a Young Readers adaptation which is essentially the same book but eliminates the occasional profanity found in the adult version. You can also choose the audio book format (available on CD) where you will be treated to Trevor Noah reading the stories to you himself!
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Killers of the Flower Moon. The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

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Killers of the Flower Moon. The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI  by David Grann
Format: Book
Who it’s for: Adults

The Osage Native American tribe was living the good life in the 1920s thanks to the oil fields lying under their reservation in Oklahoma.  Living the good life, that is, until their members start dying at an alarming rate under suspicious circumstances.  When tribe members are found blatantly murdered, an investigation is launched by J. Edgar Hoover who is desperately trying to make a name for himself and his budding Federal Bureau of Investigation. Newly appointed FBI Agent Tom White assembles an undercover team to infiltrate the close knit and increasingly dangerous Osage community and risks his own life in order to discover who is behind the heinous crimes.

David Grann is an award winning journalist from The New Yorker who weaves this true tale of mystery, conspiracy, and racial injustice. Grann reexamines this case through his investigation and manages to tie up the loose ends that the FBI was unable to resolve almost one hundred years ago.
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