Spanish Peaks Library District

On a plane, a black passenger nervously scrutinizes an Arab-American passenger. In front of a store, a white woman clutches her purse as a black man walks by. In conversation, the topic of race comes up and both people wonder what they are willing to say-and what they are not. Each scenario reveals that how we act and react to each other on a daily basis stems from racial assumptions, biases, and misunderstandings. Some we acknowledge, others we overlook....

"Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison brings the genius of a master writer to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Her goal, she states at the outset, is to "put forth an argument for extending the study of American literature...draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration...

"As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as 'black rage,' historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, 'white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames,' she writes, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.' Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time...

The author details his quest to uncover the truth about the father he had never known and his unseen influence on the author's life and the choices he has made, inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Betty DeRamus is an award-winning journalist who rummaged through musty records and forgotten memoirs to resurrect this book's unsung heroes. Despite the risks, some American slaves partook of the "forbidden fruit" of marriage. And when the dreaded separation inevitably occurred, slave spouses grieved deeply and sometimes made Herculean efforts to re-unite. DeRamus recounts the tales of soulmates who braved bloodhounds,...

"Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when...

Legendary African American activist-comedian D. L. Hughley uses satire to draw attention to white privilege and racial injustice, sardonically offering an illustrated how-to guide for black people, full of insight from white people, about how to act, dress, speak, walk, and drive in the safest manner possible.

"They were charismatic and forward thinking, imaginative and courageous, compassionate and resolute, and, at times, arrogant, vengeful and reckless. For hundreds of years, Native American leaders from Massasoit, Tecumseh, and Tenskwatawa, to Major Ridge, Geronimo, and Fools Crow valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture. Sometimes, their strategies were militaristic, but more often they were diplomatic,...

"At home and in government, contemporary America finds itself riven by a culture war in which aggression and defensiveness alike are on the rise. It is not alone. In such partisan conditions, how can humans best approach one another across our differences? Taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy as a guiding light, Claudia Rankine explores a series of real encounters with friends and strangers - each disrupting the false comfort of spaces...