What’s on Our Bookshelves
With the new year in full swing, PRH is thinking about the texts that build our foundations and sustain our spirit as we do this work at this time under increasing political duress.
Reading keeps us grounded in what people before us and around us know to be true and know to be possible. Please find a few books that are currently on our shelves across the PRH Staff and Board of Directors.
If you’re interested in reading any of these books, we invite you to consider supporting your local library or an independent bookstore in your community.
A Few Rules For Predicting The Future
By Octavia E. Butler
Excerpt:
“Learn From The Past… I wanted to understand the lies that people have to tell themselves when they either quietly or joyfully watch their neighbors ruined, spirited away, killed.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Dr. Aisha Mays, PRH Board Member
An American Sunrise
By Joy Harjo
Excerpt:
EXILE OF MEMORY
“We could not see our ancestors as we climbed up
To the edge of destruction
But from the dark we felt their soft presences at the edge of our minds
And we hear their singing.
There is no word in this trade language, no words with enough power to hold all this we have become—
We are in time.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Rosalie Candau, PRH Staff
“U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo walks you through the ache of displaced peoples and also confronts new and ancestral joy and protection.”
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
By Derecka Purnell
Excerpt:
“The difference between what’s legal and illegal is not the behavior of the lawbreaker; it is the interests of the powerful people who create the law /and/ have control of the police to enforce it.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Vanessa Safie, PRH Staff
“We must lead our efforts from a place of love and we need to better understand the root of our oppression to change it versus reacting to the thing that is in our face at the moment.”
The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
By Sonya Renee Taylor
Excerpt:
“The planet is a big, daunting place. It is easy to feel at the whim of the universe. We have been convinced we are ineffectual at exacting any real change against our social systems and structures, so instead we land the guilt and blame squarely on the shoulders of the most accessible party: ourselves. This burden has kept us immobile in our own lives and oblivious to our impact in the world. The weight of the shame has kept us small and trapped in the belief that our bodies and our lives are mistakes. What an exhausting and disheartening way to live. It was this sense of epic discouragement that fueled my inquiry into the nature of apology and led me to explore how our lives might look different if we began living unapologetically. What would the world look like if each of us navigated our lives with the total awareness that we owed no one an apology for our bodies?”
From the Bookshelf of:
Rosalie Candau, PRH Staff
“Stunning book. While reading, you may laugh, cry, want to throw something at the wall, hug yourself, scream into the void, and maybe tell yourself it will be alright. She brings us in deep to challenging conversation – talking through capitalism, ableism, racism, and systemic oppression in ways where we not only examine ourselves within the hierarchy ladder but also how we can look introspectively within our human selves with love + acceptance, and not apology.”
Call Us What We Carry
By Amanda Gorman
Excerpt:
Fury & Faith
“So when you’re told that your rage is reactionary,
Remind yourself that rage is our right.
It teaches us it is time to fight.
In the face of injustice,
Not only is anger natural, but necessary,
Because it helps carry us to our destination.
Our goal is never revenge, just restoration.
Not dominace, just dignity.
Not fear, just freedom.
Just justice.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Rosalie Candau, PRH Staff
“Stunning, haunting, powerful, and lingering words from Amanda Gorman leave you replaying the poems in your mind days and weeks after you read them. Odes and reminders of history – and – futures, weaving through pain and sorrow with hope and possibilities for thriving in a future that hasn’t been made a reality yet.”
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
By Angela Y. Davis
Excerpt:
“Progressive struggles — whether they’re focused on racism, repression, poverty, or other issues — are doomed to fail if they do not also attempt to develop a consciousness of the insidious promotion of capitalist individualism. Even as Nelson Mandela always insisted that his accomplishments were collective, always also achieved by his comrades, the media attempted to sanctify him as a heroic individual. A similar process has attempted to disassociate MLK Jr. from the vast numbers of people who constituted the very heart of the US freedom movement. It’s essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as part of an ever expanding community of struggle.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Rosalie Candau, PRH Staff
“Guides you toward a global mindset when thinking about social justice movements, longevity of activism, and your role in incorporating transnational solidarity into how you engage with movement building and community organizing here at “home”. Makes us examine our role in the prison industrial complex and capitalist individualism and exceptionalism within imperialism.”
Hood Feminism
By Mikki Kendall
From the Bookshelf of:
Mani Vinson, PRH Staff
“An introduction to transformative justice, an abolitionist framework centered on dismantling carceral punishment and guilt/shame-based accountability and replacing them with liberatory practices. In the short, TJ is designed to address harm, conflict, and violence, without perpetuating more harm and violence.
Also watch two trans films I love: Artistic Legacies: Black Trans Femmes in the Arts and Paris is Burning (1990). I think everyone should see them.
Love Poems
By Nikki Giovanni
Excerpt:
“i’m saying it’s my house
and i’ll make fudge and call
it love and touch my lips
to the chocolate warmth
and smile at old men and call
that revolution cause what’s real
is really real”
From the Bookshelf of:
Dr. Jamila Perritt, PRH President & CEO
“We don’t often hear a lot of talk about love in movement spaces, but Nikki Giovanni’s poetry and writings are so beautiful in that they blend the reality of these things. Love is foundational for liberatory movements. We fight for our families and communities because we love them. We fight for ourselves for the same reason. This book is such a reminder to me that love must always be at the root of struggle.”
Open Veins of Latin America
By Eduardo Galeano
From the Bookshelf of:
Anita Brakman, PRH Staff
“A really great book for engaging folks on understanding how colonialism is built by design to strip resources from communities. It really stands the test of time”
The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities
By Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ching-In Chen
From the Bookshelf of:
Mani Vinson, PRH Staff
“An introduction to transformative justice, an abolitionist framework centered on dismantling carceral punishment and guilt/shame-based accountability and replacing them with liberatory practices. In the short, TJ is designed to address harm, conflict, and violence, without perpetuating more harm and violence.
Also watch two trans films I love: Artistic Legacies: Black Trans Femmes in the Arts and Paris is Burning (1990). I think everyone should see them.
Sassafras, Cypress, & Indigo
By Ntozake Shange
Excerpt:
“Where there is a Womxn There is Magic.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Dr. Aisha Mays, PRH Board Member
Sister Outsider
By Audre Lorde
From the Bookshelf of:
Mani Vinson, PRH Staff
“An introduction to transformative justice, an abolitionist framework centered on dismantling carceral punishment and guilt/shame-based accountability and replacing them with liberatory practices. In the short, TJ is designed to address harm, conflict, and violence, without perpetuating more harm and violence.
Also watch two trans films I love: Artistic Legacies: Black Trans Femmes in the Arts and Paris is Burning (1990). I think everyone should see them.”
The Undocumented Americans
By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
From the Bookshelf of:
Rosalie Candau, PRH Staff
“May challenge your pre-conceived notions on who you imagine to be undocumented Americans and who loves and celebrates their presence every day across the U.S. Beautiful, rich stories of undocumented folks and communities from across the U.S.”
What It Takes To Heal
By Prentis Hemphill
Excerpt:
“Love is when we will another’s existence… Love is a light and steady touch, a presence and attention. To will someone is a generosity of our own spirit. A shift from scarcity. A faith in connection. Love is a kind of reunification… its expression is its power, and that scares us, too
The love that it takes to heal is a verb to be practiced out loud. A love, which like the light from the sun, provokes a flower into its full bloom. It is only through love that we are ever really changed…. and so that it becomes the shaper of our futures.”
From the Bookshelf of:
Kelsey Rhodes, PRH Staff
“Prentis Hemphill’s reflections have always caught me off guard in the content they’ve created online and for podcasts. The way they require that love is at the center of our transformational work makes me uncomfortable in a growing pains kind of way; the kind of discomfort that offers growth and change. A therapist, organizer, activist, and somatic trainer, Prentis offers such a well rounded approach to the way what’s going on in our internal systems is informed by and influences our communities.”