Racial communities & identities 

This section consists of resources by, for, and about the experiences, marginalization, and activism in different racial communities in the U.S. If you are interested in broader discussions of white supremacy, racial capitalism, and empire, please see our White Supremacy & Empire page.

ARAB AMERICA

• Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a “Post-Race” Era by Evelyn Alsultany

• BDS: What is it, why it matters by Leila Abdulrazzaq (zine)

• Beyond intent: Why we need a new paradigm to think about racialized violence by Evelyn Alsultany

• How Does it Feel to be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi.  Penguin Books (July 28, 2009).

• Food for Our Grandmothers: Writing by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists by Joanna Kadi (please note that the author identifies as male and now uses the name Joe, but used Joanna at the time of publication). South End Press (July 1, 1999).  

• Exile's return: The making of a Palestinian American by Fawaz Turki. Free Press, 1994.  

• Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American women in the United States by Evelyn Shakir. Praeger (1997)

• Teaching Arabs, Writing Self: Memoirs of an Arab American Woman by Evelyn Shakir. Olive Branch Press, 2012.

• Reel Bad Arabs, How Hollywood Vilifies a People (documentary film by Jack Shaheen)

• Palestinian Justice Syllabus by POC Online Classrom

ASIAN AMERICA

• After: Poems by Fatimah Asghar. Yes Yes Books (2015). See TedX talk here.

• The Audacity to Dream: On Asian Women, Feminism, and My Grandmother by Karissa Chen

• Asian Eyes: Westernized Beauty Standards and Asian Identity by Julie Feng

• Miss Cylon: Empire and Adoption in "Battlestar Galactica" by Juliana Hu Pegues

• The Invisibility of Asian Americans – Grace Ji-Sun Kim

• Densho Encyclopedia: resources on Japanese American internment in WWII 

• Passing It On by Yuri Kochiyama. UCLA Asian American Studies Press Center (2004)

• At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 by Erika Lee. The University of North Carolina Press; First Paperback Edition edition (May 19, 2003)

• The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women by Sharon Lim-Hing. Sister Vision (August 26, 1998)

• Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics by Lisa Lowe. Duke University Press Books (1996)

• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Square Fish; Reprint edition (December 23, 2008)

• Coming Home: Queer South Asians and The Politics of Family by Alok-Vaid Menon

• Woman Native Other, Chapter Three: Difference “A Special Third World Woman Issue” by Trinh T. Minh-Ha

• Song I Sing Poems by Bao Phi. Coffee House Press (2011)  

• From Orphan to Adoptee: U.S. Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption by SooJin Pate.Univ Of Minnesota Press (April 14, 2014)

• On Strike!: San Francisco State College Strike 1968-1969:  The Role of Asian American Students by Karen Umemoto

• Feminism and Race: Just Who Counts As a ‘Woman of Color’? by Lindsey Yoo

BLACK AMERICA

• A Black Feminist Roundtable On bell hooks, Beyonce, and “Moving Beyond Pain” by Lori Adelman

• My Battle Against the Assumed Androgyny of Black Women by Aja Barber

• “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” in The Black Woman by Frances Beale.

• Lemonade Syllabus by Candice Benbow, a pdf/book with over 200 art, literature, and historical resources celebrating black womanhood (named for Beyonce's 2016 visual album Lemonade)

• Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (full book)

• “Walking While Black” by Garnette Cadogan

• “Black intellectuals, white audiences: Searching for tales of authentic blackness” by Matthew Clair

• Teaching Hard History, Southern Poverty Law Center report on how slavery is taught

• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Spiegel & Grau; 1 edition (July 14, 2015)

• Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins (full book)

• Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination by Patricia Hill Collins

• Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat (Chapters 1-8)

• Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

• Performance Practice as a Site of Opposition by bell hooks (from Let’s Get it On: The Politics of Black Performance, edited by Catherine Ugwu)

• All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. The Feminist Press at CUNY (January 1, 1993).

• Black Women’s Safety at the Barbershop: Why Accountability is Pro-Black by Candice Iloh

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (full book)

• Sweat by Zora Neale Hurston

• Feminismos negros: Una antolgía edited by Mercedes Jabardo (full book in Spanish)

• For the Record, a poem by Audre Lorde

• An Open Letter to Mary Daly by Audre Lorde

• The Autobiography of Malcom X. Ballantine Books; Reissue edition (November 1992).

• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (full novel)

• The Site of Memory by Toni Morrison

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Anchor (March 4, 2014).

• “Toward a Critical Environmental Studies: Black Lives Matter as an Environmental Justice Challenge” by David Pellow

• Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Riverhead Books; Reprint edition (February 1, 1999)

• Black Feminism and Intersectionality by Sharon Smith

• Plays by August Wilson, such as Gem of the Ocean, Radio Gulf, or Fences.

• The Black Radical Tradition, a massive pdf including more than 500 pages of writing by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frances M. Beal, the Combahee River Collective, I Wor Kuen, and more (table of contents included). Learn more here.

• Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, comic from the 1950s

• Transatlantic Slave Trade Database

INDIGENOUS AMERICA

• Abolish Columbus Day resources from the Zinn Education Project

• Police Violence Against Native Americans Syllabus

• Pablo Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection, Amherst University. Collection of over 1,400 texts written by Native Americans from 1772 to the present.

• #StandingRockSyllabus (resources about settler-colonialism, environmental racism, and the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline)

• Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women edited by Beth Brant (Degonwadonti). Firebrand Books; Revised edition (January 1, 1989)

• Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West by Ned Blackhawk. Harvard University Press (April 30, 2008) Introduction here

• Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community by Brenda Child. Penguin Books; Reprint edition (January 29, 2013)

• Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940. by Brenda Child. University of Nebraska Press (February 1, 2000)

• inVISIBILITY: Indigenous in the city - Indigenous artists, Indigenous youth and the project of survivance by Susan Dion and Angela Salmanca 

• Dakota 38 Full Documentary (about contemporary commemorations of the Dakota War and the subsequent execution of 38 Dakota men)

• Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria Jr. University of Oklahoma Press; (1st,1969) edition (1988) Chapter 3: The Disastrous Policy of Termination here

• Refusal to forgive: Indigenous women’s love and rage by Rachel Flowers

• Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations by Mishuana Goeman. Univ Of Minnesota Press (April 12, 2013). (conclusion here)

• Solarize-ing Native hip-hop: Native feminist land ethics and cultural resistance by Jenell Navarro

• The Familiar Face of Genocide: Internalized Oppression among American Indians by Lisa Poupart

• The “law and order” of violence against Native Women: A Native feminist analysis of the Tribal Law and Order Act by Kimberly Robertson

• Race, tribal nation, and gender: A Native feminist approach to belonging (zine) by Renya Ramirez

• Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo, Tecumseh and other Heroes of Native Resistance by Vincent Schilling

• Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States by Audra Simpson. Duke University Press Books (May 9, 2014) (chapter one available here)

• Queering Resurgence: Taking on Heteropatriarchy in Indigenous Nation Building by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

• Indict the System: Indigenous and Black Connected Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 

• The Misery of Settler Colonialism: Roundtable on Glen Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks and Audra Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

• From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii by Huanani-Kay Trask (University of Hawaii Pr; Rev Sub edition (June 1999).

• Learning from the Land: Indigenous Land Based Pedagogy and Decolonization by Matthew Wildcat, Mandee McDonald, Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, and Glen Coulthard

• From a Native Trans daughter: Roots of an Indigenous Abolitionist Imaginary by Kalaniopua Young

• Whose Land is it Anyway? A Manual for Decolonization, edited by Peter MacFarlane and Nicole Schabus

LATINX AMERICA

• Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua. Aunt Lute Books; Fourth Edition edition (June 12, 2012) pdf of chapters 1-3 here and  chapters 5-7 here

• "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers" by Gloria Anzaldua (read our summary here)

• How to Tame a Wild Tongue by Gloria Anzaldua

• Decolonize Your Diet: Plant-Based Mexican-American Recipes for Health and Healing by Luz Calvo and Catriona Rueda Esquibel. Arsenal Pulp Press (2015).

• Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma by Anna Castillo, Plume; 2nd edition (September 1, 1995).

• Latino Cultures in the US - digital archive 

• Latina Feminism: National and Transnational Perspectives by Cherise Charleswell

• Cuentos: Stories by Latinas edited by Alma Gómez, and Cherríe Moraga, and Mariana Romo-Carmona. Out of print, but find a pdf of the introduction here.

• The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (full book)

• Latina Feminism: National and Transnational Perspectives by Cherise Charleswell

• En La Lucha/In the Struggle: Elaborating a Mujerista Theology by Ada María Isasi-Díaz. Fortress Press (2009).

• Entre Mundos/Between Worlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldua edited by AnaLouise Keating

• Medicine Stories: History, Culture and the Politics of Integrity by Aurora Levins Morales. South End Press (1999).

• I Am Not Better Than My Mami by Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez

• Invisible No More: Understanding the Disenfranchisement of Latino Men and Boys by Pedro Noguera, Aída Hurtado, Edward Fergus. Routledge (2011)

• Mestizaje and the Mexican Mestizo Self: No Hay Sangre Negra, So There is No Blackness by Taunya Lovell Banks

• Neustra America by Jose Marti. En espagnol or in English (full book).

• A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings 2000 - 2010 by Cherrie Moraga. Duke University Press; 2011.

• Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism edited by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz. University of Texas Press (2015)

• Are Hispanics White? by Franchesca Ramsey, MTV Decoded (video)

• Xicanisma: The Chicana Feminist & Her Movement by Nicole Akoukou Thompson

• Chicana Without Apology: The New Chicana Cultural Studies by Eden E. Torres. Routledge; 2003.

• Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About by Carla Trujillo. Third Woman Press (1991).

• Decolonize Your Mind: The Roots and Power of Xicanisma by Venceremos

JEWISH AMERICA

• Anti-Semitism has no place in Palestine Advocacy by Yasmeen Serhan

• Making Our Movements Stronger by Resisting Antisemitism by Jonah S. Boyarin and Dania Rajendra

• Why Does the United States Give So Much Money To Israel? by Emma Green

• Newt, the Jews, and an “Invented People” by David Remnick

• Zionism is Not Judaism by Ahmed Moor

• What We Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Nakba, Donna Nevel

• Can You Be a Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour says No by Collier Meyerson

• Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to Our Movement via Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

• A Guide to Difficult Conversations About Israel and Palestine via Jewish Voice for Peace

MIXED RACE AMERICA

• Mixed Up! The Mixed-Race Queer + Feminist Zine

• To live in the borderlands mean you... by Gloria Anzaldua (poem)

• Chapter 7, "Towards a New Consciousness" from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua

• Mulattas and Mestizas: Representing Mixed Identities in the Americas 1850-2000 by Suzanne Bost

• Passing for White, Passing for Black by Adrian Piper

• Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage by Maria P. Root

• Caucasia by Danzy Senna. Riverhead Books, 1999.

• The Mulatto Millennium by Danzy Senna

• Love is Colorblind: Reflections of a Mixed Girl by Jeni C. Wright

• 100Metis - A website featuring videos by Metis people talking about their identity (available in English and French)

MUSLIM AMERICA

• American Muslims: Fact Versus Fiction a Unity Productions Foundation Video

• #BlackIslamSyllabus by Kayla Renee Wheeler

• Chapters from Muslims in the Western Imagination by Sophia Rose Arjana: Introduction, Muslim Monsters in the Americas, The Monsters of September 11, The Muslim Monster

• I'm A Muslim and I'm Tired of Explaining Myself an AJ+ Video

• Islamophobia is Racism Syllabus

• Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim Women by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi. Soft Skull Press; Original edition (February 17, 2012). (blog here)

• Muslim Girl - A blog that works to eliminate stereotypes and create interfaith dialogue

• A People’s History of Muslims in the United States by Alison Kysia

• Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy edited by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi. Beacon Press (February 4, 2014)

• Totally Radical Muslim Zine