I recently finished listening to So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, and I cannot recommend it enough.
If you are going to read one book on anti-racism, let it be this book. Oluo’s experiences and insight as a Black woman in America are eye-opening, heartbreaking, and infuriating at once. With that said, her expression of Black joy and success within our nation’s system of racism was absorbing and hopeful. Her words are so important, and I was so thankful this book was recommended to me.
With every chapter of So You Want to Talk About Race, countless questions about my own prejudices and privileges were answered. Questions I didn’t even know I had were answered. Viewpoints I have never explored were pointed out to me.
This book called me out. I needed to hear it.
I was thankful for every hard truth that Oluo presented to me. A few chapters really stuck out to me as topics I didn’t know enough about, and probably should have. Some of those were chapter eight on the school-to-prison pipeline, chapter 10 on cultural appropriation, and chapter 14 on the model minority myth.
So You Want to Talk About Race forced me to reflect deeply on my own knowledge about race and race relations in the United States. It forced me to be uncomfortable, and sit in that discomfort. It simultaneously infuriated and inspired me, and once I went through that range of emotion, told me what I could do better.
This book should be required reading in college, or even high school. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who claims to or wants to support the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement.
Are there any other anti-racism books I should pick up next?
xx, Lauren
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