"That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet."
- Jhumpa Lahiri
As is the ODI tradition, this 2022 list is curated in the spirit of our ongoing efforts to affirm, ally for solidarity, and act in the pursuit of racial equity and justice and make SU a thriving place for all. This consequential year revealed the depth of the gulf of understandings of our shared history and the present manifestations.
There is no shortage of impactful reads for sure; and many are included in past summer reading lists. I hope these new offerings inspire reflection on how we make meaning, as well as context for more authentic conversations and actions in creating a stronger university and a more just world.
Caveat: Reading alone is insufficient to realize our shared vision for an inclusive and equitable university. Yet, without widening perspectives progress remains elusive. Please continue to share your ideas of resources from research and enlightening reads over summer and beyond to inclusion@seattleu.edu.
Finally, colleagues, we must take care of ourselves to maintain strength for the journey toward justice. I wish you time to rest, restore, and to experience joy this summer. Stay safe and be well.
Summer Reading List
Curated by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Seattle University
- The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation's Upheaval and Racial Reckoning by Resmaa Menakem
- Know My Name by Chanel Miller (Common Text 2022-2023)
- South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
- Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness by Maureen O'Connell
- His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
- We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle
- 37 Words Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination by Sherry Boscher
- The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang
- Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca, Viet Thanh Nguyen (foreword)
- Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández
- Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place by bell hooks
- See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur
- The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones (Creator)
- Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal
- More Salt Than Diamond: Poems by Aline Mello
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
- Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha LaPointe
- Lynching and Leisure: Race and the Transformation of Mob Violence in Texas by Terry Anne Scott
- The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
- My Broken Language: A Memoir by Quiara Alegría Hudes
- Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm by Robin DiAngelo
- About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Editors)
- Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
- The Ground Breaking: The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City's Search for Justice Paperback by Scott Ellsworth
- Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 by David Wallace Adams
- Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann
- Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle by Shannen Dee Williams
- If They Come for Us: Poems by Fatimah Asghar
