By Beaudry Allen, Laura Bang, Deborah Bishov, Sarah Wingo, and Kallie Stahl 

Black lives matter. Antiracism is a lifelong process. Over the past months, we’ve seen an outpouring of interest from our community seeking to learn more and to broaden their understanding of the historical context of our current moment. Our role as the library is to share resources to support learning, so with that in mind, we are sharing a list of books and other resources. No list of this nature could ever be comprehensive, but we hope that this list, compiled by members of the Falvey Memorial Library Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion working group, will serve as a starting point.  

Falvey Memorial Library E-Resources
These books and movies are available digitally in our collections and are free to all members of the Villanova University community.  

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• I Am Not Your Negro: film based on a manuscript by James Baldwin 
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony G. Greenwald
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist 
• How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
• I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates  
• Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo 
• An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz  
• Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge 
• Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong  
• How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
• Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley
• Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall 
• How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde 
• The Bluest Eye: A Novel by Toni Morrison
• The Origin of Others: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures by Toni Morrison 
• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble 
• An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz
• Breathe: A Letter to My Sons by Imani Perry
• Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby 
• Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea J. Ritchie
• Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy E. Roberts
• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad  
• Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States edited by Maya Schenwar, Joe Macaré, & Alana Yu-lan Price
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson 
• ***Film available to stream for free during the month of June: https://www.justmercyfilm.com/  
• From #blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• The End of Policing by Alex Vitale
• America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis  
• The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race  edited by Jesmyn Ward
• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
   
  

Freely Available E-books
These e-books are currently (as of September 2020) freely available on the internet. 

• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Available from the Internet Archive’s Open Library
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (1997 and 1999 editions) by Beverly Daniel Tatum Available from the Internet Archive’s Open Library. Read the foreword from the 20th anniversary edition through the Google Books preview. 

Podcasts
These podcasts are freely available on the internet. 

• The 1619 Project Podcast (New York Times) with Nikole Hannah-Jones 
• Code Switch (NPR)  
• Pod Save the People (Crooked Media) with DeRay McKesson 
• The Stoop with Hana Baba and Leila Day 
• Still Processing (New York Times) with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham
  
• Up First Bonus Episode (NPR):  American Police 
• Unlocking Us with Brené Brown: Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist
  

Other Freely Available Resources
These web resources are freely available to everyone. 

• The 1619 Project from the New York Times 
• Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus from JSTOR 
• MUSE in Focus: Confronting Structural Racism. “A selection of temporarily free scholarship from Project MUSE publishers on the history of structural racism in the United States and how the country can realize anti-racist reform.” 
• Talking About Race from the National Museum of African American History 

Public Libraries
Because of the way e-book licensing works, some e-books not available through Falvey may be available through your local public library. Current Villanova affiliates have access to the collections at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Lower Merion Library System. If you live outside Pennsylvania, you may have access to other large library systems beyond your local public library.  The following e-books are available from the Free Library, though some have a wait list  

• Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson   
• Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi  
• When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors  
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine  
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein  
   

Additional Anti-Racist Reading Lists 

• Ibram X. Kendi in The New York Times 
• Suyin Haynes in Time 
• The Schomburg Center’s Black Liberation Reading List 

If you’re looking for a specific work or for literature on a specific topic, please feel free to get in touch with our librarians at ref@villanova.edu 

Falvey Memorial Library stands united with those who seek social justice and equality and supports those protesting worldwide to dismantle institutionalized racism and white supremacy.

As Villanova University President, the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA, wrote in his email to the campus community, “With COVID-19, we witnessed what was occurring and swiftly and dramatically changed behaviors in order to save lives. As I think about George Floyd, and the numerous other black men and women who have been killed unjustly, I can’t help but wonder, why isn’t our reaction the same? When will we understand that injustice affects us all? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best when he said: ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

To the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) members of the Villanova community, we see you, we hear you, and we will listen, learn, and grow. Falvey Memorial Library is committed to creating a community in the spirit of Villanova University’s Augustinian values; to ensure the Library is a place where all feel welcome and safe.

Learn more about diversity and inclusion on Falvey Memorial Library’s Diversity and Inclusion Subject Guide.