By Roxanne Bogucka

Juneteenth (variously called Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, or Cel-Liberation Day) is a holiday that commemorates the date when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the enslaved black people in Texas. “Juneteenth” is a portmanteau word formed from “June” and “nineteenth.”

Although the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, enslaved Texans were not apprised of this fact until Union Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, on June 19, 1865 (Acosta, 2020). While the text of General Order No. 3 announced that “all slaves are free,” it also stated that “Freedmen are advised to remain in their present homes, and work for wages.”

In Austin, freed persons organized the first Emancipation Day celebrations in what is now Eastwoods Park, just north of present-day Dean Keeton Boulevard (Hasan, 2017). Photographs of Austin’s Juneteenth observances in 1900, taken by a Mrs. Grace Stephenson, including this one of celebrants, are available in The Portal to Texas History. According to the Portal metadata, Mrs. Stephenson later sold her photos, along with a report of the day’s festivities, to the San Francisco Chronicle. A search for the article in America’s Historical Newspapers was unsuccessful. A reference staffer from the San Francisco Public Library replied that SFPL is unable to respond to these kinds of reference questions at the moment.

As freed persons dispersed from Texas, they carried with them the tradition of celebrating emancipation on June 19^th. The database African American Newspapers, Series 1 has several articles about communities’ Juneteenth celebrations. The earliest reportage was published in the Parsons (KS) Weekly Blade, in 1895.

Enlarged images of Juneteenth coverage in the Parson’s Weekly Blade from June 22, 1895

In 1979, Texas State Representative Al Edwards (D-Houston) introduced House Bill 1016, legislation that led to Texas becoming the first of these United States to declare Juneteenth an official holiday. Today, Juneteenth is an official holiday or observance in 46 states and the District of Columbia (National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, n.d.). While not observed by the University of Texas, Juneteenth (Emancipation Day) is an official public holiday in the state of Texas. Do not get too excited by this, as the state of Texas also lists Confederate Heroes Day on its official calendar of holidays (Texas State Auditor’s Office).

The United Kingdom, which abolished the slave trade in 1807, and passed the Slavery Abolition Act nearly 30 years before the United States, has a related observance on 18 October—Anti-Slavery Day, whose unfortunate name raises inescapable questions about the other days of the year.

This year, with parades and gatherings being deemed unwise, Austin celebrates Juneteenth virtually. Stay Black and Live will be held online from 6 to 10 p.m. on Friday, June 19, 2020. There will almost certainly be a performance of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” also called the Black National Anthem. Learn the words, learn the tune, raise your voices in song on Friday, and raise your voices in citizenship every day.

Selected Resources from the UT Libraries

• Abernethy, Francis E., ed. (1996). Juneteenth Texas. Denton, TX : Texas Folklore Society.
• African American Newspapers, Series 1, https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/db/618 and Series 2, https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/aans2
• African American Newspapers: The 19^th Century. https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/db/10
• African American Periodicals. https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/aap
• Jordan, D., & Jordan, D. (2008). Juneteenth. (2nd ed.). Chicago: Heinemann Library.
• “Describes the holiday known as Juneteenth Day, which has roots in Texas and which celebrates the end of slavery in the United States.”
• Sierra, Sali. (1988). Juneteenth and other freedom celebrations. Chicago: Society for Visual Education, Inc. [filmstrip]
  • “Explains the origins and histories of Black freedom celebrations in North America. Tells how, even though the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, it was not until June 19, 1865, that General Granger landed near Galveston, Tex., and spread the word that slavery had been abolished. Shows that the anniversary of Granger’s landing is celebrated today among Black communities as Juneteenth.”
• Texas Newspaper Archive. https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/db/959

Works Consulted / Additional Reading

• Acosta, Teresa Paloma. (2010, June 15. Modified: 2020, February 21). Juneteenth. In Handbook of Texas Online. Austin : Texas State Historical Association. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/lkj01. Access date: June 14, 2020
• The Anti-Slavery Day Act 2010. (2010). U.K. Statutory Instruments, 2010 No. 2325. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/2325/made. Access date: June 14, 2020.
• Conradt, Stacy. (2018, June 19. Updated: 2020, May 27). 12 things you might not know about Juneteenth. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501680/12-things-you-might-not-know-about-juneteenth. Access date: June 14, 2020.
• Emancipation Proclamation. (1862). The National Archives. [online exhibit]. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation. Access date: June 15, 2020
• General Orders, No. 3. Retrieved from the Briscoe Center for American History. https://www.cah.utexas.edu/db/dmr/image_lg.php?variable=di_01803. Access date: June 8, 2020.
  • General Orders, No. 3. U.S. House, 54th Congress, 1st Session (H. Doc. 369, Part 2). “General Order Number 3,” 1896. U.S. Documents Collection. Y 1.1/2: SERIAL 3437
• Gordon Granger. United States, None. [Between 1860 and 1870] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018669780/. Access date: June 15, 2020
• Hasan, Syeda. (2017, January 19). Staring down development, neighbors seek historical recognition for Emancipation Park. https://www.kut.org/post/staring-down-development-neighbors-seek-historical-recognition-emancipation-park. Access date: June 14, 2020
• Juneteenth and General Order No. 3. (n.d.). Retrieved from GalvestonHistory.org. https://www.galvestonhistory.org/news/juneteenth-and-general-order-no-3. Access date: June 15, 2020
• Legislative Reference Library of Texas. https://lrl.texas.gov/index.cfm. Access date: June 15, 2020
• National Juneteenth Observance Foundation. http://nationaljuneteenth.com/St_Holiday_Legislation.html
• National Museum of African American History and Culture. (n.d.) The historical legacy of Juneteenth. https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/historical-legacy-juneteenth. Access date: June 8, 2020
• (1895, June 22). Parsons Weekly Blade, p. 4. Available from Readex: African American Newspapers: https://infoweb-newsbank-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/apps/readex/doc?p=EANAAA&docref=image/v2%3A12B765516BD0CFE8%40EANAAA-12BE0D1D07C169A0%402413367-12BBC9429910C368%403. Access date: June 15, 2020
• Stephenson, Grace Murray. (1900). Emancipation Day celebration. Austin History Center General Collection Photographs. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth124053/. Access date: June 8, 2020.
• Stephenson, Grace Murray. (1900). Emancipation Day celebration band. Austin History Center General Collection Photographs. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth124054/. Access date: June 8, 2020.
• Taylor, Derrick Bryson. (2020, June 13). So you want to learn about Juneteenth? New York Times. Access date: June 13, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/article/juneteenth-day-celebration.html
• Texas Remembers: Juneteenth. Texas State Library. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/juneteenth.html
• Texas State Auditor’s Office. (n.d.). http://www.hr.sao.texas.gov/Holidays/
• U.S. House of Representatives. 54^th Congress. (1896). The war of the rebellion: a compilation of the official records or the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/outofthestacks/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GeneralOrders3_Juneteenth.pdf. Access date: June 14, 2020

This year the UT Libraries Diversity Action Committee (DAC) is proud to present Dr. Karma Chavez of UT’s Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies as the keynote speaker at our spring event, From Awareness to Action: The Importance of Queer and Trans Migrant Activism. Karma will discuss the immigration activist movement, intersections that complicate immigrant experiences, and the importance of the inclusion of queer and trans activism in the movement. Her talk is entitled “#AbolishICE: The Importance of Queer and Trans Migrant Activism.”

Dr. Chavez’s Description of Her Keynote

“Numerous trans and queer migrant organizations and projects with radical politics have formed in the past few years, and they have become key actors on the national immigration stage. Such groups include the Black LGBTQ+ Immigrants Project (of the Transgender Law Center), Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (of the Center for Transformative Action), and Trans Queer Pueblo.

These groups organize around issues such as reclaiming the anti-police ethos of Stonewall, supporting detained people during and after their incarceration, building liberation for trans Latinx migrants, and challenging the criminalization and marginalization of black queer and trans migrants. Moreover, these and other poor and working class, queer and trans migrants of color within diffuse organizations have been central in pushing the mainstream movement, or that which can be characterized as being dominated by mestiza/o Latinx organizations and points of view, including privileging traditional heteronormative family values, the church, hard work, and a distancing from being “criminal.”

Increasingly, and because of the work of queer and trans migrant activists, the mainstream part of the movement is being pushed beyond its traditionally assimilationist aspirations toward demands for #Not1More deportation, and even to #AbolishICE.”

Intersectionality and Its Effects on Migrants

The race, gender, and sexuality of migrants intersect to influence how they are treated both at the border and after they have established themselves in the United States. The term “intersectionality” was coined by legal scholar and critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the ways in which black women experienced both racism as people of color and misogyny as women. In her landmark paper, Crenshaw was specifically addressing court cases in which issues were seen as either racial discrimination or sex discrimination but not both. In the thirty-one years since her article’s publication, discussions of intersectionality have grown to encompass issues of sexuality, economic class, and other ways in which people can be marginalized. In Crenshaw’s own words: “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects.”

The way in which immigrants are depicted demonstrates the lens through which popular culture prefers to see those seeking to cross the border into the United States. Mainstream immigration activists tend to circulate images that show a certain type of immigrant: a mother trying to protect her children, a man wearing a Christian cross, and other images centering on family and religion. These images resonate with many people because they fit with the cis-centric, heteronormative, essentialist cultural perceptions concerning those who “deserve” aid. They ignore the presence and compounded struggles of queer and trans migrants; rather, they present all immigrants as members of a Christian nuclear family unit composed of a (cis-male) father and (cis-female) mother. This serves to erase the existence and struggles of immigrants who are queer, non-binary, or transgender.

The treatment of LGBTQ+ immigrants has led to the rise of activist movements that seek to address the ways in which these individuals experience both immigration injustice and anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry. These movements seek to resist the assimilationist tendencies of mainstream immigration activism and push for recognition of their own unique status as LGBTQ+ immigrants. One such group, #Not1More Deportation,  explains:

In recent years, the terms of the immigration debate have been poisoned and a crisis created as deportations, incarceration, and criminalization of immigrant communities has escalated at unprecedented rates. But at the same time record numbers of people are refusing to be victims and instead are drawing an entirely different picture by taking a stand for themselves, for their families, for our communities, and for all of us.

Likewise, the movement to #AbolishICE has gained momentum over the last few years both online and with elected officials.

We hope you will join us next Wednesday to listen to Dr. Chavez talk about her research on these complicated issues! Her keynote address will be followed by a Q&A. We will then have an opt-in activity (in partnership with Diversidad Sin Fronteras Texas) in which participants will have the opportunity to write letters of support and love to asylum-seeking trans women currently in detention.

Activism and Migration Groups (*please note: we have chosen to copy the terminology used by each of these groups to describe the groups with whom they work. For more information see the LGBTQ Encyclopedia on the DAC Blog*)

Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project

One of the programs hosted by the Transgender Law Center, BLMP seeks to support Black LGTQIA+ migrants through “community-building, political education, creating access to direct services, and organizing across borders.” They also seek to address the systemic issues that lead to the unjust treatment of migrants.

Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement

Familia: TQLM is an advocacy group for “all LGBTQ Latinos, Latinas, and gender nonconforming individuals.” In partnership with non-LGBTQ allies, they work to unite the LGBTQ Latino and Latina community.

Queer Detainee Empowerment Project

QDEP supports queer individuals in immigration detention, works to help them build a life after being detained, and organizes efforts to fight against the negative treatment of LGBTQIA, transsexual, and gender non-conforming by the state.

Trans Queer Pueblo

 Located in Arizona, Trans Queer Pueblo seeks to support members of the LGBTQ+ migrant community of color through advocating for movements that lead to self-sufficiency.

 Bibliography

Burridge, A., Mitchelson, M., & Loyd, J. (2012). Beyond walls and cages: Prisons, borders, and global crisis. University of Georgia Press. Available here.

Chávez, K.R. (2017). Homonormativity and violence against immigrants. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 4(2), 131-136. Available here.

—. (2013). Queer migration politics: Activist rhetoric and coalitional possibilities. University of Illinois Press.

—. (2017). Queer migration politics as transnational activism. S&F Online. Available here.

— & Griffin, C.L. (Eds.) (2012).  Standing in the intersection: Feminist voices, feminist practices in communication studies. SUNY Press.

Coaston, J. (2019). The intersectionality wars. Vox. Available here

Costanza-Chock, S. (2014). Out of the shadows, into the streets! Transmedia organizing and the immigrant rights movement. The MIT Press.

Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8), 139-167. Available here.

Davis, K., & Evans, M. (Eds). (2016). Transatlantic conversations : feminism as traveling theory. Routledge. Available here.

Dechaine, D. (2012). Border rhetorics: Citizenship and identity on the US-Mexico frontier. University of Alabama Press.

Foust, C.R., Pason, A., & Rogness, K.Z. (Eds.) (2017). What democracy looks like: The rhetoric of social movements and counterpublics. The University of Alabama Press.

Godfrey, E. (2018). What ‘Abolish ICE’ actually means. The Atlantic. Available here.

Haritaworn, J., Kuntsman, A., & Posocco, S. (Eds). (2013). Queer necropolitics. ProQuest Ebooks. Routledge. Available here.

Jordan, S. (2009). Un/convention(al) refugees: contextualizing the accounts of refugees facing homophobic or transphobic persecution. Refuge, 26(2), 165–182.

Levinson-Waldman, R. (2018). The Abolish ICE movement explained. Brennan Center for Justice. Available here.

Luibheid, E., & Cantu, L. (Eds). (2005). Queer migrations: Sexuality, U.S. citizenship, and border crossings. University of Minnesota Press.

Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality, more than two decades later. (2017). Columbia Law School [blog]. Available here.

Kingston, L.N. (2019). Fully human: Personhood, citizenship, and rights. Oxford University Press.

McKinnon, S.L., Asen, R., Chavez, K.R, & Howard, R.G. (Eds.). (2016). Text + field: Innovations in rhetorical method. The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Nyers, P., & Rygiel, K. (Eds). (2012). Citizenship, migrant activism, and the politics of movement. Routledge.

Sycamore, M.B. (Ed). (2008) That’s revolting! Queer strategies for resisting assimilation. Soft Skull Press.

Vaid, U. (2012). Irresistible revolution: Confronting race, class and the assumptions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender politics. Magnus Books.

Viteri, M. (2014). Desbordes: Translating racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities across the Americas. SUNY Press.

By Bree’ya Brown and DAC Committee Members

Last month, library Twitter, as well as other information professions and their platforms, was taken over by news and debates surrounding a controversial decision by the National Archives and Records Administration to alter photographs of the 2017 Women’s March in a public exhibit. In this blog post, we’d like to talk a little bit more about why this conversation is important and why it has so many information professionals speaking out against the decision.

The National Archives and Records Administration

To start with, it is helpful to know a little more about the purpose of the National Archives. The National Archives was established in 1934 as an independent agency of the U.S. federal government. It employs historians, librarians, and archivists to manage and preserve an unbiased record of public and government actions. The records held in the National Archives are accessible to anyone onsite and also can be viewed on the institution’s online catalog. Many of the most famous documents in American history, such as a copy of the Declaration of Independence, are on display in the National Archives Museum, also in D.C.

The National Archives’ stated mission is to provide public access to government records. This enables Americans to understand the country’s history as well as hold their government accountable. In fact, the stated values of the archives include providing information that can “transform the American public’s relationship with their government.”

The Controversial Act

The current controversy began on January 17, 2020 when The Washington Post published an article stating that the National Archives censored images displayed in an exhibit entitled Rightfully Hers. The exhibit, which was open to the public, juxtaposed two photographs taken almost a hundred years apart. The first photograph displayed a 1913 women’s suffrage march in Philadelphia. The second photograph showed an image of the 2017 Women’s March in Washington D.C. In the Washington Post article, journalist Joe Heim noted that portions of the 2017 photograph had been deliberately obscured, reporting:

In the original version of the 2017 photograph, taken by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama, the street is packed with marchers carrying a variety of signs, with the Capitol in the background. In the Archives version, at least four of those signs are altered.

The altered signs blurred out the name Trump in phrases such as “God Hates Trump,” and “Trump & God – Hands off Women,” preventing viewers from viewing the full historical document. In addition to the concealment of Trump’s name, words associated with the female anatomy like “pussy” and “vagina” were also hidden by the federal agency. The day after The Washington Post published the article online about the exhibit, the National Archives took down the controversial display.

The National Archives’ Response

Shortly after taking down the exhibit, the National Archives released a series of tweets apologizing for the decision to alter the image.

The institution stated that the 2017 photo was not one of their archival records but instead one they had licensed as a promotional image. Nevertheless, it was the National Archives’ decision to alter the image, not the owner of the photograph. The current Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, went on to write on the National Archive’s blog:

We wanted to use the 2017 Women’s March image to connect the suffrage exhibit with relevant issues today. We also wanted to avoid accusations of partisanship or complaints that we displayed inappropriate language in a family-friendly Federal museum. With those concerns in mind, and because the image was not our archival records, but was commercially-licensed and used as a graphic component outside of the gallery space, we felt this was an acceptable and prudent choice.

“Unacceptable Erasure”

In response to the National Archives’ initial decision, the American Library Association commented:

It is a fundamental tenet of librarianship that any alteration, deletion, or editing of materials held by a library or archives because of a fear of controversy or because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval is an act of censorship that all information workers are called upon to resist. Removal or alteration of archival materials, if done to conceal truthful material about past persons or events, constitutes an unacceptable erasure of the historical record that impairs our ability to provide accountability for the past, change the future, and acknowledge the truth of our different perspectives and experiences.

Obscuring archival documents not only violates the ALA Library Bill of Rights and Expurgation of Library Resources, but also results in historical erasure, breeds a loss of credibility with the public, and disassociates the institution from democratic values that focus on freedom of assembly and speech.

The unaltered photograph provided historical evidence of women’s existence, voices, and perspectives. Though the National Archives intended to connect recent events with the historical trajectory of the Women’s Rights Movement, the blurring of any part of the image erases part of the story and, in doing so, obscures the voices and perspectives of the women involved in the 2017 march.

Moreover, the alteration went against the National Archives’ purpose of reflecting history in a non-partisan, non-biased way. Alteration of a historical document is by nature a biased and biasing act.

Preserving records and managing access to public and government documents requires commitment and integrity. In the words of ALA Bill of Rights (Article II):

Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

Why This Matters

The alteration of the image prevented the public from seeing history as it actually occurred. Historians, archivists, curators, and librarians have a responsibility to preserve history and peoples’ stories while upholding the value of documents and artifacts by protecting their authenticity.

As you can imagine, voices on twitter had much to say on the matter, including this thread by historian and history professor Karin Wulf.

by Laura Tadena

This month’s blog post highlights diversity in graphic literature. It was difficult to narrow down this list to just twenty titles because of the growing number of titles that reflect individuals from underrepresented identity groups. Arguably, the publishing world is still not diverse enough and there is a disparity between the authors telling these stories. I for one, am looking forward to seeing more titles published where readers have the opportunity to see themselves in the work.

Here’s is our Graphic Literature inclusive reading recommendations list.  We hope you enjoy!

1. A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni & Tristan Jimerson
   • “Archie, a snarky genderqueer artist, is tired of people not understanding gender-neutral pronouns. Tristan, a cisgender dude, is looking for an easy way to introduce gender-neutral pronouns to his increasingly diverse workplace. The longtime best friends team up in this short and fun comic guide that explains what pronouns are, why they matter, and how to use them. They also include what to do if you make a mistake, and some tips-and-tricks for those who identify outside of the binary to keep themselves safe in this binary-centric world.”
2. The Arab of the future: a childhood in the Middle East by Riad Sattouf
   • “In striking, virtuoso graphic style that captures both the immediacy of childhood and the fervor of political idealism, Riad Sattouf recounts his nomadic childhood growing up in rural France, Gaddafi’s Libya, and Assad’s Syria–but always under the roof of his father, a Syrian Pan-Arabist who drags his family along in his pursuit of grandiose dreams for the Arab nation. Riad, delicate and wide-eyed, follows in the trail of his mismatched parents; his mother, a bookish French student, is as modest as his father is flamboyant. Venturing first to the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab State and then joining the family tribe in Homs, Syria, they hold fast to the vision of the paradise that always lies just around the corner.”
3. Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq
   • “Coming-of-age story about a young boy named Ahmad struggling to find his place in the world. Raised in a refugee camp called Baddawi in northern Lebanon, Ahmad is just one of the thousands of Palestinians who fled their homeland after the war in 1948 established the state of Israel. In this visually arresting graphic novel, Leila Abdelrazaq explores her father’s childhood in the 1960s and ’70s from a boy’s eye view as he witnesses the world crumbling around him and attempts to carry on, forging his own path in the midst of terrible uncertainty.”
4. The best we could do: An illustrated memoir by Thi Bui
   • “The Best We Could Do is an intimate look at one family’s journey form their war-torn home in Vietnam to their new lives in America. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent–the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home.”
5. Bingo love by Tee Franklin
   • “When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-’60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.”
6. Black Panther: World of Wakanda  by Roxane Gay
   • “You know them now as the Midnight Angels, but in this story they are just Ayo and Aneka, young women recruited to become Dora Milaje, an elite task force trained to protect the crown of Wakanda at all costs. Their first assignment will be to protect Queen Shuri… but what happens when your nation needs your hearts and minds, but you already gave them to each other? Meanwhile, former king T’Challa lies with bedfellows so dark, disgrace is inevitable. Plus, explore the true origins of the People’s mysterious leader, Zenzi. Black Panther thinks he knows who Zenzi is and how she got her powers – but he only knows part of the story!”
7. Dare to disappoint: Growing up in Turkey  by Özge Samancı
   • “As a child in Izmir, Turkey in the 1980 and 90s, Özge Samanci watched as her country struggled between its traditional religious heritage and the new secular westernized world of brand-name products and television stars. In Özge’s own family, she struggled to figure out the place where she belonged, too. Her older sister was a perfect student, and her dad hoped Özge would study hard, go to good schools, and become an engineer to find stability in their country’s uncertain economic climate. But Özge was a dreamer and wanted adventure. This touching memoir shows how Özge dared to overcome both her family and her country’s expectations to find happiness by being an artist.”
8. El Deafo by Cece Bell
   • “In this funny, poignant graphic memoir, author/illustrator Cece Bell chronicles her hearing loss at a young age and her subsequent experiences with the Phonic Ear, a very powerful–and very awkward–hearing aid. The Phonic Ear gives Cece the ability to hear–sometimes things she shouldn’t–but also isolates her from her classmates. She really just wants to fit in and find a true friend, someone who appreciates her as she is. After some trouble, she is finally able to harness the power of the Phonic Ear and become “El Deafo, Listener for All.” And more importantly, declare a place for herself in the world and find the friend she’s longed for.”
9. La Lucha: The story of Lucha Castro and human rights in Mexico by Jon Sack
   • “The Mexican border state of Chihuahua and its city Juárez have become notorious the world over as hotbeds of violence. Drug cartel battles and official corruption result in more murders annually in Chihuahua than in war-torn Afghanistan. Thanks to a culture of impunity, 97 percent of the killings in Juárez go unsolved. Despite a climate of fear, a small group of human rights activists, exemplified by the Chihuahua lawyer and organizer Lucha Castro, works to identify the killers and their official enablers. This is the story of La Lucha, illustrated in beautiful and chilling comic book art, rendering in rich detail the stories of families ripped apart by disappearances and murders–especially gender-based violence–and the remarkably brave advocacy, protests, and investigations of ordinary citizens who turned their grief into resistance”
10. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me by Ellen Forney
    • “Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Ellen Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic but terrified that medications would cause her to lose her creativity and livelihood, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability without losing herself or her passion. Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the “crazy artist,” Ellen found inspiration from the lives and work of other artist and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, William Styron, and Sylvia Plath.”
11. March by John Lewis
    • “This graphic novel is a first-hand account of Congressman John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis’ personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.”
12. Monster: A graphic novel  by Walter Dean Myers
    • “While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.”
13. Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
    • “Nimona, a young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy, and Lord Ballister Blackheart, a villain with a vendetta, set out to prove that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his friends are not the heroes everyone thinks they are, but Lord Blackheart soon realizes that Nimona’s powers are as murky and mysterious as her past, and her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.”
14. Pashmina by Nidhi Chanani
    • “Priyanka Das has so many unanswered questions: Why did her mother abandon her home in India years ago? What was it like there? And most importantly, who is her father, and why did her mom leave him behind? But Pri’s mom avoids these questions and the topic of India is permanently closed. For Pri, her mother’s homeland can only exist in her imagination. That is, until she finds a mysterious pashmina tucked away in a forgotten suitcase. When she wraps herself in it, she is transported to a place more vivid and colorful than any guidebook or Bollywood film.”
15. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood  by Satrapi, Marjane
    • “Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi’s childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private life and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming–both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland.”
16. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
    • “Prince Sebastian hides from his parents his secret life of dressing up as the hottest fashion icon in Paris, the fabulous Lady Crystallia, while his friend Frances the dressmaker strives to keep her friend’s secret.”
17. “Puerto Rico strong: A comics anthology supporting Puerto Rico disaster relief and recovery edited by Marco Lopez, Desiree Rodriguez, Hazel Newlevant, Derek Ruiz, and Neil Schwartz.
    • “Puerto Rico Strong is a comics anthology that explores what it means to be Puerto Rican and the diversity that exists within that concept, from today’s most exciting Puerto Rican comics creators.”
18. Runaways. 1, Find your way home by Rainbow Rowell
    • “When the Runaways eliminate the Pride from Los Angeles, it leaves a vacuum of power in the city’s underworld, and soon Nico, Karolina, Gert, Chase, and Molly are on the run again to uncover the truth behind their parents’ past before it catches up to them.”
19. Tales from la Vida: A Latinx comics anthology by Frederick Luis Aldama
    • “Collection of comics created by Latinx artists and writers that comes together to shed light on their various autobiographical experiences as situated within the language, culture, history, and sociopolitics that inform Latinx hemispheric identities and subjectivities.”
20. Undocumented: A worker’s fight by Duncan Tonatiuh
    • “Juan grew up in Mexico working in the fields to help provide for his family. Struggling for money, Juan crosses over into the United States and becomes an undocumented worker, living in a poor neighborhood, working hard to survive. Though he is able to get a job as a busboy at a restaurant, he is severely undercompensated–he receives less than half of the minimum wage! Risking his boss reporting him to the authorities for not having proper resident papers, Juan risks everything and stands up for himself and the rest of the community.

Have favorites that aren’t in this list? Share them with us in the comments.

For this post, we’re focusing on inclusive reading recommendations in literary fiction. Granted, what constitutes literary fiction is up for some debate, so it can sort of end up being a catch-all term. For this post, I’m defining literary fiction as fictional stories that center the character journey rather than centering plot or genre tropes.

1. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
   • “”An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty Two brown girls dream of being dancers–but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free.”
2. Islay by Douglas Bullard
   • “Islay is the name of an imaginary island state coveted by Lyson Sulla, a Deaf man who is tired of feeling that ‘hearing think deaf means dumb, pat head.’ Sulla signs this to his wife Mary in explanation of his desire to tum Islay into a state solely for Deaf people, with himself as governor. From there, his peripatetic quest begins.”
3. Sing, unburied, sing by Jesmyn Ward
   • “Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family.”
4. Nevada by Imogen Binnie
   • “Nevada is the darkly comedic story of Maria Griffiths a young trans woman living in New York City and trying to stay true to her punk values while working retail. When she finds out her girlfriend has lied to her, the world she thought she’d carefully built for herself begins to unravel, and Maria sets out on a journey that will most certainly change her forever.”
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
   • “When his ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them “the truth.” After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true?”
6. The leavers by Lisa Ko
   • “One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. Set in New York and China, the Leavers is the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he’s loved has been taken away–and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.”
7. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
   • “Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith’s own life, The Price of Salt tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany–the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese’s job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society’s confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation.”
8. Exit west by Mohsin Hamid
   • “In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet–sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, thrust into premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors–doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As violence and the threat of violence escalate, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.”
9. The mothers by Brit Bennett
   • “It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken beauty. Mourning her mother’s recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor’s son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. It’s not serious– until the pregnancy. As years move by, Nadia, Luke, and her friend Aubrey are living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently?”
10. The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif
    • “Miriam is the traditional young Indian mother, hardworking and self-effacing. But then she meets the rebellious Amina who confounds the Indian community by driving a taxi and setting up a cafe with a black man, and her world is turned upside down.”
11. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
    • “The lives of two sisters–Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates–are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.”
12. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
    • “A classic novel, in which the man who calls himself the ‘bomb of Bombay’ chronicles the story of a child and a nation that both came into existence in 1947–and examines a whole people’s capacity for carrying inherited myths and inventing new ones.”
13. Fierce femmes and notorious liars : a dangerous trans girl’s confabulous memoir by Kai Cheng Thom
    • “Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir is a coming-of-age story about a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who make their home in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles.”
14. The book of unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez
    • “Moving from Mexico to America when their daughter suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras confront cultural barriers, their daughter’s difficult recovery and her developing relationship with a Panamanian boy.”
15. Good kings bad kings by Susan Nussbaum.
    • “The residents at a facility for disabled young people in Chicago build trust and make friends in an effort to fight against their living conditions and mistreatment.”
16. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
    • “Things Fall Apart tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a ‘strong man’ of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries.”
17. Everything I never told you by Celeste Ng
    • “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.”
18. And the mountains echoed by Khaled Hosseini
    • “Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and step-mother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Adbullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named, is everything; there is an unparalleled bond between these two motherless siblings. What happens to them, and the large and small manners in which it echos through the lives of so many other people is example of the moral complexity of life. In this multigenerational novel revolving around parents and children, brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, the author explores the many ways in which family members love, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another.”
19. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
    • “The tale of two women: the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, back in the thirties. Their southern-style cafe offered good barbecue, good coffee, and all kinds of love and laughter–not to mention an occasional murder.”
20. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
    • “Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history.”

As always, feel free to include your own recommendations in the comments below!

Happy New Year everyone! Was reading more inclusively on anyone else’s list of resolutions? Here’s another inclusive reading recommendations list to help you out. This one is focused on mysteries, detective stories, crime novels and the like.

1. Devil in a blue dress by Walter Mosley
   • “Devil in a Blue Dress honors the tradition of the classic American detective novel by bestowing on it a vivid social canvas and the freshest new voice in crime writing in years, mixing the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the racial realism of Richard Wright to explosive effect.”
2. Death of a red heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
   • “Inspector Chen Cao, head of the Shanghai Police Bureau’s Special Case Squad, investigates the murder of a National Model Worker whose private life may have led to her death.”
3. Four hands by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
   • “Greg Simon and Julio Fernandez are investigative jounalists who are chasing down an elaborate conspiracy plot. The story they discover and type out together weaves truth with lies, wild humor with tragedy, and reality with fantasy–a stranger-than-fiction tale of imperial excess where delusion makes perfect sense.”
4. The paying guests by Sarah Waters
   • “It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned; the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa – a large, silent house now bereft of brothers, husband, and even servants – life is about to be transformed as impoverished widow Mrs. Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.”
5. Bluebird, bluebird by Attica Locke
   • “When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules–a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders–a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman–have stirred up a hornet’s nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes–and save himself in the process–before Lark’s long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.”
6. Trail of lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
   • “While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters. Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last best hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much more terrifying than anything she could imagine. Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel the rez, unraveling clues from ancient legends, trading favors with tricksters, and battling dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology. As Maggie discovers the truth behind the killings, she will have to confront her past if she wants to survive.”
7. The Best Bad Things by Katrina Carrasco
   • “It is 1887, and Alma Rosales is on the hunt for stolen opium. Trained in espionage by the Pinkerton Detective Agency–but dismissed for bad behavior and a penchant for going undercover as a man–Alma now works for Delphine Beaumond, the seductive mastermind of a West Coast smuggling ring. When product goes missing at their Washington Territory outpost, Alma is tasked with tracking the thief and recovering the drugs. In disguise as the scrappy dockworker Jack Camp, this should be easy–once she muscles her way into the local organization, wins the trust of the magnetic local boss and his boys, discovers the turncoat, and keeps them all from uncovering her secrets. All this, while sending coded dispatches to the circling Pinkerton agents to keep them from closing in.”
8. The death of friends by Michael Nava
   • “When Supreme Court judge Chris Chandler is found dead in his chambers, his old friend, Henry Rios, a gay Mexican American criminal defense lawyer, investigates and finds that the man had a secret life.”
9. Real world by Natsuo Kirino
   • “In a crowded residential suburb on the outskirts of Tokyo, four teenage girls indifferently wade their way through a hot, smoggy summer and endless cram school sessions meant to ensure entry into good colleges…. When Toshi’s next-door neighbor is found brutally murdered, the girls suspect the killer is the neighbor’s son, a high school boy they nickname Worm. But when he flees, taking Toshi’s bike and cell phone with him, the four girls get caught up in a tempest of dangers–dangers they never could have even imagined–that rises from within them as well as from the world around them.”
10. Wife of the gods by Kwei Quartey
    • “An original debut novel set in Ghana, is the story of Detective Inspector Darko Dawson, who is sent from the big city to the village of Ketanu to solve the murder of an accomplished young AIDS worker. Darko’s own mother disappeared from this same village many years ago, and as the mystery unfolds, the reader meets a rich cast of characters, and learns about Trokosi, a system where young teenage girls are sent to live with fetish priests to bring good fortune to their families. Darko explores the motivations and secrets of the residents of Ketanu, and in addition to solving a recent murder, discovers the shocking truth about his own mother’s disappearance.”
11. A crack in the wall by Claudia Piñeiro
    • “Pablo Simó’s life is a mess. His career as an architect is at a dead-end; he is reduced to designing soulless office buildings desecrating the heart of Buenos Aires. His marriage seems to be one endless argument with his wife over the theatrics of their rebellious teenage daughter. To complicate matters, Pablo has long been attracted to sexy office secretary Marta Horvat, who is probably having an affair with his boss. Everything changes with the unexpected appearance of Leonor, a beautiful young woman who brings to light a crime that happened years before, a crime that everyone in the office wants forgotten, at all costs.”
12. Wish you were here by Rita Mae Brown
    • “Crozet, Virginia, is a typical small town-until its secrets explode into murder. Crozet’s thirty-something post-mistress, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen, has a tiger cat (Mrs. Murphy) and a Welsh Corgi (Tucker), a pending divorce, and a bad habit of reading postcards not addressed to her. When Crozet’s citizens start turning up murdered, Harry remembers that each received a card with a tombstone on the front and the message “Wish you were here” on the back. Intent on protecting their human friend, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker begin to scent out clues. Meanwhile, Harry is conducting her own investigation, unaware her pets are one step ahead of her. If only Mrs. Murphy could alert her somehow, Harry could uncover the culprit before the murder occurs–and before Harry finds herself on the killer’s mailing list. “
13. A rising man by Abir Mukherjee
    • “Calcutta, 1919. Captain Sam Wyndham, former Scotland Yard detective, has been recruited to head up a new post in the police force. The body of a senior official has been found in a filthy sewer, and a note left in his mouth warns the British to quit India, or else. Wyndham is teamed with arrogant Inspector Digby and Sergeant Banerjee, one of the few Indians to be recruited into the new CID. The case takes them from the opulent mansions of wealthy British traders to the seedy opium dens of the city– and puts them under pressure to solve the case before it erupts into increased violence on the streets.”
14. IQ by Joe Ide
    • “The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood’s high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can’t or won’t touch. They call him IQ. He’s a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tires or a homemade casserole. To get by, he’s forced to take on clients that can pay. This time, it’s a rap mogul whose life is in danger. As Isaiah investigates, he encounters a vengeful ex-wife, a crew of notorious cutthroats, a monstrous attack dog, and a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic. The deeper Isaiah digs, the more far reaching and dangerous the case becomes.”
15. A carrion death by Michael Stanley
    • “In the aftermath of the murder of an anonymous victim, assistant superintendent David Bengu begins his career on Botswana, where his convivial passions and determined methods earn him a local nickname that likens him to a hippopotamus.”
16. There, there by Tommy Orange
    • “Twelve Native Americans came to the Big Oakland Powwow for different reasons. Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind in shame. Dene Oxendene is pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and has come to work the powwow and to honor his uncle’s memory. Edwin Frank has come to find his true father. Bobby Big Medicine has come to drum the Grand Entry. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield has come to watch her nephew Orvil Red Feather. Orvil has taught himself Indian dance through YouTube videos, and he has come to the powwow to dance in public for the very first time. Tony Loneman is a young Native American boy whose future seems destined to be as bleak as his past, and he has come to the Powwow with darker intentions — intentions that will destroy the lives of everyone in his path.”
17. Blanche on the lam by Barbara Neely
    • “In the first of the Blanche White mystery series, the witty and determined Blanche finds herself unexpectedly embroiled in a case of hidden family secrets, untold riches and suspicious deaths.”
18. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
    • “In a chilling literary hall of mirrors, Patricia Highsmith introduces Tom Ripley. Like a hero in a latter-day Henry James novel, Ripley is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal young American back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him, exactly like him. Suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral, Ripley stops at nothingcertainly not only one murderto accomplish his goal. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil.”
19. The cosmic clues by Manjiri Prabhu
    • “When a cat leads Sonia to her very first investigation, she quickly unmasks a killer, using astrology as her guide. Suddenly clients begin streaming in: a persistent, handsome TV personality; a terrified bride-to-be; a missing husband with suicidal tendencies…all challenge Sonia’s astrological abilities to prevent a crime. All apparently isolated experiences, but bound by an invisible thread. And while Sonia has stellar success in unraveling the truth, very soon she’ll have to look closely at her own stars. Because the most notorious international criminal has just crossed Sonia’s path–and he has his own plans for her future!”
20. In the miso soup by Ryu Murakami
    • “It is just before New Year’s. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Frank’s behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isn’t until the second night, however, in a scene that will shock you and make you laugh and make you hate yourself for laughing, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life.”

As always, feel free to include your own recommendations in the comments below!

In this inclusive reading recommendations post, we’re focusing on biographies and memoirs. As always, we’d love to hear your own recommendations or experiences with these or other books in the comments.

1. Becoming by Michelle Obama
   • In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private. A deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations.
2. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
   • Noah’s path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist, his mother is determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. With an incisive wit and unflinching honesty, Noah weaves together a moving yet funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time.
3. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
   • In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she publicly stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Since then, Mock has gone from covering the red carpet for People.com to advocating for all those who live within the shadows of society. Redefining Realness offers a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged, and transgender in America. Welcomed into the world as her parents’ firstborn son, Mock set out early on to be her own person–no simple feat for a young person like herself. She struggled as the smart, determined child in a deeply loving, yet ill-equipped family that lacked money, education, and resources. Mock had to navigate her way through her teen years without parental guidance but luckily with a few close friends and mentors she overcame extremely daunting hurdles.
4. The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui
   • Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves.
5. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
   • A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America–and the founding of a movement that demands restorative justice for all in the land of the free. Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood In Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi.
6. Crazy Brave: A Memoir by Joy Harjo
   • A memoir from the Native American poet describes her youth with an abusive stepfather, becoming a single teen mom, and how she struggled to finally find inner peace and her creative voice.
7. Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole Georges
   • When Nicole Georges was two years old, her family told her that her father was dead. When she was twenty-three, a psychic told her he was alive. Her sister, saddled with guilt, admits that the psychic is right and that the whole family has conspired to keep him a secret. Sent into a tailspin about her identity, Nicole turns to radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger for advice– Calling Dr. Laura tells the story of what happens to you when you are raised in a family of secrets, and what happens to your brain (and heart) when you learn the truth from an unlikely source.
8. I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb
   • When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls’ education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.
9. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
   • For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he’s sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him–most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear … In [this book], Coates takes readers along on his journey through America’s history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings–moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago’s South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America’s ‘long war on black people,’ or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police
10.  Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride
    • Informative, heartbreaking, and profoundly empowering, Tomorrow Will Be Different is McBride’s story of love and loss and a powerful entry point into the LGBTQ community’s battle for equal rights and what it means to be openly transgender. From issues like bathroom access to health care to gender in America, McBride weaves the important political and cultural milestones into a personal journey that will open hearts and change minds. As McBride urges: ‘We must never be a country that says there’s only one way to love, only one way to look, and only one way to live.’ The fight for equality and freedom has only just begun.
11. Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes
    • Mary Brave Bird grew up fatherless in a one-room cabin, without running water or electricity, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement’s chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance.
12.  The Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
    • A memoir that examines rural poverty and the lingering strains of racism in the South by the author of Salvage the bones.
13. The Ministry of Guidance Invites You To Not Stay: An American Family in Iran by Hooman Majd
    • With U.S.-Iran relations at a thirty-year low, Iranian-American writer Hooman Majd dared to take his young family on a year-long sojourn in Tehran. ‘The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay’ traces their domestic adventures and closely tracks the political drama of a terrible year for Iran’s government. It was an “annus horribilis” for Iran’s Supreme Leader. The Green Movement had been crushed, but the regime was on edge, anxious lest democratic protests resurge. International sanctions were dragging down the economy while talk of war with the West grew. Hooman Majd was there for all of it.
14. In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri; translated by Ann Goldstein
    • A series of reflections on the author’s experiences learning a new language and living abroad, in a dual-language edition.
15. Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember: The Stroke That Changed My Life by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
    • Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on New Years Eve 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world quite literally upside down. By New Years Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, she learned that she had had a stroke. For months, Lee outsourced her memories to her notebook. It is from these memories that she has constructed this frank and compelling memoir.
16. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
    • On the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. Kalanithi chronicles his transformation from a naïve medical student into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
17. The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir by Michele Norris
    • The cohost of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” set out, through original reporting, to write a book about “the hidden conversation on race” that is going on in this country. Along the way she unearthed painful family secrets that compelled her to question her own self-understanding; she traveled extensively to explore her own complex racial legacy. Her exploration is informed by hundreds of interviews with ordinary Americans and their observations about evolving attitudes toward race in America.
18. Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
    • An Iranian-American journalist, who grew up as a California girl living in two worlds, returns to Tehran and discovers not only the oppressive and decadent life of her Iranian counterparts who have grown up since the revolution, but the pain of searching for identity between two cultures, and for a homeland that may not exist. The landscape of her Tehran–ski slopes, fashion shows, malls and cafes–is populated by a cast of young people whose exuberance and despair brings the modern reality of Iran to vivid life.
19. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Baeh
    • This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. Ishmael Beah, now 25 years old, tells how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
20. In the Absence of Sun: A Korean American Woman’s Promise to Reunite Three Lost Generations of Her Family by Helie Lee
    • Describes the attempt of Helie Lee to reunite her grandmother with her uncle who was lost decades ago during an escape from North Korea.

*Note: This is NOT a comprehensive list. Help us make it more comprehensive by adding books you like in the comments!