Our staff have organized several lists of books and films at New Lenox Library to better understand current events and the history of racism in America. These resources focus on a variety of topics, including historical context, systemic inequality, anti-Black violence, protest, intersectionality, allyship, education, hope, celebration, and resilience.
Our collection is always growing. View our New Releases for a list of monthly new media.
Non-Fiction Reading for Adults
When They Call You a Terrorist: a Black Lives Matter Memoir
Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele
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Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, & You
Jason Reynolds
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The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago & American Segregation
Natalie Y. Moore
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Between the World & Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America
Michael Eric Dyson
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Black Klansman: Race, Hate, & the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime
Ron Stallworth
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We Were Eight Years in Power: an American Tragedy
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
Mira Jacob
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I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street
Matt Taibbi
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How Does It Feel to be a Problem? Being Young & Arab in America
Moustafa Bayoumi
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The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson
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Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, & Do
Jennifer L. Eberhardt, PhD
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How We Fight for Our Lives: a Memoir
Saeed Jones
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Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
Jose Antonio Vargas
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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice & Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
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Don't Label Me: an Incredible Conversation for Divided Times
Irshad Manji
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Why We Can't Wait
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl & Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays
Damon Young
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Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America
Nefertiti Austin
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Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah
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Stay Woke: A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us
Justin Michael Williams
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Rising Out of Hatred: the Awakening of a Former White Nationalist
Eli Saslow
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Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America
Vegas Tenold
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The Second Coming of the KKK: the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s & the American Political Tradition
Linda Gordon
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One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy
Carol Anderson; foreword by Senator Dick Durbin
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Hidden Figures
Margot Lee Shetterly
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Heavy: an American Memoir
Kiese Laymon
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
James W. Loewen
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When Affirmative Action was White: an Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
Ira Katznelson
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The Other Wes Moore: One Name & Two Fates
Wes Moore
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The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery & the Making of American Capitalism
Edward E. Baptist
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Fiction Reading for Adults
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston
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Viewing for Adults
42: the Jackie Robinson Story (DVD)
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