Growing Edges
Racial Justice - READ:
* Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, Kelly Brown Douglas
“If Trayvon was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?”—President Barack Obama
On the Sunday morning after the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, black preachers across America addressed the questions his death raised for their communities: “Where is the justice of God? What are we to hope for?”
In this timely and compelling book, Kelly Brown Douglas examines the myths and narratives underlying a “stand-your-ground” culture, taking seriously the social as well as the theological questions raised by this and similar events, from Ferguson, Missouri to Staten Island, New York.
But the author also brings another significant interpretative lens to this text: that of a mother. She writes: “There has been no story in the news that has troubled me more than that of Trayvon Martin’s slaying. President Obama said that if he had a son his son would look like Trayvon. I do have a son and he does look like Trayvon.”
In the face of tragedy and indifference, Kelly Brown Douglas arms the truth of a black mother’s faith in these times of “stand your ground.”
(https://www.orbisbooks.com/stand-your-ground.html?sef_rewrite=1)
* Lucille Clifton Poetry
“The Terrible Stories (1996) and Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000) shed light upon women’s survival skills in the face of ill health, family upheaval, and historic tragedy. Blessing the Boats is a compilation of four Clifton books, plus new poems, which, Becker noted in the American Poetry Review, “shows readers how the poet’s themes and formal structures develop over time.” Among the pieces collected in these volumes are several about the author’s breast cancer. She also deals with juvenile violence, child abuse, biblical characters, dreams, the legacy of slavery, and a shaman-like empathy with animals as varied as foxes, squirrels, and crabs. She also speaks in a number of voices, as noted by Becker, including “angel, Eve, Lazarus, Leda, Lot’s Wife, Lucifer, among others ... as she probes the narratives that undergird western civilization and forges new ones.” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lucille-clifton)
* FOR KIDS: A Kids Book About Racism, Jelani Memory “Yes, this really is a kids book about racism. Inside, you’ll find a clear description of what racism is, how it makes people feel when they experience it, and how to spot it when it happens.
“This is one conversation that’s never too early to start, and this book was written to be an introduction for kids on the topic.” (https://akidsbookabout.com/products/a-kids-book-about-racism)
suggestions from the Rev. Dr. Julius Carroll:
* The Cross and the Lynching Tree, The Rev. Dr. James H. Cone
"No one has explored the spiritual world of African Americans with the depth or breadth of Cone. Here he turns his attention to two symbols that dominated not only the spiritual world but also the daily life of African Americans in the twentieth century. In their inextricable tie, he finds both the terror and hope that governed life under violent racism as well as potent symbols of the African American past and present in the United States.” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Harvard University)
* The Souls of Black Folk ,W. E. B. Du Bois, PHD (1st PHD earned at Harvard University by an African American scholar)
“ W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is a seminal work in African American literature and an American classic. In this work Du Bois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these enduring concepts, Souls offers an assessment of the progress of the race, the obstacles to that progress, and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.