We Believe Black Lives Matter

The Read Between the Vines Podcast team stands with the protestors fighting for justice and equality. We recognize the systemic racism that is so pervasive in organizations that are meant to serve and protect. 

With the help of our community, we have put together a reading list to educate, challenge, and inspire those who wish to become more involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. We suggest reading one book every month and talk through the content with your friends and family; it is not enough to read and not practice.

Now is not the time to disappear into the background for fear of retribution. Now is the time to stand up for those who cannot stand themselves, speak up for voices that cannot be heard, and fight for those who have carried the weight for too long. We support the Black Lives Matter movement, the retraining and fund reallocation for police departments nationwide, oversight and accountability for law enforcement, and the just, fair treatment of all.

Check out the Black Lives Matter website to find your local chapter. 

We’ve put a pause on our regularly scheduled content while we work to better recognize and understand our role in the changing landscape of today’s society. We’ll be back soon with a special poetry episode featuring the voices of black poets throughout history, and then we’ll get back to our books – but we will not forget and we will not be silent. We’ve added a BLM page to our website that will continue to host this list of books and other recommendations as they appear.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
by Robin J. DiAngelo
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
by Ibram X. Kendi
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century
by Dorothy Roberts
Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves
edited by Glory Edim
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
by Audre Lorde
Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More
by Janet Mock
The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
by Langston Hughes
The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
The Blacker the Berry
by Wallace Thurman
West Indian Immigrants: A Black Success Story?
by Suzanne Model
Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Racial Tradition
by Cedric J. Robinson
Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
by Peniel E. Joseph
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor