UAA/APU Books of the Year: Healing What Divides Us
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
ed. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson and ed. Katharine Wilkinson
Provocative and illuminating essays, poetry and art from a highly diverse group of women at the forefront of the climate movement. All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.
Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together Again
Van Jones
CNN host Van Jones offers a blueprint for transforming our collective anxiety into meaningful change. Jones urges members of both political parties to abandon the politics of accusation. He issues a call for a new “bipartisanship from below,” pointing us toward practical answers to problems that affect us all regardless of region or ideology: rural and inner-city poverty, unemployment, addiction, unfair incarceration, and the devastating effects of the pollution-based economy on both coal country and our urban centers.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Robin Kimmerer
A New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Bestseller. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Resmaa Manakem
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. He argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans--our police. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.
Racism in America: A Reader
Harvard University Press
A collection of essays by renowned scholars addressing a wide range of issues related to racism in America. Compiled and published by Harvard University in the wake of the George Floyd racial equity protests.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.
Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Sherry Turkle
Author and media researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over
thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling
consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation,
tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look,
listen, or reveal ourselves.
But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures. Based on five years
of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that
we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take
us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing
that we do.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.
Talking Across the Divide: How to Communicate with People You Disagree with and Maybe Even Change the World
Justin Lee
A guide to learning how to communicate with people who have diametrically opposed opinions from you, how to empathize with them, and how to (possibly) change their minds America is more polarized than ever.
These resources are organized by the following themes:
For a complete list of resources and themes, please visit our 2021-2023 Additional Resources Live Doc.