Reading about activism? What a waste of time, right? What can a couple of old books tell me about the world that I don’t already know?

It turns out — quite a lot. Reading and educating yourself about disparities, injustice, and change doesn’t stop when you close the pages of To Kill a Mockingbird or A Raisin in the Sun in middle school. It’s our responsibility as citizens to stay educated, constantly challenge our thoughts, and inspire others. Although most activism education comes from social media these days, reading is an important vehicle to help us comprehend and engage. 

Books about activism and change help you form your own thoughts, ideas, and theories using the words and voices of those who’ve come before us as guidance. And it doesn’t even need to be some dusty old book about political theory. 

Here are ten books that can help educate, inspire, and change you. 

 

Emergent Strategy 

By: Adrienne Maree Brown
Topics:  Systemic Injustice, Racism, Environmentalism, Spirituality, Capitalism

If you love science fiction and philosophy, Emergent Strategy and its associated books are a great place to start your reading journey. This new take on a self-help book uses the miracle of nature, emotions, and Afro-futurism to inspire readers to work towards changing the political atmosphere, the environment, and the overall planet. Brown was inspired by science fiction legend Octavia Butler’s exploration of change in humans and utilizes this analysis in the book to talk about hard-to-digest topics such as late-stage capitalism, environmental collapse, white supremacy, and hetero-patriarchy without losing hope for a better tomorrow. 

 

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

By: Mikki Kendall

Topics: Systemic Injustice, Racism, White Feminism, Patriarchy, Education, Poverty, Violence

Feminism has become mainstream, but it would be fantastic if we didn’t leave behind certain groups of women while breaking the glass ceiling. In this nonfiction book, Kendall analyzes how modern-day feminism forgot about Women of Color and the different struggles they must overcome to be treated equally in a world that abandoned them. It’s brutally candid, consequential, and beautiful, with essays about homelessness, poverty, health and education disparities, and domestic violence. It’s pretty much required reading for those who consider themselves feminists and is a staple in intersectional activism. 

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis

By: Dean Spade

Topics: Covid-19, Climate Change, Mass Incarceration, Immigration, Wealth Inequality

Interdependence is a difficult concept to imagine. People from every corner of the world, coming together, without governments getting in the way, to help each other? Sounds impossible. But, through mutual aid, a grassroots activism concept that Dean Spade teaches in this handbook, it may be within reach. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis is a guide for organizing your community and meeting their needs in times of urgency. Although different from other activism books you may pick up due to its practicality, this book offers concrete tools to create fundamental social movements. 

The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century

By: Grace Lee Boggs, Scott Kurashige, Danny Glover (Foreword)

Topics: Racial Inequality, Feminism, Poverty, Immigrant Rights, Xenophobia, Urban Communities

If you are still searching for what activism and fighting for change means to you, this book may offer some guidance. Boggs, a community activist from Detroit who was 96 when the book was published, recalls her time as a member of many social movements and explains how she inspired others during the height of change in the 1900s. The book is less of an instruction manual and more of a helping hand in envisioning actual change and revolution. Boggs died in 2015 at the age of 100, but her story continues to inspire today’s activists.

Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life

By: Alice Wong

Topics: Systemic Injustice, Racism, Xenophobia, Ableism

The Disability Visibility Project (DVP) is an online platform dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability culture. In Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, DVP’s founder, Alice Wong, combines essays, conversations, images, and artworks to tell her story — the life of a Chinese American with spinal muscular atrophy. In this memoir, she shares her love for pop culture, food, and both of her communities while untangling the ableism and xenophobia she has battled throughout her life. Wong’s writing is transformative, expansive, and brilliant, touching upon the richness of disabled life and combating stereotypes of what healing really means. 

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

By: Nick Estes

Topics: Environmentalism, Indigenous Peoples, Colonialism

Recognizing that activism is an intergenerational story with decades of history and struggle is crucial. We didn’t start these battles, but we can try to finish them. Estes explores this concept by unpacking the Dakota Access Pipeline protest movement. This young writer analyzes one of the most significant protests this generation has ever seen while weaving it into indigenous resistance from hundreds of years of history. It is a powerful, gut-wrenching, yet touching book, with first-hand accounts from indigenous activists on top of years of research. 

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation

By: Eli Clare

Topics: Ableism, Poverty, LGBTQ+ issues, Homophobia, Disability Activism, Environmentalism

Although a little older than some of the other books on this list, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation still stands alone as one of the most groundbreaking stories of exploration, love and social justice. The book, which is a mix of prose, personal essay, and political analysis, explores how Clare felt living in rural America, which had little room for a queer or disabled community, and how this led to a loss of connection with the land and nature he once called home. It is a story filled with unanswered questions, self-determination, and the search for peace in exile. 

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance: A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power

By: Danielle L. McGuire

Topics: Racism, Systemic Injustice, Feminism, Sexual Assault, Violence

Everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks. Or, at least, they know the watered-down version taught in schools. This book delves into the part of the story people like to forget — the mass sexual violence committed against black women by white men throughout history and how Parks launched a movement that exposed these ritualistic assaults years before she sat on that bus. McGuire goes beyond what primary historians did, uncovering the darkest parts of the civil rights movement and writing a terrifying yet illuminating depiction of the tragedies Recy Taylor and hundreds of other women faced. 

All Boys Aren’t Blue

By: George M. Johnson

Topics: Racism, Systemic Injustice, LGBTQ+ issues, Homophobia, Transphobia, Patriarchy, Masculinity

For activists, if a book is considered one of the country’s most banned pieces of literature, it is probably a book you want to read. All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir and manifesto about growing up as a queer man of color, is banned in at least 29 school districts because of its in-depth discussion of LGBTQ+ issues and “sexual content.” It is structured in a series of short but powerful personal essays, making this a quick and compelling read. Each piece is a mix of beauty, pain, sadness, and love and is a reminder of why life is worth fighting for. 

I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America

By: Tyler Merritt

Topics: Racism, Systemic Injustice, Religion, Police Brutality

Tyler Merritt, as seen on Jimmy Kimmel, in the New York Times, and Sports Illustrated, released multiple viral videos about the Black community and police brutality that became the platform on which the book was built. Merritt welcomes readers into his world, life as a black man in the film, music, and theater industries, and, using humor and emotion, talks about bringing happiness to a world filled with anger and sadness. There is also a historical aspect of the book, where he informs readers about sharecropping, lynching, Christianity, and Black family dynamics and how they impact his community today. This book is both a casual conversation about life and a serious discourse about racial injustice.