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Books for your personal social justice journey

This guide was created as a companion for the Hoodies & Books event on Pace's New York City campus on February 26, 2025.

Books about social justice movements and activism

Cover of the book Deadly Injustice

Deadly injustice : Trayvon Martin, race, and the criminal justice system

Beekman Library Stacks
HV9950 .D425 2015
 
From the publisher: Uses the Trayvon Martin case as a springboard to examine race, crime, and justice in our criminal justice system. Contributors explores how race and racism inform how Americans think about criminality; how crimes are investigated and prosecuted; and how highly publicized criminal cases go on to shape public views about offenders and the criminal process.

Cover of the book Unapologetic : a Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements

Unapologetic : a Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements

Beekman Library Stacks
HQ75.6.U5 C36 2018

Summary: Unapologetic is a 21st century activists' guide to upending mainstream ideas about race, class, and gender-- through a Black, queer, feminist lens-- carving out a path to collective liberation.Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Carruthers challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. She offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances.

Cover of the book People power : the community organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky

People power : the community organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky

Beekman Library Stacks
HN90.C64 P46 2015
Also available as an ebook
 
From the publisher: People Power is about how people can effectively organize to pursue justice, what power structures do in response to organizing, and how to beat the powers that be. Providing a vibrant story of many different organizers and organizations, its lessons are essential if we are to restore American democracy. ...Weaving classic texts with interviews and their own context-setting commentaries, the editors of People Power provide the first comprehensive history of Alinsky-based organizing in the tumultuous period from 1955 to 1980, when the key organizing groups in the United States took form.

Cover of the book Killing rage : ending racism

Killing rage : ending racism

Beekman Library Stacks
E185.615 .H645 1995
 
From the publisher: One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it....And in the title essay, hooks writes about the "killing rage"--The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism--finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change.

Cover of the book A theory of justice

A theory of justice

Request from the Pace Law Library

From Wikipedia: A Theory of Justice is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributive justice (the socially just distribution of goods in a society). The theory uses an updated form of Kantian philosophy and a variant form of conventional social contract theory. Rawls's theory of justice is fully a political theory of justice as opposed to other forms of justice discussed in other disciplines and contexts.

Cover of the book Rules for revolutionaries : how big organizing can change everything

Rules for revolutionaries : how big organizing can change everything

Beekman Library Stacks
E911 .B66 2016

From the publisher: Rules for Revolutionaries is a bold challenge to the political establishment and the "rules" that govern campaign strategy. It tells the story of a breakthrough experiment conducted on the fringes of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign: a technology-driven team empowered volunteers to build and manage the infrastructure to make seventy-five million calls, launch eight million text messages, and hold more than one-hundred thousand public meetings--in an effort to put Bernie Sanders' insurgent campaign over the top. Bond and Exley, digital iconoclasts who have been reshaping the way politics is practiced in America for two decades, have identified twenty-two rules of "Big Organizing" that can be used to drive social change movements of any kind.

Cover of the book Protest! : a history of social and political protest graphics

Protest! : a history of social and political protest graphics

Beekman Library Stacks
N72.P6 M385 2019
 
Summary: Throughout history, artists and citizens have turned to protest art as a means of demonstrating social and political discontent. From the earliest broadsheets in the 1500s to engravings, photolithographs, prints, posters, murals, graffiti, and political cartoons, these endlessly inventive graphic forms have symbolized and spurred on power struggles, rebellions, spirited causes, and calls to arms. Spanning continents and centuries, Protest! presents a major new chronological look at protest graphics... Protest! documents the integral role of the visual arts in passionate efforts for change.

Cover of the book When they call you a terrorist : a Black Lives Matter memoir

When they call you a terrorist : a Black Lives Matter memoir

Beekman Library Stacks
E185.97.K43 A3 2018
 
Summary: Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, the author experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement....In 2013, when Trayvon Martin's killer went free, her outrage led her to co-found the Black Lives Matter movement with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, the women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who have turned a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of black and brown skin. Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, the author transformed personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering inequality, and forming a movement fueled by strength and love, to tell the country - and the world - that Black Lives Matter.

Cover of the book Black girl dangerous : on race, queerness, class and gender

Black girl dangerous : on race, queerness, class and gender

Beekman Library Stacks
E184.A1 M1486 2014
 
From the publisher: Mia McKenzie, creator of the enormously popular website Black Girl Dangerous, writes about race, queerness, class and gender in a concise, compelling voice filled at different times with humor, grief, rage, and joy. In this collection of her work from BGD (now available only in this book), McKenzie's nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience. McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other.

Cover of the book The source of self-regard : selected essays, speeches, and meditations

The source of self-regard : selected essays, speeches, and meditations

Beekman Library Stacks
PS3563.O8749 A6 2019
 
One of the most celebrated and revered writers in the history of American literature gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass, that are Toni Morrison's hallmarks.

Cover of the book A queer history of the United States

A queer history of the United States

Beekman Library Stacks
HQ76.3.U5 B696 2011
 
From the publisher: A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski's book takes the reader through the centuries--from Columbus' arrival and the brutal treatment the Native peoples received, through the American Revolution's radical challenging of sex and gender roles--to the violent, and liberating, 19th century--and the transformative social justice movements of the 20th....More than anything, A Queer History of the United States is not so much about queer history as it is about all American history--and why it should matter to both LGBT people and heterosexuals alike

Cover of the book Making all Black lives matter : reimagining freedom in the twenty-first century

Making all Black lives matter : reimagining freedom in the twenty-first century

Beekman Library Stacks
E185.615 .R26 2018
 
From the publisher: In the wake of the murder of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the exoneration of his killer, three black women activists launched a hashtag and social-media platform, Black Lives Matter, which would become the rubric for a larger movement... Ransby interviewed more than a dozen of the movement's principal organizers and activists, and she provides a detailed review of its extensive coverage in mainstream and social media. Making All Black Lives Matter offers one of the first overviews of Black Lives Matter and explores the challenges and possible future for this growing and influential movement.