I participated in the Women's March this past Saturday. It was awesome. There were so many people gathering to protest for their values and viewpoints. The March also inspired this month's Variations on a Theme. Here is a list of books about people fighting for what they believe in.
March
John Lewis
Winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. A galvanizing account of Lewis's coming-of-age in the movement, it's a capsule lesson in courage of conscience, a story that inspires without moralizing or simplifying in hindsight…The three volumes of March…aren't just a record of Lewis's activism but one of its brilliant examples, designed to help new generations of readers visualize the possibilities of political engagement…The graphic-novel genre proves to be the perfect means of showing us the friction at the movement's seams. Vivid and dynamic, yet easily accommodating political nuance, this form lends itself to depicting the complex confrontations and negotiations of a wide range of individuals…Emphasizing disruption, decentralization and cooperation over the mythic ascent of heroic leaders, this graphic novel's presentation of civil rights is startlingly contemporary. Lewis may be one of the "great men" of the movement, but his memoir is humble and generous, carving out much of its space for less well-known organizers, figures like Jim Lawson, Ella Baker and Diane Nash.
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
The Stonewall Riots: The History and Legacy of the Protests that Helped Spark the Modern Gay Rights Movement
Charles River Editors
The Stonewall Riots: The History and Legacy of the Protests that Helped Spark the Modern Gay Rights Movement chronicles the fateful chain of events that brought about the raid and the uprising that many consider the first step in the fight for gay rights. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Stonewall riots like never before, in no time at all.
Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights movement in America
Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney
This is the definitive account of the last great struggle for equal rights in the twentieth century. From the birth of the modern gay rights movement in 1969, at the Stonewall riots in New York, through 1988, when the gay rights movement was eclipsed by the more urgent demands of AIDS activists, this is the remarkable and until now untold story of how a largely invisible population of men and women banded together to create their place in America’s culture and government. Told through the voices of gay activists and their opponents, filled with dozens of colorful characters, Out for Good traces the emergence of gay rights movements in cities across the country and their transformation into a national force that changed the face of America forever. Out for Good is the unforgettable chronicle of an important—and nearly lost—chapter in American history.
The Suffragette: The History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement
Sylvia Pankhurst
By 1903, more than fifty years of peaceful campaigning had brought British women no closer to attaining the right to vote. In that year activist Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union, a militant organization dedicated to achieving women's suffrage. The union's motto, "Deeds not words," reflected its radical approach, consisting of stone-throwing, window-breaking, arson, and physical confrontation with authorities. The Suffragette, written by Emmeline Pankhurst's daughter, Sylvia, offers an insider's perspective on the union's growth and development as well as the motives and ideals that inspired its leaders and followers. She chronicles the protesters' tactics as well as the consequences of their actions: arrests, imprisonment, hunger strikes, and the mental and physical ordeals of forced feeding. Vintage photographs illustrate the demonstrations, courtroom trials, and other dramatic incidents from the history of the women's militant suffrage movement.
March of the Suffragettes: Rosalie Gardiner Jones and the March for Voting Rights
Zachary Michael Jack
March of the Suffragettes tells the forgotten, real-life story of “General” Rosalie Gardiner Jones, who in the waning days of 1912 mustered and marched an all-women army nearly 175 miles to help win support for votes for women. General Jones, along with her good friends and accomplices “Colonel” Ida Craft, “Surgeon General” Lavinia Dock, and “War Correspondent” Jessie Hardy Stubbs, led marchers across New York state for their pilgrims’ cause, encountering not just wind, fog, sleet, snow, mud, and ice along their unpaved way, but also hecklers, escaped convicts, scandal-plagued industrialists on the lam, and jealous boyfriends and overprotective mothers hoping to convince the suffragettes to abandon their dangerous project. By night Rosalie’s army met and mingled with the rich and famous, attending glamorous balls in beautiful dresses to deliver fiery speeches; by day they fought blisters and bone-chilling cold, debated bitter Anti-suffragists, and dodged wayward bullets and pyrotechnics meant to intimidate them. They composed and sang their own marching songs for sisterhood and solidarity on their route, even as differences among them threatened to tear them apart.
Other Protest Books
The Art of Protest - T.V. Reed
The Ascent of Woman - Melanie Phillips
At the Dark End of the Street - Danielle L. McGuire
Bearing the Cross - David Garrow
Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly
Loving Vs. Virginia - Patrick Hruby Powell
Making Gay History - Eric Marcus
Not Here, Not Now, Not That! - Steven J. Tepper
Parting the Waters - Taylor Branch
Protest Nation - Timothy Patrick McCarthy
Ten Tea Parties - Joseph Cummins
Victory - Linda Hirshman
John Lewis
Winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. A galvanizing account of Lewis's coming-of-age in the movement, it's a capsule lesson in courage of conscience, a story that inspires without moralizing or simplifying in hindsight…The three volumes of March…aren't just a record of Lewis's activism but one of its brilliant examples, designed to help new generations of readers visualize the possibilities of political engagement…The graphic-novel genre proves to be the perfect means of showing us the friction at the movement's seams. Vivid and dynamic, yet easily accommodating political nuance, this form lends itself to depicting the complex confrontations and negotiations of a wide range of individuals…Emphasizing disruption, decentralization and cooperation over the mythic ascent of heroic leaders, this graphic novel's presentation of civil rights is startlingly contemporary. Lewis may be one of the "great men" of the movement, but his memoir is humble and generous, carving out much of its space for less well-known organizers, figures like Jim Lawson, Ella Baker and Diane Nash.
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Charles River Editors
The Stonewall Riots: The History and Legacy of the Protests that Helped Spark the Modern Gay Rights Movement chronicles the fateful chain of events that brought about the raid and the uprising that many consider the first step in the fight for gay rights. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Stonewall riots like never before, in no time at all.
Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights movement in AmericaDudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney
This is the definitive account of the last great struggle for equal rights in the twentieth century. From the birth of the modern gay rights movement in 1969, at the Stonewall riots in New York, through 1988, when the gay rights movement was eclipsed by the more urgent demands of AIDS activists, this is the remarkable and until now untold story of how a largely invisible population of men and women banded together to create their place in America’s culture and government. Told through the voices of gay activists and their opponents, filled with dozens of colorful characters, Out for Good traces the emergence of gay rights movements in cities across the country and their transformation into a national force that changed the face of America forever. Out for Good is the unforgettable chronicle of an important—and nearly lost—chapter in American history.
Sylvia Pankhurst
By 1903, more than fifty years of peaceful campaigning had brought British women no closer to attaining the right to vote. In that year activist Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union, a militant organization dedicated to achieving women's suffrage. The union's motto, "Deeds not words," reflected its radical approach, consisting of stone-throwing, window-breaking, arson, and physical confrontation with authorities. The Suffragette, written by Emmeline Pankhurst's daughter, Sylvia, offers an insider's perspective on the union's growth and development as well as the motives and ideals that inspired its leaders and followers. She chronicles the protesters' tactics as well as the consequences of their actions: arrests, imprisonment, hunger strikes, and the mental and physical ordeals of forced feeding. Vintage photographs illustrate the demonstrations, courtroom trials, and other dramatic incidents from the history of the women's militant suffrage movement.
March of the Suffragettes: Rosalie Gardiner Jones and the March for Voting RightsZachary Michael Jack
March of the Suffragettes tells the forgotten, real-life story of “General” Rosalie Gardiner Jones, who in the waning days of 1912 mustered and marched an all-women army nearly 175 miles to help win support for votes for women. General Jones, along with her good friends and accomplices “Colonel” Ida Craft, “Surgeon General” Lavinia Dock, and “War Correspondent” Jessie Hardy Stubbs, led marchers across New York state for their pilgrims’ cause, encountering not just wind, fog, sleet, snow, mud, and ice along their unpaved way, but also hecklers, escaped convicts, scandal-plagued industrialists on the lam, and jealous boyfriends and overprotective mothers hoping to convince the suffragettes to abandon their dangerous project. By night Rosalie’s army met and mingled with the rich and famous, attending glamorous balls in beautiful dresses to deliver fiery speeches; by day they fought blisters and bone-chilling cold, debated bitter Anti-suffragists, and dodged wayward bullets and pyrotechnics meant to intimidate them. They composed and sang their own marching songs for sisterhood and solidarity on their route, even as differences among them threatened to tear them apart.
Other Protest Books
The Art of Protest - T.V. Reed
The Ascent of Woman - Melanie Phillips
At the Dark End of the Street - Danielle L. McGuire
Bearing the Cross - David Garrow
Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly
Loving Vs. Virginia - Patrick Hruby Powell
Making Gay History - Eric Marcus
Not Here, Not Now, Not That! - Steven J. Tepper
Parting the Waters - Taylor Branch
Protest Nation - Timothy Patrick McCarthy
Ten Tea Parties - Joseph Cummins
Victory - Linda Hirshman
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