Resources | Race & American Memory

In this groundbreaking historical novel, Roots, Alex Haley sets out a mission to discover his heritage, and fill in the gaps where history isn’t available. Taking the reader through two centuries and six generations of his family, Haley brings to life the monumental drama of Kunta Kinte in 1750s West Africa to the slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workmen and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects that followed.

Researching over two thousand years of Western civilization, in The History of White People historian Nell Irvin Painter exposes the construction of race and the ensuing praise of whiteness that has benefited certain individuals in economic, scientific, and political aspects, from ancient Greece through to 21st-century America.

White Like Me is a memoir offering a personal examination of the way racial privilege shapes the experiences of white Americans. Tim Wise demonstrates how racism simultaneously burdens people of color and benefits those who, as Wise describes them, are “white like me.” The experiences of Wise’s own life reveal how white privilege can work against those who refuse to challenge their privileges and limit the potential for progressive social change.

Blending poetry and lyric prose, Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, tells the story of Sethe, a former slave haunted by memories of her brutal plantation days and by the ghost of her daughter, who remains nameless except for the inscription on her grave: Beloved.

In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates relates the awakening he’s had about his true place in the world—a place determined by the fact that he inhabits a black body. Coates attempts to answer questions surrounding the concept of “race” using personal narrative, reimagined history, and emotionally charged reporting to shed new light on the past and provide a beautiful vision for our future.

In Citizen, Claudia Rankine opens readers’ eyes to mounting racial aggression and tensions that, for some, go unnoticed in 21st-century daily life. Rankine argues that our ability to address these tensions is tied to the state of our belonging, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. Citizen provides a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary society.

Robert Young’s Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction studies situations, experiences, and testimony rather than abstract theory. He re-examines the political, social, and cultural effects of decolonization as an historical condition, with examples such as the status of aboriginal people, those dispossessed from their land, Algerian raï music, postcolonial feminism, and global social and ecological movements.