Recommended Reads for Equity: Biographies

"Socioeconomic and racial inequities that perpetuate across generations and how they seep into child and youth development; Promising practices for building collective power to debunk distorted truths about non-dominant communities and transform broken structures of society"

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"It is a powerful story of growth, redemption, and forgiveness in an era of mass incarceration"

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"This book helped me understand the systemic discrimination and cycle for poor people of color getting caught up by the legal system and then not being able to get out. The book details how it is particularly hard on women who have children and why it is so hard to get back on your feet. Despite the terrible stories, the book is engaging and ultimately empowering because the author was able to transcend her situation through some lucky chances and created new opportunities and living situations for women in similar circumstances."

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"I read the book to better understand issues of equity in America and why and how institutional racism still persists. Though this book did help me better understand racism in America, it also offered an unintended but cherished lesson...

The unintended lesson is why some parents who have suffered trauma, parent with destructive fear. My father is the product of a fascist regime and has parented as someone who fears the world. Black parents in America know a similar fear, a deeper fear, a more sinister and pervasive fear. I never understood my father's fear completely or his broken way of parenting as well as I have in reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, Between the World and Me.

I moved to America in 1991 with the belief that it was a Norman Rockwell painting not unlike The Golden Rule. I believed it was easier in America, than in other countries, to live in peace regardless of our race, religion or creed. The truth, for now, is different for some. Peace (equity) is not guaranteed. "Between the World and Me" explains that. I found it instructive and heartbreaking."

Recommended by: Hannah Wilson, Student UW Seattle, Environmental Science and Resource Management
"This book delves into the power structures in the U.S. and why work the way they do historically and contemporarily against people of color, especially black people. This book is empowering in that it gave me, a black and mixed race woman, the knowledge of my position in our society and how it has developed over time. It shows the beauty of people of color and how they have shown incredible resilience in the face of injustice."


Recommended by: Anonymous
"It explains a similar upbringing for a lot black people in America, the hardships, that still persist today, indignation of black bodies, the infallible strength, tenacity, spirit, wisdom and power that is black people; the black father/son dynamic, the truth and much more. Equity is knowing how important diversity is and knowing everyone benefits from it, thus allowing people to be more inclusive and be richer for it."


Recommended by: Teresa Ward, Faculty UW Seattle, Nursing
"Thoughtfully written book on race in America by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This book is written as a letter to his son on Coates experiences and the historical context of growing up in Baltimore, attending Howard University, living in Paris and New York. Insightful book."

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"I read this book in one weekend, not because it is a quick read but because I couldn't stop reading it and did nothing else all weekend. While it seems to be mostly marketed and reviewed as a memoir of "growing up Inupiaq,” it is just as much a memoir of Hensley’s integral part in the struggle for Indigenous land and cultural rights in Alaska. Hensley has an incredibly important and moving story to tell, and he is also a brilliant (and really funny) storyteller."

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"This memoir by legendary community leader and organizer Bob Santos documents an important history and story of how communities of different cultural backgrounds united to fight for equity, diversity and inclusion in Seattle."

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"Josephine works in Nursing at the UW and has spent many years working with the homeless as well as teaching teaching critical reflective practice to health science students and expanding our understanding of homelessness."

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