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Still Here…: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Perkins’ Recommended Reads
Travel from the comfort of your home with books mentioning different states in their titles.
We live in a time when there is a constant flow of what seems to be new ideas, and new ways of thinking. Are these ideas so new? Are these problems we have never encountered, or are these things that have been with us for some time?
Below is a list of works that sought to instruct, to explain, or to memorialize. Moreover, these authors want us to see how what was, is, once again, what is now. This list is by no means exhaustive, and titles on the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are constantly being added to the Library’s collections. We invite you to explore the titles below, and those items that are being added moving forward.
Digital book (DB), braille (BR), large print (LT), and audio described videos (DVD) copies of these titles are available from the Perkins Library or the Worcester Talking Book Library. Please contact the library to order any of these books.
Prepared by James Gleason
Deputy Director
Perkins Library
And the Band Played On: The AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
DB 26042, Available as BARD Download
The author, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, has been covering the AIDS epidemic full-time since 1982. He presents the apathy and politics displayed by the government, the media, the medical establishment, and the gay community before they realized the magnitude of the crisis, as well as the tragedy of the disease’s human toll. Bestseller. 1987.
Black Like Me
by John Howard Griffin
DB 61703, BR 16177, Available as BARD Download
The revealing and sometimes terrifying experiences of a white man who deliberately darkened his skin with chemicals in 1959 to find out what it was like to be a black man in the Deep South. 1960.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
by Dee Alexander Brown
DB 75663, BR 19577, Available as BARD Download
Based upon the records of treaty councils and the actual words of leaders such as Geronimo, Chief Joseph, and Crazy Horse. This history, from 1860 to 1890, covers the thirty critical years during which the West was won and the civilization of the Native American was lost. 1971.
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America
by Ronald T. Takaki
DB 37361, Available as BARD Download
Professor of ethnic studies traces American history from non-Anglo perspectives, beginning with Native Americans and including Africans, Russian Jews, Japanese, Irish, Chinese, and Latinos. Takaki discusses the exploitation of immigrants in the development of the American economy, and he relates the problems of minorities in continuing ethnic and racial misunderstandings, making a case for education on the subject. 1993.
The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan
DB 53797, Available as BARD Download
1960s feminist discusses problems of American women. Considers a distorted image of femininity to have arrested women’s intellectual growth, hampered their sexual fulfillment, threatened their marriages, and become their major barrier to self-realization. 1963.
The Hiding Place
by Corrie Ten Boom
DB 43746, BR 2785, DB available as BARD Download
Describes the author’s experiences in a German concentration camp. Ten Boom tells how she never lost faith in God and how she ministered to fellow prisoners and comforted them. For junior and senior high and older readers. 1974.
I Am Not Your Negro
by James Baldwin
DB 88630, BR 21879, Available as BARD Download
A compilation of passages from unpublished and previously published books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews used in the creation of the 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary of the same name. Explores Baldwin’s unwritten book concept profiling Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. Some strong language. Bestseller. 2017.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
DB 82383, Available as BARD Download
A history of the United States exploring the perspective of its indigenous peoples. Dunbar-Ortiz analyzes how native tribes actively resisted national expansion and examines the systematic destruction of the lives and cultures of the native civilizations present in North America before European colonization. Violence. 2014.
Download An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, DB 82383
Night Trilogy
by Elie Wiesel
DB 42074, BR 11185, LT 22457, Available as BARD Download
Night is the story of a Jewish boy who is deported with his family and community from Hungary to the horrors of the infamous Auschwitz. In “Dawn,” Elisha, the sole survivor of his family, becomes a Jewish terrorist in Palestine and is ordered to execute an Englishman. In “The Accident,” a concentration camp survivor tries to rebuild his life in New York City. Some violence and some descriptions of sex. 1972.
Nothing About Us Without Us
by James I. Charlton
DB 57159 (In process)
Analysis by U.S. activist of global disability rights movement. Drawing on interviews of people with disabilities in ten countries in the Americas, Europe, and Third World, Charlton provides a political, economic, and cultural context to better understand and support an emerging international effort seeking power to resist and end conditions of dependency. 1993.
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: the Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965
by Jia Lyn Yang
DB 99705, Available as BARD Download
A tracing of events after Congress, in 1924, instituted strict ethnic quotas on immigration. The author discusses the effects of these restrictions on American society and recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents worked to abolish the law and passed the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020.
Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy
by James S. Hirsch
DB 90544, Available as BARD Download
The author recounts the events of a race riot–generally known as the Greenwood riot–that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. Discusses the events of that night, their lasting impact, and the community’s response to the riot, including the destruction of many records pertaining to it. 2002.
Souls of Black Folk
by W. E. B. Du Bois
DB 63648, BR 13240, Available as BARD Download
Fourteen essays and sketches by civil rights activist, published in 1903, examine African American experiences in the post-Civil War South. Argues that emancipation should have brought immediate racial equality and that racial accommodation policies reflected a sellout. Centennial edition includes 2003 introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer/historian David Levering Lewis. 1903.
Stolen Justice: The Struggle for African American Voting Rights
by Lawrence Goldstone
DB 98339, Available as BARD Download
Traces the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era through the eyes of incredible individuals, both heroic and barbaric, and examines the legal cases that made the Supreme Court a partner of white supremacists in the rise of Jim Crow. Violence and some strong language. For junior and senior high readers. 2020.
The Stonewall Reader
by Edmund White
DB 95636, Available as BARD Download
Anthology chronicling the 1960s fight for LGBTQ rights and the activists who spearheaded it. Contains firsthand accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles documenting the years leading up to and following the Stonewall uprising. Foreword by Edmund White. 2019
The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing up Gay in a Straight Man’s World
by Alan Downs
DB 61478, Available as BARD Download
Gay psychologist offers anecdotes from his practice and clinical research to help gay men cope with the shame they may feel because of their sexual orientation. Discusses typical childhood development, identity crises, and relationships. 2005.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson
DB 71929, Available as BARD Download
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist chronicles the migration of African Americans from the South during 1915-1970. Recounts experiences of sharecropper’s wife Ida Mae Gladney in 1937, citrus picker George Starling in 1945, and physician Pershing Foster in 1953. Asserts that institutionalized racism spurred millions to uproot themselves. Some violence. Bestseller. 2010.
What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement
by Fred Pelka
DB 74570, Available as BARD Download
Twentieth-century disability activists describe their political struggles for basic human rights, which led to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. They discuss landmark campaigns, including the demand for a deaf president at Gallaudet University and ADAPT’s struggle for accessible public transit. 2012.
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