7 Books to Understand Diverse American Experiences This Independence Day
America - she is complex. Every day of her history has included beautiful acts of bravery and humanity, and every day of her history has also included brutal acts of dehumanization and cruelty. These are 7 of the books that have given me a window into the diverse experiences of my fellow Americans who walk or have walked in different shoes than my own. As we celebrate and think critically about our country this July 4th, I hope you will consider one or more of these that might broaden your own perspective.
There There: This brilliant novel follows 12 characters from Native communities. It explores of the plight of the urban Native American - grappling with a painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
The 1619 Project : A New Origin Story: This book reframes American history by putting slavery and its legacy at the center of the narrative about the country. The essays show how the history of slavery reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
The Immortalists: The story starts in 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side and travels through the next few decades of American history through the eyes of characters, including San Francisco amid the 1980s' AIDS epidemic. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
Homeland Elegies: Being Muslim in America is an experience that can never fully be understood by those of us who do not live with that identity, but this story of a father and son working through that complexity is one of the best books I read in 2021. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
On the Come Up: On the Come Up is a tribute to hip-hop.. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working-class black families. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
Where We Come From: Tackling the crisis of U.S. immigration policy from a deeply human angle, this novel follows a Mexican-American family in Brownsville, Texas. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
Transcendent Kingdom: Gyasi is an incredible novelist, and this book is a deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. (Amazon | Bookshop | Indiebound)
