Given the events on campus, the Herald has reached out to Yale students and professors to share their personal reading recommendations on how to help get a better grasp of recent racial discourse on campus. Read away!
Professor Vanessa Agard-Jones
“Women of Colour as Diversity Workers” and On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life by Sara Ahmed
Sara Ahmed’s work is particularly instructive for us in this moment. Her blog post here, on “Women of Colour as Diversity Workers,” is a great introduction to the arguments she makes in On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life.
“NHI: An Open Letter to My Colleagues” by Sylvia Wynter
While it was written in the early 1990s, Sylvia Wynter’s “NHI: An Open Letter to My Colleagues” is uncannily current. Wynter helps us think together about the relationship between anti-Black violence and the structure of the university–it would behoove us all to heed her call to “rewrite knowledge” to make the questions that we need to ask posable, not to mention, resolvable. Her work isn’t an easy read, but students in my co-taught class with Laura Wexler (Dialogues in Feminism and Technology) are sharp analysts of this part of her oeuvre, so can likely help folks who are interested in taking on the challenge.
This Bridge Called My Back by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa; “Remembering This Bridge Called My Back, Remembering Ourselves” in Pedagogies of Crossing by M. Jacqui Alexander
Finally, I would recommend the text and reflection that I offered to audiences at the teach-in a few weeks back: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back (originally published in 1981, and reissued just this year) and M. Jacqui Alexander’s reflection “Remembering This Bridge Called My Back, Remembering Ourselves,” published in Pedagogies of Crossing in 2006.
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Alex Zhang
“All Lives Matter: 1800s Edition” by Anthony McPherson
Short two minute video. Just watch it, please. Here: http://bit.ly/1Ht1Gv9
Don Nakanishi ’71 Keynote Address at the 2015 Yale Asian American Studies Conference
One of the “fathers” of Asian American Studies and a Yale alum, Nakanishi speaks about several of the things at Yale we now regard as signs of progress yet whose histories we take for granted. He describes how he helped start MEChA and AASA at Yale, how ethnic studies was so vital to his personal and professional development, and much, much more. Knowing the historical background he presents is absolutely essential to understand current movements at Yale. The keynote can be found here: http://bit.ly/1lzac1m
On Strike: Ethnic Studies 1969-1999
This short documentary gives an inside look at how ethnic studies was formed in the United States. It details the Third World Liberation Front movement in California, which eventually spread to Yale around 1969 and 1970. Full documentary available here: https://vimeo.com/23242564
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Olivia Klevorn
How to be Drawn by Terrence Hayes
This book should be on many reading lists this year. It is this year’s Between the World and Me of poetry. Inventive, funny, and painful, the book explores blackness without triteness or trope. It is a wholly original immersion into the mind of Terrence Hayes and his life in a black body.
When My Brother was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz
This book of poetry is an agonizing recounting of moving through the world as a native, both on and off the reservation. It was published several years ago but its immediacy is time-resistant.
“Everybody’s Protest Novel” by James Baldwin
This is an essay in Notes From a Native Son that puts reading lists like these in context. It deconstructs the idea of the “protest novel,” specifically the liberal consciousness generated by reading one, and the subjugation of blackness that results from these novels’ ultimate support of racial hegemony.
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Brea Baker
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
A series of poetic monologues and chorepoems that highlight the stories of seven women suffering in a racist and sexist society. This piece is so important to understand the psychological impacts of sexism and racism and the intersectionality of the two on black women.
All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: But Some of Us Are Brave edited by Gloria Hull, Patricia Scott, and Barbara Smith
This text demonstrates just how black women are able to slip through the cracks in the wars against racism and misogyny. This series of essays explores the role of black women and their fight for acknowledgment and validation throughout history.
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lispitz
A look at various aspects of public policy that place white people at the top of the American food chain. This book perfectly demonstrates how pervasive racism and misogyny can be to black people on a daily basis.