2022 #read Announcement…
I’ll be continuing my Read to Learn series in 2022. Here’s the schedule with short summaries of each book:
January - The New Jim Crow The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class statusdenied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.
February - Grant Park Grant Park is a page-turning and provocative look at black and white relations in contemporary America, blending the absurd and the poignant in a powerfully well-crafted narrative that showcases Pitts’s gift for telling emotionally wrenching stories.
March - The Fire This Time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwins 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
April - The Outsider Wright presents a compelling story of a black man’s attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself, a man who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes.
May - Women, Race, & Class Women, Race, & Class is a collection of 13 essays about the American women’s liberation movement from the 1960s up to the point at which the book was published, and also about slavery in the United States. She applies Marxist analysis to the relation of class and race to capitalism in America.
June - Red River This is a story about men whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War; newly freed men who have to fight for their liberties, hoping the federal government will come to their aid. But after a deadly racial massacre, once-proud families are left to deal with the wreckage and find the strength to push on.
Have you read any of them? Let me know if you’d like to join me in reading any of these important books!
Toni Rocchetti is a copy editor helping authors strengthen their narratives, deepen character arcs, and find the story that is already in the draft. She reads 80+ books a year across literary fiction, memoir, and nonfiction — and writes about what she is learning along the way. Work with Toni →
