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1) Dear Martin
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High School Project Lit Titles
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Short YA Fiction
YA Contemporary Fiction Classics
Project Lit - Full List
Short YA Fiction
YA Contemporary Fiction Classics
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"Justyce McAllister is a good kid, an honor student, and always there to help a friend--but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out. Then...
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High School Project Lit Titles
Nashville Reads 2024 | The Works of Jason Reynolds
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Nashville Reads 2024 | The Works of Jason Reynolds
Project Lit - Full List
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Description
When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints.
3) Legal tender
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English
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Bennie Rosato is a maverick lawyer, and business at her law firm has never been better. Then, without warning, a savage murder tears the firm apart. All evidence points to Bennie, who has motive aplenty and an unconfirmable alibi. Her world turns upside-down as the lawyer becomes the client, and the law is now after her. When another killing takes place, Bennie runs for her life, a fugitive armed only with her wits and courage. She is determined
...4) Blue hour
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English
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"Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an unraveling America. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class. Unmoored by the grief of a recent devastating miscarriage and Noah's fight for his life, she worries she can no longer chase the hope of having...
5) I rise
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English
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"Fourteen-year-old Ayo has to decide whether to take on her mother's activist role when her mom is shot by police. As she tries to find answers, Ayo looks to the wisdom of her ancestors and her Harlem community for guidance"--Provided by publisher.
6) The black and the blue: a cop reveals the crimes, racism, and injustice in America's law enforcement
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English
Description
A CNN contributor and former law enforcement officer offers a personal account of the racism, crimes, and color lines that challenge America's police, sharing insights into high-profile cases, the Black Lives Matter movement, and what is needed for change.
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11th-12th Grade Reading
Awesome YA Books by Black Authors
Built-In Besties or Baddies: Siblings in YA Books
YA Books for Juneteenth
Awesome YA Books by Black Authors
Built-In Besties or Baddies: Siblings in YA Books
YA Books for Juneteenth
Description
Although distraught, Happi is also unsettled by the way people have idealized the memory of her sister who was killed after attending a social justice rally -- why do people have to be perfect in order to be missed? As a way to honor the memory, however, Happi and her other sister Genny go on a roadtrip using the original "Green Book" -- but the trip reveals secrets neither sister knew about the dead Kezi.
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English
Description
Describes the issue of police brutality and use of excessive force against persons of color in the United States, describing recent and historical cases, the history of violence against Black Americans, and protest movements calling for reform. Includes color photographs, text-related questions, a list of ways to take action, a timeline, a glossary, and a list of further reading.
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The best-selling bible of the movement to defund the police in an updated edition
"Urgent, provocative, and timely, The End of Policing will make you question most of what you have been taught to believe about crime and how to solve it."
—James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own
The massive uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020— by some estimates the largest...
"Urgent, provocative, and timely, The End of Policing will make you question most of what you have been taught to believe about crime and how to solve it."
—James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own
The massive uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020— by some estimates the largest...
11) The hate u give
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English
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Awesome YA Books by Black Authors
High School Project Lit Titles
Nashville Reads 2023: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!
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High School Project Lit Titles
Nashville Reads 2023: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!
More Lists...
Description
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters...
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"'My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.' Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman...
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"Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings. Here, Purnell argues that police can not be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems...
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" 'If you want to understand the massive antiracist protests of 2020, put down the navel-gazing books about racial healing and read America on Fire.' -Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Library Journal "Books and Authors to Know: Titles to Watch 2021" From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and "riots" that shatters our understanding of the post-civil rights era. What began in spring...
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English
Description
"On July 17, 2014, a forty-three-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of Garner's life were captured on video and seen by millions. His agonized last words, 'I can't breathe,' became a rallying cry for the nascent Black Lives Matter protest movement. A grand jury ultimately...
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When Freddie Gray was arrested for possessing an 'illegal knife' in April 2015, he was, by eyewitness accounts that video evidence later confirmed, treated 'roughly' as police loaded him into a vehicle. By the end of his trip in the police van, Gray was in a coma he would never recover from. This killing led to a week of protests and then five days described alternately as a riot or an uprising that set the entire city on edge, and caught the nation's...
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"A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy-from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing-telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar:...
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English
Description
"An unforgettable and stirring memoir in the vein of Free Cyntoia, Just Mercy, and The Sum of Us that both inspires and upends our understanding about the future of policing in the United States. In 2012, nineteen-year-old Leon Ford was shot five times by a Pittsburgh police officer as he was racially profiled during a case of mistaken identity. When he woke up in the hospital, he was faced with two life-changing realities: he was a new father, and...
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English
Description
"Activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation"--Front flap.