Community Corner
Belden Library Has E-Books And Podcasts On Social Justice Available For Download
Recommended authorism include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Angie Thomas and Bryan Stevenson
May 27, 2020
Eye-Opening Books and Podcasts
Find out what's happening in Berlinfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Are you truly free if others around you are not?
Does ignorance of injustice absolve you from responsibility to fight it?
Find out what's happening in Berlinfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
How well do we truly support the vulnerable among us?
Helen Keller wrote,"Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained." Knowing where and how injustice exists is the first step to being aware of the problems faced by those around us and finding ways to effect change. Here are some eye-opening books and podcasts to help you on a journey towards social justice.
Books and Audiobooks
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates
The author presents a history of racial discrimination in the United States and a narrative of his own personal experiences of contemporary race relations, offering possible resolutions for the future.
eBook on OverDrive Audiobook on OverDrive eBook RBdigital Library Catalog
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
Anthony Ray Hinton
A man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he did not commit describes how he became a victim of a flawed legal system, recounting the years he shared with fellow inmates who were eventually executed before his exoneration.
eBook on OverDrive Audiobook on OverDrive eBook RBdigital Audiobook on RBdigital Library Catalog
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.
eBook on OverDrive Audiobook on OverDrive eBook RBdigital
Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era
Jerry Mitchell
An award-winning investigative reporter shares the real-life detective story of how Klansmen came to justice in notorious unsolved civil rights cold cases–decades after they had gotten away with murder.
Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
Emily Bazelon
A Times Magazine investigative journalist exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis, offering strategic recommendations for reversing discriminatory practices without changing the law.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Jon Krakauer
Chronicles the experiences of several women in Missoula, Montana, who claimed to be raped by University of Montana football players, highlighting the inequities of the law in regard to rape allegations and the treatment of rape victims and perpetrators.
eBook on OverDrive Audiobook on OverDrive eBook RBdigital
The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You
Dina Nayeri
In her first work of nonfiction, winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize Dina Nayeri–an author whose “exploration of the exile’s predicament is tender and urgent” (The New Yorker)–examines what it means to be a refugee through her own story of childhood escape from Iran, and through the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers.
eBook on hoopla Audiobook on hoopla eBook RBdigital
Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
Megan Phelps-Roper
The activist and TED speaker Phelps-Roper reveals her life growing up in the most hated family in America. Rich with suspense and thoughtful reflection, her life story exposes the dangers of black-and-white thinking and the need for true humility in a time of angry polarization.
The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community
Mary Pipher
The best-selling author of Reviving Ophelia presents a stirring glimpse of the world beyond our borders, told through the tales of refugees who have escaped countries riddled by conflict and ripped apart by war to realize their dream of starting a new life in America, vividly detailing their triumph over adversity.
Things We Didn’t talk About when I was a Girl: A Memoir
Jeannie Vanasco
A part-memoir, part-true-crime account and testament to female friendship describes how the author navigated sexual trauma by contacting her former friend and rapist, who agreed to come forward and explore how biases shape sexual violence and its perceptions.
A Walk Across the Sun
Corban Addison
Orphaned and homeless after a tsunami decimates their coastal India town, teenage sisters Ahalya and Sita Ghai are abducted and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner before they are helped by an American attorney fighting human trafficking.
Sold
Patricia McCormick
Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.
Audiobook on hoopla eBook RBdigital
Beartown
Fredrik Backman
In the forest community of Beartown, the possibility that the amateur hockey team might win a junior championship, bringing the hope of revitalization to the fading town, is shattered by the aftermath of a violent act that leaves a girl traumatized.
eBook on OverDrive Audiobook on OverDrive eBook RBdigital
The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas
After witnessing her friend’s death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter’s life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.
eBook on OverDrive Audiobook on OverDrive eBook RBdigital Audiobook on RBdigital Library Catalog
The Same Sky
Amanda Eyre Ward
A childless woman seeking to adopt crosses paths with a thirteen-year-old Honduran girl on a dangerous journey into Texas with her brother.
Lost Children Archive
Valeria Luiselli
A fiercely imaginative novel about a family’s summer road trip across America–a journey that, with breathtaking imagery, spare lyricism, and profound humanity, probes the nature of justice and equality in America today.
Podcasts
White Lies
7 episodes
In 1965, Rev. James Reeb was murdered in Selma, Alabama. Three men were tried and acquitted, but no one was ever held to account. Fifty years later, two journalists from Alabama return to the city where it happened, expose the lies that kept the murder from being solved and uncover a story about guilt and memory that says as much about America today as it does about the past.
Dig
6 episodes
A woman told Louisville police she was raped in January 2018. She expected them to quickly try to arrest the suspect. But an officer on the scene that night didn’t seem to believe her. The detectives weren’t convinced that a crime occurred. And a prosecutor rejected the case well before an arrest was even under consideration. In the first season of Dig, a new podcast from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, we bring you the results of a yearlong look at how rape cases are investigated in Louisville. What we’ve learned: here, the police defer to prosecutors on rape cases — and prosecutors reject the vast majority of cases presented to them. Due to this unusual relationship, most people accused of rape here will never face consequences. Most won’t be arrested or convicted. And the case will be closed anyway.
Reveal
From prisons to protests, immigration to the environment, Peabody Award-winning Reveal goes deep into the pressing issues of our times. The Atlantic says “the experience of each episode is akin to a spoonful of sugar, even when it’s telling a story about Richard Spencer’s cotton farms or a man’s final days as a heroin addict.” Reveal is a project of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is co-produced with PRX. The show is hosted by Al Letson and partners with reporters and newsrooms around the world, including The Washington Post, ProPublica, APM, The Marshall Project and The Investigative Fund. Reveal is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has won many broadcast journalism awards, including a duPont and three national Emmys.
Recommended Episodes:
- The Lost Homes of Detroit
When the Great Recession walloped Detroit, thousands of people fell behind on property taxes and lost their homes. Since 2008, one-third of properties in the city have been tax foreclosed. And homes in majority-black neighborhoods are 10 times more likely to be at risk of tax foreclosure than those in other neighborhoods. Independent producer Mark Betancourt and The Detroit News analyzed massive amounts of data to find out where all this tax debt came from. They found that hundreds of millions of dollars never should have been billed to Detroiters in the first place. - Six Years Separated
An asylum-seeking migrant girl is separated from her family at the border and enters U.S. custody at 10 years old. Now, she’s 17 and still in a shelter, even though her family is ready to take her in. They just can’t find her. They turn to reporter Aura Bogado for help. - Amazon: Behind the Smiles
Shop. Click. And the next day, your purchase is on your doorstep. Amazon has changed the face of shopping, but at a surprisingly high human cost. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming soon, we look at what’s behind those smiling packages and expose the dangers of working at Amazon. - America’s Drug War, Revealed
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush did his first televised broadcast, speaking directly to the nation about an issue he believed was the gravest domestic threat to America: drugs. Specifically, crack cocaine. In the speech, Bush pulled a baggie of crack out of his desk as a prop, saying it had been seized from Lafayette Park, right across the street from the White House. This is the story of how that baggie of crack played into the war on drugs and how those policies are still affecting people today.
Snap Judgment
Dramatic tales, killer beats and the edgiest new talent in storytelling come together for a weekly radio hour hosted by Glynn Washington.
Recommended Episodes:
- Tell Christy I Love Her
Tom was a cop. Jason was a teenager in a gang. One night in 1997, they had a violent encounter that Tom describes as “inevitable.” Tom and Jason relate the story of that night and the series of events that unfolded in the years afterward. - The Search for No Name Aporval
When 14-year-old Annaporva finally decides to ask her mother about her biological family a story so unexpected unravels – there’s kingpins, death threats, and Maneka Gandhi.
This press release was produced by the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
