July Millennial Picks: #Blacklivesmatter

From the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach:

July 16, 2020

by Bethany and Emily

Millennials Ruin Book Club is not your average book club. Instead of reading all the same book, the club members meet every month to talk about what they’ve been reading, their hits and misses, and recommendations for people looking to start something new. This month, we discussed our Summer Reading challenge and found that many of us have been focusing on books by Black authors or books that address racism. Here are our picks, because #BlackLivesMatter isn’t a trend.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“In this brief book, which takes the form of a letter to the author’s teenage son, Coates comes to grips with what it means to be black in America today. There is awesome beauty in the power of his prose and vital truth on every page” (Booklist, 2015).

Millennials say: A good pick for people wanting to dip their toes into anti-racist reads. It’s short, but powerful.

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

“Cinderella's story is turned on its head in this queer dystopian fantasy YA that imagines the life of young women 200 years after the original happily ever after” (Shelf Awareness, 2020).

Millennials say: This book is SO GOOD. A queer, Black teenage girl tries to take down the patriarchy in a society that worships Cinderella and forces girls to be chosen by suitors at an annual ball. That’s really all that needs saying, right?

Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space by Margot Lee Shetterly

“Shetterly does an outstanding job of weaving the nearly unbelievable stories of these African-American women into the saga of NASA’s history (as well as its WWII-era precursor) while simultaneously keeping an eye on the battle for civil rights that swirled around them” (Booklist, 2016).

Millennials say: The movie was great, but the book gives you much more detail to the story that the film couldn’t fit in. Definitely worth the read.

Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert

“Hibbert continues her wickedly funny romantic comedy series, The Brown Sisters, with a magical friends-to-lovers tale that brings together a brainy and bewitching PhD student who is afraid of commitment with a gruff and husky security guard who is a hopeless romantic” (Booklist, 2020).

Millennials say: Laugh-out-loud hilarious and still heartwarming. The first book in the series, Get a Life, Chloe Brown, is so worth reading as well.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

“Reflecting and refracting her story via four related women at its heart, and with an irresistible narrative voice, Bennett writes an intergenerational epic of race and reinvention, love and inheritance, divisions made and crossed, binding trauma, and the ever-present past” (Booklist, 2020).

Millennials say: An incredibly moving tale that does not shy away from difficult topics (family, race, sexuality). I might have cried a little.

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

“The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality” (Penguin Random House, 2018).

Millennials say: Eye-opening and thought-provoking.

This press release was produced by the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach. The views expressed are the author's own.