As the Department of Surgery continues to grow and emphasize the importance of our equity, diversity and inclusion efforts, we strive as individuals to continue to learn and develop both personally and professionally. For that reason, our faculty and staff have curated a recommended reading list for those interested in learning more and challenging the status quo:
- How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi - Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
- Blind Spot: The Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony Greenwald - I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality.
- White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism 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.
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson - The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
- Becoming by Michelle Obama - In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.
- Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy - One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans
- Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot - Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on the Seabird Island Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.
- Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving - Waking Up White is the book Irving wishes someone had handed her decades ago. By sharing her sometimes cringe-worthy struggle to understand racism and racial tensions, she offers a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, manners, and tolerance. As Irving unpacks her own long-held beliefs about colorblindness, being a good person, and wanting to help people of color, she reveals how each of these well-intentioned mindsets actually perpetuated her ill-conceived ideas about race. She also explains why and how she's changed the way she talks about racism, works in racially mixed groups, and understands the antiracism movement as a whole.
- Killing Rage: Ending Racism by Bell Hooks - One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race.
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates - In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
The Team is Currently Reading:
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi
- Intersectionality by Patricia Hill Collins, Sirma Bilge
- The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table by Minda Harts
*All book summaries provided by Goodreads.com