Books written by friends, mentors, and former classmates, people I followed on Tumblr, and other parasocial relationships.
I love championing my friends books! THEY ARE ALL SO SMART.
A few notes: I have a lot of very very smart friends and mentors. If I missed you, the fault is mine. It does not reflect your work and please message me if you want to be included. To be included I must know you personally. This does not mean I have to know you IN PERSON (online friends are real too). I have only included books published in the time I have known a person otherwise I would never stop writing this list. Finally, these are books I can all personally vouch for (i have read almost all of them and if I haven’t I have it pre-ordered and just couldn’t nab an arc).
I am linking to the books using Amazon, primarily for ease and because a lot of stores don’t stock academic books. But please please, shop your local indie. Borrow it from the library. Make your local library buy it. But if you do use my link I will get a couple cents which is a few less cents going to Bezos. I will list a few favorite bookshops at the end.
Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany by Rebecca Brenner Graham
Gendering Secession: White Women and Politics in South Carolina, 1859–1861 by Melissa DeVelvis is coming out this month!
Love in 280 Characters or Less by Ravynn K Stringfield (pre-order)
I got to read this early and
is brilliant! Pre-order and by her other book if you haven’t!Love Requires Chocolate also by Ravynn K. Stringfield
A Deadly Endeavor by Jenny Adams
plus a A Poisonous Silence by Jenny Adams
Get it Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy by Andréa Becker (coming out in July)
Move: An American Religion by Richard Kent Evans
To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS (Justice, Power and Politics) by Dan Royles
Carmen in Diaspora: Adaptation, Race, and Opera's Most Famous Character by Jennifer Wilks
The Objects That Remain by Laura Levitt
Infamous Bodies: Early Black Women’s Celebrity and the Afterlives of Rights by Samantha Pinto
The Myth of Colorblind Christians: Evangelicals and White Supremacy in the Civil Rights Era by Jesse Curtis
Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Commemoration and Religion’s Presence of the Past by Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas
Encountering Pennywise: Critical Perspectives on Stephen King’s IT by Whitney May
Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual by Tyler D. Parry
Pretty: A Memoir by KB Brookins
This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (Politics and Culture in Modern America) by Melanie Newport
Dark Days by Roger Reeves
The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives by Bryant Simon
Thank you, Holly!!! <3