The Hate Race (2016)

Men We Reaped

Jesmyn Ward

2013 · 272 pages · 3 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. But why? As she began to write about living through all the dying, Jesmyn realized the truth -- and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle.

Riverine

Angela Palm

2016 · 239 pages · 3 reviews

Others: Positive

The author explores her coming-of-age years and beyond in a rural town in Indiana, where, always feeling like an outsider, she experienced some of the most traumatic events of her life. Palm grew up in an Demotte, Indiana where every year the Kankakee River flooded and returned to its old course while the residents sandbagged their homes against the rising water. From her bedroom window she watched the neighbor boy and loved him in secret, but felt escape was a continually receding hope. Now Palm finds herself drawn back, like the river, to her origins. And it means visiting the prison where the boy that she loved is serving a life sentence for a brutal murder.

Sitting Pretty

Rebekah Taussig

2020 · 256 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

"From disability advocate with a PhD in disability studies and creative nonfiction, and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty, an essay collection based on a lifetime of experiences in a paralyzed body, tackling themes of identity, accessibility, bodies, and representation"-- Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous, inspirational, or angelic. She longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Here she writes about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit. Taussig reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. She shows how disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. -- adapted from jacket

Rapture practice

Aaron Hartzler

2013 · 403 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

In this funny and heartfelt coming-of-age memoir, the author recalls his teenage journey to find the person he is without losing the family who loves him. The plot contains sexual situations.

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

2013 · 400 pages · 8 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

Inferno

Catherine Cho

2020 · 248 pages · 4 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive