5 Books To Read On Social Justice That Go Beyond The Instructive
Saturday is Juneteenth — the day when enslaved people in Texas learned they were freed two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It's now a Federal holiday.
Some have turned to books to deepen their understanding of Juneteenth and past social injustices — and their long term consequences. Author Kiese Laymon says that while he understands the demand in the last year for instructive books, he's "more interested in incisive and innovative books."
He's recommending Bird Uncaged, Thick, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, The Prophets, and Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Laymon has just revised and reissued his own debut novel "In the last year, I thought about what accountability means for narrators and for creators of narrators. And I just didn't want that book to cause any harm," he tells NPR. "If I can go back into a text and not just make it better, make it more breathable,
