Holiday shopping, literature, and a thousand lights in the coming night

Usually, around this time of year, I tell you all the books I’ve been reading, or all the books I’ve been buying, or all the books in the past year or so by friends of mine, and I suggest you make your holiday shopping list from it. It’s a way to support literature and my literary community.

This year, I’ve decided to do something slightly different.

A couple weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that I was building a holiday shopping list and asked for recommendations of books, recent or upcoming, that are by or that celebrate:

• African Americans
• American immigrants
• Americans with disabilities
• American women
• Arab Americans
• Latinx Americans
• LGBTQIA Americans
• Muslim Americans
• Native Americans
• and (as I wrote on that original Facebook post) “any other voices that you think will counter the nationalist white straight cisgender male bullshit that we will refuse to let dominate this nation”

More than two dozen people chimed in and built a wide-ranging list of books, a few classic but most of them recent, including memoirs, novels, poetry, and comics and graphic novels.

So this is your holiday shopping list, gang. As I wrote in my original FB post, “Out of the fiery oven of this furor, let us feed millions on our words.”

Many thanks to all those people — writers, publishers, librarians, teachers, and avid readers — for helping build the list. This is mostly their work; I’m just here to learn. In fact, many of these I haven’t read yet — I asked for this list in part to add these books to my own to-read shelf so I could listen through the page to all these beautiful perspectives — so I can’t say much about them all. But the folks who recommended these books said interesting things about them, and I think they’re all worth exploring. Some of the suggestions were for whole authors — someone’s entire opera — so for those, I’ve just listed the name followed by (in general). I’ve also added any books from my own reading this past year that do fit within the parameters I laid out above.

And now, at last, things for you to gift/read this holiday season and through the years ahead:

• Adrianne Harun, The King of Limbo
• Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island
• Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story
• Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of my Name
• Ben Bernardo Attias, DJ Culture in the Mix: Power, Technology, and Social Change in Electronic Dance Music
• Ben H. Winters, Underground Airlines
• Bonnie Jo Campbell (in general)
• Caitlin R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl
• Catana Tully, Split At The Root
• Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones
• Chelsea Martin, Mickey
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
• Colin Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark
• Debra Monroe, My Unsentimental Education
• Dinaw Mengestu, All Our Names
• Ellen Urbani, Landfall
• EJ Runyon, A House of Light and Stone
• Emily O’Neill, You Can’t Pick Your Genre
• Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories
• Gabino Iglesias, Zero Saints
• Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior
• Hassan El-Tayyab, Composing Temple Sunrise
• Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers
• Jac Jemc, A Different Bed Every Time
• Jenny Forrester, Narrow River, Wide Sky (preorder)
• Jenny Forrester (ed), The Unchaste Anthology
• Jesmyn Ward (ed), The Fire This Time
• Jillian Weise, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex
• Jonterri Gadson, Blues Triumphant
• Joy Harjo (in general)
• Juliet Escoria, Witch Hunt
• Kate Ristau, Clockbreakers
• LaShonda Katrice Barnett, Jam on the Vine
• Lidia Yuknavitch, The Small Backs of Children
• Linda LeGarde Grover, The Road Back to Sweetgrass
• Louise Erdrich, The Round House
• Luis Alberto Urrea, The Water Museum, Into The Beautiful North, and The Devil’s Highway
• Luvvie Ajayi, I’m Judging You
• M.R. Carey, The Girl With All the Gifts
• Margaret Malone, People Like You
• Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Martin Julie Iromuanya, Mr. & Mrs. Doctor
• Masande Ntshanga, The Reactive
• Melissa Broder, So Sad Today
• Michelle Tea, Black Wave
• MK Asante, Buck
• Mo Daviau, Every Anxious Wave
• Monica Drake, The Folly of Loving Life
• Moss Angel Witchmonstr, Sea-Witch Vol. 1 (preorder)
• Natashia Deon, Grace
• Nicole Dennis-Benn, Here Comes the Sun
• NK Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (and everything else)
• Nnedi Okorafor, (in general)
• Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza, Some Sing, Some Cry (and everything else)
• Octavia E. Butler, Kindred
• Raina Telgemeier, Sisters
• Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
• Rene Denfeld, The Enchanted
• Richard Wright, Native Son
• Rios de la Luz, The Pulse Between Dimensions And The Desert
• Roger Emile Stouff (in general)
• Roxane Gay (in general)
• Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, World of Wakanda
• Sarai Walker, Dietland
• Sharon Olds, Odes
• Susan Nussbaum, Good Kings Bad Kings
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, The Beautiful Struggle, and the Black Panther comics
• Toni Morrison (in general)
• Tonisha M. Pinckney, I Am More! Surviving Survival
• Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
• Violet LeVoit, I Miss the World
• Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown (eds.), Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
• Wendy C. Ortiz, Bruja
• Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

But wait, there’s more!

One person responding to my Facebook post recommended donating to or joining the ACLU (you can also give gift memberships to other people): https://action.aclu.org/secure/give-gift-aclu-membership

And a friend in Texas, whose African-American daughter has been the subject of racist attacks at her Texas college, has been reminding people of the importance (now especially so) of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s work to track hate crimes and protect victims of hate crimes. To support their efforts, you can donate or join here: https://www.splcenter.org/support-us

These reminded me of John Oliver’s excellent list of other potential organizations and charities we can support, as well as the list of ways to help the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in their efforts to protect the drinking water of millions. So here is John Oliver’s list, with links (quoted from the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Facebook post):

• To support women’s health, donate to Planned Parenthood (plannedparenthood.org) or the Center for Reproductive Rights (reproductiverights.org).
• If you don’t believe manmade global warming is a silly issue, give to the Natural Resources Defense Council (nrdc.org).
• If you don’t think refugees are a terrorist army in disguise, donate to the International Refugee Assistance Project (refugeerights.org).
• You may also want to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (naacpldf.org), the Trevor Project for LGBT youth (thetrevorproject.org), or the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (maldef.org).
• And to support journalism, subscribe to a newspaper and donate to ProPublica (propublica.org).

And here is the list of ways to help the efforts of the Standing Rock Sioux, from Indian Country Today:

• The official Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Dakota Access Pipeline Donation Fund (http://standingrock.org/)
• Water Protector Legal Collective (formerly Red Owl Legal Collective) (https://fundrazr.com/11B5z8?ref=ab_0634x9)
• Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council (https://medichealercouncil.com/donate/)
• The official Oceti Sakowin Camp (Seven Council Fires) Fund (http://www.ocetisakowincamp.org/donate)
• Medical Fund for Sophia Wilansky (https://www.gofundme.com/30aezxs?ssid=813003298&pos=1)
• The Lakota Language Immersion Nest (https://www.gofundme.com/lakotanest)
• Shailene Woodley’s organization, “Up to Us” (https://www.omaze.com/made/standing-rock)
• B Yellowtail’s “Protector” fundraiser (http://shop.spreadshirt.com/byellowtail)
• The Indigenous Environmental Network (http://www.ienearth.org/)
• EarthJustice (http://earthjustice.org/)

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/11/23/how-give-and-give-thanks-standing-rock-166566

Another way not listed on the Indian Country Today site is to support the two legions (yes, legions!) of veterans heading to the DAPL site to protect the water protectors. They have a fundraiser to help these veterans pay for transportation, food, gear, and emergency supplies: https://www.gofundme.com/veterans-for-standing-rock-nodapl

And now it’s your turn, gang. What other books and writers should we be reading? What other organizations and efforts should we be supporting? Leave your thoughts in the comments — and please, keep the comments constructive. I shared this list to uplift and support and educate, and I’d like the comments to reflect that spirit.