High School Texts

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
By Robin Diangelo

Antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
Adopted April 29, 2019

Stories of Your Life and Others

By Ted Chiang

This book  delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic.
Adopted September 17, 2018

So You Want To Talk About Race
by Ijeoma Oluo

The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, it’s hard to know where to start. Ijeoma Oluo guides readers through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life.
Adopted November 5, 2018

In a Lonely Place
by Dorothy B. Hughes

Written with controlled elegance, Dorothy B. Hughes’s tense novel is at once an early indictment of a truly toxic masculinity and a twisty page-turner with a surprisingly feminist resolution. A classic of golden age noir, In a Lonely Place also inspired Nicholas Ray’s 1950 film of the same name, starring Humphrey Bogart.
Adopted November 27, 2017

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick

Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Nothing to Envy is the first book about North Korea to go deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and penetrate the mind-set of the average citizen. It is a groundbreaking and essential addition to the literature of totalitarianism.
Adopted November 27, 2017

India and Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation?
by Stanley Wolpert

 Wolpert concisely distills sixty-three years of complex history, tracing the roots of the relationship between these two antagonists, explaining the many attempts to resolve their disputes, and assessing the dominant political leaders. In addition to providing a comprehensive perspective on the origin and nature of this urgent conflict, Wolpert examines all the proposed solutions and concludes with a road map for a brighter future for South Asia.
Adopted November 27, 2017

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond

Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their incomes on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.
Adopted November 27, 2017

March: Book One
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin
and Nate Powell

Before he became a respected Congressman, John Lewis was clubbed, gassed, arrested over 40 times, and nearly killed by angry mobs and state police, all while nonviolently protesting racial discrimination. He marched side-by-side with Martin Luther King as the youngest leader of the Civil Rights Movement that would change a nation forever. BOOK ONE spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Dr. King, the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.
Adopted October 23, 2017

March: Book Two
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy... and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Adopted October 23, 2017

Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History
by Trevor Getz and Liz Clark

Winner of the James Harvey Robinson Prize from the American Historical Association, this is a compelling and powerfully illustrated "graphic history" based on an 1876 court transcript of a West African woman named Abina, who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court. The book is a microhistory that does much more than simply depict an event in the past; it uses the power of illustration to convey important themes in world history and to reveal the processes by which history is made.
Adopted October 23, 2017

Sold
by Patricia McCormick

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. She is desperately poor, and when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family's crops, Lakshmi's stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family. He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at "Happiness House" full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. The day comes when she must make a decision - will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life?

Adopted November 14, 2016

Speak
by Louisa Hall

In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th century to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human and what it means to be less than fully alive.

In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human - shrinking rapidly with today's technological advances - echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard or understood.
Adopted November 14, 2016

Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. Alix resolves to make things right.

Adopted November 2, 2020

Dear Martin
by Nic Stone

Justyce McAllister is a good kid, an honor student, and always there to help a friend—but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. Despite leaving his rough neighborhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.
Adopted November 2, 2020

Born a Crime
by Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away.
Adopted November 2, 2020 

The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
by Clemantine Wamariya

In 1994, Clemantine and her 15-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety - perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
Adopted November 2, 2020

All American Boys
by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints. 

American Street
by Ibi Zoboi

Ibi Zobol draws on her own experience as a young Haitian immigrant in American Street, a book infused with magical realism and vodou culture. When Fabiola's mother is detained upon their arrival to the United States from Haiti, Fabiola must navigate her loud American cousins, the grittiness of Detroit's west side, a new school, and a surprising romance all on her own. 

And She Was
by Jessica Verdi

When 18-year-old Dara finds her long-hidden birth certificate and discovers that her mother, Mellie, is a transgender woman, she sets off with her friend Sam to find her biological mother's family and unravel some of the secrets surrounding her childhood. What she discovers and what her mother reveals in emails will challenge and change Dara. 

Away We Go
by Emil Ostrovski

Westing is not your typical school. In order to be admitted, you have to be dying. No one is expected to live to graduation. What do you do when you go to a school where no one has a future? When an older boy named Zach invites Noah and Marty to join his secret Polo Club, the lives of both boys change as they struggle to find meaning in their shortened existence. 

The Black Flamingo
by Dean Atta

A fierce coming-of-age novel about identity and the liberating power of drag follows the experiences of a mixed-race teen in London who struggles to connect with his heritage before coming out and establishing his place in Drag Society. 

The Closest I've Come
by Fred Aceves

Enduring abuse at the hands of his mother's racist boyfriend and his gritty peers, gentle-hearted Marcus dreams of escaping his disadvantaged neighborhood in central Tampa, Florida, and is placed in an after-school program for promising at-risk teens, where new friendships inspire him to think about his future in different ways. 

Copperhead
by Alexi Zenter

Jessup wants is to enjoy his senior year, but it's hard to live a normal life when everybody in town knows that your stepfather is a white supremacist--one who was involved in a violent encounter with two young black college students. David John's release from prison sets off a chain of events that will forever define Jessup's entry into adulthood, dragging him into the swirling currents of irreconcilable ideologies, crushing loyalties, and unshakeable guilt. 

Cursed
by Karol Ruth Silverstein

As if her parents' divorce and sister's departure for college weren't bad enough, fourteen-year-old Ricky Bloom has just been diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness. Her days consist of cursing everyone out, skipping school--which has become a nightmare--daydreaming about her crush, Julio, and trying to keep her parents from realizing just how bad things are. But she can't keep her ruse up forever.

The Dangerous Art of Blending In
by Angelo Surmelis

Seventeen-year-old Evan struggles to deal with his mother's abuse and his new feelings for his friend Henry. But as things with Henry heat up, and his mother's abuse escalates, Evan has to decide how to find his voice in a world where he has survived so long by being silent. This is a revelatory coming-of-age novel based on the author's own childhood, about a boy who learns to step into his light. 

Dear Justyce
by Nic Stone

A sequel to the best-selling Dear Martin finds incarcerated teen Quan writing letters to his neighbor, Justyce, about the former's experiences in the American juvenile justice system while the latter attends Yale University. Simultaneous eBook. 

Dig
by A.S. King

Five estranged cousins are lost in a maze of their family’s tangled secrets. Their grandparents now sit atop a million-dollar bank account—wealth they’ve refused to pass on to their adult children or their five teenage grandchildren.  As the rot beneath the surface of the Hemmings’ white suburban respectability destroys the family from within, the cousins find their ways back to one another, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name.

Dominicana
by Angie Cruz

Fifteen-year-old Ana Canción never dreamed of moving to America, but when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year's Day, 1965, Ana becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape.