We are primarily reading fiction, with the occasional trip into memoir.  Books should spark discussion around social justice issues, though they don’t need to call out explicitly that they are about social justice in order to be considered.  If it is your month to pick a book, please keep this in mind. Non-fiction choices should read like a story, with identifiable characters and themes (such as memoir).  Anthologies, essay collections, and academic texts are probably not going to be welcomed by the group, with very few exceptions.  If one of our fiction choices sparks your interest in a non-fiction book, please feel free to share that with the group so that anyone interested in furthering their understanding of that topic may do so outside the context of our official book choice for the month.

Please be careful about selecting books that are about an underprivileged group, but written by someone outside of that group (ie: books about black people written by white people.)

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Gender
• Sexual Orientation
• Size
• Race
• Ability
• Class
• Orientation
• Culture
• Age

Books
The list below contains suggestions of books that deal with social justice themes, and could spark a good conversation about these issues.  If it is your month to pick a book and you’re feeling stuck, one of the books on this list could be great place to start!  We’ve also published a list of books we have already read.

• Bastard out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison*
• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood*
• Tango: My Life Backwards and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond*
• Kindred, by Octavia Butler*
• Who Will Tell My Brother?, by Marlene Carvell
• Like One Of The Family: Conversations from a Domestic’s Life, by Alice Childress*
• The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
• Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides*
• Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg
• Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, by Susan Gregg Gilmore*
• Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Al*
• The Ways of White Folks, by Langston Hughes*
• The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingslover*
• There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, by Alex Kotlowitz
• The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison*
• My Year of Meats, by Ruth Ozeki*
• My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Piccoult*
• The Chosen, by Chaim Potok
• Dead Man Walking, by Helen Prejean*
• Hungry, by Crystal Renn*
• PUSH, by Sapphire
• Princess, by Jean Sasson*
• When She Was White, by Judith Stone
• I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, by Susan Straight
• The Submission, by Amy Waldman*
• The Temple of My Familiar, by Alice Walker
• Martyrs’ Crossing, by Amy Wilentz
• Oranges are not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson*