Contribute your recommendation here
This year's Black History Month library display will be created by you - students and community members of SCC.
Recommend a Black History related book, speech, poem, video, podcast, website, or other media which is meaningful to you. With your permission, your selection will be posted on this guide and/or displayed in the library.
Check back often to see your recommended item on this SCC Library Guide and to see newly added items recommended by the SCC community!
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Hannah-Jones, Nikole and others
A collection of essays and historical vignettes that show how the tendrils of 1619--of slavery and resistance to slavery--reach into every part of our contemporary culture.
Between the World and Me
by Tanahisi Coates
Written as a letter to his adolescent son, Coates shares the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences. This book clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Homegoing: A Novel
by Yaa Gyasi
Recommended by Okunyi
Written with tremendous sweep and power, Homegoing traces the generations of family who follow, as their destinies lead them through two continents and three hundred years of history, each life indelibly drawn, as the legacy of slavery is fully revealed in light of the present day.
(This book is on-order for the SCC Library. It's estimated to arrive during March 2022.)
Maya Angelo: And Still I Rise
PBS: American Masters series
This film celebrates Dr. Maya Angelou by weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos, which paint hidden moments of her exuberant life during some of America's most defining moments.
Read: Still I Rise
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
"...Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings." - Publisher
Our Lady of the Nile
by Scholastique Mukasonga
Recommended by an SCC student
It is fifteen years prior to the 1994 Rwandan and a quota permits only two Tutsi students for every twenty pupils. As Gloriosa, the school's Hutu queen bee, tries on her parents' preconceptions and prejudices, Veronica and Virginia, both Tutsis, are determined to find a place for themselves and their history. In the struggle for power and acceptance, the lycée is transformed into a microcosm of the country's mounting racial tensions and violence. - The publisher
The Rose That Grew from Concrete
by Tupac Shakur
Recommended by Angela Smith:
"... not a lot of people know about this book and a lot of people like his music. This is a book of poems. Tupac’s mom was a Black Panther…his writing is powerful and moving. The nice thing about this book too is that it is in Tupac’s own handwriting on one side of the page and typed on the other."
(This book is on-order for the SCC Library. It's estimated to arrive during March 2022.)
Cane River
Horace B. Jenkins
Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins.. A budding, forbidden romance lays bare the tensions between two communities, both descended from slaves but of disparate opportunity...
Recommended by Okunyi
Access this film for free using Kanopy streaming videos located in Spokane Public Library's Digital collections. All SCC students and employees are pre-approved for an SPL library card number. Instructions are here, or ask a librarian for help.