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READING FOR INSPIRATION AND TRANSFORMATION (“De-colonising our Minds”) A BOOKLIST CREATED AT THE GLOBAL COMMUNITY DIALOGUE 14 (RWANDA), 2019

The idea for this list grew out of a conversation during the Global Community Dialogue (14) in Rwanda in September 2019; the discussion was between Lynda White, Natasha Aruliah, John Cornwell and Ganza Kanamugire. Very soon other group members became involved in the discussions and made their own suggestions and contributions.

In particular this list is an endeavour to capture and experience different voices, other than those we frequently hear, the dominant White, Western narrative, in order for us to support our own learning and accountability to de-colonising and anti-racism. Black1 authors have specifically been separated from white authors, and fiction and story from non-fiction and theory (the white supremacy value of the ‘objective’ written word). This list gives us authors that reflect experiences to give us a more global view of our world, its’ cultures, issues and the people in it. The list of Non-Fiction, is a broad category that includes memoirs/autobiography, as well as an effort to add some leadership, organization development, business and change titles to the list.

These are not in any order and in no way have they been vetted by us or others. As we began to put together a list from recommendations from our Global Community Dialogue Group, there was an intention to check author’s backgrounds, and country/heritage of origin and current citizenship/country of residence, together with additional books they may have written. As we worked on this, we also started to discover other authors, which led to this being a much longer list than anticipated – and for all of us, an exciting list as there were many new discoveries for us to also seek out for reading! Additionally, as we listed authors known to us and discovered new authors, we became aware that many of these people have won significant literary prizes for their work, including such as Nobel, Pulitzer, Caine Prize for African writing, Commonwealth, Man Booker, Giller, Jnanpith, JCB Prize, Sahitya Akademi, among others.

It is our intention also that the list should grow and develop, whilst still maintain a focus on justice, equity, inclusion and decolonising; we hope others will add to the list and expand its horizons further2. We wish it to be of benefit and value in many ways and in particular in challenging the dominant narratives and ideologies that given rise to the need for creating this list in the first place. Have fun, be inspired and de-colonise… always!

1 The term Black is used in a political sense to describe all people who have experienced white racism and are visually ‘read’ as not being white. In some contexts, other terms are frequently used such as “people of colour”, “Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic”, “Black, Indigenous and People of Colour” etc. We simply use the term ‘Black’ to collectively acknowledge voices not from the dominant white narrative. 2 If you have contributions you would like to make to the list, kindly send them to [email protected]

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BLACK WRITERS (FICTION)

NAME OF IDENTITY BOOKS AUTHOR (Heritage, Origin and/or Nationality, Residence)

Alexia Arthurs Jamaican living in USA How to love a Jamaican Aminatta Forna Scottish-Sierra Leonean Ancestor Stones The Memory of Love The Hired Man Happiness Amitav Ghosh Indian The Glass Palace Sea of Poppies River of Smoke Flood of Fire The Hungary Tide The Shadow Lines British Jamaican The Long Song Never Far from Nowhere Small Island Indian The Ministry of Utmost Happiness Bernadine Evaristo British Mr. Loverman Girl, Woman, Other Blonde Roots Soul Tourists The Emperor’s Love Celeste Ng Chinese American Everything Never Told You Little Fires Everywhere Cherie Dimaline Metis, Canadian Indigenous Red Rooms The Marrow Thieves Empire of Wild Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Nigerian Half of a Yellow Sun Americanah Purple Hibiscus The Thing Around Your Neck Chinelo Okparanta Nigerian Under the Udala trees Chinua Achebe Nigerian Things Fall Apart No Longer at Ease Arrow of God A Man of the People Claire G Coleman Noongar, Australian Terra Nullius Aboriginal The Old Lie Clemantine Wamariya Rwandan The Girl who Smiled Beads Crystal Hana Kim Korean American If you Leave Me

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Danzy Senna American Caucasia – A Novel New People You Are Free: Stories David Chariandy Trinidad -Canadian Soucouyant Brother Devi S. Laskar Indian - American The Atlas of Reeds and Blues Doreen Baingana Ugandan Tropical Fish Dunya Mikhail Born and raised in Iraq The Beekeeper Now in America Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq Eden Robinson Haisla/Heiltsuk, Canadian Traplines Indigenous Monkey Beach Blood Sports Elif Shafak Turkish-British The Bastard of Istanbul The Forty Rules of Love The Three Daughters of Eve Etaf Rum Palestinian-American A Woman is No Man Gabriel Garcia Marquez Colombian One Hundred Years of Solitude Love in the Time of Cholera Han Kang Korean Human Acts Helen Oyeyemi Nigerian born, British, Boy, Snow, Bird living in Prague What is Not Yours Is Not Yours Ingrid Rojas Contreras Born and raised in Fruit of the Drunken Tree Columbia in USA now Isabel Allende Chilean American The House of the Spirits Island Beneath Ines of My Soul Eva Luna My Invented Country Daughter of Fortune American Another Country Go Tell It On The Mountain The Fire Next Time Nobody Knows My Name Tell Me How Long the Trains Been Gone Just Above My Head Giovanni’s Room Jasmin Darznik Iranian British Song of a Captive Bird Jeannette Armstrong Okanagan, Canadian Slash Indigenous Breathe Tracks Whispering in the Shadows Jennifer Nansubuga Ugandan Kintu Makumbi Jhumpa Lahiri British American of Indian Interpreter of Maladies Heritage The Namesake The Lowland Unaccustomed Earth In Other Words

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Khaled Hosseini Afghan American The Kite Runner A Thousand Splendid Suns And the Mountains Echoed Indian-American The Inheritance of Loss Kirsten Chen Bury What We Cannot Take Krystal Sital Born in Trinidad now living Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad in USA Bi-racial, Canada The Book of Negroes Any Known Blood The Illegal Lee Maracle Sto:lo Nation, Canadian Sojourner's Truth and Other Stories Indigenous Sundogs Ravensong Daughters are Forever Will's Garden First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style Celia's Song Bent Box – Poetry Talking to the Diaspora - Poetry Leila Aboulela Sudanese, lives in The Translator Elsewhere Home Leila Slimani French Moroccan Lullaby Adele Lillian Li Chinese American Number One Chinese Restaurant Lucy Tan Chinese American What We ere Promised Margaret Ogola Kenyan The River and the Source I Swear by Apollo Mariama Ba Senegalese So Long a Letter Scarlet Song Mario Vargas Llosa Peruvian Conversation in the Cathedral Captain Pantoja and the Special Service Meera Syal British- South Asian Anita and Me The House of Hidden Mothers Meja Mwangi Kenyan Going down River Road Kill me Quick Striving for the Wind Sri Lankan born Canadian Anil’s Ghost The Cat’s Table Running in the Family Warlight, In the Skin of a Lion Miguel Angel Asturias Guatemalan Mr. President Mira Stout Korean American, living in One Thousand Chestnut Trees London Mira T Lee Chinese American Everything Here Is Beautiful Mohsin Hamid British Pakistani The Reluctant Fundamentalist Moth Smoke

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How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Discontent and Its Civilizations Exit West Monica Ali Bangladeshi-British Brick Lane Alentejo Blue In the Kitchen Untold Story Nafissa Thompson-Spires African American Heads of the Colored People

Naguib Mahfouz Egyptian The Trilogy The Children of Gebelawi & many others Nakkiah Lui Gamilaroi/Torres Strait Kill the Messenger Islander – Australian Black is the New White Aboriginal Nawal El Saadawi Egyptian The Fall of the Imam Woman at Point Zero Negar Djavadi Born in Iran/ Iranian French Disoriental Nella Larson American – novelist of the Passing Nelson Mandela South African Long Walk to Freedom Ngugi wa Thiong’o Kenyan The River Between A Grain of Wheat Weep Not, Child Wizard of the Crow Octavio Paz Mexican The Labyrinth of Solitude Orhan Pamuk Turkish Snow My Name is Red A Strangeness in My Mind Pablo Neruda Chilean Twenty Love Poems and Song of Despair Canto General Peter Kimani Kenyan Dance of the Jakaranda Porochista Khakpour Born in Iran, Iranian Sons and Other Flammable Objects American The Last Illusion Sick Richard Wagamese Ojibway, Canadian One Native Life Indigenous Indian Horse Romesh Gunesekera Sri Lankan Born, British Monkfish Moon Reef

Sabaa Tahir Pakistani-American An Ember in the Ashes A Torch Against the Night Scholastique Mukasonga Rwandan, lives in France Our Lady of the Nile Shawna Singh Baldwin Canadian American of What the Body Remembers Indian descent The Tiger Claw The Selector of Souls Shyam Selvadurai Sri Lankan born, Canadian Funny Boy Cinnamon Gardens

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The Hungry Ghosts Ta-Nehisi Coates African American The Water Dancer Tayari Jones African American Leaving Atlanta The Untelling Silver Sparrow An American Marriage Thrity Umrigar Indian American The Secrets Between Us The Space Between Us If Today Be Sweet Everybody’s Son The World We Found Thomas King Cherokee, Native Medicine River American, Canadian Green Grass, Running Water The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative Tomi Adeyemi Nigerian American Children of Blood and Bone Toni Morrison American The Bluest Eye Song of Solomon The Source of Self Regard Sula Beloved God Help the Child Tony Birch Australian Aboriginal Blood Ghost River The White Girl Tsitsi Dangarembga Zimbabwen Nervous Conditions The book of Not This Mournable Body Uwen Akpan Nigerian Say You’re One of Them Indian A Suitable Boy The Golden Gate An Equal Music Two Lives Yasmin Rahman British Muslim All the Things We Never Said Youssef Ziedan Egyptian Azazeel The Shadow of a Serpent Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Kenyan Dust The Dragonfly Sea The Weight of Whispers Zadie Smith Multiracial, British born, White Teeth lives in US On Beauty NW Swing Time

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BLACK WRITERS (NON-FICTION)

NAME OF IDENTITY BOOKS

AUTHOR Afua Hirsch British Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging Akala British Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire Ali Mazrui Kenyan, The Africans academic career The African Condition also in US Cultural Forces in World Politics The African Diaspora – African Origins and New World Identities (with Isidore Okpewho and Carol Boyce Davies) Africanity Redefined: Collected Essays The African Intelligentsia A Tale of Two Africas Islam: Between Globalization and Counter-Terrorism Race, Gender, & Culture Conflict: Debate in the African Condition Aminatta Forna Scottish-Sierra The Devil that Danced on the Water Leonean Amitav Ghosh Indian The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable Arthur Manuel Secwepemc, Unsettling Canada A National Wake-Up Call. Indigenious Canadian Arundhati Roy Indian My Seditious Heart The End of Imagination. The Cost of Living. The Greater Common Good. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Arundhati Roy (& others) Indian Kashmir – The Case for Freedom Things that Can and Cannot Be Said: Essays and Conversations (with John Cusack) Asha Bandele American The Prisoner’s Wife Daughter: A Novel Something Like Beautiful The Subtle Art of Breathing Absence in the Palm of My Hands Asha Bandele and Patrisse American When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Khan-Cullors Memoir Ayan Hirsi Ali Somali born, Infidel: My Life Dutch American Nomad bell hooks American Killing Rage The Will to Change All About Love: New Visions

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Belonging: A Culture of Place Ain’t I A Woman Bone Black Skin Again The Will to Change Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice Bev Sellars Secwepemc, They Called Me Number One Canadian Indigenous Brian Loritts American Right Color Wrong Culture Insider Outsider: My Journey As a Stranger in White Evangelicalism & My Hope for Us All Bonang Mohale South African Lift as You Rise: Speeches & Thoughts on Leadership Carl E James & Adreinne Multiple Talking about Identity: Encounters in Race, Ethnicity ad Shadd (eds) authors both Language (first person narratives – including Lawrence Black* & White Hill) Chiku Malunga Malawian Organisational Wisdom in 100 African Proverbs Understanding Organisational Sustainability through African Proverbs Cultivating Personal and Organizational Effectiveness: Spiritual Insights from African Proverbs Understanding Organizational Leadership through Ubuntu Making Strategic Plans Work: Insights from African Indigenous Wisdom Power and Influence: Self Development Lessons from African Proverbs and Folktales Chimamanda Ngozie Nigerian We Should all be Feminists Adichie Cornel West American Race Matters Dambisa Moyo Zambian, Dead Aid lives in UK How the West was Lost Winner Takes All Edge of Chaos Danzy Senna American Where Did You Sleep Last Night – A Personal History David Chariandy Multiracial I’ve been meaning to tell you: A Canadian David Olusoga British Nigerian Black and British: A Forgotten History (explores history between British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean) Derald Wing Sue American Micro-aggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact Overcoming Our Racism: The Journey to Liberation Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding

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and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race – Multicultural Counseling Competencies: Individual and Organizational Development Enoch Luyonza Rwandan Beyond Walls: Breaking out of the Walls of Limitation Eusebius McKaiser South African A Bantu in My Bathroom: Debating Race, Sexuality & Other Uncomfortable South African Topics Run Racist Run: Journeys into the Heart of Racism Glenn Singleton American Courageous Conversations About Race (racial equity in education) Ijeoma Oluo African So You Want to Talk About Race American Immaculee Ilibagiza Rwandan Left to Tell James Ogude (editor) Kenyan, lives in Ubuntu and Personhood South Africa Ubuntu and the Everyday Keith Boykin American One More River to Cross – Black and Gay in America Lawrence Hill Bi-Racial, Black Berry Sweet Juice – “on being black and white in Canadian Canada” Blood: The stuff of life Lee Maracle Sto:lo Nation, My Conversations with Canadians Canadian Indigenous Leticia Nieto Mexican Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A American Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone. Malala Yousafzai (with Pakistani, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Christina Lamb) lives in UK Was Shot by the Taliban Marjane Satrapi French-Iranian Persepolis – A Memoir of Growing Up in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution (French & English) (NF) Martin Kalungu-Banda Zambian, Leading Like Madiba lives in UK It’s how we end that Matters: Lessons from an African President Mary-Frances Winters American We Can’t Talk About that at Work American I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Gather Together in My Name Singin’ and Swingin’ and I’ Merry Like Christmas The Heart of A Woman All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes Wouldn’t Take nothing for my Journey Now Dr. Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge born Hong Organization Development – A practitioners guide for Kong, American Organization Development and Human Resources (with raised, Britain Linda Holbeche) Michelle Alexander African The New Jim Crow American Mohed Altrad Syrian-French Badawi (French and English) L’Hypothese de Dieu La Promesse d’Annah Mompoloki Makwana Botswanan Embrace your Greatness

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Morgan Jerkins African This Will Be My Undoing American Nawal El Saadawi Egyptian Memoirs from the Women’s Prison The Hidden Face of Eve My Travel around the World Nene Molefi South African A Journey of Diversity and Inclusion in South Africa: Guidelines for Leading Inclusively Ngugi wa Thiong’o Kenyan Dreams in a Time of War – A childhood Memoir In the House of the Interpreter Nikesh Shukla (editor) British The Good Immigrant Nolitha Fakude South African Boardroom Dancing: Transformation Stories from a Corporate Activist Orhan Pamuk Turkish Istanbul – Memories and the City Paul Gilroy Bi-racial British There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack Against Race Darker than Blue Price Cobbs American Black Rage; My American Life Ralph Wiley American Why Black People Tend to Shout: Cold Facts and Wry Views From a Black Man’s World Reni Eddo-Lodge British Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race Resmaa Menakem African My Grandmothers hands: Racialised trauma and the American pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan Asian diaspora Go Home (a collection of essays & explores slur ‘go (editor) writers home’) Ruth King African Healing Rage: Women Making Inner Peace Possible American Mindful of Race Sabrina Mahfouz (editor) British Egyptian The Things I Would Tell You, British Muslim Women Write Scholastique Mukasonga Rwandan, lives The Barefoot Woman in France Cockroaches Shashi Tharoor Indian An Era of Darkness: the British Empire in India Shirin Ebadi Iranian, lives in Iran Awakening Britain Until we are Free The Golden Cage SIHA (Strategic Initiative Various Women in Islam (journal exploring gender relations in for Women in the Horn of Muslim communities) Africa) Ta-Nehisi Coates African The Beautiful Struggle American Between the world and me Thomas King Cherokee, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native Native People in North America American, Canadian Walter Rodney Guyanese How Europe Underdeveloped Africa The Groundings With My Brothers William Edward Burghardt American The Souls of Black Folks Du Bois The Talented Tenth

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Black Reconstruction in America The Negro The Philadelphia Negro Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil The Gift of the Black Folk Dusk of Dawn William Kamkwamba Malawian The Boy who Harnessed the Wind

White Authors on Diversity & Inclusion (non-fiction)

NAME OF AUTHOR IDENTITY TITLES OF BOOKS

Carl E James & Adreinne Multiple authors both Talking about Identity: Encounters in Race, Shadd (eds) Black* and white Ethnicity ad Language (first person narratives) Carmen Maria Machado American Her Body and Other Stories, In the Dream House Jaco Maritz South African How we Made it in Africa (Stories of 25 African Entrepreneurs) James Surowiecki American The Wisdom of Crowds Robin Di Angelo America White Fragility Peter Singer American One World: The Ethics of Globalisation Susan Gore & Keith Kron American Coming Out in Faith Ronald Wright British Born, Canada Stolen Continents – The “New World” through Indian Eyes (Americas) The Arbinger Institute The Anatomy of Peace – Resolving the Heart of Conflict Viktor Frankl Hungarian In Search of Meaning

GCD - De-Colonising Our Minds book list Dec 2019