We’ve been busy continuing to create new study guides for your education and enjoyment. Here is a list of fifteen of our new titles for July.
1. Black Theology and Black Power by James H. Cone
Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power explores and defines the Black Power movement within the context of Christianity, advocating for freeing the gospel from Whiteness and calling for a new system that values Black lives.
2. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist serves as a comprehensive guide to antiracist practice and education in the United States. Its main asserts that it is not enough to be “not racist”—we must be actively antiracist to bring about necessary change.
3. Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
Watson’s Montana 1948 follows David Hayden, a young boy whose family is torn apart by a racially charged tragedy. Content warning: abuse and suicide.
4. “Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening” by Charlotte Smith
Smith’s poem “Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening” (1800) is about a speaker watching the seascape at night, a dark scene illuminated by waves and faint lights from a ship in the distance.
5. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Catton’s novel The Luminaries follows prospector Walter Moody’s quest for riches amidst a series of mysterious occurrences in Hokitika, New Zealand, during the gold rush of the 1860s.
6. Charged by Emily Bazelon
Bazelon’s Charged is a nonfiction examination of the ways in which criminal proceedings in the United States are influenced by the disproportionate power of prosecutors.
7. Plainwater by Anne Carson
Carson’s Plainwater is a poetry and prose collection consisting of five parts, which explore themes of authenticity, memory, and connection.
8. “The Jewelry” (or “The False Gems”) by Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Jewelry” (or “The False Gems”) follows Monsieur Lantin after he discovers that his late wife’s supposedly fake jewelry is actually worth a small fortune.
9. A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernández
Hernández A Cup of Water Under My Bed is a memoir of how her personal journey as an “Americana” (someone on the borderland between American and other cultures of America) relates to the American dream.
10. Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
Kristof and WuDunn’s Half the Sky examines women’s oppression in the developing world, with large section of each chapter devoted to telling stories from other women’s actual experiences.
11. An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Dunbar-Ortiz’s award-winning An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States reinterprets American history from the perspective of Native peoples, analyzing the motivations and beliefs behind European colonialism and considering the ideological gap that still remains between the two groups’ perspectives on history.
12. The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet
Genet’s The Thief’s Journal is a part-memoir, part-novel account of his time traveling across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s as a petty thief and vagabond.
13. Ivanov by Anton Chekhov
Chekhov’s play Ivanov follows the titular Ivanov as he falls in love with his friend’s daughter while his wife dies of consumption.
14. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
El Saadawi’s novel Woman at Point Zero is based on her real-life encounter with a prisoner named Firdaus on the eve of her execution. Content warning: physical and sexual abuse, murder.
15. Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
Coetzee’s fictionalized memoir Summertime is comprised of interviews between a biographer and those who knew the late writer John Coetzee, framed with material from John’s notebook.