I've been sitting on this post idea for a couple of weeks, and now feels like the right time to share it.

If you're new around here, I care about things, and I want to read about the things I care about, no matter how difficult:

"I tend to gravitate toward heavy books—for example, nearly 30% of last year's reading dealt directly with tough topics: racism, sexism, abortion, FGM. To me, that percentage should be even higher. A large part of why I read is to learn more about the world around me, particularly the parts we'd rather minimize or ignore altogether. If there's nothing else I can do (and I certainly hope to do more, in my career and personal life), I at least want to bear witness." - shainareads.com, 01/07/2015

I care about a lot of different things, but right now I've got racism and police brutality on the brain. It's on my mind a lot, actually. As a multi-ethnic white woman, I'll never experience racism and more than likely never experience police brutality, but I refuse to close my eyes against it.

This list won't do anything to change the state of the world today—I'm not under any illusions—but these four books helped me to see just how much work is left to be done. Maybe they'll help someone else see that, too.



All images are clickable and lead to the title's Goodreads page (all images from GR). Check out my own review of Just Mercy here. If you're hungry for more books about hard topics, this is a pretty good list.