NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB's November 2023 Must Read Books • LIBRARY JOURNAL EDITOR PICK •

“A groundbreaking book, both bold in its premise and precise in its exploration of systemic racism in the workplace. This could not be a more urgent and necessary blueprint for progress.”—Bakari Sellers, New York Times bestselling author of My Vanishing Country

“Provides a trailblazing antiracist framework for us all.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

"This vital and accessible study is a must-read for anyone concerned with workplace equality."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

A leading sociologist reveals why racial inequality persists in the workplace despite today’s multi-billion-dollar diversity industry—and provides actionable solutions for creating a truly equitable, multiracial future.

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to advancement and mobility—ignored and failed Black people. While explicit discrimination no longer occurs, and organizations make internal and public pledges to honor and achieve “diversity,” inequities persist through what Adia Harvey Wingfield calls the “gray areas:” the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that are now more important than ever. The reality is that Black employees are less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions.

Wingfield has spent a decade examining inequality in the workplace, interviewing over two hundred Black subjects across professions about their work lives. In Gray Areas, she introduces seven of them: Alex, a worker in the gig economy Max, an emergency medicine doctor; Constance, a chemical engineer; Brian, a filmmaker; Amalia, a journalist; Darren, a corporate vice president; and Kevin, who works for a nonprofit.

In this accessible and important antiracist work, Wingfield chronicles their experiences and blends them with history and surprising data that starkly show how old models of work are outdated and detrimental. She demonstrates the scope and breadth of gray areas and offers key insights and suggestions for how they can be fixed, including shifting hiring practices to include Black workers; rethinking organizational cultures to centralize Black employees’ experience; and establishing pathways that move capable Black candidates into leadership roles. These reforms would create workplaces that reflect America’s increasingly diverse population—professionals whose needs organizations today are ill-prepared to meet.

It’s time to prepare for a truly equitable, multiracial future and move our culture forward. To do so, we must address the gray areas in our workspaces today. This definitive work shows us how.

Gray Areas includes 15 black-and-white images and a photo insert.

A probing essay collection that chronicles one woman’s complicated quest to find home in a fractured America, from the award-winning author of Field Study and contributor to Four Hundred Souls, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

At eighteen, Chet’la Sebree began, as she writes, “perfecting the art of leaving.” After moving out of her parents’ house in Delaware for college, the lauded poet, essayist, and academic rarely kept the same address for more than two years—bouncing from city to city, country to country, perpetually in search of her next adventure.

For Sebree, traveling has been a life-long passion, forged during family road trips and vacations with friends; college study abroad programs in Europe; and far-flung writing residencies and job opportunities. She dreamed of one day taking her own Great American Road Trip, Jack Kerouac–style—except refashioned as a millennial Black woman who had also begun considering her next chapter: settling down and starting a solo fertility journey.

During the pandemic, Sebree thought she might finally get her chance to hit the road. But then, George Floyd was murdered, following the killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Aubrey, and so many others. As America continued to reveal its most violent self, Sebree started to wrestle with the very idea of home: Where do I belong in a country not meant for people like me to survive? What does this mean for a child I might bring into it?

In Turn (W)here, Sebree turns to the page for answers, seamlessly weaving memoir with history and cultural criticism in a collection of inventive essays bound by themes of movement, home, inheritance, and belonging. Spanning continents, geographies, and states of mind, Sebree lights a pathway for the wanderer, the seeker—anyone propelled into the unknown by the desire for a place to truly belong.

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. It takes you on a race journey from then to now, shows you why we feel how we feel, and why the poison of racism lingers. It also proves that while racist ideas have always been easy to fabricate and distribute, they can also be discredited.

Through a gripping, fast-paced, and energizing narrative written by beloved award-winner Jason Reynolds, this book shines a light on the many insidious forms of racist ideas--and on ways readers can identify and stamp out racist thoughts in their daily lives.

“This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

Heather C. McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. As she dug into subject after subject, from the financial crisis to declining wages to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common problem at the bottom of them all: racism—but not just in the obvious ways that hurt people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is at the core of the dysfunction of our democracy and even the spiritual and moral crises that grip us. Racism is a toxin in the American body and it weakens us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? To find the way, McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Mississippi to Maine, tallying up what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others.

The Sum of Us is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here: divided and self-destructing, still the richest country in the world, but spiritually starved and vastly unequal. At the heart of the book are the humble stories of Americans yearning to be a part of a better America, including white supremacy’s collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a vision for the future of our country—one whose population has ties to every place on the globe—where we finally realize that life can be so much more than zero-sum.

One World is proud to present THE 1619 PROJECT: A New Origin Story, a book that dramatically builds on the vision of the original magazine project with major expansions of the original essays, seven new essays by historians, and dozens of new poems and pieces of fiction. The book includes a significant elaboration of the project’s Pulitzer Prize-winning lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones and a new introduction that together offer a stirring rebuttal to critics. Hannah-Jones has also written a third essay that makes the case for reparative solutions to the legacy of injustice the project documents.

Edited by Hannah-Jones, along with New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein, features editor Ilena Silverman, and New York Times executive producer Caitlin Roper, the book offers work from some of the country’s most outstanding journalists, thinkers, historians and scholars, including: Michelle Alexander, Leslie Alexander, Carol Anderson, Jamelle Bouie, Anthea Butler, Matthew Desmond, Martha Jones, Ibram Kendi, Kevin Kruse, Trymaine Lee, Tiya Miles, Wesley Morris, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Dorothy Roberts, Jeneen Interlandi, Bryan Stevenson, and Linda Villarosa.

Woven throughout the book are works of fiction and poetry that bring to life four hundred years of history with imaginative writing by Joshua Bennett, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Rita Dove, Camille Dungy, Cornelius Eady, Eve L. Ewing, Nikky Finney, Vievee Francis, Yaa Gyasi, Forrest Hamer, Terrance Hayes, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Barry Jenkins, Tyehimba Jess, Robert Jones, Jr., A. Van Jordan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kiese Laymon, Jasmine Mans, Terry McMillan, Lynn Nottage, ZZ Packer, Gregory Pardlo, Darryl Pinckney, Claudia Rankine, Jason Reynolds, Evie Shockley, Tim Siebles, Clint Smith, Danez Smith, Patricia Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Natasha Trethewey, Jesmyn Ward and Sonia Sanchez.

The book also includes archival portrait photography of Black Americans paired with each essay, curated by Kimberly Annece Henderson.

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—art, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics.

A vital path home. Employing African epistemologies and an embodied African beingness, this book embraces the revelation and miracle of Blackness.

Creating a world worthy of our children requires recalling the dignity and distinction of the African way of life.

This book is not written for settler consumption. Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms.

Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.

Structured in three parts—Remember, Refuse, and Reclaim—Kindred Creation is a philosophical guidebook and a vital invitation to power and reconnection. Davis employs parable, poetry, theory, memory, narrative, and prophecy to help readers:

* Remember: By unforgetting the unending and cascading violence of settler colonialism and other forms of domination and exploring the ways that African land, language, lifestyle, and labor are stolen, distorted, and repackaged for colonial consumption to extract capital and sever ties to ancestral knowledge, lifeways, and dignity

* Refuse: By rejecting and interrupting death-making institutions and relationships and choosing kinship and self-determination in the face of settler colonial violence

* Reclaim: By revealing that freedom is within us—and within reach. Davis shares how the reader can birth new worlds and relationships and offers strategies for reclaiming land, language, lifestyle, and labor.

The colonial violence and dispossession of African land, language, and labor is inflicted intentionally—and by design. Reclaiming African lifeways and remembering what was forcibly forgotten must be by creation: a re-membering of our interconnectedness and kinship.

A COLLECTION OF INCISIVE ESSAYS ABOUT AFRICAN ART, CULTURE AND THE CONTINENT’S STRUGGLE TO SHAKE OFF EUROPEAN RULE

Too many of our convictions about the fifty-four nations of Africa come from non-African sources. Western media often treat the continent as a simulacrum of Western anxieties. In contrast, Jeremy Harding focuses on specific historical episodes and cultural practices – cinema, art, ethnography and journalism – to steer us away from treacherous generalisations.

Analogue Africa celebrates the ingenuity with which African artists – and a handful of Europeans – have reimagined the colonial encounter and voiced their impatience with white minority rule. Among his illustrious cast of filmmakers, photographers, writers and painters are Seydou Keïta, Sanlé Sory, Ernest Cole, Sarah Maldoror, John Akomfrah, William Kentridge and Binyavanga Wainaina. Harding argues that Western museums with priceless African holdings – the British Museum, the Musée du Quai Branly, the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Belgium – are now the sites of a struggle over the colonial past, adding the latest chapter to an unfinished history.

From the queen of genre-bending speculative fiction, comes the newest Sauútiverse offering, a mystery like no other, where the investigator is not a detective, but a sound scientist.

In a world where sound is a tangible force, Muso’mi is a maadiregi―an expert in the art of consuming it. At the prestigious Mahadum, she researches the language of silence, seeking to master the gift her mother calls theft. But academic intrigue turns to deadly peril when her friend vanishes after unearthing a hidden truth. Pursuing clues through pools of quietude across worlds, Muso’mi stumbles upon a horrifying discovery: a pattern of carnage left in fields of harvested silence. Now, the hunter becomes the hunted, as her unique expertise draws her into the orbit of a serial killer who understands the power of sound all too well.

Includes a glossary of Bantu, Afrocentric and made-up words from this cross-cultural tale written in gorgeous lyrical language packed with emotion.

What if the writing life isn’t about daily word counts―but about daily attention to your whole self?

You don’t need to write every day to be a writer. You don’t need perfect conditions, endless hours, or a life free from doubt. What you need is permission to bring your whole, imperfect self to the page―and practices that nourish your soul as you write.

All of life is the writing life.

Drawing on her experience as a spiritual director working primarily with writers, Charlotte Donlon offers something rare: a book that honors both the craft of writing and the care of the soul. Through contemplative practices, personal stories, and wisdom from writers like Toni Morrison, Margaret Walker, and Kaveh Akbar, she invites you to discover how rest, doubt, grief, and joy all become sacred ground for creative flourishing.

Structured around five essential movements―“Begin,” “Belong,” “Become,” “Behold,” “Bestow”―this book offers practical rituals and gentle companionship for the real conditions of your life. Whether you’re navigating resistance, recovering from burnout, or simply longing for a more sustainable practice, you’ll find permission to write from exactly where you are.

Writers of all backgrounds are welcome here. People of deep faith and profound doubt. Those who write every day and those who write in stolen moments. Published authors and private journalers. This is a sanctuary, not a system―a space where your creative identity isn’t measured by output but nourished by attention.

Spiritual Direction for Writers doesn’t promise to make you more productive. It promises something better: to help you become more fully yourself, on and off the page. Because when writing helps make you a kinder, wiser, and more generous human being―when it opens you to what matters most―you’ve already succeeded.

“Charlotte’s book makes space, supports readers, writers, and listeners, and truly cares about the people who encounter its pages. It is a place to land and rest, a place to be curious, to experiment, to pray, to breathe, to feel, and to embrace the truth of your identity as a writer.”
―Ashley M. Jones, poet laureate emerita of Alabama

She just wanted to fit into Amish Country. . .now she’s standing out!

First novel in The Plain Order Ink Society series, in which Amish writers crack the case of local mysteries.

Sadie Lynch thought inheriting her late Amish aunt’s candle shop was a blessing—a chance to leave her stalled writing career behind and find a fresh start. But running a Plain business when she's not Amish isn’t exactly filling her store with customers—especially when the local minister insists she sell out.

Sadie, who doesn’t want to leave, thankfully meets Wanda—an Amish woman with a secret obsession. As Wanda continues to visit the candle shop, an unexpected partnership blooms when Wanda agrees to help Sadie’s shop in exchange for writing advice.

But the grand reopening of the candle shop takes a deadly turn when the body of the Amish minister is discovered behind the counter. Now Sadie is the only suspect, prompting Wanda and the Plain Order Ink Society to try helping her solve the mystery.

But in this Plain community, secrets burn brighter than flames—and nothing is as simple as it seems.

James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef finalist and Food & Wine Best New Chef Caroline Schiff believes a sweet treat is the perfect daily ritual, and her book is designed to sweeten life in just the right dose.

Why wait for a special occasion when dessert can be part of every day?

Star chef Caroline Schiff believes a sweet treat is an important daily ritual―something small and simple, or occasionally a showstopper to celebrate big moments. Daily Dessert is her joyful, highly versatile collection of recipes designed to sweeten life in just the right dose.

Sometimes that means one perfect cookie warm from the oven, a snacking cake to last all week, a no-bake refresher on a scorching day, or a cozy pudding for a winter night. Organized by mood and moment, chapters move from Simple Little Sweets (quick, small-batch recipes) to Weekly Snacking Bakes, Sunny Day Sweets, Cozy Day Confections, Dessert for Breakfast, No-Bake Treats, and Celebration Sweets―plus a Basics section with Schiff’s essential doughs, sauces, and toppings.

Recipes are approachable yet irresistible, the kind of things fans already love from Schiff: Hot Butterscotch Pecan Blondies, Upside-Down Clementine Olive Oil Snacking Cake, Raspberry Crème Fraîche Galette, Espresso Crunch Coffee Cake, Gingersnap and Orange Cream Sandwiches, No-Churn Toasted Cinnamon Ice Cream, and her iconic Baked Alaska for a Crowd.

Daily Dessert is an invitation to embrace the joy of sweets as part of everyday life. With Schiff’s playful voice, professional know-how, and unfussy recipes, this book is for everyone―novice bakers, seasoned pros, and anyone who simply believes dessert makes life better.