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Audiobooks on Race and Racism

This list was created as part of the We Read initiative. Check out these audiobooks on race and racism and show how YOU read with your ears! 

Children's Books

Cover of Coretta Scott
Ntozake Shange
Kadir Nelson

This extraordinary poetic text by Ntozake Shange captures the movement for civil rights in the United States and honors its most elegant inspiration, Coretta Scott.

Cover of Dreamers
Yuyi
Morales

The incredible true story of a Caldecott Honor and Pura Belpré Award-winning author and illustrator's immigration to America is a lasting testament to the immigrant's journey.

Cover of Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline
Woodson

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. 

Cover of Before She Was Harriet
Lesa
Cline-Ransome

Throughout her lifetime Harriet Tubman was known by many names—as General Tubman she was a Union spy, as Moses she led hundreds to freedom on the Underground Railroad and as Minty she was a spirited slave. The reverse-chronological approach to the details of her life unfolds through memorable verse and lavish illustrations in this unique, evocative biography of an American icon.

Cover of Ghost Boys
Jewell
Parker Rhodes

Only the living can make the world better. Live and make it better. Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.

Middle Grades

Cover of New Kid
Jerry
Craft

Seventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds-and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself?

Cover of We Rise, We Resist, We Rai
Wade
Hudson

What do we tell our children when the world seems bleak, and prejudice and racism run rampant? Fifty diverse creators lend voice to young activists.

Cover of The Rock and the River
Kekla
Magoon

In 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father's nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.

Cover of Feathers
Jacqueline
Woodson

When a new, white student nicknamed "The Jesus Boy" joins her sixth grade class in the winter of 1971, Frannie's growing friendship with him makes her start to see some things in a new light.

Cover of Under the Blood-Red Sun
Graham Salisbury
Greg Watanbe

Tomikazu Nakaji's biggest concerns are baseball, homework, and a local bully, until life with his Japanese family in Hawaii changes drastically after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Cover of Clean Getaway
Nic
Stone

Set against the backdrop of the segregation history of the American South, take a trip with an eleven-year-old boy who is about to discover that things aren't always what they seem.

Cover of Eagle Song
Joseph
Bruchac

Danny Bigtree's family has moved to a new city, and no matter how hard he tries, Danny can't seem to fit in. He's homesick for the Mohawk reservation where he used to live, and the kids in his class call him "Chief" and tease him about being an Indian—the thing that makes Danny most proud. Can he find the courage to stand up for himself?

Cover of The Hate U Give
Angie
Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Teens

Cover of Pride
Ibi
Aanu Zoboi

Pride and Prejudice gets remixed in this smart, funny, gorgeous retelling of the classic, starring all characters of color, from Ibi Zoboi, National Book Award finalist and author of American Street.

Cover of Dear Martin
Nic
Stone

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.

Cover of Big Dose of Lucky
Marthe
Jocelyn

Malou has just turned sixteen—hardly old enough to be out in the world on her own—and all she knows for sure is that she's of mixed race and that she was left at an orphanage as a newborn. When the orphanage burns to the ground, she finds out that she may have been born in a small town in Ontario's cottage country. Much to her surprise, Parry Sound turns out to have quite a few young brown faces, but Malou can't believe they might be related to her. After she finds work as a cleaner in the local hospital, an Aboriginal boy named Jimmy helps her find answers to her questions about her parents. The answers are as stunning—and life-changing—as anything Malou could have imagined back at the orphanage.

Cover of Light it Up
Kekla
Magoon

Told from multiple viewpoints, Shae Tatum, an unarmed, thirteen-year-old black girl, is shot by a white police officer, throwing their community into upheaval and making it a target of demonstrators.

Cover of Loving vs. Virginia
Patricia
Hurby Powell

From acclaimed author Patricia Hruby Powell comes the story of a landmark civil rights case, told in spare and gorgeous verse.

Cover of All American Boys
Jason
Reynolds

Two teens grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

Adults

Cover of The Nickel Boys
Colson
Whitehead

In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. 

Cover of So You Want to Talk About
Ijeoma
Oluo

A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that listeners of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.

Cover of Me and White Supremacy
Layla
Saad

This book seeks to teach listeners how to dismantle the privilege within themselves, so that they can stop inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.

Cover of The New Jim Crow
Michelle
Alexander

Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.

Cover of Biased
Jennifer L.
Eberhardt

From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias come stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time. How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? 

Cover of The Fire Next Time
James
Baldwin

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with his eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

Cover of Ain't I A Woman
Bell
Hooks

A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood.

Cover of Between The World and Me
Ta-Nehisi
Coates

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. 

Cover of Eloquent Rage
Brittney
Cooper

So what if it's true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting.

Far too often, Black women's anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. Black women's eloquent rage is what makes Serena Williams such a powerful tennis player. It's what makes Beyoncé's girl power anthems resonate so hard. It's what makes Michelle Obama an icon.