Resources

We believe Catalyst is an important step in the process of learning about social justice, but it is not the only one. With that in mind, we have compiled a list of resources that we hope will spark further conversations for you and the people around you. (Please be mindful that these resources deal with multiple issues which some audiences may find triggering and may contain graphic or unsettling imagery).

Film/TV

  • “13th” (Netflix) – The film explores the “intersection of race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States;” it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which freed the slaves and prohibited slavery (unless as punishment for a crime).
  • Loving (HBO) – The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple whose arrest for interracial marriage in 1960s Virginia began a legal battle that would end with the Supreme Court’s historic 1967 decision.
  • Hidden Figures (HBO) – The story of a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a vital role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program.
  • Lila & Eve (Netflix) – Two distraught mothers, whose children were gunned down in a drive-by, team up to avenge their deaths after local authorities fail to take action.
  • Fruitvale Station (Netflix) – The film depicts the story of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old from Hayward, California, and his experiences on the last day of his life, before he was fatally shot by BART Police in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009.
  • Insecure (HBO) – The series explores the black female experience from the perspective of the two female protagonists.
  • The Handmaid’s Tale (HBO) – Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.

Novels

​Fiction

  • Being Emily, Rachel Gold – The story of a transgender girl coming out to her girlfriend and her parents, and the stumbling blocks that come with those decisions.
  • The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas – A story that follows a protagonist drawn to activism after she witnesses the police shooting of her unarmed friend.
  • You’re Welcome, Universe, Whitney Gardner – When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful (albeit illegal) graffiti mural. Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a one-way ticket to a “mainstream” school in the suburbs, where she’s treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art, and not even Banksy himself could convince her to give that up.
  • The Round House, Louise Erdrich – The story of a Native American boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
  • The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen – A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties. In dialogue with but diametrically opposed to the narratives of the Vietnam War that have preceded it, this novel offers an important and unfamiliar new perspective on the war: that of a conflicted communist sympathizer.
  • ​Girl Mans Up, M-E Girard – Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see the truth—that in order to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.

Non-Fiction

  • Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates – Written as a letter to the author’s teenaged son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being black in the United States, Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son the “racist violence that has been woven into American culture.”
  • A Colony in a Nation, Chris Hayes – America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure—wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation—reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first “law and order” president. Hayes contends our country has fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order, fear trumps civil rights, and aggressive policing resembles occupation.
  • Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay – A series of essays which explores being a feminist while loving things that could seem at odds with feminist ideology.
  • When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, Patrisse Khan-Collins – The emotional and powerful story of one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter and how the movement was born.

Articles

  • “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” – Audre Lorde
  • “Kimberle Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later” (includes a link to Crenshaw’s original paper coining “intersectionality”)
  • How ‘Service With a Smile’ Takes a Toll on Women – Adia Harvey Wingfield (emotional labor)

Podcasts

  • Nancy , Kathy Tu and Tobin Low – Stories and conversations about the queer experience today. Prepare to laugh and cry and laugh again.
    • 6: “Here’s What It’s Like”
    • 7: “Fear of being Butch”
    • 13: “It’s Really You”
    • 32: “Lena Waithe’s Superpowers”
  • Queery, Cameron Esposito (available on iTunes, Google Play, Feral Audio, Spotify, etc) – QUEERY explores individual stories of identity, personality and the shifting cultural matrix around gender, sexuality and civil rights.
    • Rhea Butcher
    • Mary Lambert
    • Stephanie Beatriz
  • Call Your Girlfriend, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman – Every week, Aminatou and Ann call each other to discuss the intricacies of pop culture and the latest in politics.
    • 10 – Strings Attached
    • 19 – Office Candy Dish
    • 68 – Rage Phase
    • 84 – Ur Fave is Problematic
    • 96 – See You On the Ballot / 101 – She’s Running (Two-Part Series)
    • Loophole Women
  • Stuff You Should Know
    • Are Election Laws Designed to Suppress Voting?
    • The Black Panther Party
    • The Quinoa Revolution
  • Rookie, Tavi Gevinson – We interview people we admire. We also discuss creativity, feminism, pop culture, love, bodies, poetry, candy, and more.
    • Be Proud of Who You Are, feat. Ibtihaj Muhammad and George Saunders
    • Young People in Front, feat. Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood
    • The Good Kind of Magical Thinking, feat. Roxane Gay
  • Code Switch – Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get…stuck? Code Switch can help.
  • Science Vs – Science Vs takes on fads, trends, and the opinionated mob to find out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between.
  • Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Tanzila ‘Taz’ Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh – The good and the bad about the American Muslim female experience. But you know, satirically & disturbingly hilarious.