Books I’ve Read on Understanding Others and Self

Last updated January 2022.

On Antiracism, Race, Identity, Feminism

  • Nonfiction
    • ain't i a woman by bell hooks
    • An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
    • Between the World and Me by Ta Nehisi Coates
    • Becoming by Michelle Obama
    • Color of Law, The: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (partway)
    • Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
    • Hillbilly Elegy: a Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
    • How to be Black by Baratunde Thurston
    • I Am Malala: the Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai
    • Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The by Rebecca Skloot
    • Last Black Unicorn, The by Tiffany Haddish
    • My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg
    • Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Bonilla-Silva
    • Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow
    • River in Darkness, A: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa
    • Souls of Black Folk, The by W.E.B. DuBois (partway)
    • We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta Nehisi Coates
  • Fiction
    • Americanah by by Chimamanda Ngozi Aidichie
    • American Marriage, An by Tayari Jones
    • Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
    • Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor
    • Bitch Planet (comic) series
    • Black Enough by Ibi Zoboi
    • Caucasia by Danzy Senna
    • Daughter of Fortune by Izabel Allende
    • Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
    • Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
    • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
    • Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera
    • Mountain Sings, The by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
    • Namesake, The by Jhumpa Lahiri
    • New People by Danzy Senna
    • Patternist series by Octavia Butler
    • Poet X, The by Elizabeth Acevedo
    • Sorrow of War, The by Bao Ninh
    • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    • Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
    • Valley of Amazement, The by Amy Tan
    • Water Dancer, The by Ta Nehisi Coates

On Japanese Studies, Identity, Literature

  • Fiction
    • Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
    • Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
    • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
    • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
  • Non-fiction
    • Patriotism by Yukio Mishima

On Religion and Moral Philosophy

  • Antigone by Sophocles
  • Confessions by St. Augustine
  • Cosmopolitanism : Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame Anthony Appiah
  • Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich
  • Erring: A Postmodern A/theology by Mark C. Taylor
  • Identity & Violence by Amartya Sen
  • Inside Story, The: A Narrative Approach to Religious Understanding and Truth by Paul Brockelman
  • Mahabharata
  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  • Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant
  • Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
  • Ramayana
  • Sacred and the Profane, The by Mircea Eliade