Social Justice Book Club: The New Jim Crow Intro & Kick-Off

Friends! This post is a day late, for which I am eternally sorry; I was planning to finalize some things and get this up yesterday morning, and then we lost internet in a big storm on the islands on Saturday, and here we are. Anyway, I'm home now, and so so excited to be diving into Michelle Alexander's powerful book with so many of you.

To get started, let us know in the comments below or in your own blog or social media post:

Book Review: The Black Presidency, by Michael Eric Dyson

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

The Black Presidency offers a nuanced analysis of the politics of race in the U.S. in the context of Barack Obama's presidency.

Book Review: Our Kids, by Robert Putnam

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

In Bowling Alone, political scientist and Harvard professor Robert Putnam took a close look at the evolving landscape of community in the United States. With Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, he turns to a distinct but inherently related topic: the dissolution of the American Dream and the many ways that class mobility in the U.S. has stagnated in the 50 years since Putnam himself was a child. Putnam explores the "myths and realities" of the American Dream before analyzing the various factors that he claims are preventing young people today from achieving upward class mobility, which involve family structure, parenting, schooling and community.