With all the focus on a one-dimensional definition of love this month, it can be beneficial to expand our ideas of what constitutes love for all - ourselves, our communities, even our environment. Reading has always been an act of resistance, and the commercialism of Valentine's Day attempts to define even the stories we choose to consume that narrate what love really is to each person. Challenge your perspective with diverse reads in different genres, and define love on your own terms and outside of solely romantic ideals.
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America
Roxanna Asgarian
Nonfiction
The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children--and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children.
Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian's We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children's birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts' adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian's reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America's most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.
Whether prayers or spells or poems--and whether there's a difference--she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.
All About Love
Bell Hooks
Nonfiction
A
New York Times bestseller and enduring classic,
All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy.
All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
"The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society's failure to provide a model for learning to love.
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.
Love Has No Skin Tone: A Lesson About Social Justice
Michol M. Whitney (Author), Kayla Hargrove (Illustrator)
Children’s (Ages 6 -12)
In May of 2020, Nova is excited to go grocery shopping with her family. Little did she know, due to civil unrest, rioters damaged the stores where she usually shops. Her family drives to a store in a beautiful neighborhood far from where they live. As they arrive at the grocery store, the family is confronted by an angry man who does not want them there. The man's despicable behavior traumatizes Nova, and she wants to go back to her neighborhood.
This racist experience allowed Nova's parents to help her recognize and confront racism. Her parents have an open and honest discussion with her about diversity, inclusivity, and discrimination. Nova learns that love has no skin tone and that it is better to treat everyone with kindness and respect.
Check out the full list of recommendations
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Audiobooks
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