Rad Mini Library

Wild Seed. Octavia E Butler (Author) A People's History of the United States. Howard Zinn (Author) Soldier: A Poet's Childhood. June Jordan (Author) This Is Your Time. Ruby Bridges (Author) The Hate U Give: A Printz Honor Winner. Angie Thomas (Author)  Amandla Stenberg (Foreword by)

A is for Activist. Innosanto Nagara (Author) Love. Matt de la Peña (Author)  Loren Long (Illustrator) Heather Has Two Mommies. Leslea Newman (Author)  Laura Cornell (Illustrator) And Tango Makes Three. Peter Parnell (Author)  Justin Richardson (Author)  Henry Cole (Illustrator) New Kid: A Newbery Award Winner. Jerry Craft (Author)

The Rad Mini Library is stocked! Banned books, Black stories, Queer & Trans stories, disability justice, and more for kids and grownups! Oatmeal cups, vegan chicken noodle soup cups! Kids / small KN95 masks! Hand warmers!

Pet. Akwaeke Emezi (Author) Americanah. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Author) Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Bryan Stevenson (Author) All American Boys. Jason Reynolds (Author)  Brendan Kiely (Author) Dear Martin. Nic Stone (Author)

Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer https://iupress.org/9780253009340/feminist-queer-crip/ From the Publisher: In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes http://www.angelagarbes.com/ From Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/p/books/essential-labor-mothering-as-social-change-angela-garbes/17364605 The Covid-19 pandemic shed fresh light on a long-overlooked truth: mothering is among the only essential work humans do. In response to the increasing weight placed on mothers and caregivers--and the lack of a social safety net to support them--writer Angela Garbes found herself pondering a vital question: How, under our current circumstances that leave us lonely, exhausted, and financially strained, might we demand more from American family life? In Essential Labor, Garbes explores assumptions about care, work, and deservedness, offering a deeply personal and rigorously reported look at what mothering is, and can be. A first-generation Filipino-American, Garbes shares the perspective of her family's complicated relationship to care work, placing mothering in a global context--the i...

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis From AK Press https://www.akpress.org/areprisonsobsolete.html A short, impassioned, argument for abolition. Davis eloquently points out that mass incarceration has had little or no effect on crime, how disproportionate numbers of the poor and minorities end up in prison, and the obscene profits the system generates. Who needs it! "In this extraordinary book, Angela Davis challenges us to confront the human rights catastrophe in our jails and prisons. As she so convincingly argues, the contemporary US practice of super-incarceration is closer to new age slavery that to any recognizable system of 'criminal justice'..." —Mike Davis

We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown From AK Press Cancel or call-out culture is a fraught topic these days. Originating as a way for marginalized and disempowered people to address harm and take down powerful abusers, often with the help of social media, it is seen by some as having gone too far. But what is “too far” when you’re talking about imbalances of power and patterns of harm? And what happens when people in social movements direct our righteous anger inward at one another? In We Will Not Cancel Us , movement mediator adrienne maree brown reframes the discussion for us, in a way that points to possible paths beyond our impasse. Most critiques of cancel culture come from outside the milieus that produce it, sometimes even from its targets. Brown explores the question from a Black, queer, and feminist viewpoint that gently asks, how well does this practice serve us? Does it prefigure the sort of world we want to live in? And, ...

The Family Book. Todd Parr (Author) Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You. Jason Reynolds (Author)  Ibram X. Kendi (Author)  Sonja Cherry-Paul (Adapted by)  Rachelle Baker (Illustrator) Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women. Francesca Cavallo (Author)  Elena Favilli (Author) Red: A Crayon's Story. Michael Hall (Author) Last Stop on Market Street. Matt de la Peña (Author)  Christian Robinson (Illustrator) Worm Loves Worm. J J Austrian (Author)  Mike Curato (Illustrator)

Begin the World Over. Kung Li Sun (Author) Grievers. adrienne maree brown (Author) The Dispossessed. Ursula K Le Guin (Author) -- I read many of the books that are added to the Rad Mini Library, and reading these speculative fiction books back-to-back was particularly enjoyable and a good escape! How to Be an Antiracist. Ibram X. Kendi (Author) So You Want to Talk about Race. Ijeoma Oluo (Author) Between the World and Me. Ta-Nehisi Coates (Author) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Michelle Alexander (Author) The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. Alicia Garza (Author)

We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain From AK Press https://www.akpress.org/weliveforthewe.html In We Live for the We , first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust—even hostile—society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay and raise a child so she lives with dignity and joy? McClain spoke with mothers on the frontlines of movements for social, political, and cultural change who are grappling with the same questions. Following a child's development from infancy to the teenage years, We Live for the We touches on everything from the importance of creativity to building a mutually supportive community to navigating one's relationship with power and auth...

Yasmin the Superhero. Saadia Faruqi (Author)  Hatem Aly (Illustrator) Black Is a Rainbow Color. Angela Joy (Author)  Ekua Holmes (Illustrator) Rocket Says Look Up! Nathan Bryon (Author)  Dapo Adeola (Illustrator) Harriet Gets Carried Away. Jessie Sima (Author) Peanut Goes for the Gold. Jonathan Van Ness (Author)  Gillian Reid (Illustrator) A Family Is a Family Is a Family. Sara O'Leary (Author)  Qin Leng (Illustrator) The Little Red Stroller. Joshua Furst (Author)  Katy Wu (Illustrator) Strega Nona. Tomie dePaola (Author)

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks From Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/p/books/all-about-love-new-visions-bell-hooks/8888106 "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 nat...

  Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. https://www.alexispauline.com/books  From the author's website: Undrowned is a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. Our aquatic cousins are queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions our species has imposed on the ocean. Gumbs employs a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility and naturalist observation to show what they might teach us, producing not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wondering and questioning. From the relationship between the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and Gumbs’s Shinnecock and enslaved ancestors to the ways echolocation changes our understandings of “vision” and visionary action, this is a masterful use of metaphor and natural models in the service of social justice.

The Most Beautiful Thing. Kao Kalia Yang (Author)  Khoa Le (Illustrator) The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest. Lynne Cherry (Author) What the Road Said. Cleo Wade (Author)  Lucie de Moyencourt (Illustrator) Uncle Bobby's Wedding. Sarah S. Brannen (Author)  Lucia Soto (Illustrator) A Kid of Their Own. Megan Dowd Lambert (Author)  Jessica Lanan (Illustrator) Little Pig Saves the Ship. David Hyde Costello (Author) Thinker: My Puppy Poet and Me. Eloise Greenfield (Author)  Ehsan Abdollahi (Illustrator)

A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns. Archie Bongiovanni (Author)  Tristan Jimerson (Author) The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism. Murray Bookchin (Author)  Todd McGowan (Afterword by) The Weight of the Stars: The Life of Anarchist Octavio Alberola. Agustín Comotto (Author)  Paul Sharkey (Translator) Black Blocks, White Squares: Crosswords with an Anarchist Edge. Leonard Williams (Author) Forget Prayers, Bring Cake: A Single Woman's Guide to Grieving. Merissa Nathan Gerson (Author)

Hey there - this book is in the mini library, along with Dean Spade's Mutual Aid handbook, as well as fresh garden green beans and dresses / skirts I outgrew ;-) Let's take care of each other.

Mutual Aid: Building solidarity during this crisis (and the next) Dean Spade  http://www.deanspade.net/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next/  From the author's website: Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.   Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.   Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides ...

  Added to the Rad Mini Library!  My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem From the Publisher:  In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond...

Saturday. Oge Mora (Artist) Johnny's Pheasant. Cheryl Minnema (Author)  Julie Flett (Illustrator) Heather Has Two Mommies. Leslea Newman (Author)  Laura Cornell (Illustrator) Milo Imagines the World. Matt de la Peña (Author)  Christian Robinson (Illustrator) Kapaemahu. Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu (Author)  Dean Hamer (Author)  Joe Wilson (Author)  Daniel Sousa (Illustrator) Little Doctor and the Fearless Beast. Sophie Gilmore (Author) Truman. Jean Reidy (Author)  Lucy Ruth Cummins (Illustrator) It Fell from the Sky. Terry Fan (Author)  Eric Fan (Author)

Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Adrienne Maree Brown (Editor)  Walidah Imarisha (Editor)  Sheree Renee Thomas (Foreword by) Print Culture and the Formation of the Anarchist Movement in Spain, 1890-1915. James Michael Yeoman (Author) War and Peace: On the Principle and Constitution of the Rights of Peoples. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Author)  Paul Sharkey (Translator)  Alex Prichard (Introduction by) The Modern Crisis. Murray Bookchin (Author)  Andy Price (Introduction by) A Profession Without Reason: The Crisis of Contemporary Psychiatry--Untangled and Solved by Spinoza, Freethinking, and Radical Enlightenment. Bruce E. Levine (Author) Gang Politics: Revolution, Repression, and Crime. Kristian Williams (Author)  Robert Evans (Foreword by) Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century. Tom Wetzel (Author)

  The Neighbor Notes is so fun! Love hearing from neighbors who stop by the Rad Mini Library!

It's pandemic-y out there. Stop by the everything library and pick up kids KN95 masks, rad books, toys / treasures, and by this evening FRESH veggies. Longfellow, Minneapolis. TAKE CARE.

Speak Up. Miranda Paul (Author)  Ebony Glenn (Illustrator) Hello, Mandarin Duck! Bao Phi (Author)  Dion Mbd (Illustrator) Julián Is a Mermaid. Jessica Love (Author) Change Sings: A Children's Anthem. Amanda Gorman (Author)  Loren Long (Illustrator) Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story. Kevin Noble Maillard (Author)  Juana Martinez-Neal (Illustrator)

Living for Change: An Autobiography. Grace Lee Boggs (Author) All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (Editor)  Katharine K Wilkinson (Editor) Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Author) Creative Interventions Workbook: Practical Tools to Stop Interpersonal Violence. Creative Interventions (Author) How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Jenny Odell (Author) From Urbanization to Cities: The Politics of Democratic Municipalism. Murray Bookchin (Author)  Sixtine Van Outryve d'Ydewalle (Introduction by)

Bought a copy of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower to share. Very few stories are as relevant and accurate and true as this one.  

When 6 members of SCOTUS (and a ton more elected officials and surveillance/police types) would rather see us and our kids dead and/or imprisoned, we need to function outside of the system. My mini library experiment is barely doing that, but it's something. We need to care for and feed, clothe, shelter, share information with each other. Be innovative. Be human to each other. How else will we survive?

It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity. Theresa Thorn (Author)  Noah Grigni (Illustrator) Missing Daddy. Mariame Kaba (Author)  Bria Royal (Illustrator) I Talk Like a River. Jordan Scott (Author)  Sydney Smith (Illustrator) Mommy's Khimar. Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow (Author)  Robin Eller (Read by)  Ebony Glenn (Illustrator) Antiracist Baby Board Book. Ibram X. Kendi (Author)  Ashley Lukashevsky (Illustrator) Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam. Fawzia Gilani-Williams (Author)  Chiara Fedele (Illustrator)

A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy  There's a Revolution Outside, My Love edited by John Freeman, Tracy K. Smith The Nation on No Map by William C. Anderson A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence edited by Creative Interventions A Life for Anarchy: A Stuart Christie Reader Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement. Ejeris Dixon (Editor); Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Editor)

  The Rad Mini Library is stocked with rad books, seeds, and toys. Check it out! Two blocks west of Longfellow Park.

 The Rad Mini Library is almost ready to be installed!

 Pieces from the rotting shed were cut to size, assembled, and painted. The door with plexi came from the shed, too - all I had to buy was a cool door knob, spray foam to keep it water-tight, and magnets for the door.