The Westport Library Resource Guides: Appropriate at the Westport Playhouse: TEAM Westport Recommendations

Non-Fiction

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
In a bold and innovative argument, a rising legal star shows readers how the mass incarceration of a disproportionate number of black men amounts to a devastating system of racial control.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis.
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system.
The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist
In The Half Has Never Been Told, historian Edward E. Baptist reveals the alarming extent to which slavery shaped our country politically, morally, and most of all, economically.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
White Like Me by Tim Wise
White Like Me is one-part memoir, one-part polemical essay collection. It is a personal examination of the way in which racial privilege shapes the daily lives of white Americans in every realm: employment, education, housing, criminal justice, and elsewhere.
Slaves in the Family by Robert Edward Ball
Journalist Ball confronts the legacy of his family's slave-owning past, uncovering the story of the people, both black and white, who lived and worked on the Balls' South Carolina plantations.
The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
Historian and legal scholar Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin; BookSource Staff (Compiled by)
A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document.
Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race [electronic resource, audio]. by Irving, Debby.
Combining her organization development skills, classroom teaching experience, and understanding of systemic racism, Irving educates and consults with individuals and organizations seeking to create racial equity at both the personal and institutional level.
Who Killed John Clayton? by Kenneth C. Barnes
Who Killed John Clayton? traces patterns of political violence in the South over a three-decade period. Using vivid courtroom-type detail, Barnes describes how violence was used to define and control the political system in the post-Reconstruction South and how this system in turn produced Jim Crow.

Fiction

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
It is the story--set in post-Civil War Ohio--of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked death in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad: a woman of "iron eyes and backbone to match." Sethe lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing intruder who calls herself Beloved.

Films

12 Years a Slave (2013)
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.

13th (2016)
This documentary by Ava DuVernay is an An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Writer James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.

About Team Westport
TEAM (Together Effectively Achieving Multiculturalism) Westport is collaborating with the Westport Country Playhouse to present Appropriate, in support of the mission of TEAM: "To achieve and celebrate a more welcoming, multicultural community."

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