Big Idea Reading List
Start a conversation and create change in your community with a book club. Our resources and ideas are here to support you.
Stories of Resilience and Determination: African American Genealogy Research in Kansas
By Sherri Camp, Genealogy Librarian and Author
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READ African American Topeka (Arcadian Publishers) by Sherri Camp shares the heritage of Black life in the Kansas capitol city through photos and stories.
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READ Revisit the masterpiece that sparked new interest in family research. Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley begins with a young enslaved man, Kunta Kinte, and follows his descendants as they live through history.
Democracy As a Matter of the Spirit
By Dr. Randal Jelks, Professor of African and African American Studies and American Studies at the University of Kansas.
- READ Letters to Martin: Meditations on Democracy in Black America by Randal Maurice Jelks (Chicago Review Press, 2022).
Doing Indigenous Language
By Dr. Andrew McKenzie (Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma), Associate Professor of Linguistics and Affiliate Professor in Indigenous Studies at the University of Kansas.
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READ The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday. Exploring Kiowa myths, legends, and history, this creative memoir is an evocation of three things in particular: a landscape that is incomparable, a time that is gone forever, and the human spirit, which endures.
Turning Land Acknowledgements into Action…In a Good Way
By Dr. Alex Red Corn (Osage Nation), EdD, executive director of the Kansas Association of Native American Education, an assistant professor of educational leadership, and coordinator for Indigenous partnerships in the College of Education at Kansas State University.
- Haskell Indian Nation’s University professor Rhonda LeValdo wrote about the importance of land acknowledgments in KANSAS! Magazine.
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Critics of land acknowledgments say they relegate Indigenous people to the past. Learn more about contemporary Native America in David Treuer’s The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee (New York. Riverhead Books, 2019.)
Story As Medicine
By Dr. Rachel C. Jackson (Cherokee Nation), Assistant Professor of Native American Literatures & Cultural Studies and Rhetoric & Writing Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
- Harjo, Joy. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings. (New York. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.)
Confronting the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
By Dr. Eric P. Anderson (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Professor of History in the Indigenous & American Indian Studies program at Haskell Indian Nationas University.
- Adams, David Wallace. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).
Natives Making News: Toward a More Authentic and Ethical Representation of American Indian Identity, Issues, and Individuals
By Dr. Melissa Greene-Blye (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma), Assistant Professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas.
- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian website continues the museum’s steadfast commitment to bringing Native voices to what it presents.
- S. Elizabeth Bird, editor. Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998)
- John Coward. The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press, 1820-90 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999)
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015)
- Check out the resources offered by the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), which serves and empowers Native journalists through programs and actions designed to enrich journalism and promote Native cultures.
Finally Breaking Through: The Current State of Indigenous Storytelling
By Rodrick Pocowatchit (Comanche, Pawnee and Shawnee nations), Wichita, Kansas-based filmmaker, graphic designer and writer.
- Tommy Orange, There, There
This Pulitzer Prize finalist and first novel by Cheyenne and Arapaho author Orange, published in 2018, is truly engrossing and moving, and worth every emotion spent. It follows a large cast of Native Americans living in the Oakland, Calif., area and their battles with family and identity.
- Susan Power, The Grass Dancer
Standing Rock Sioux author Power’s book has a rich sense of place, set on a North Dakota reservation, and explores the harsh price of unfulfilled longings and the healing power of mystery and hope. Interlocking stories bring to life not just individual characters but also their links to one another in the past and the present. Lyrical and dreamy.
- Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves
In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow means death for the unwilling donors, who are being ruthlessly hunted. Driven to flight, a group of teens struggle for survival.
- Thomas M. Yeahpau, X-Indian Chronicles: The Book of Mausape
In stories and poems mixing magical realism with unflinching reality, Kiowa author Yeahpau offers a raw, graphic view of life on a reservation, where a young “X-Indian” man named Mausape dreams he's about to compete against the King of All Fancy-Dancers -- who, it turns out, is really Elvis Presley in full Las Vegas regalia. The stories only get wonderfully weirder after that.
It's Time to Expand Our Views on Peacemaking
by Sheryl R. Wilson, Director of the Kansas Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution
- The Little Book of Restorative Justice by Howard Zehr
- The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice by Fania Davis
- The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools: Teaching Responsibility, Creating Caring Climates by Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz
- The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education: Fostering Healing and Hope in Schools by Katherine Evans and Dorothy Vandering
- Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing Our Realities edited by Edward Valandra
It's Time to Understand the History of Black Voting Rights
by Kim Warren, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, School of Social Welfare and Associate Professor of History, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas
- National Parks Service, “Series: Suffrage in America: The 15th and 19th Amendments”
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Martha S. Jones, “How the Daughters and Granddaughters of Former Slaves Secured Voting Rights for All,” Smithsonianmag.com, 8 March 2019
Coupling Jim Crow and Jane Crow
by Ayesha K. Hardison, Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas
- Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray
- “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott” by Mary Fair Burks, in Women in the Civil Rights Movement
- The Street by Ann Petry
- The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West
- Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
- Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist by Nancy Goldstein
- Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature by Ayesha K. Hardison
It’s Time to Recognize the History of Race and Baseball in Kansas: The Good, The Bad, and the Magnificent
by Phil S. Dixon, Author and Baseball Historian
- Wilber "Bullet" Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs, by Phil S. Dixon
- The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America’s National Pastime, by Phil S. Dixon
- The Kansas City Athletics: A Baseball History, 1954-1967, by John E. Peterson
- The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball, by Janet Bruce
- Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train, by Henry W. Thomas and Shirley Povich
- Kansas Baseball, 1858-1941, by Mark Eberle
- "Dean Brothers Face Negro Leagues Best in Barnstorming Tour," Miami County Republic, May 10, 2020
- "MLB Commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the Negro Leagues," NPR, July 31, 2020
- "A Road to Equality," National Baseball Hall of Fame
- "MLB Finally Recognizes Negro Leagues as the Major Leagues They Always Were," The Ringer, December 16, 2020
Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Gordon Parks
by Kirk Sharp, Director of the Gordon Parks Museum
- Gordon Parks, A Choice of Weapons
- Gordon Parks, The Learning Tree
- Gordon Parks, A Poet and His Camera
It's Time to Tell the Stories of African American Entrepreneurs
by Robert E. Weems, Jr., Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, Wichita State University
- The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship, by Juliet E. K. Walker
- An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes, by Merah S. Stuart
Images from the Mind of a Bi-Racial Black Woman
by Ann Dean, professional photographer
- "The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History the United States" by Walter Johnson
- "A Choice of Weapons" by Gordon Parks
- "Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience"
- "More Than Enough" by Elaine Welteroth
- "Freedom is a Constant Struggle" by Angela Davis
- "I Am Not Your Negro" by James Baldwin
- "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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"Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan" by Daryl Davis
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
It's Time to Reconnect with Nature
by Leslie VonHolten, writer and executive director of Symphony in the Flint Hills
- Wendell Berry, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 2017).
- Jim Harrison, The Essential Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).
- J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Editions, 2016).
- Barry Lopez, Horizon (Alfred A. Knopf, 2019).
- Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Vintage, 1992).
Changing How We Talk About the Civil Rights Movement
by Clarence Lang, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State University
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
It's Time to Change How We Talk About Immigrants
by Kandace Creel Falcón, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead
- A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernandez
- The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
- I'm Not Your Perfect American Daughter by Erika Sanchez
- Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario
We Need to Elevate Black Women's Stories
by Donna Rae Pearson, Local History Librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library
- How to be Less Stupid about Race by Crystal M. Fleming
- Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America by Melissa Harris-Perry
- The Sisters are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America by Tamara Winfrey Harris
It's Time for More Representation in STEM
by Sarah Lamm, Colby native and doctoral student in planetary science at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff
- Ed Dwight Was Set the Be the First Black Astronaut. Here's Why that Never Happened. (New York Times, July 16, 2019)
- Follow the Mars Curiosity rover (Twitter)
- This is What a Scientist Looks Like (Tumblr)
- LGBTQ Scientists are Still Left Out (Nature)
- Science in Kansas 150 Years and Counting (Ad Astra-KS)
- 500 Queer Scientists
- It's Time to Stop Excluding People with Disabilities from Science (Massive Science)
- Why the Universe Needs More Black and Latino Astronomers (Smithsonian Magazine)
- How Ashley Walker Shined a Necessary Light on Black Junior Astronomers (Astronomy in Color)
- The Native Astronomer (News Maven)
- Disabilities Don't Stop These Experts in Science (Science News for Students)
It's Time to Change the Way We Talk About Poverty
by Jason Wesco, Executive Vice-President of the Community Health Care Center
- Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh. HK's Instagram Book Club is reading and discussing "Heartland" in September 2019. Join us!
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
- A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
- Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
- Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol
How Should We Honor Someone's Military Experience?
by Tai S. Edwards, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College
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James M. Dubik, “Foreword: Expanding Our Understanding of the Moral Dimension of War,” in Nancy Sherman Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers (Oxford University Press, 2015).
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Robert Emmet Meagher and Douglas A. Pryer, eds., War and Moral Injury: A Reader (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018).
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Matt Richtel, “Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service,” The New York Times, February 21, 2015.
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Phillip Carter, “For veterans, is ‘thank you for your service’ enough?” The Washington Post, November 4, 2011.
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Max Fisher, “Why Some Veterans Hate it When You Say ‘Thank You,’” The Atlantic, December 11, 2010.