Okay, hi welcome back to my channel
this is going to be kind of a different video, but I think a very poignant and
important one
If you have like read a newspaper if you've seen the news or if you are living in it
you know what is happening in America and it's becoming like this much bigger movement because I've seen
protests
in New Zealand
I've seen them in Netherlands I've seen them in the UK
We are grouping ourselves in Italy to do some protest in
Like many of our big cities like Rome Milan. They are coming. I know they are
Now that I am a creator and I am a white person. Of course
I feel like it's my duty to speak up if I have this new platform
I've been speaking to my friends, but if I don't speak up in
every platform that I have I feel like I'm doing a disservice to
what I can do so
As you can hear I am not very
Eloquent in English. It's not my first language, but
My very very much more eloquent mother she is a professor at the university of padova
she teaches
political science and gender studies, and she
With many other women and men they founded a cooperative called ImmaginAfrica that
wants to shed light on the immigrant situation in Italy because
We see in the newspaper. That we are very much talking about America and the problem of racism in America
But we in Europe and in other countries in the world, we are not immune to that. We are not above that
At all like I've seen, I remember the time where one of our star football player
Balotelli, he is a black man, and he was booed off the
like the football field by racist remarks it was disgusting and
the
Like conversation about immigrants here in Italy is abysmal
so my mother and she has read many books on the topic and she
like landed to me, so I think
She will be much more as I said eloquent when explaining them to you
they will be kind of different books because I've seen a lot of great recommendation like
White fragility and Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race
and other many amazing books non-fiction books, but
Many of the books that are being recommended I think on Twitter and on YouTube
I will link some amazing videos down below by
I've seen one by Cecilia
Over that Disney chick I think on YouTube, but I will have all the links down below
and
other amazing books
But many of them have never been translated into Italian or either European languages
And I know many people like my grandma if she wants to
Read something about racism and educate herself. She doesn't know English
She doesn't she knows a little bit of French, but she never took English in school
So I wanted to recommend some very I think important books
That have been translated that people here in Italy and maybe in France and in Germany can find in your local libraries
To educate ourselves. I with the help of my mother compiled this list
The video will be structured in two parts and I will leave a
Timestamp down below if you want to skip to one part on the other the first part will be my mother
telling you about all the books that she chose why she chose them and
Brief synopsis and why they're important and then the second part will be me recommending you books by black authors
Mostly fiction books that I have loved throughout all these years that I've been reading
some of them are
Very popular some of them. I haven't seen many people talk about and then I will leave a
Twitter thread down below of
Awesome books that really sound awesome by black authors
About black main characters
Down below there are so many there's so many of them there are coming out right now and that you can pre-order and support
because the support that I've seen right now on Twitter because I
am mainly on Twitter and YouTube
cannot stop at the end of this week or this month, or this year, it has to like
Be prolonged throughout all your life
Because you can't really say to be supportive of Black people and Black authors
Black people that are working and have like
businesses when you just
support them for five days
Just because it's relevant right now. It's always relevant. Not just because people are protesting and marching
but
every day
Like raising racism is an everyday
Topic of discussion and it should be and you should challenge it every day. You should talk to your friends to your family
So, yeah, I will now shut up and just let my mother do the talking
Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin is the first book out the list
The topic of racial segregation in America's residential community is one that increasingly come into the spotlight
White it seems are increasingly seeking out
predominantly white suburban communities to live
for his book
Benjamin travelled for twenty seven thousand miles across US to find the whitest communities in the country in
Here he rented homes and temporarily became a resident of those circle of whitopias
Where as a black man he was able to experience the good the bad and the awkward
It's interesting also to notice that his journey retraces the map of vote for Trump in
2018 election but twelve years before it happens
Showing how the defeat of the Democrat was highly predictable
If only the political analysts were able to search in the right places. So the second book of the list is of
an Italian historian
professor Alessandro Portelli of the University of Rome and
The title of the book is They say in Harlan County an oral history and
Portelli was one of my professor in university and is a great a real master of the oral history
Methodologies applied to the American contest in this book he's great in making the reader
hear the voices and even seen the faces of his testimonies and
To have an... make an image, make a map of the desolation in Harlan County
Kentucky a place of poverty in a land owned by
wealthy coal company a striking landscape
Tragically signed by strip mining and bloody labor struggle, a place of discrimination and racism
Which Portelli is able to capture the complexity but
Avoiding the most common stereotypes about Appalachia and simply giving people the chance to speak without
covering their voices with analysis and scientific discourses or
Explanation of data and things like that just 
 the word of the never heard. The third book
I've chosen is again by Alessandro Portelli and the title is Badlands
It's a book about the American soul grasped through the songs
one of the most famous American singer and songwriter
Bruce Springsteen as an example of how Springsteen texts can be
Useful to understand or try at least to understand the spirit of the American people Portelli brings Born in the USA
Apparently an explicit patriotic song but of an indignant
Disappointed patriotism the Patriotism of those who were sent to die in Vietnam or that of the over
100 people almost all of them Black and unarmed killed by the police in March 2015 alone
Great to read and discover that everything really everything
Even the songs of a singer can become sources for sociological analysis and can help us
Understanding the time we are living
so after white American supremacy
portrayed by the black
American journalist after a race and class discrimination
in one of the poorest part of the US and that the margin of the working class two faces of the same coin or the
neoliberal capitalism
Let's see what happens if you are not only black and/or poor but also a woman
What if we complicate the categories and we intersect the sexes to race in class
Among the numerous writing of Angela Davis dedicated a gender race in class
I want to mention here her autobiography published in 2013
It's impossible not to mention something written by Angela Davis in this list
political activists, Communist, leader of the Black Panthers, feminist scholar and philosopher
Angela Davis has dedicated her life to the political solution
Of the problem of racism and civil rights in her personal history and the prominence
They had all over the world let her to be as a woman in
African-american is symbol of both feminism and racial equality
Now I want to mention not a book but a scientific paper in my opinion a fundamental piece of knowledge in order to understand
The deep-rooted racism: the problem of the other
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
An Indian American feminist scholar in 1984 wrote under the westernized
feminist scholarship and colonial discourses and in this essay
She presents the  argument that the Western feminists way of framing the world has reduced all non Western women
into a single collective other
The other is just a sort of a genius group of different eyes
with no specificity
No needs and rise, no agency, but waiting for the help of the white Western society
And this is precisely the problem of racism the non-recognition or the other so quite difficult
but worth a reading
On the same line of the problematic an aknowledgement or the other is a classic book of the bulgarian
anthropologist very well known
Tzvetan Todorov
The conquest of the America and the problem of the other is the title a landmark study
Let's say in this book
Todorov is capable to underline and clarify the main issue of the Columbus Enterprise
the fact that the old white Western world
embodied by Colombo was blind in front of the new world and the story he told
is not the one of a discovery of a new continent but a story of the destruction
The stermination of the indigenous people of
this new continent the story of the depredation of their culture and religion
The pig and the skyscraper by Marco Deramo an italian sociologist
is another of the book in this list a
fascinating journey into one of the most interesting cities of the united states where everything from the historical to the
sociological and economical point of view seems to have begun the Second Industrial Revolution
the new urbanism, multicultural society, the integration policies, but it's not an American dream story
Not even a novel in the classical way. It's a long story of conflict between the black community and the white capitalism
Chicago is seen as a laboratory of the today's world of
multiculturalism in its contradiction on the failure of a neoliberal development system that fails in
Recognizing the line of the color of the skin in on this border is still stuck
"The frontier always run in the middle" wrote Alessandro Leogrande in his
2015 book the frontier the one I've chosen to close this list a
thin imperceptible yet deep line that diggs furrows and separate lives a frontier that
Separate and at the same time unites the Democratic liberal and civilized north of the world with the poor
bitten by war
backward and undemocrat self
It is on the edge of this frontier that the great game of the contemporary world is played
The language of this book is crude and rude
but at the same time able to create a long poem
Moving to the unexplored where migration and rejection take place where people fight to live or die
Leogrande
take as a aboard of the ships that save migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and draws the words
from the seabed in which they are stuck in hidden to the root and at the same time to the apex of our
Contemporary races so much cause so much indifference
Somewhere in the future our descendant will wonder how we could have let this happen
We have arrived at a part where I shout out some of the books by black authors that I really liked
Some of them I read some of them. I am currently reading some of them just sounds amazing and
Many of my friends have told me that they truly loved them and they are currently in my E-reader
So I will be reading them soon
they're
In no particular order. So let's start. The first one is running with Lions by
Julian Winters, this was a very cute
contemporary story, a queer story about soccer and soccer camp. Very cute
The second one is Black leopard red wolf by
Marlon James, which I am currently reading I am about
75 pages into this. This is a sci-fi. Very mysterious story with a very
particular style of writing that I am actually really enjoying I know some people
find it kind of pretentious but I am enjoying it and
This is the same author A brief history of seven killings, which is also
a very popular book here on Booktube
The next one is another
Very popular book. It's Children of blood and bone by Tommy Adeyemi
Here, I think it's part of a trilogy or a series
this is a fantasy book that it's
African inspired and I am currently ten pages into it. I will finish it
it's very long, but
Again, a lot of people told me that it's an amazing fantasy story
About a world where magic has been I think banned or disappeared
But so far, I am very intrigued. Next. Sorry. It's very hot
It's more of an author recommendation and it's James Baldwin
The book that I am currently on hold at my library is Giovanni's room
here or La stanza di Giovanni
Which I think it's very interesting because it's another queer story involving an Italian character. So
and it's not
Really a memoir but it's a recollection of a story that really happened
James Baldwin is an amazing writer. He was an activist throughout all his life. He wrote
many books many
poetry
which my mother who is very
avid poetry fan really likes
He wrote so much and I think any of his books
I think I would recommend even though I haven't read all of them yet
Next and this is I think the last one
It's another author recommendation and it's Walter Mosley
He is a super prolific writer. So
if you like mysteries if you like thrillers, if you like like very action-packed book, but really
Like well-written he is author for you
He wrote I think over 40 or 50 books he has many series
I think some of them on going. So if you are a fan of that I truly recommend Walter Mosley
Okay, so we've arrived at the end of this video now
I urge you to please go into the description because I will leave all the links to
sign all the petitions that I can find and if you can
donate to the bail funds and
All the organizations that are now in need and all the person the people that are now in need
So, please go into the description I will live also some
videos of amazing Black creators and
just
videos that I think are very important to watch right now and
some Twitter threads that I think will help you with petitions and then the other
books books by Black authors that I think are worthy of checking out I
am a very new creator here in booktube, so I don't make
Unfortunately a dime on YouTube. I'm very a very tiny teeny creator
So I please urge you to at least if you can't
- protests if you can't donate because
many reasons at least sign the petition talk to your friends or family about
these issues and please like watch the news and
read newspapers and listen to the radio, but also
Please I think Twitter is right now the only like truthful news source
But please be careful of fake news, but many of the videos that are being cut
From media you can find them in their entire length there. So
Please this
Is my
Plea to educate yourself in any way you can and educate others
Because people are losing their life and they are just asking to be treated as human beings. So
Please check out the description
Check out some of these books and go
educate yourself
Goodbye
