A recommended reading list compiled by members of the SAR group; this will grow as we have the time and resources to do so. There are many reading lists recommended by a variety of different groups, so it’s easy to search for.

We also have a Lending Library in Stroud, that we have all donated to and anyone is welcome to get in touch to borrow books.

Check our Story Highlights on Instagram for more ways to learn, recommended accounts and other resources such as terminology.

  • Akala - Natives

    From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today.

    Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.
    Natives is the searing modern polemic and Sunday Times bestseller from the BAFTA and MOBO award-winning musician and political commentator, Akala. Guardian Review.

  • Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed
    Paulo Freire is a Brazilian philosopher of education, and “Pedogogy of the Oppressed” deals with the concept of oppression in the school system and suggests an alternative method of education. “Those on the Right would call him a “radical” because he believes that poor people shouldn’t be exploited and children should be taught to think creatively and critically. For Freire, oppression and education are linked — the more you have of the latter, the less you will have of the former, which is why the oppressors try to restrict education.” - Douglas Giles

  • Paul Gilroy - There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack
    This classic book is a powerful indictment of contemporary attitudes to race. By accusing British intellectuals and politicians on both sides of the political divide of refusing to take race seriously, Paul Gilroy caused immediate uproar when this book was first published in 1987. A brilliant and explosive exploration of racial discourses, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack provided a powerful new direction for race relations in Britain.

  • Buchi Emecheta - Second Class Citizen
    "Adah, a woman from the Ibo tribe, moves to England to live with her Nigerian student husband. She soon discovers that life for a young Nigerian woman living in London in the 1960s is grim. Rejected by British society and thwarted by her husband, who expects her to be subservient to him, she is forced to face up to life as a second-class citizen."

  • Lemn Sissay - My name Is Why
    This is Lemn's story; a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Sissay reflects on a childhood in care, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home.

    Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation's best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

  • Priyamvada Gopal - Insurgent Empire - Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent
    Insurgent Empire shows how Britain’s enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. What is more, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom.

    Priyamvada Gopal examines a century of dissent on the question of empire and shows how British critics of empire were influenced by rebellions and resistance in the colonies, from the West Indies and East Africa to Egypt and India. In addition, a pivotal role in fomenting resistance was played by anticolonial campaigners based in London, right at the heart of empire.

  • Benjamin Zephaniah - The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah
    Benjamin Zephaniah, who has travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, now tells the one story that encompasses it all: the story of his life.

    In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets protesting about unemployment, homelessness and the National Front, Benjamin's poetry could be heard at demonstrations, outside police stations and on the dance floor. His mission was to take poetry everywhere, and to popularise it by reaching people who didn't read books. His poetry was political, musical, radical and relevant.

  • Christine Delphy - Separate and dominate : Feminism and Racism After the War on Terror

    When the French government passed a ban on the veil in 2011, surprisingly few French feminists spoke out against the racist measure. Christine Delphy - the sociologist whom Simone de Beauvoir once described as "France's most exciting feminist writer" - was one of the notable few. Castigating humanitarian liberals for demanding cultural assimilation of the women they were purporting to save, Delphy showed how criminalizing Islam in the name of feminism was fundamentally paradoxical. Dominating Others is Delphy's manifesto against this tendency, and for a fluid understanding of political identity that does not place different political struggles in a false opposition. Dismantling the absurd claim that Afghanistan was invaded to save women, alongside the notion that homosexuals and immigrants alike should reserve their self-expression for private settings, Dominating Others is a call for a true universalism that sacrifices no one at the expense of others.

  • Claire Heuchan & Nikesh Shukla - What is race? Who are racists? Why does skin colour matter? And other big questions.
    An important and timely book on race and racism, encouraging children to think for themselves about the issues involved. Talk about race is often discouraged, but this book aims to bring everyone into the conversation. It explores the history of race and society, giving context to how racist attitudes come into being.