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YW Boston’s 2021 Reading List

With non-fiction, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and books for kids and teens, YW Boston’s reading list includes recommendations from its staff, board of directors, Academy of Women Achievers Host Committee, and 2021 Academy of Women Achievers awardees, who include Lindauer CEO Deb Taft.

Crucial to YW Boston’s mission to create more inclusive environments is a belief in making space to learn, to listen to one another, and to build community. Reading provides everyone the opportunity to do this while also allowing quiet, introspective time to process and reflect. For the past five years, the YW has compiled a list of favorite books related to its mission to eliminate racism and empower women.

Recommendations from Lindauer CEO Deb Taft include:

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad

Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of colour, and in turn, help other white people do better, too. When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it.

Collecting Courage: Joy, Pain, Freedom, Love edited by Nneka Allen, Camila Vital Nunes Pereira, and Nicole Salmon

A collection of stories documenting racism and survival by 14 accomplished Black fundraisers working in charities across North America. With searing and intimate detail, they write about their experiences with anti-Black racism—about coping with being last hired, first fired, overlooked for promotion to outright hostility in toxic workplaces.

Click here to access the complete reading list.

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