Stop Anti-Asian Racism and China Bashing rally in Washington, DC, 27 March 2021. Photo credit: Elvert Barnes

Beacon Press supports our authors, the Asian and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and all those fighting against American xenophobia and hatred. This violence is not new. It has a long history in this country. We know that recent acts of violence are rooted in the same white supremacy and hate that take the lives of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color. We remain committed to publishing resources to help dismantle the systems of white supremacy, hate, and toxic masculinity. #StopAsianHate #EndWhiteSupremacy

As a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association, their seven principles guide the work that we do. Through partnerships with the UUA, its affiliated organizations, and other groups, our books reach audiences who can use our books as resources for movement building. They are also used for professional development to help improve teacher and student experience in the classroom and transform education. Reading groups choose our books to gain a better understanding of current issues or events in American history.

See below for some recommended reading that helps to make sense of the issues and also provides ways for people to take action. Now more than ever, we are committed to lifting up the voices and providing resources that speak to the current political climate and social activism.

Reading Up on the Issues

Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence
Edited by Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader

Focuses intensively on the crisis of gun violence in America. This volume brings together poems by dozens of our best-known poets. Each poem is followed by a response from a gun violence prevention activist, political figure, survivor, or concerned individual.

Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics
Kay Whitlock and Michael Bronski

Boldly assert that American society’s reliance on the framework of hate to explain violent acts against marginalized communities is wrongheaded, misleading, and ultimately harmful. Kay Whitlock and Michael Bronski invite readers to radically reimagine the meaning and structures of justice within a new framework of community wholeness, collective responsibility, and civic goodness.

Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment
Zach Norris

Lays out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from fear and punishment and toward growth and support systems for our families and communities. The result reinstates full humanity and agency for everyone who has been dehumanized and traumatized, so they can participate fully in life, in society, and in the fabric of our democracy.

How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Crystal M. Fleming

Draws upon critical race theory to unveil how systemic racism exposes us all to racial ignorance—and provides a road map for transforming our knowledge into concrete social change.

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Andrea J. Ritchie

A timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. It documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of policing and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.

Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination
Alexandra Minna Stern

Brings awareness to the underlying concepts that guide the alt-right and its overlapping forms of racism, xenophobia, and transphobia. By unearthing the hidden mechanisms that power white nationalism, Alexandra Minna Stern reveals just how pervasive the far right truly is.

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
Mona Eltahawy

Seizes upon the energy of the #MeToo movement to advocate a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what Mona Eltahawy calls the “seven necessary sins” that women and girls are not supposed to commit. It’s a manifesto for all feminists in the fight against patriarchy.

Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South
Adrienne Berard

Chronicles the event that would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools, an astonishing 30 years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, led by one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer.

We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities After 9/11
Tram Nguyen

Reveals the human cost of the domestic war on terror and examines the impact of post-9/11 policies on people targeted because of immigration status, nationality, and religion. Tram Nguyen tells the stories of people who witnessed and experienced firsthand the unjust detainment or deportation of family members, friends, and neighbors.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo

Explores the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged that serve to maintain racial inequality.

Yellow Peril, Again: Coronavirus and the Echoes of Chinese Exclusion
Adrienne Berard

“The coronavirus outbreak has put into sharp relief the American tradition of conflating immigration and infection. In fact, America’s fear of the ‘diseased immigrant’ dates back to the nation’s first major wave of immigration and our initial understanding of disease itself.”

• Racism, sexism must be considered in Atlanta case involving killing of six Asian women, experts say, an NBC News piece featuring future Beacon author Catherine Ceniza Choy, explains that while police said the suspect of the Atlanta shooting denied having racial motivations, experts and activists alike say it’s nearly impossible to divorce race from the discourse, given the historical fetishization of Asian women.
• Atlanta spa shootings spotlight spike in violence against Asian Americans, an NBC Today piece featuring Catherine Ceniza Choy, covers how the country is grappling with a disturbing spike over the past year in hate crimes against Asian Americans, as documented by police departments from New York to Los Angeles.
• Why anti-Asian hate incidents often go unreported and how to help, from ABC News, reports on wany people still “doubt there is such a thing as anti-Asian racism.”

Taking Action

• Literary Hub listed AAPI-led organizations where you can donate today.
• Stop AAPI Hate tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.
• Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago is partnering with New York-based nonprofit Hollaback! and CAIR-Chicago to plan and implement an aggressive scaling up of locally-led bystander hate incident intervention trainings for community members.
• Asian American Journalists Association has some good resources on how journalists/writers should cover various issues, including the Atlanta shootings.