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Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion : Bookshelf

A guide supporting the work of VCC's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Like all of us, it is always a work in progress.

Anti Racism Reads

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A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining (2023)

A deeply personal and illuminating approach to antiracism and allyship, revealing the power of imagination and action to dismantle oppressive systems and build liberating ones, from a highly lauded lecturer, public academic, writer, and activist. 

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Anti-Racism in Education: Stories of Growing Activism (2023)

A powerful book comprising stories of anti-racist action by higher education scholars including researchers and teachers at various stages of their careers. Aimed at and relevant for anyone in education, it encourages reflection on the tolerance of racist structures and strategies to help enact positive change. An edited volume, each chapter discusses the author's experiences of racism including how they became part of anti-racist teaching activism through a growing understanding of the impact of racism in education. 

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The Antiracism Handbook (2022)

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You'll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism.

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Social Justice Parenting (2021)

An empowering, timely guide to raising anti-racist, compassionate, and socially conscious children, from a diversity and inclusion educator with more than thirty years of experience.

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Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions (2020)

This practical, accessible, nonjudgmental handbook is the first to help individuals and organizations recognize and prevent microaggressions so that all employees can feel a sense of belonging in their workplace. Our workplaces and society are growing more diverse, but are we supporting inclusive cultures? 

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The Racial Healing Handbook : Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing (2019)

A powerful and practical guide to help you navigate racism, challenge privilege, manage stress and trauma, and begin to heal. Healing from racism is a journey that often involves reliving trauma and experiencing feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety. 

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So You Want to Talk About Race (2019)

Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life. 

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How to be an Antiracist (2019)

Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other.

Black Canadian Reads

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Stay Up: Racism, Resistance, and Reclaiming Black Freedom (2023)

Racism is a real and present danger. But how can you fight it if you don’t know how it works or where it comes from? Using a compelling mix of memoir, cultural criticism, and anti-oppressive theory, Khodi Dill breaks down how white supremacy functions in North America and gives readers tools to understand how racism impacts their lives. From dismantling internalized racism, decolonizing schools, joining social justice movements and more, Dill lays out paths to personal liberation and social transformation.

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Black Girl in Love (with Herself) (2021)

After a lifetime of never truly relating to the personal development experts because of the color of her skin, Trey Anthony has written the book she needed to read as a black woman trying to navigate a world filled with unique challenges that often acts like she doesn't exist.

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With/holding (2021)

With/holding is a collection of genre-blurring poems that examines the representation and reproduction of Blackness across communication media and popular culture. Together, text and image call up a nightmarish and seemingly insatiable buzzing-clicking-scrolling-sharing appetite for a daily diet of Black suffering. 

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Burning Sugar (2020)

The latest from Vivek Shraya’s VS. Books: a poetic exploration of Black identity, history, and lived experience influenced by the constant search for liberation. In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black bodies.

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Until We Are Free (2020)

An anthology of writing addressing the most urgent issues facing the Black community in Canada

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The Skin We're In (2020)

A bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists.

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They Said This Would Be Fun (2020)

From award-winning journalist Eternity Martis, a look at race and gender on campuses, and a personal tale of struggle and survival.

Refugee Reads

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Under the Nakba Tree: Fragments of a Palestinian Family in Canada (2022)

Mowafa Said Househ's family fled Palestine in 1948 and arrived in Canada in the 1970s. His childhood was spent in Edmonton, Alberta, where he grew up as a visible minority and a Muslim whose family had a deeply fractured history. In the year 2000, Mowafa visited his family's homeland of Palestine. It was the beginning of the Second Intifada and Mowafa witnessed first-hand the consequences of prolonged conflict and occupation. 

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Angry Queer Somali Boy (2019)

Kidnapped by his father on the eve of Somalia's societal implosion, Mohamed Ali was taken first to the Netherlands by his stepmother, and then later on to Canada. Unmoored from his birth family and caught between twin alienating forces of Somali tradition and Western culture, Mohamed must forge his own queer coming of age. 

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Homes : A Refugee Story (2018)

In 2010, the al Rabeeah family left their home in Iraq in hope of a safer life. They moved to Homs, in Syria -- just before the Syrian civil war broke out. Abu Bakr, one of eight children, was ten years old when the violence began on the streets around him: car bombings, attacks on his mosque and school, firebombs late at night. Homes tells of the strange juxtapositions of growing up in a war zone: horrific, unimaginable events punctuated by normalcy -- soccer, cousins, video games, friends.

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Memoirs of a Muhindi: Fleeing East Africa for the West (2017)

 

In Memoirs of a Muhindi, Mansoor Ladha bears witness to what happens when nations turn against entire religious and ethnic groups.

Ru (2012)

In vignettes that shift back and forth between past and present, Ru tells the story of a young woman forced to leave her Saigon home during the Vietnam War.

Indigenous Reads

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Culturally Sustaining Policymaking in Indigenous Communities: Partnering to Promote Lasting Change (2024)

The book interrogates who gets to define educational quality, who counts as an expert on improving schools, and what improvement actually looks like. Additionally, the text highlights the way local educators and members of the community employed everyday tactics and incognito acts of improvement to reshape school turnaround efforts.

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Wayi Wah!: Indigenous Pedagogies: An Act for Reconciliation and Anti-Racist Education (2022)

Extend your learning to explore how racism and bias are embedded in education systems, as well as our own perspectives--and how to create equitable education for all learners. How can Indigenous knowledge systems inform our teaching practices and enhance education? How do we create an education system that embodies an anti-racist approach and equity for all learners? This powerful and engaging resource is for non-Indigenous educators who want to learn more, are new to these conversations, or want to deepen their learning. 

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Leave Some for the Birds: Movements for Justice (2023)

From acclaimed filmmaker, artist and activist Marjorie Beaucage comes a poetic memoir that reflects on seven decades of living and seeking justice as a Two Spirit Michif woman. Poems, poetic observations and thoughtful meanderings comprise this inspirational journal-memoir-poetry collection from a woman who has dedicated her life and her talent to creating social change. 

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Killing the Wittigo: Indigenous Culture-Based Approaches to Waking up, Taking Action, and Doing the Work of Healing (2023)

The book foregrounds Indigenous resilience through song lyrics and as-told-to stories by young people who have started their own journeys of decolonization, healing, and change. It also details the transformative work being done in urban and on-reserve communities through community-led projects and Indigenous-run institutions and community agencies. 

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Strategies of Justice: Aboriginal Peoples, Persistent Injustice, and the Ethics of Political Action (2019)

The book focuses on two intertwined issues: the kinds of moral permissions that those facing persistent injustice have when they act politically, and the kinds of transformations that political action may bring about in those who undertake it. 

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21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act (2018)

Since its creation in 1876, the Indian Act has dictated and constrained the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Peoples, and is at the root of many enduring stereotypes. Bob Joseph's book comes at a key time in the reconciliation process, when awareness from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities is at a crescendo. Joseph examines how Indigenous Peoples can return to self-government, self-determination, and self-reliance and why doing so would result in a better country for every Canadian.

Asian Canadian Reads

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Superfan : How Pop Culture Broke My Heart (2023)

A memoir in pieces that uses one woman's life-long obsession with pop culture as a lens to explore family, grief, the power of female rage, Asian fetish, and what it's cost her to resist the trap of being a "good Chinese girl." For most of Jen Sookfong Lee's life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her.

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We Were Dreamers : An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story (2022)

We Were Dreamers weaves together the narratives of two generations in a Chinese immigrant family who are inextricably tied to one another even as they are torn apart by deep cultural misunderstanding. Let's just say, it's really hard to be seen as cool amongst your peers when your parents assign you hours of extra homework every night. 

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Mistakes to Run With (2019)

A devastatingly honest memoir that reckons with the past in order to ask whether the things that happen to us - and the choices we make - dictate the people that we become. This book chronicles the turbulent early years of the author's life, from a rough childhood to her teen years as a sex worker to her emergence as a writer.

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We Have Always Been Here : A Queer Muslim Memoir (2019)

When Samra discovers that her mother has arranged her marriage, she must again hide a part of herself--the fun-loving, feminist teenager that has begun to bloom--until she simply can't any longer. So begins a journey of self-discovery that takes her to Tokyo, where she comes to terms with her sexuality, and to a queer-friendly mosque in Toronto, where she returns to her faith in the same neighbourhood where she attended her first drag show. 

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Death Threat (2019)

In the fall of 2017, the acclaimed writer and musician Vivek Shraya began receiving vivid and disturbing transphobic hate mail from a stranger. Celebrated artist Ness Lee brings these letters and Shraya's responses to them to startling life in Death Threat, a comic book that, by its existence, becomes a compelling act of resistance. 

 

LGBTQ+ Reads

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The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ + Advocate (2023)

The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate is an enjoyable, humorous, encouraging, easy to understand guidebook for being an ally to LGBTQ+ communities.

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Pride & Progress: Making Schools LGBT+ Inclusive Spaces (2023)

Pride & Progress began as a podcast created to amplify the voices of LGBT+ educators and allies. This book builds upon the podcast’s success to create an essential guide for teachers and educators who want to make their educational spaces LGBT+ inclusive.

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Dismantling Everyday Discrimination: Microaggressions Toward LGBTQ People (2023)

This book examines the microaggressions that LGBTQ people face on a daily basis, highlights their impact on mental health, and discusses ways mental health providers can help clients process and address microaggressions. In contrast to outright assaults and hate crimes, microaggressions are typically more covert or innocuous in nature-sometimes intentional or unintentional-communicating hostile, insulting, or negative messages about people of oppressed groups.

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On Community (2023)

Looking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community’s boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another.

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Gender Magic: Live Shamelessly, Reclaim Your Joy, and Step Into Your Most Authentic Self (2023)

Gender Magic is essential reading for anyone who yearns to step into their fullest self and imagine a life beyond gendered binaries. Whether you're transgender, non-binary, cisgender, or still exploring, this compassionate and practical guide will help you experience your gender in fresh ways by teaching.

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50 LGBTQI+ Who Changed the World

This book pays tribute in 50 portraits to the activists, personalities, writers and artists who have advanced the LGBTQI+ movement and celebrates those who have fought and are fighting every day to create a more inclusive and tolerant world

Disability Reads

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Ableism in Education: Rethinking School Practices and Policies (2024)

How we organize children by ability in schools is often rooted in ableism. Ability is so central to schooling where we explicitly and continuously shape, assess, measure, and report on students' abilities that ability-based decisions often appear logical and natural. However, how schools respond to ability results in very real, lifelong social and economic consequences. Special education and academic streaming (or tracking) are two of the most prominent ability-based strategies public schools use to organize student learning.

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The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People with Learning Difficulties: A Guide for Educators (2024)

A practical, holistic approach to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people with learning difficulties in educational settings with easy-to-implement strategies and downloadable reflective worksheets

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Missed and Dismissed Voices: Living with Hidden Chronic Health Problems (2023)

The book focuses on the meaning and management of both medically diagnosed chronic diseases and medically unexplained physical conditions or syndromes. In each case, people must decide whether to make their private suffering public. 

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Disability Through The Lens of Justice (2023)

 Begon argues that our theory of justice should be concerned with the lives individuals can lead, and not with whether their bodies and minds function typically. The problem that disability raises is not the mere fact of difference, but the ways in which that difference is accommodated (or not) and the limitations it may cause. 

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Watch, Listen, Ask, Learn : How School Leaders Can Create an Inclusive Environment for Students with Disabilities (2023)

Equity and inclusive learning are the keys to the future of learning, and this is especially true when it comes to special education. With key action items, case studies, and pragmatic instruction, both current and aspiring leaders can learn to move their school or districts forward with inclusive and equitable education"

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The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs (2022)

An essay collection that expands on Leah's bestselling book Care Work, centring and uplifting disability justice and care in the pandemic era. Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled--and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation? 

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Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018)

Presently, disability justice and emotional/care work are buzzwords on many people's lips, and the disabled and sick are discovering new ways to build power within themselves and each other; at the same time, those powers remain at risk in this fragile political climate in which we find ourselves. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.

Deaf Reads

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Introduction to Deaf Culture (2023)

You are about to enter the realm of Deaf culture, a world that may be completely new to you. Intriguingly, insiders and outsiders to this world may regard it in two completely different fashions. Let us examine this contradiction with the proverbial glass of water that can be viewed as either half-full or half-empty

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Literacy and Deaf Education : Toward a Global Understanding (2020)

This contributed volume provides a global view of recent theoretical and applied research that focuses on literacy education for deaf learners

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