this list was originally created by joshua briond (@queersocialism on twitter or @jos.

hau
on instagram), based off my own readings and research over the last couple of years!
and i’ve allowed others to add a few of their own readings (some of which i haven’t read
yet, so keep that in mind), so i do not endorse every single thing in every single text
listed here—in fact, i’ve politically outgrown quite a few of the things listed. so please
read and engage critically and with an open mind! let this moment radicalize you, and
share widely if you wish! let me know if you’d like to add or edit anything through a
request!

thanks!
joshua briond*

intro to radical politics

● assata: autobiography
● angela davis an autobiography
● angela davis: freedom is a constant struggle
● huey p newton: revolutionary suicide
● what is marxism all about?
● beginners guide to marxism
● huey p newton: to die for the people, collected writings
● w.e.b du bois: w.e.b du bois speaks
● the autobiography of malcom x
● muammar gaddafi: the green book
● walter rodney: groundings with my brothers
● lenin: state and revolution
● kwame ture: stokely speaks, from black power to pan-africanism
● conversations with james baldwin
● walter rodney: the russian revolution: a view from the third world
● kwame ture & charles v. hamilton: black power; the politics of liberation in america
● malcom x speaks
● thomas sankara: women’s liberation and the african freedom struggle
● harry haywood: black bolshevik
● w.e.b. du bois: essay collection
● debunking anti-communism myths & propaganda
● karl marx & frederick engels: the communist manifesto
● joseph stalin: dialetical & historical materialism
● reading marx’s “capital” with david harvey
● marxism-leninism study guide
● basic marxism-leninism study plan
● paulo freire: pedagogy of the oppressed
● michael parenti: left anticommunism
● samir amin: the american ideology
 ● charisse burden-stelly: Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the
Movement
●
●
●

black and marxist feminism

● keeanga-yamahtta taylor: how we get free, black feminism and the combahee river
collective
● bell hooks: yearning; race, gender, and cultural politics
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: african women and feminism

marxian analysis of the political economy (source: MLM Reading & Video List)

● wage labor and capital - karl marx, 1847

● value, price, and profit - karl marx, 1847
● economic manuscripts - karl marx, 1844
● contribution to the critique of the political economy - karl marx, 1859
● capital vol. 1 - karl marx, 1867
● capital vol. 2 - karl marx, 1863-1878 (edited & published by engels, 1885)
● capital vol. 3 - karl marx (completed & published by engels, 1893)
● imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism - vladimir lenin, 1916

prison abolition (extended list with the help of a curated list by Ashanté Reese and SA Smythe)

● george jackson: blood in my eye

● soledad brother: the prison letters of george jackson
● angela davis: are prisons obsolete?
● angela davis: political prisoners, prisons, and black liberation
● paula c. johnson: voices of african american women in prison
● ruth wilson gilmore: golden gulag: prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing
california
● summer heat (mariame kaba, 2015)
● “what abolitionists do” (mariame kaba, david stein, dan berger, 2017)
● what does police abolition mean? (derecka purnell, 2017)
● is prison necessary? ruth wilson gilmore might change your mind (NYT, 2019)
● yes, we literally mean abolish the police (mariame kaba, nyt, 2020)
● policing the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order (stuart hall, 1978)
● the challenge of prison abolition: a conversation (angela y. davis and dylan rodriguez,
2000)
● freedom dreams (robin d.g. kelley, 2002)
on the prison industrial complex (s/o ashanté reese and sa smythe)

● discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (michel foucault, 1977)
● slavery by another name: the re-enslavement of black americans from civil war to world
war ii (douglas blackmon, 2008)
● texas tough: the rise of america’s prison empire (robert perkinson, 2010)
● understanding mass incarceration: a people’s guide to the key civil rights struggle of our
time (james kilgore, 2015)
● policing the planet: why the policing crisis led to black lives matter (jordan camp &
christina heatherton, 2016)
● rethinking the american prison movement (dan berger & toussaint losier, 2017)
● occupied territory: policing black chicago from red summer to black power (simon balto,
2017)
● “organized disorder: the new york city jail rebellion of 1970” (orisanmi burton, 2018)
● force and freedom: black abolitionists and the politics of violence (kellie carter jackson,
2019)
●

prison writings

● the interesting narrative of the life of olaudah equiano, or gustavus vassa, the african
(olaudah equiano, 1789)
● incidents in the life of a slave girl (harriet jacobs, 1861)
● prison notebooks (antonio gramsci, 1929-1935)
● angela davis: an autobiography (angela y. davis, 1974)
● assata: an autobiography (assata shakur, 1987)
● writing on the wall: selected prison writings of mumia abu-jamal (mumia abu-jamal,
1980s-2015)
● jailhouse lawyers: prisoners defending prisoners v. the u.s.a (mumia abu-jamal, 2009)
● the new abolitionists: (neo)slave narratives and contemporary prison writings (joy james
ed., 2005)

gender, sexuality & punishment

1. captive genders: trans embodiment and the prison industrial complex (eric stanley & nat
smith, 2011)
2. “building an abolitionist trans and queer movement with everything we’ve got” (morgan
bassichis, alexander lee and dean spade, 2011)
3. “feminism and the (trans)gender entrapment of gender nonconforming prisoners” (julia
oparah, 2012)
4. against equality: prisons will not protect you (ryan conrad ed., 2012)
5. chained in silence: black women and convict labor in the new south (talitha l. leflouria,
2015)
 6. normal life: administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law (dean
spade, 2015)
7. no mercy here: gender, punishment, and the making of jim crow modernity (sarah haley,
2016)
8. invisible no more: police violence against black women and women of color (andrea
ritchie, 2017)
9. all our trials: prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence (emily thuma 2019)
10. arrested justice: black women, violence, and america’s prison nation (beth ritchie, 2012)

children, juveniles & policing

● carceral capitalism (jackie wang, 2018)

● pushout: the criminalization of black girls in schools (monique morris, 2015)

immigration, colonialism & global policing

● the wretched of the earth (frantz fanon, 1961)

● the groundings with my brothers (walter rodney, 1969)
● “transatlantic visions: resisting the globalization of mass incarceration” (julia sudbury,
2000)
● american gulag: inside u.s. immigration prisons (mark dow, 2005)
● “amnesty or abolition: felons, illegals, and the case for a new abolition movement” (kelly
lytle hernández, 2011)
● undoing border imperialism (harsha walia, 2013)
● new racial missions of policing (paul amar, 2013)
● undocumented: how immigration became illegal (aviva chomsky, 2014)
● afro-paradise: blackness, violence, and performance in brazil (christen smith, 2016)
● ‘we have to act. this is what forms collectivity’: black solidarity beyond identity in
contemporary paris” (vanessa e. thompson, 2017)
● policing black lives: state violence in canada from slavery to the present (robyn maynard,
2017)
● carceral humanitarianism: logics of refugee detention (kelly oliver, 2017)
● our history is the future (nick estes, 2019)
● policing life and death: race, violence, and resistance in puerto rico (marisol lebron,
2019)

abolition planning/moves for abolition futures

● abolition now! (critical resistance 10 collective, 2008)

● the undercommons: fugitive planning & black study (fred moten & stefano harney, 2013)
● futures of black radicalism (gaye theresa johnson and alex lubin, 2017)
● as black as resistance: finding the conditions for liberation (william c. anderson and zoé
samudzi, 2018)
● repair: redeeming the promise of abolition (katherine franke, 2019)
 ● what do abolitionists really want? (bill keller, 2019)
● the case for abolition (gilmore & kilgore, 2019, in response to the previous article)
● race after technology: abolitionist tools for the new jim code (ruha benjamin, 2019)
● a world without policing

films

● visions of abolition (92” dir. setsu shigematsu)

● geographies of racial capitalism w/ ruth wilson gilmore (16” dir. kenton card, 2020)

abolitionist blogs & other resources

● the abolitionist toolkit - http://criticalresistance.org/resources/the-abolitionist-

toolkit/
● abolition beyond the binary (2019) -
http://hoodcommunist.org/2019/12/05/abolition-beyond-the-binary/
● alternatives to policing - http://www.alternativestopolicing.com/home-
adversary#home

on racial capitalism

● jackie wang: carceral capitalism

● e. franklin fraizer: black bourgeoisie
● robin d.g. kelley: hammer and hoe
● marxism, reparations and the black freedom struggle
● cedric j. robinson: black marxism

critical race & class studies

● w.e.b. du bois: black reconstruction

● frantz fanon: black skin, white masks
● afropessimism
○ frank b.wilderson iii: red, white & black -- cinema and the structure of u.s.
antagonisms
○ jared sexton: amalgamation schemes -- antiblackness and the critique of
multiracialism
○ calvin l.warren: ontological terror -- blackness, nihilism, and emancipation
○ frank b. wilderson: afro-pessimism and the end of redemption
○ jared sexton: unbearable blackness
○ jared sexton: all black everything
 ○ calvin warren: black mysticism: fred moten’s phenomenology of (black) spirit
● black aesthetic theories
○ fred moten: blackness and nothingness (mysticism in the flesh)
○ fred moten: the case of blackness
○ stefano harney & fred moten: the undercommons -- fugitive planning & black
studies
● saidiya hartman: the end of white supremacy, an american romance
● david theo goldberg: dread: the politics of our time
● david theo goldberg: are we all postracial yet?
● david r. roediger: how race survived U.S. history, from settlement and slavery to the
obama phenomenon
● patrick wolfe: traces of history; elementary structures of race
● walter rodney: the history of the guyanese working people, 1881-1905
● david roediger: class, race, and marxism

on capitalism, fascism, imperialism, neocolonialism, settler-colonialism

● frantz fanon: the wretched of the earth

● edward said: orientalism
● robert sirvent & david haiphong: american exceptionalism and american innocence
● frantz fanon: a dying colonialism
● walter rodney: how europe underdeveloped africa
● eduardo galeano: open veins of latin america
● samir amin: eurocentrism
● v.i. lenin: imperialism the highest stage of capitalism
● kwame nkrumah: neo-colonialism: the last stage of imperialism
● edward w. said: culture and imperialism
● william blum: america's deadliest weapon
● william blum: freeing the world to death
● william blum: killing hope
● michael parenti: blackshirts & reds
● glen sean coulthard: red skin, white masks
● clr james: the black jacobins
● chris harman: a people’s history of the world
● “decolonization is not a metaphor”
● michael parenti: the logic of us intervention:

africa & the global south (s/o: @qgotnorings)

● african liberation and american activists 1950-2000:

● sankara speaks
● africa must unite
 ● neo colonialism the last stage of imperialism:
● wretched of the earth:
● third world women and the inadequacies of western feminism:
● ho chi minh on revolution:
● leila khaled: my people shall live (1971)
● biko and the overview of Black revolution:
● taking power: the origins of the third world revolution:
● revolution in the air: 60's radicals turn to marx and che:
● africa's gender revolution:
● vietnam the origins of revolution 1885-1946
● cabral, return to the source:
● burkina faso in 1984:
● lessons of losing power: grenada's new jewel movement:
● remembering angola: cuban internationalism
● fidel speaks:
● the struggle for liberation in south africa and intl solidarity
● egyptian marxists:
● nasser and pan-arabism:
● on arab socialism:
● imperialist war, capitalist crisis in yemen

on zionism and towards a liberated palestine

● edward w. said: the question of palestine

● fayez a. sayegh: zionist colonialism in palestine

indigenous studies

● nick estes: our history is the future

● “decolonization is not a metaphor”
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: women in the yoruba sphere

environmental justice and ecosocialism studies (h/t: @zerowastehabesha on instagram!)

● rooted in the earth - dianne d. glave

● freedom farmers - monica m. white
● farming while black - leah penniman
● pan-african social ecology - modibo kadalie
● black food matters - hanna garth
● black food geographies - ashanté reese
● black on earth - kimberly n. ruffin
● black faces, white spaces - carolyn finney
● a terrible thing to waste - harriet a. washington
 ● toxic communities - dorceta e. taylor
● the environment and the people in american cities 1600s-1900s - dorceta e. taylor
● the rise of the american conservation movement - dorceta e. taylor
● sistah vegan - a. breeze harper
● aphro-ism - aph ko and syl ko
● as we have always done - leanna betasamosake simpson
● love letter to the earth - thich nhat hanh
● as long as the grass grows - dina gilio-whitake
● braiding sweetgrass - robin wall kimmerer

on revolution

● frantz fanon: towards the african revolution

● v.i. what is to be done?
● thomas sankara: the heirs of the world’s revolution
● kwame nkrumah: africa must unite
● slavoj žižek: violence
● zahi zalloua: žižek on race: toward an anti-racist future
●

on slavery

● stephanie e. jones-rogers: they were her property

● david roediger: seizing freedom, slave emancipation and liberty for all
● daina ramey berry and leslie m. harris: sexuality & slavery
● frederick douglass: my bondage and my freedom
● saidiya v. hartman: scenes of subjection; terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth-
century america
● eric williams: capitalism and slavery
● thomas a. foster: rethinking rufus: sexual violations of enslaved men
● hortense j.spillers: black, white, and in color: essays on american literature and culture

whiteness/critical race studies

● nell irvin painter: the history of white people

● theodore w allen: the invention of the white race volume I
● theodore w allen: the invention of the white race volume II
● david r. roediger the wages of whiteness
● david r. roediger: toward the abolition of whiteness ,
● david r. roediger: working toward whiteness
● david r. roediger: seizing freedom, slave emancipation & liberty for all
● karen brodkin: how jews became white folks & what that says about race in america
 ● dorothy roberts: fatal invention: how science, politics, and big business re-create race in
the twenty-first century
●

on gender, sexuality, and masculinities

● c. riley snorton: black on both sides a racial history of trans identity

● dwight m. mcbride: why i hate abercrombie & fitch
● c. heike schotten: queer terror: life, death, and desire in the settler colony
● aliyyah abdur-rahman: against the closest, black political longing and the erotics of race
● hanne blank: straight, the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality
● out in culture: gay, lesbian, and queer essays on popular culture
● essex hemphill: ceremonies
● robert f. reid-pharr: black gay man, essays
● jeffrey q. mccune, jr.: sexual discretion, black masculinity and the politics of passing
● e. patrick johnson: no tea, no shade; new writings in black queer studies
● the lesbian and gay studies reader
● rainbow solidarity: in defense of cuba
● bell hooks: we real cool
● maria lugones: heterosexualism and the colonial modern gender system
● maria lugones: towards a decolonial feminism
● marlon m. bailey: butch queens up in pumps: gender, performance, and ballroom culture
in detroit
● robert aldrich: colonialism and homsexuality
● eve kosofsky sedgwick: epistemology of the closet
● https://www.aaihs.org/excavating-black-queer-thought-a-pride-bibliography/
● “the roots of lesbian & gay oppression: a marxist view” by bob mccubbin
● afsaneh najmabadi: women with mustaches and men without beards: gender and sexual
anxieties of iranian modernity
● anne mcclintock: imperial leather: race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial conquest
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: gender epistemologies in africa
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: the invention of women: making african sense of western gender
discourses
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: african gender studies a read
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: the invention of women
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: what gender is motherhood?

women’s oppression, through a marxian and/or black feminist lens

● audre lorde: sister outsider

● claudia jones: an end to the neglect of the negro woman!
 ● silvia federici: caliban and the witch
● audre lorde: i am your sister
● bell hooks: ain’t i a woman, black women and feminism
● adrienne rich: of woman born, motherhood as experience and institutions
● audre lorde: the uses of the erotic
● simone de beauvoir: the second sex
● the sexual liberals and the attack on feminism
● angela davis: modern motherhood, women and family in england
● silvia federici: revolution at point zero: housework, reproduction, and feminist struggle
● silvia federici: witches, witch-hunting, and women
● monique wittig: the straight mind and other essays

fat studies (s/o the brilliant & beautiful @DashaunLH on instagram/twitter for putting this
together)

● sabrina strings: fearing the black body: the racial origins if fat phobia
● tressie mcmillan cottom: thick: and other essays
● natalie boero: killer fat: media, medicine, and morals in the american "obesity epidemic"
● kiese laymon: heavy: an american memoir
● sonya renee taylor: the body is not an apology: the power of radical self-love
● roxane gay: hunger: a memoir of (my) body
● the fat studies reader
● j. eric oliver: fat politics: the real story behind america's obesity epidemic
● shadow on a tightrope: writings by women i'm fat oppression
● kathleen lebesco: revolting bodies? the struggle to redefine fat identity
● elena levy-navarro: historicizing fat in anglo-american culture
● paul campos: the obesity myth: why america's obsession with weight is hazardous to
your health
● andrea elizabeth shaw: the embodiment of disobedience: fat black women's unruly
political bodies
● amy erdman farrell: fat shame: stigma and the body in american culture
● jason whitesel: fat gay men: girth, mirth, and the politics of stigma
● michelle mary lelwica: shameful bodies: religion and the culture of physical improvement
● sander l. gilman: fat boys: a slim book
● sander l. gilman: fat: a cultural history of obesity

disability studies

● robert mcruer: crip theory; cultural signs of queerness and disability

● “the ruse of analogy:” blackness in asian american and disability studies
● disability studies
● leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha: care work: dreaming disability justice by leah
● mia mingus work on ugliness
●
critical reads

● marx’s das kapital for beginners

● black panther ten point program
● domenico losurdo: liberalism: a counter history

must read revolutionary texts edition

● black panthers speak

● j.v. stalin: the foundations of leninism
● kwame ture: ready for revolution
● robert f. williams: negroes with guns
● harry haywood: negro liberation
● charles e. cobb jr.: this nonviolence stuff’ll get you killed
● steve biko: i like what i like; selected writings
● black like mao, red china & black revolution
● che guevera: guerilla warfare
● walter rodney: a history of the guyanese working people, 1881-1905
● return to the source – selected speeches by amilcar cabral
● zoé samudzi and william c. anderson: as black as resistance
●

understanding caste system and indian revolutionary books

● the annihlation of caste - b.r.ambedkar

● why i am not a hindu- kancha illaiya
● castes in india- b.r.ambedkar
● who were the shudras-b.r.ambedkar
● revolutionary desires-ania loomba

articles, speeches, and essays

● w.e.b. du bois: essay collection

● amiri baraka: essay collection
● james baldwin: the free and the brave
● adrienne rich: compulsory heteorsexuality and lesbian existence
● david m. halperin: essay collection
● e. patrick johnson: black queer studies a critical anthology
● stuart hall: essay collection
● audre lorde: the masters tools will never dismantle the master’s house
● kwame nkrumah: axioms of kwame nkrumah
 ● angela davis essays on liberation
● clr james: black power, its past, today, and the way ahead
● edward said’s lecture at york university
● kwame ture: we are all africans
● the death of stockley carmichael (and later kwame ture)
● raewyn connell essay collection
● stalin: marxism versus liberalism
● what is dialectical materialism?
● racism in the communist movement
● the logic of lesser evilism
● lenin: the three sources and three component parts of marxism
● oyèrónkẹ́ oyěwùmí: de-confounding gender: feminist theorizing and western culture,

must read cultural texts

● bell hooks: all about love

master page of info

● https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ETMn7RmNsi9t2e8_ZsnwERAWTjIMy_xTJHixcO
VWuNM/edit

james baldwin

● go tell it on the mountain

● giovanni's room
● another country
● the fire next time
● tell me how long the train's been gone
● if beale street could talk
● little man, little man
● Sonny’s blues
● just above my head
● notes of a native son
● nobody knows my name
● black antisemitism and jewish racism
● harlem, usa
● rap on race
● no name in the street
● a dialogue
● devil finds work
● the price of the ticket
 ● the evidence of things not seen
● baldwin: collected essays
● native sons
● the cross of redemption

toni morrison

● the bluest eye (1969)

● sula (1971)
● song of solomon (1977)
● tar baby (1981)
● beloved (1986)
● jazz (1992)
● paradise (1997)
● love (2003)
● a mercy (2008)
● home (2012)
● god help the child (2015)
● the source of self-regard: selected essays, speeches, and meditations (2019) V

● revolutionary study guide/book list, via @bountay_:

https://dialecticalartist.wordpress.com/politicalresources/

organizations & collectives

● bay area transformative justice collective: https://batjc.wordpress.com/

● critical resistance: http://criticalresistance.org/
● movement for black lives: https://m4bl.org/about-us/
● project nia: http://project-nia.org/

podcasts and interviews

● justice in america episode 20: mariam kaba and prison abolition

● is defunding police possible? a conversation with josie duffy rice and derecka purnell
● the fire this time: the new uprising against racism and police violence