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Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2023-24)
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (2022-23)
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee (2021-22)
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson (2020-21)

2023-24: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

, by Potawatomi professor Robin Wall Kimmerer, is about the role of Indigenous knowledge as an alternative or complementary approach to Western mainstream scientific methodologies. Braiding Sweetgrass explores reciprocal relationships between humans and the land, with a focus on the role of plants and botany in both Native American and Western traditions. The book received positive reviews, appearing on several bestseller lists including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. 

is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. She lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

Read full message from Dean Sternberg

2022-23: Your House Will Pay

Steph Cha’s has been selected as this year’s Community Book. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book award, Cha’s 2019 powerful novel about racial tensions in LA follows two families—one Korean-American, one African-American—grappling with the effects of a decades-old crime based on the actual death of Latasha Harlins. Cha weaves a compelling story about how this traumatic event affects both families involved as well as the entire Black and Asian communities in Los Angeles by depicting events in 1991 and in 2019.

is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology.

Read full message from Dean Sternberg
of the Aug. 8 conversation between President Elam and Steph Cha

2021-22: The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Heather McGhee’s has been selected as this year’s Community Book. A nonfiction title published in February 2021, The Sum of Us is quickly receiving excellent reviews and national attention. McGhee argues forcefully that racism hurts everybody and that the way forward is by building multi-racial collaborations and coalitions, resulting in a “solidarity dividend.”

is an expert in economic and social policy and contributor to NBC’s Meet the Press, McGhee currently chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. She holds a BA in American studies from Yale University and a JD from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.

Read full message from Dean Sternberg

2020-21: Red at the Bone: A Novel

President Harry Elam chose ɫ���’s first community book: (New York: Riverhead Books, 2019) by Jacqueline Woodson. From the dust jacket: “As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives – even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.”

is the best-selling author of more than two dozen award-winning books.  She is a four-time National Book Award finalist; a four-time Newbery Honor winner; a two-time NAACP Image award winner, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner.  Her New York Times-bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, received the National Book Award in 2014.

Related News Article (Aug. 24, 2020)

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