An anti-racist booklist for our times
Sex, Race and Class – The Perspective of Winning
A Selection of Writings, 1952-2011 Selma James
Foreword Marcus Rediker, Introduction Nina López
PM Press, 2012. £12
“Selma James is a treasure . . . one of the key political thinkers and activists of our times.” Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship.
“It’s time to acknowledge James’s path-breaking analysis: from 1972 she re-interpreted the capitalist economy to show that it rests on the usually invisible unwaged caring work of women.” Dr. Peggy Antrobus, feminist, author.
“When Selma James speaks, I listen. When she writes, I read. She has been a crucial part of my re-education for decades.” Benjamin Zephaniah, poet “Intellectually ambitious attempt to synthesize Marxism, feminism, and post-colonialism . . .” Jenny Turner, London Review of Books
THE POINT IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD
Selected Writings of Andaiye
Ed. Alisa Trotz, Pluto Press, 2020. £18
Radical activist, thinker, comrade of Walter Rodney, Andaiye was one of the Caribbean’s most important political voices. For the first time, her writings are published in one collection. Through essays, letters and journal entries, Andaiye’s thinking on the intersections of gender, race, class and power are profoundly articulated, Caribbean histories emerge, and stories from a life lived at the barricades are revealed.
BLACK WOMEN BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
Margaret Prescod and Norma Steele
Falling Wall Press, 1986. £6
“For the first time in Britain, West Indian women spell out what it cost them to immigrate, why they came, and what they expect for the future.” Migration Today.
“The public fight over immigration focuses on how much immigrants are given. It is not often stated how much immigrants have had to pay . . . Through books such as [this] the message will finally come home.” Caribbean & West Indian Chronicle
UJAMAA – The hidden story of Tanzania’s socialist villages
Ralph Ibbott, Introduction Selma James
Crossroads Books, 2014. £20 The great 20th century movements for independence get little credit for what they achieved. Ujamaa tells the astonishing story of the socialism villagers built in rural Tanzania. They were inspired by, and in turn inspired, the extraordinary President Julius Nyerere and his policy of African socialism. This is Ralph Ibbott’s account of ujamaa as he lived it.
JAILHOUSE LAWYERS:
Prisoners Defending Prisoners v the USA
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Foreword Angela Y. Davis, Introduction Selma James Crossroads Books, 2011. Is reprinting.
FROM DEATH ROW, award-winning journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal tells us about fellow prisoners who learn to use the law and the courts to win justice for themselves and other prisoners. “This is the story of law learned,” he writes, “not in the ivory towers of multi-billion-dollar endowed universities [but] in the hidden, dank dungeons of America – the Prison-house of Nations.”
THE LADIES and THE MAMMIES
Jane Austin & Jean Rhys
Selma James
Falling Wall Press, 1983
£6.90
In November 1979, Selma James spoke at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. This book expands on what she had to say connecting two great writers whose context was colonial slavery and the power relations in the Great Houses of England.
The Arusha Declaration:
Rediscovering Nyerere’s Tanzania
Julius Nyerere
Preface Madaraka Nyerere, Introduction Selma James
Crossroads Books £3 First published in 1967, the development strategy of Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere was based not on industry but on bypassing capitalism with ujamaa – self-governing agricultural socialist villages.
STRANGERS & SISTERS:
Women, Race & Immigration
Voices from the Conference Black & Immigrant Women Speak out and Claim our Rights.
Edited with an introduction by Selma James
Falling Wall Press, 1985. £5
The voices of grassroots women from 38 countries at the first-ever conference of immigrant women in Britain, hailed by the Black British press as “a joyful and optimistic” event and “an overwhelming outpouring of information and view-points which generated a togetherness never attained before.”
BLACK WOMEN and the
PEACE MOVEMENT
Wilmette Brown
Foreword Janice Owens
Falling Wall Press, 1984.
£4.99
“In a crucial and path-breaking analysis . . . challenges us to recognise, reappraise and restructure the common links shared by women . . . should be studied, discussed and used as a guide book.”
WONDERFUL ADVENTURES of Mrs SEACOLE
in Many Lands
Falling Wall Press, 1984.
Out of print.
Autobiography. Mary Seacole, born a slave in Jamaica, stands beside Florence Nightingale, for her nursing work during the Crimean War.
Voted greatest Black Briton in 2004.
A CHRONOLOGY OF INJUSTICE
The case for Winston Silcott’s conviction to be overturned.
Compiled by Legal Action for Women
Crossroads Books, 1998. Out of print.
Winston Silcott’s wrongful conviction for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock was quashed but he remained in prison for the murder of another man. The Chronology puts the facts of this case in their social and political context and makes a compelling case for the conviction to be overturned.
CREATING A CARING ECONOMY
CREANDO UNA ECONOMIA SOLIDARIA
Nora Castañeda and the Women’s Development Bank of Venezuela (available in both English & Spanish)
Ed. Nina López Crossroads Books, 2006. £5