2025: Nonfiction book on abolition, immigration justice, and/or what we build in their place
Book recommendations/suggestions for the Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 book challenge. Find your next book!
read, seed, water, feed book challenge - about prompt support posts
about prompt support posts
All of the prompt support posts (those that begin with "2025: Book written by...", for example) are organized similar to each other.
Each of these posts was created to support the Read, Seed, Water Feed book challenge on Storygraph that I am hosting. They were also created to support learning outside of the university, collective educational efforts, finding new authors to read, finding books, and more.
For each book challenge prompt, I will share the following sections:
- one or more slides with books I have read or am currently reading that I recommend for the prompt
- a list of additional books from my TBR (to-be-read) list for the prompt
- a text listing of the books that I shared in the slides
I might share one or more of the following in addition, depending on capacity and other factors:
- other supportive text as appropriate, such as countries included
- some quotes, notes, and/or reflections about one or more of the books
- links to other posts on the site where I discuss the books or prompt in more detail
I did many things to minimize hierarchy within these posts, and there will still be some things that might feel odd, such as split galleries of slides, which was a choice made to address current limitations in how the galleries work.
If interested, find bingo cards, more background on the prompts, and other reflections, on the Reading Challenge page and if on Storygraph, join the challenge.
Mostly, my goal for prompt support posts is to share books for each prompt, as suggestions and as examples. This section will be first on every post and may be skipped.
Thank you for reading.
Recommended Books
Books I've read or am currently reading that I recommend for this prompt.
Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 reading challenge prompt and description, showing books recommended that I have read or am currently reading. All recommended books are listed lower in the post in the section “Recommended Books in a List.”
More Books from my TBR List
For some prompts, I’m trying to diversify what I read; for others, deepening my knowledge while also growing my perspective. For some prompts, there are definitely more books on my to-be-read (TBR) list than the ones I share that I have read or am currently reading. Here are some of those books:
- Abolition Feminisms Vol. 1: Organizing, Survival, and Transformative Practice (2022) edited by Alisa Bierria, Jakeya Caruthers, and Brooke Lober
- Abolition Feminisms Vol. 2: Feminist Ruptures against the Carceral State (2022) edited by Alisa Bierria, Jakeya Caruthers, and Brooke Lober
- Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation (2022) by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- Abolition Revolution (2022) by Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean
- Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (2020) edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
- The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition (2024) by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen
- Borders, Human Itineraries, and All Our Relation: The Alchemy Lecture #1 (2023) by Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Natalie Díaz, Dele Adeyemo, Rinaldo Walcott
- Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition (2020) by Liat Ben-Moshe
- The End of Policing (2017 by Alex S. Vitale
- Engage: Indigenous, Black, and Afro-Indigenous Futures (2024) edited by Joy James
- Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care (2023) by M.E. O'Brien
- Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World: The Alchemy Lecture #2 (2024) by Phoebe Boswell, Janaína Oliveira, Joseph M. Pierce, Saidiya Hartman, Cristina Rivera Garza, Introduction by Christina Sharpe
- Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators (2019) by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan
- Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (2023) by Leigh Goodmark
- Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color (2017) by Andrea J. Ritchie
- Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators (2021) by The Education for Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective
- A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice (2024) by Katie Tastrom
- Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies (2023) by Andrea J. Ritchie
- States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (2000) by Joy James
- Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022) by Dorothy Roberts
- Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair (2019) by Danielle Sered
- We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition (2024) by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson
notes and repeated notes..
This is a broad expansive category.
... abolition of all types of punitive and racially biased systems of injustice and other oppressive systems that cause harm (police violence, incarceration, surveillance, borders, nation states, child protective services, traditional family structures, capitalism, etc) to mostly already marginalized communities.
... learning and applying ways to tear down the systems and structures that hurt people and imagining and creating ones that are based on supporting and caring for each other.
... building communities that embody collective care, support and defense, community-centered and accountable systems of relating to each other, and more.
Many other books related to abolition, why we are in the world we are in and what we need to do to create one that works for everyone, writings from prison, and so much more are listed in other prompts, and so many other books aren't on here either. All struggles against oppression are interconnected, roots are intertwined. This is a general theme to this book challenge, and it spreads across many of the categories. I started to write more about this, and will share separately.
Recommended Books in a List
As a list, books I've read or am currently reading that I recommend for this prompt:
Nonfiction
Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation (2022) by Sophie Lewis
Abolition. Feminism. Now. (2021) by Erica Meiners, Gina Dent, Beth Richie, Angela Y. Davis
All About Love: New Visions (1999) by bell hooks
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) by Angela Y. Davis
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom (2021) by Derecka Purnell
Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future (2022) by Patty Krawec
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (2021) by Da’Shaun L. Harrison
Belonging: A Culture of Place (2004) by bell hooks
Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021) by Harsha Walia
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, Second Edition (2015) by Eric A. Stanley, Nat Smith with CeCe McDonald
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) (2022) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Experiments Imagining Otherwise (2021) by Lola Olufemi
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015) by Angela Y. Davis
Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration (2021) by Reuben Jonathan Miller
Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety (2023) by Erica Woodland and Cara Page
In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities (2022) by Joy James
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (2023) by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
Love WITH Accountability: Digging up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (2019) by Aishah Shahidah Simmons
M Archive: After the End of the World (2018) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health (2023) by Micha Frazer-Carroll
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (2020) by Dean Spade
New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the Afterlife of Erica Garner (2023) by Joy James
No More Police: A Case for Abolition (2022) by Andrea J. Ritchie, Mariame Kaba
“Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration (2021) by Victoria Law
The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth (2021) by The Red Nation
Rehearsals for Living (2022) by Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions (2021) by Astra Taylor
Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction (2022) by Shira Hassan
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) by bell hooks
The Trauma of Caste: A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition (2022) by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (2023) by Orisanmi Burton
Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition (2024) by Silky Shah
Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want (2022) by Ruha Benjamin
We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (2021) by Mariame Kaba
Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?: Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (2016) edited by Maya Schenwar with Alicia Garza, Alana Yu-Lan Price, Joe Macaré
Get any/all of these books wherever you get your books.
Please support libraries however you can. Find out many ways to get involved in supporting libraries at Libraries for the People.
Please consider purchasing books when they are available from Workshops 4 Gaza's bookstore: Tip of the Spear (2023) by Orisanmi Burton. When I share books that are available for purchase there at the time of posting, I will list them here after the link.
Thank you for reading.
