Eden’s Endemics: Narratives of Biodiversity on Earth and Beyond – Dr. Elizabeth Callaway | Nonfiction
Written by a University of Utah professor! Dr. Callaway touches upon various topics ranging from seed banks to the science-fiction genre and bird-watching to make the argument that there is no set way to measure biodiversity. Western society conceptualize biodiversity based on tropes rooted in colonial history such as the Lost Eden, Noah’s Arc, and the Tree of Life. These notions have an affect on what kinds of biodiversities are prioritized for protection, which in turn, creates narratives that reinforce power differentials.
Having and Being Had – Eula Biss | Nonfiction
After purchasing her first home, essayist and poet, Eula Biss, explores the value system she has bought into. She writes: “My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts, the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Through the recounting of simple moments in libraries, laundromats, bars, and backyards, she examines society’s assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the stipulations of capitalism.
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo | Nonfiction
This book examines the counterproductive reactions white folks often have when discussing racism. These reactions are commonly defense mechanisms that serve to protect their positions in society while maintaining racial inequity.
White fragility is characterized by anger, fear, guilt, argumentativeness, and silence.
Antiracism educator, Diangelo, explores and describes how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to dismantle this phenomenon.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff | Nonfiction
Written by an Emerita Harvard Business School Professor.
The term coined by Shoshana Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism, aims to exploit and control human nature with totalitarian order as the end goal.
Shosana walks us through the history of U.S. tech companies and the NSA’s and CIA’s investments to “the war on terror.” She explains that founders of tech start-ups, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page created surveillance capitalism instead of the egalitarian cyberspace they dreamed of.
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine – Uché Blackstock, MD | Nonfiction
Uché Blackstock and her sister, Oni, grew up in Brooklyn had dreams of following in their mother’s footsteps and both becoming doctors, too. In the 1980’s, their mother founded an organization of Black women physicians.
What Dr. Blackstock didn’t understand when she was young, is that only 2% of U.S. physicians are Black women. As an ER physician and then a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock discovered that racist practices in American healthcare ensure that Black patients have worse health outcomes than others.
Her memoir outlines the fruition of her dream to become a doctor into the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious by N. Katherine Hayles | Nonfiction
With fresh insights derived from neuroscience, cognitive science, and literature, Katherine Hayles expands on the general understanding of cognition; cognition is much larger than consciousness.
Cognition is not only applicable to non-consciousness processing in humans, but also unicellular organisms and plants.
In a time period when technological advances are bringing seemingly far-fetched facets of cognition to the public, Hayles encourages readers toward a more sustainable environment for all living things.
