Brookline High School Program in Social Justice Leadership
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  • Program
    • 1st Quarter: Identity
    • 2nd Quarter: Cultivating Passion
    • 3rd Quarter: Making Change
    • 4th Quarter: Leadership
    • Trainings & Speakers >
      • Race, Racism and Identity Training
      • Prison Trip
      • Community Organizing Training
      • Toxic Tour >
        • Dudley and Chinatown Tours >
          • Community Garden: Dudley
          • Electroplating / New Police Station
          • Airbeat
          • Bartlett Yard Bus Depot
          • Ferdinand's / BPS
          • Dudley Station
          • Walter's Park
          • Brownfield Site: Dudley
          • Hibernian Hall
  • Student Activism
    • Organizing Guide
    • Brookline Literacy Partnership
    • Global Women's Health
    • Food Justice Committee
    • Student Awards and Distinction
  • Resources
    • Organizations
    • Quotations >
      • 1 Defining Social Justice
      • 2 Compassion and Solidarity
      • 3 Commitment, Power, Acting
      • 4 Social Justice and Courage
      • 5 Humility and Social Justice
      • 6 Praxis: Questioning for Transformation
    • Music
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    • Speeches
    • High School Programs
    • Summer and School year Opportunities
  • Internship

Social justice readings

Please consider purchasing books from The Brookline Booksmith, the local bookstore for the BHS Program in Social Justice Leadership.

Books read in whole for BHS Program in Social Justice Leadership

  • Life on the Outside:  The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, Jennifer Gonnerman
  • An Ordinary Man:  An Autobiography, Paul Rusesabagina (with Tom Zoellner)

Excerpts from the following books are read (alphabetical by author):

  • Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky
  • The Better World Handbook:  Small Changes the make a Big Difference, Ellis Jones, Ross Haenfler, Brett Johnson
  • Kaffir Boy, Mark Mathabane
  • Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements, Bill Moyer with JoAnn McAllister, Mary Lou Finley and Steven Soifer
  • Letters from Young Activists:  Today's Rebels Speak out, Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin , Kenyon Farrow and Bernardine Dohrn
  • Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
  • Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in a Cynical Time, Paul Rogat Loeb
  • The Impossible will take a while:  A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, Paul Rogat Loeb
  • 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, Stephanie Nolen
  • Telling Stories to Change the World:  Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims, Rickie Solinger, Madeline Fox, Kayhan Iran, Eds.

Finding books on Social Justice

First, use our SJLP Library Thing (click) page to find books.  You can browse, or search by Tag (ie "Race," "Incarceration").  To add additional books, email Mr. Grande for the password.

Other Social Justice Reading lists

  • Goodreads member-generated list
  • Social Justice Training Institute
  • South End Press
  • Teaching for Change
  • Rethinking Schools
  • Teaching Tolerance
  • Marymount School
  • Lucinda Leugers list
  • UW School of Education






  • Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor, Paul Farmer
  • Racism: A Short History, George M. Fredrickson
  • Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
  • Violence:  Reflections on a National Epidemic, James Gilligan
  • A Human Being Died Last Night:  Pumla Gobodo--Madikizela
  • Mountains Beyond Mountains:  The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man who would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder
  • Unequal Childhoods:  Class, Race and Family Life, Annette Lareau
  • The Status Syndrome:  How Social Standing Affects our Health and Longevity, Michael Marmot
  • The Trouble with Diversity:  How we Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality
  • American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton
  • A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power
  • Race and the Invisible Hand:  How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue Collar Jobs, Deirdre Royster
  • Orientalism, Edward W. Said
  • The Hidden Cost of Being African American:  How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality, Thomas M. Shapiro
  • Silencing the Past:  Power and the Production of History, Michele-Rolph Trouillot 
  • The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
Cultivating life long leaders for Social Justice