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🧲 Books like this

Dear Martin

Nic Stone · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas · 458 pages

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter navigates between the poverty-stricken neighborhood she has grown up in and the upper-crust suburban prep school she attends. Her life is up-ended when she is the sole witness to a police officer shooting her best friend, Khalil, who turns out to have been unarmed during the confrontation – but may or may not have been a drug dealer. As Starr finds herself even more t

RacismRacial ViolenceDeath of a FriendCultural Identity
❤️

All American Boys

Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely · 328 pages

When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints. Two teens grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitter

Racial ViolenceRacismTeen ProtagonistEmotional
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X

Ilyasah Shabazz, Kekla Magoon · 360 pages

Co-written by Malcolm X's daughter, this riveting and revealing novel follows the formative years of the man whose words and actions shook the world. Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's a pack of lies--after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him la

Racial ViolenceRacismIdentity FormationCultural Identity
❤️

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Sherman Alexie · 256 pages

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Death of a FriendRacismCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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Monster

Walter Dean Myers · 281 pages

While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

Identity FormationRacismEmotionalTeen Protagonist
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Benjamin Alire Saenz · 368 pages

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

Identity FormationCultural IdentityDeath of a FriendYoung Adult
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Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · 155 pages

An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Readers of his work in The Atlantic and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “

RacismDeath of a FriendRacial ViolenceCultural Identity
🙂

The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Racial ViolenceRacismCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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Piecing Me Together

Renee Watson · 264 pages

Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she's ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way. And she has. She accepted a scholarship to a mostly-white private school and even Saturday morning test prep opportunities. But some opportunities feel more demeaning than helpful. Like an invitation to join Women to Women, a mentor

Identity FormationRacismCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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Deadly, Unna?

Phillip Gwynne · 272 pages

Fourteen-year-old Gary Black's life in Australia centers around his large family and footy (Australian football), until he becomes friends with an Aborigine boy and realizes how horrible prejudice can be.

Death of a FriendRacismCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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How It Went Down

Kekla Magoon · 339 pages

When sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson is shot to death, his community is thrown into an uproar because Tariq was black and the shooter, Jack Franklin, is white, and in the aftermath everyone has something to say, but no two accounts of the events agree.

RacismRacial ViolenceDeath of a FriendYoung Adult
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Fire from the Rock

Sharon M. Draper · 240 pages

Racial ViolenceRacismIdentity FormationTeen Protagonist
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From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

Jacqueline Woodson · 141 pages

Melanin Sun has a lot to say. But sometimes it's hard to speak his mind, so he fills up notebooks with his thoughts instead. He writes about his mom a lotu they're about as close as they can be, because they have no other family. So when she suddenly tells him she's gay, his world is turned upside down. And if that weren't hard enough for him to accept, her girlfriend is white. Melanin Sun is angr

Identity FormationRacismTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages

RacismRacial ViolenceIdentity FormationCultural Identity
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Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin · 190 pages

Publisher's description: Studs Terkel tells us in his Foreword to the definitive Griffin Estate Edition of Black Like Me: "This is a contemporary book, you bet." Indeed, Black Like Me remains required reading in thousands of high schools and colleges for this very reason. Regardless of how much progress has been made in eliminating outright racism from American life, Black Like Me endures as a gre

RacismRacial ViolenceCultural IdentityEmotional
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The House Girl

Tara Conklin · 372 pages

A novel of love, family, and justice follows Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in a Manhattan law firm, as she searches for the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.

Racial ViolenceRacismIdentity FormationCultural Identity
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Winger

Andrew Smith

Two years younger than his classmates at a prestigious boarding school, fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his female best friend who thinks of him as just a kid, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team with some of his frightening new dorm-mates.

Death of a FriendIdentity FormationTeen ProtagonistEmotional
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Black Boy White School

Brian F. Walker · 256 pages

When fourteen-year-old Anthony "Ant" Jones from the ghetto of East Cleveland, Ohio, gets a scholarship to a prep school in Maine, he finds that he must change his image and adapt to a world that never fully accepts him, but when he goes home he discovers that he no longer truly belongs there either.

Identity FormationRacismCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

RacismRacial ViolenceCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
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Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng

Racial ViolenceRacismCultural IdentityEmotional
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The Record Keeper

Agnes Gomillion · 464 pages

RacismIdentity FormationCultural IdentityTeen Protagonist
🙂

Allegiant

Veronica Roth · 526 pages

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered -- fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories. But Tris's

Identity FormationCultural IdentityRacismTeen Protagonist
🙂

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison · 474 pages

Invisible Man is the story of a young black man from the South who does not fully understand racism in the world. Filled with hope about his future, he goes to college, but gets expelled for showing one of the white benefactors the real and seamy side of black existence. He moves to Harlem and becomes an orator for the Communist party, known as the Brotherhood. In his position, he is both threaten

Racial ViolenceRacismIdentity FormationCultural Identity
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Dreamland Burning

Jennifer Latham · 377 pages

SOME BODIES WON'T STAY BURIED. SOME STORIES NEED TO BE TOLD. When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the past, the present, and herself. One hundred years earlier, a single violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into

RacismRacial ViolenceTeen ProtagonistYoung Adult

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