This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work by Tiffany Jewell

What a great classroom resource! THIS BOOK IS ANTI-RACIST is part workbook and part history book and part instructional guide. Even though it's pretty short, TBIAR talks about everything from privilege to institutional racism to how you can go about calling out problematic behavior and whether it should be public or private (there's a series of questions you should ask yourself).

I really liked the illustrations from Aurelia Durand: they're bright and colorful and give this a really fun vibe that's reminiscent of the guides published by the American Girl imprint. The tone is conversational, simple, but doesn't talk down, and I liked how the author gave history and context behind a lot of the inequality that plagues multiple countries (not just the U.S.), and the types of questions that readers can ask themselves to do better.

One thing that was new to me was the term "folx." I Googled it and there's over a million results, but a lot of them refer to the Firefox software system. I guess it's a gender neutral term for people to use to describe themselves, but I didn't think "folks" was gender specific? Latinx and Filipinx, for example, come from languages that have "gendered" nouns, so the replacement of the "a" or the "o" serve as a means to respect and acknowledge people who don't wish to be associated with a specific gender. I was confused and unfamiliar with the term, but it's always cool to learn about a new means of identifying people because knowing is half the battle.

TBIAR is a book that will most likely teach you something new about yourself or about others, and provide you with a tool kit you can use to call out problematic behavior, look at whether you're doing any of your own, and also give you ideas on how you can either work more proactively against discrimination and/or use your own privilege to benefit others with less. It's a really great book and I think it's an amazing classroom resource for teachers. I'm telling my teacher friends all about this one!

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review! 

3.5 out of 5 stars