Campus Wide Book Series
In the wake of trauma and violence against Black, Indigenous, and other people of color the college has set out to identify the ways in which power and privilege inform policy and practice and uproot ourselves from racist behavior. Eradicating expressions of racism and challenging the attitudes that allow them to emerge is the shared responsibility of all within our community. In this quest, the college has become committed to offering campus reads that center on antiracism on our journey and commitment to a racially just community.
2023-2024 Selected Reads
- We Want to Do More than Survive by Dr. Bettina L. Love
Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice. - We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders by Linda Sarsour
Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March, shares an “unforgettable memoir” about how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist, and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized activist on behalf of marginalized communities across the country. From the Brooklyn bodega her father owned, where Linda learned the real meaning of intersectionality, to protests in the streets of Washington, DC, Linda's experience as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants is a moving portrayal of what it means to find one's voice and use it for the good of others. We follow Linda as she learns the tenets of successful community organizing, and through decades of fighting for racial, economic, gender, and social justice, as she becomes one of the most recognized activists in the nation. We also see her honoring her grandmother's dying wish, protecting her children, building resilient friendships, and mentoring others even as she loses her first mentor in a tragic accident. Throughout, she inspires you to take action as she reaffirms that we are not here to be bystanders.
To obtain copies of the 2023-24 campus wide books reads, all MiraCosta District employees may visit:
- The Community Learning Center in the Instructional Services building (with Dean John Makevich) or in the new Student Services Building (with Director Mitra De Souza)
- The 3700 Building at the Oceanside Barnard campus (with the Student Equity or Counseling Department staff)
- The Administration Building at the San Elijo campus (with Dean Russell Waldon)
- Have a book mailed to you via Intercampus Mail or to your home via United States Postal Service Mail by filling out this Google Form
- or If you prefer to receive the ebook or audiobook versions, go to the MiraCosta College Library website here.
2022-2023 Selected Reads
- A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande
As an immigrant in an unfamiliar country, with an indifferent mother and abusive father, Reyna had few resources at her disposal. Taking refuge in words, Reyna’s love of reading and writing propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Told in Reyna’s exquisite, heartfelt prose, A Dream Called Home demonstrates how, by daring to pursue her dreams, Reyna was able to build the one thing she had always longed for: a home that would endure. - Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions by Gina Ann Garcia
In Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Gina Ann Garcia explores how institutions are serving Latinx students, both through traditional and innovative approaches. Drawing on empirical data collected over two years at three HSIs, Garcia adopts a counter-narrative approach to highlight the ways that HSIs are reframing what it means to serve Latinx college students. She questions the extent to which they have been successful in doing this while exploring how those institutions grapple with the tensions that emerge from confronting traditional standards and measures of success for postsecondary institutions.
2021-2022 Selected Reads
- From Equity Talk to Equity Walk: Expanding Practitioner Knowledge for Racial Justice
in Higher Education by Tia Brown McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, and Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux
From Equity Talk to Equity Walk offers practical guidance on the design and application of campus change strategies for achieving equitable outcomes. Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, this invaluable resource provides real-world steps that reinforce primary elements for examining equity in student achievement, while challenging educators to specifically focus on racial equity as a critical lens for institutional and systemic change.
2020-2021 Selected Reads
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Olou
Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it’s hard to know where to start. How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life. - How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
Distinguished Guest Speakers and Facilitators
- Dr. Ibram X. Kendi- Author of How to Be an Antiracist
- Dr. Veronica Keiffer-Lewis- Allied Path Consulting Agency
- Justin Campbell- Allied Path Consulting Agency
- Michelle Deutchamn- Executive Director of the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement
- Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon- Co-author of From Equity Talk to Equity Walk
