Little Bits of Good*

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


It is not an uncommmon question - "where were you when..." And those "when" topics have shaped the United States - President Nixon's impeachment, 9-11-01, Armstrong on the moon, etc... 

One of my own first clear memories is watching my mother weep after the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy. For many days to follow, the mood in our house was somber and hushed.

In April 1968, I was sitting cross-legged in my front yard, next to my older sister. It was still early spring and the trees were not fully leaved which gave us a gauzy distant vision of downtown Kansas City. From our suburban yard, we could see flames shooting into the sky. Our city was on fire. I started asking questions all beginning with "why." Why are people so angry? Why are there fires? Why are we under a curfew? Why are our parents so tense? At nine-years-old, I struggled to understand the news, the heavy shock of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My sister tried to explain - fear, race, economics, but I think she wasn't sure of any answers either.

When the "why" questions demand to be answered or at least addressed, books can help us with ideas and considerations. 


"Extremists have shown what frightens them the most is a girl with a book." -- Malala Yousafzai


                              Nonfiction

Common Sense - Thomas Paine
Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
Self-Reliance - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Diary of Anne Frank
The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger - Margaret Sanger
20 Years at Hull-House - Jane Addams
1968 - Mark Kurlansky
Steal This Book - Abbie Hoffman
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom - Catherine Clinton
On Liberty, the Subjection of Women and Utilitarianism - John Stuart Mill
John Adams - David McCullough
Black Boy - Richard Wright
Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin
A Testament of Hope - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Bad Feminist - Roxanne Gay
A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines - Gail Collins
Suffragette: My Own Story - Emmeline Parkhurst
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
The Long Loneliness - Dorothy Day
Dust Tracks on a Road - Zora Neale Hurston
The Givenness of Things: Essays - Marilynne Robinson
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power - Jon Meachum
33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs - Dorian Lynskey


                                 Fiction 

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd
Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver
Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo

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What I'm reading now: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Jared Diamond.


*"Do your little bits of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." 
                                                             --Bishop Desmond Tutu


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