Tacoma Reads
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Tacoma Reads is a city-wide reading program that seeks to unite the community in dialogue around contemporary themes through reading a common text. A longstanding partnership between the City of Tacoma’s Mayor’s Office and the Tacoma Public Library, Tacoma Reads in 2021 is thrilled to have the support of the Tacoma Urban League as its premier sponsor.

Tacoma Reads 2021 will focus on the themes of race, social justice, and healing through three books, one for each reading level:

Adults:

“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson

From Penguin Random House, opens a new window: In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns. Her debut work won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named to Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and The New York Times’s list of the Best Nonfiction of All Time. She has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston Universities and has lectured at more than two hundred other colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia.

Learn more about Isabel Wilkerson and “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” on the Penguin Random House website, opens a new window. Check out download, or listen to “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” through Tacoma Public Library.

Please save the date for Tacoma Reads: A Conversation with Isabel Wilkerson on Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021.

Teens/Young Adults:

“A Good Kind of Trouble” by Lisa Moore Ramée

From Harper Collins, opens a new window: After attending a powerful protest, Shayla starts wearing an armband to school to support the Black Lives Matter movement, but when the school gives her an ultimatum, she is forced to choose between her education and her identity.

Learn more about “A Good Kind of Trouble” and Lisa Moore Ramée on the Harper Collins website, opens a new window. Check out, download, or listen to “A Good Kind of Trouble” through Tacoma Public Library, opens a new window.

Kids and Families:

“The Day You Begin” by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López

From Penguin Random House, opens a new window: National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson and two-time Pura Belpré Illustrator Award winner Rafael López have teamed up to create a poignant, yet heartening book about finding courage to connect, even when you feel scared and alone.

Learn more about “The Day You Begin,” Jacqueline Woodson, and Rafael López on the Penguin Random House website, opens a new window. Check out “The Day You Begin” through Tacoma Public Library, opens a new window.