MEME: Books to Gift the President

Posted in activism, Books, current affairs by

Inspired by a post/conversation at Flip Flopping Joy, about the problems with capitalism, I promised to start a meme today about the books you would gift the President and his cabinet if you could. (I use the word “gift” as a verb in the anthropological sense in which it obligates receiver and giver to one another for mutual benefit & to hopefully avoid the perception that somehow the President needs educating. He is a brilliant and well read man, which is why a gift of books seems so apropos.  Wouldn’t it be great if the press had to stop talking about those Lincoln memoirs he is caring around and start talking about something he picked up at a feminist press?)

obama_2(JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

The Rules: What books would you give the Obama administration to help them be more radical about or better prepared to handle the issues you think are essential to global equality?  You can pick as many books as you want, tap as many people as you like.

The Bonus: If your suggestion just happens to be a book I have more than 2 copies of, I might just pull it off my shelf and start an actual box to send along.

My List (partly formed from the discussion at bfps)

  1. Shiva Earth Democracy
  2. Golden The Women Outside
  3. Frank Bananeras
  4. Wallersterein World Systems
  5. James Warfare in the American Homeland
  6. Clare Exile and Pride
  7. Incite! The Color of Violence
  8. Jaggar “A Feminist Critique of the Alleged Southern Debt” (with a note saying, please consider this as a model for dealing with both the college loan debt crisis and the housing crisis)
  9. DeRose Whose Hungry?
  10. Williams American Method
  11. Gedicks Dirty Gold
  12. Valentine Imagining Transgender
  13. Waterson Love, Sorrow, and Rage
  14. Abelda and Withorn Lost Ground
  15. Sudbury Ed. Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and The Prison Industrial Complex.
  16. Halley Don’t
  17. Sing, Whisper, Shout Pray
  18. Hartmann Reproductive Rights and Wrongs
  19. Diaz-Gotto Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice.
  20. James Voices Rising
  21. Lindsay-Poland Emperors in the Jungle
  22. Zavella. Women and Migration
  23. Mcreery Out Front
  24. Ehrenreich Nickle and Dimed (I don’t really like the privileged premise of this book but it does lay things out simply, interestingly, and with the necessary info about what it is like to be poor in America)

I would also gift him the following films and documentaries

  1. Maid in America
  2. Motherland Afghanistan
  3. Anonymously Yours
  4. Something Like a War
  5. No Place Like Home
  6. Save Me
  7. NPR series on Sexual Abuse of Native American women here and here
  8. Our House
  9. Bamako
  10. Baby Steps
  11. Return to Kandahar
  12. Freeheld
  13. Sicko

Jess, roped into this meme b/c of her thoughtful post, agreed that this one should be on the list:

You may have noted many of these books come from Southend Press. 😀

I tap the following people to keep the process of consciousness-raising with the Pres and his cabinet, going

9 thoughts on “MEME: Books to Gift the President”

    • well consider I practically own their entire collection that shouldn’t be too hard. 😀 PS. take some credit, your book suggestion started it rolling.

      Reply

  2. Pingback: Book recommendations for President Obama : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

  3. Thanks for tagging me–my list is up at Historiann.com. (But you hardly left me anything to recommrend! I went rather conventional, I’m afraid.)

    Reply

  5. Pingback: What Should the Obamas Read? « Literary Obama

Leave a comment