100 Books Like The Lies That Bind

London 1945: the heir to the largest tribe of Bechuanaland (Botswana) arrives in Britain. Seretse Khama, an urbane 24-year-old was welcomed into the elite world of Oxford. But when he fell in love with Englishwoman Ruth Williams, the full force of colonial power was brought to bear to prevent their marriage. 

It has personal resonance for me because when I met Atam, in 1964, Smethwick was in the grip of a racist campaign. Atam and I volunteered to help the sitting Labour MP, Patrick Gordon Walker combat the Conservative Peter Griffiths’ campaign. The slogan was, ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour’. Atam was welcomed because he spoke Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu and we accompanied Patrick Gordon Walker canvassing. When I watched A United Kingdom, the film about Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, I knew that they had portrayed it well when the government representatives treat… show more.

This gorgeous book was one of the first mainstream stories I had seen that addressed the Black presence during World War 2.

Although it was released a good few years before my first historical fiction novel was published, reading it surely planted those early seeds for my later books. Of bringing untold Black British stories to light. To remind us all that history has been whitewashed and so many untold stories exist.

Mixed relationships are not new: think Antony and Cleopatra. The most famous and possibly the earliest in US history are of Pocahontas and John Smith. If you want a romantic Disney-type version of the story, this book is not for you.

Where I live you will find the world’s first public museum, the Ashmolean. Most of the original collection was assembled during the 17th century by the John Tradescants, father and son. They collected objects from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The most significant American object is Powhatan’s Mantle. Powhatan was Pocahontas’s father. It is a reminder of how much the white settlers owed their survival to the local people.

Dr. Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow and Angela L. Daniel "Silver Star" claim that they are revealing for the first time the oral history of the Mattaponi tribe regarding the story of Pocahontas and John Smith. This probably is the most… show more.

Shakespeare’s tragedies resonate in most cultures because they address the human condition. That is why Romeo and Juliet have spawned West Side Story, many films, and Russian ballets. I personally organised the Joe and Zara workshop with a mixed group of teenagers working on a modern take on the story. The young people in this ten-minute video from the workshop are impressive. 

Othello too is tragic. Othello describes how Desdemona would come again ‘greedy –to hear tales of adventure sorrow and suffering. ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed and I loved her that she did pity them.’ I relate to that.

Reading Straw Dogs made me not only appreciate my dog (& the cat) even more but realize a lot of the ideas of what I thought made me human are not that uniquely human.

I don’t think I agree with everything in the book, but exactly because of that it’s a great read and humbling in the face of how much we take freedom from the non-humans and other humans away.  

I’ve read this book twice and I would read it again and again because it taught me so much about myself in relation to how I want to approach and understand love. It affirmed my feelings about love and gave me the language and tools to understand the dynamics of love in platonic relationships, familial relationships, or romantic relationships.

I enjoyed how Hooks discussed themes such as spirituality, values, trauma, and greed. I consider this book to be an essential read and one I will always go back to when exploring concepts of love.

In the Name of Identity challenges our thinking about how we decide who we are as individuals, as groups and what makes us behave as we do with each other.

Maalouf addresses the dangers of defining people solely on a singular component of their identity rather than their identity as a whole. He examines his own identity, and acknowledges that it is complex.

He is Arab and Christian, both Lebanese and French. Yet his identity is more than the aggregate of these components. He urges the reader to avoid generalizing based on a singular component of one’s identity and convincingly argues how this can lead to violence.

Maalouf’s wisdom on how we use our identities to define ourselves against each other can help us understand how to avoid hatred and violence. 

The Hispanic community represents nearly 20% of the American population and is one of the fastest-growing minorities.

In spite of this, the community is rarely featured in conversations about race and ethnicity. Latinx (a gender-neutral term describing people of Latin heritage) provides an in-depth understanding of the community. Morales focuses on what Latinx means and how Latinx cultures of the past have shaped how the community understands its identity.

Through his analysis, Morales points out that identifying as Latinx creates a political identity that embodies an idea of ‘mixedness’ or ‘hybridity’, but at the same time challenges the black/ white racial binary which is prevalent in American history.

As Latinx increase, their political empowerment could reform the balance of forces within the country. 

Identity Crisis delivers a compelling account of the 2016 Presidential campaign.

The book explains how the election played out and what factors led to Trump’s seemingly surprising victory.

The authors explore the many plausible reasons for the outcome, eventually concluding that the racially charged language of the campaign, particularly from Trump, provoked voters’ pre-existing divisions on racial issues and prompted them to vote based on identity.

In addition, they address how identity compared to factors such as economic anxiety and dissatisfaction as explanations for Trump’s success. The 2016 election was indicative of a more apparent American crisis that raised issues such as who is American and what the values of the country are.

The Enemy Within discusses the factors that instigated violence in June 2012 between the Buddhists and Muslims within Myanmar. This violence had disastrous results for several ethnic communities, especially the Rohingya.

The book focuses on two main ideas: the development and maintenance of ethnic identity over a long period of time, that turns minorities into the ‘other’ in their own country, and Myanmar government’s practice of political violence that eliminates religious and racial diversity.

Wade describes how the discussion over an ethnic minority’s identity was manipulated by Buddhist extremists as well as the military junta. He also illustrates that by constantly threatening the identity and beliefs of groups of people in the country, the government was able to undertake a program of exclusion and persecution.