Books like The Outsider — picked by fans

Years ago, I was a janitor. When I would take a shower, it was like I could never get the stench off my body. I like Susan Strasser’s book because it reminds me of the waste I use to clean up daily. She examines the most unprecedented commonplace act of throwing things out and how it has transformed American society.

Her classic book about trash world culture is fascinating to me because, in the last hundred years, the way of life has been replaced by mass consumption, disposable goods, and waste on an unimaginable scale. Her book could easily be used as a metaphor for the ‘homeless,’ whom some view as “disposable’ goods. Her book illustrates that what counts as trash depends on who counts it, and what we throw away defines us as much as we keep it.

Strasser argues that in Western society, popular understanding of cleanliness, gender,… show more.

I liked the book because it is not just about racism, but it grapples with how hate manifests itself in our Western world.

Jensen paints on a huge canvas detailing American racism from the genocidal slave trade through lynchings to the 2000 murder of Amadou Diallo by NYC police and covers a wide range of other cultural horrors as well: the massacres of Native Americans, the Holocaust, the 8,000 deaths from the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in India and the deaths of 500,000 children in Iraj. 

When I was a homeless artist, I stumbled across this brilliant book, and it validated my belief that contrary to what global capitalists believe, free markets outside the West do not spread wealth in the hands of an ‘outsider’ minority but instead generate ethnic envy and hatred among the frustrated, impoverished majorities.

Amy Chua states that billions of poor, exploited, and powerful people around the world (homeless and displaced) watch as the wealthy minority in the United States continues to amass more control, prestige, and tax breaks.

Ironically, Chua points out, although America is viewed “as arrogant, hegemonic and vapidly materialistic, most of the downtrodden would rather be in the U. S. than anywhere else. In 2023, close to 10 million illegal migrants have entered the U.S. via the porous Texas border.

When I was a homeless artist living on Chicago’s cold streets for six months, it was hard for me to believe in a compassionate Judeo-Christian God. It was difficult for me to reconcile how a just and benevolent God would let African pregnant women be thrown into the Atlantic Ocean and perish with thousands of other slaves.

That is why I became agnostic and was attracted to Sartre’s belief in the essential freedom of individuals, and he also believed that as free beings, people are responsible for all elements of themselves, their consciousness, and their actions. It made me question why I was homeless. Was it because of bad choices in life? Or was it just the experience of being a black male in a racist capitalist society?

Sartre became an existentialist because of the war and an encounter with Merleav Ponty, who taught him the political dimension of human… show more.

Both keen and forgiving, this book traces the amorous and lofty histories of Black masculinity in America while also delighting in the surprises surrounding its speaker(s).

No song is without a community to which it belongs. We sing our songs together. This realization is especially stark and exacting in this book as it chronicles the bounty of lyrics from Marvin Gaye to the Delfonics.

Butler argues that the large increase of police assaults and killings of black men is not a breakdown in law enforcement or the activities of a few rogue cops. The system is doing what it has been designed to do. Police hurt black men, according to the author because “that is what they are paid to do.” Butler maintains that the Chokehold “is a way of understanding how American inequality is imposed.” It is a tool of oppression. One outcome of the Chokehold is mass incarceration. The construction of the thug is a means of justifying the Chokehold. Butler traces the “Ape” or “dehumanization” thesis.

The book contains loads of data showing how in city after city black people are disproportionately targeted by police officers. Programs such as Obama’s My Brothers’ Keeper ignores women and plays into perpetuating stereotypes of black men as the primary victims of racism.

I recommend this book because James Baldwin’s brilliant voice and profound writing explore the intersection of personal truths and deeply held beliefs. Baldwin masterfully captures the youth and naivety of John Grimes as he wrestles with sexuality, faith, and the pervasive racism of his time.

This book brilliantly brings these struggles to life while showcasing Baldwin’s gift for conveying complex emotions and societal pressures with intimacy and precision. 

A novel about a black Sheriff’s efforts to catch a serial killer in the fictional small town and surrounding area of Charon County, Virginia, where racism is real and visceral, and the Confederates are considered heroes by many.

The book brilliantly transports you inside the complex racial and religious realities of everyday life in a small Virginia town. Crosby’s ear for language and understanding of daily life in such a place take you there. You can picture not just the characters but also very much the place—from the town to the farms to the buildings to the rooms in them—and to the food and alcohol people drink. Small-town America is brought to vivid life.

This novel-in-stories follows a quartet of friends—Dub, Rollo, Rye, and Gio—as they party, fight, love, and occasionally even consider leaving Rhode Island. Gio, the group’s storyteller, observes, comments, and guides the reader through a hard-edged world of race and class oppression. Guns and drugs flood Gio’s world, but these forces are offset by bonds of family, friends, and friends who become family. Never has the overlooked town of Pawtucket been so lovingly portrayed, and I’ll not soon forget Holmes’ mouthwatering descriptions of Portuguese Catholic feast days in East Providence. A keen observer of toxic masculinity, Holmes shows how misogyny holds this group of young men together while it also holds them back.

I remember feeling exhausted the first time I finished reading Baldwin’s last novel. In common with many novels published during the late 1970s, this is a saga, a sprawling account of interlocking families and characters across thirty years. It takes the reader to the US, South, London, Korea, Paris, and Africa. It is also a pioneering book that describes an intense sexual relationship between African American men.

As I’ve read Baldwin over the last twenty-plus years, I’ve relished seeing patterns and themes that cut across his work. One of his earliest essays, “Journey to Atlanta,” published in 1948, is an account of his brother David’s trip to the US South as part of a gospel quartet, a story that is played out in his final novel. As with much of Baldwin’s work, this novel explores love, family, and politics.