What We Are Reading Today

A distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique who took part in the Algerian Nationalist Movement, Frantz Fanon was one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

Fanon’s masterwork is a classic alongside Edward Said’s “Orientalism” or “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” and it is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.

“The Wretched of the Earth” is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation.

A powerful movement is happening in farming today—farmers are reconnecting with their roots to fight climate change.

For one woman, that’s meant learning her tribe’s history to help bring back the buffalo. For another, it’s meant preserving forest purchased by her great-great-uncle, among the first wave of African Americans to buy land.

Others are rejecting monoculture to grow corn, beans, and squash the way farmers in Mexico have done for centuries. Still others are rotating crops for the native cuisines of those who fled the “American wars” in Southeast Asia.

In “Healing Grounds,” Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food.