What We're Reading & Watching: Back-to-School Edition

As summer winds down and students of all ages prepare for a new school year, we've created our very own back-to-school "curriculum." Here are SiX staffers recommendations for what to read or watch this fall.

Jump to:
📚 Nonfiction Books
🪄 Fiction Books
💭 Other Reads
📺 TV Shows
🎥 Films

What We're Reading

The Kidnapping Club Wall Street Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War

Nonfiction books

The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
Decoding Greatness: The Hidden Strategy for Achieving Extraordinary Success by Ron Friedman
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari
The Echoing Ida Collection edited by Cynthia R. Greenlee, Kemi Alabi, and Janna A. Zinzi
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci
On Gold Mountain by Lisa See
The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells
The Bold World by Jodie Patterson
Denmark Vesey: The Buried Story of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It by David Robertson

Fiction Books

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
Memorial by Brian Washington

Other Reads

Nap Ministry (Website)
"The 7 types of rest that every person needs" by Saundra Dalton-Smith MD (Article)
"What to do About Ahav?" by Hannah Dreier

The framework of rest as a right really resonates with me and serves as a powerful reminder of the central role rest plays in our collective liberation.

Neha Patel, Co-Executive DirectorRecommendation: The Nap Ministry

I see myself as a documentary aficionado so I chose to share quite a few documentaries that range in topic but also have good takeaways that anyone can learn from. The more we learn...the more we grow.

Lauren Bealore, Democracy DirectorRecommendation: Various documentaries

I think we should enjoy the lives that we are fighting for. For most of my life, I believed that rest was a reward (always to come later), and this led to harmful patterns of exhaustion, burnout and showing up without the energy needed to take on the big challenges I faced as a leader.

I am making a shift to the idea that rest is right, and restful leaders are powerful leaders. This article gives me language and daily tools to build rest into my leadership practice - in big and small ways.

Jessie Ulibarri, Co-Executive DirectorRecommendation: "The 7 types of rest that every person needs"

Ted Lasso is a brilliant, funny, and heartwarming story of transformative leadership through grounded empathy and optimism. In a field that requires team building as much as politics does, you may be surprised how much you learn from Coach Lasso about connecting and building genuine relationships instead of transactional ones.

Xandre Chateaubriand, Washington State DirectorRecommendation: Ted Lasso

This collection is the perfect summer read because you can dip into one stand alone article at a time, or sink into meaty sections of work like birth justice, family matters, or naked power.

Eme Crawford, Director of Reproductive Rights CommunicationsRecommendation: The Echoing Ida Collection