WHAT IS REVOLUTION? WHAT IS ABOLITION? HOW DO WE GET THERE AND HOW DO WE TAKE CARE OF ONE ANOTHER? THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS THESE BOOKS SEEK TO ANSWER.
Abolition is a hot topic right now. “Should we defund the police?”, “What does police and prison abolition look like?”, “Does abolition apply to more than just the police?”, “Who will protect us?”, “How will we get there?” are just a few questions that people have of abolitionists. And all of them are just concerns to have.
There are tons of articles—academic and otherwise—available online. I wanted to compile a list of books that have been integral to my understanding not only of prison and police abolition, but abolition as a whole: of gender, of sexuality, of the World. What is revolution? What is abolition? How do we get there and how do we take care of one another? These are the questions these books seek to answer. The rest requires us to imagine together.
Here is a list of books on abolition, revolution, and restorative justice:
1. Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists
2. The Struggle Continues by Kwame Nkrumah
3. Consciencism by Kwame Nkrumah
4. The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson
5. Die Nigger Die! by H Rap Brown/Jamil Al-Amin
6. As Black As Resistance by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson
7. Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
8. Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
9. Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism by Kwame Ture
10. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris
11. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault
12. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Davies
13. Beyond Containment by Claudia Jones
12. Sojourning For Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism by Erik S. McDuffie
14. Fumbling Towards Repair by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan
15. Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
16. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
17. Beyond Survival by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ejeris Dixon
18. Turn This World Inside Out by Nora Samaran
19. Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
20. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
21. Undoing Gender by Judith Butler
22. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
23. Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe (from Black, White, and In Color) by Hortense Spillers
24. History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
Da'Shaun Harrison
Da’Shaun Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, GA. They are the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and several other media/literary honors. As an editor, movement media and narrative strategist, and storyteller, Harrison uses their extensive history as a community organizer—which began in 2014 during their first year at Morehouse College—to frame their political thought and cultural criticism. Through the lens of what Harrison calls “Black Fat Studies,” they lecture on blackness, fatness, gender, and their intersections. Harrison currently serves as Editor-at-Large at Scalawag Magazine, is a co-host of the podcast “Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back,” and ⅓ of the video podcast “In The Middle.” Between the years 2019 and 2021, Harrison served as Associate Editor—and later as Managing Editor—of Wear Your Voice Magazine.