State of Emergency: How We Win in the Country We Built

Women’s March cofounder Mallory debuts with an impassioned look at racial injustice in America. Though Mallory was raised by activist parents in a Harlem public housing project, it wasn’t until the murder of her son’s father in 2001 that she began “to connect the dots between the violence in my community and the violence of the system around that community.” She explains how institutional racism and poverty can lead to involvement with drugs and guns (“tools of self-destruction [that] are put in the hands of young Black men more often than any schoolbooks”), and sketches the history of “systemic oppression” in the U.S. from the slave era to the “war on drugs.” (“It’s often speculated,” she writes, that the CIA funded Nicaragua’s Contra rebels with proceeds from the sale of crack cocaine in Black neighborhoods.) Mallory also discusses the Central Park Five case and the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and advises readers on what to bring to a protest and how to “speak with your wallet.” Shifting between outrage, hope, and resolute determination, this call to action will resonate with readers already fighting for racial justice, as well as those looking to join the movement. Agent: Marc Gerald, Europa Content. (May)