Audio Study Guides

Son of a Trickster is a 2017 young adult realistic fantasy novel by Eden Robinson. The first book in Robinson’s Trickster trilogy, it was shortlisted for various Canadian awards and was a Canadian bestseller. Set in Robinson’s hometown of Kitimat, British Columbia, the story is informed by the author’s Haisla and Heiltsuk heritage. The novel contains mature themes including addiction, abuse, and self-harm.Plot SummaryThe protagonist is 16-year-old Jared, a Native boy who lives with his... Read Son of a Trickster Summary

Son of the Revolution (1983), written by Liang Heng with his wife, Judith Shapiro, is a memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and is both the story of Liang’s own coming-of-age and a chronicle of China’s political and cultural upheaval following the Communist Party’s rise to power in the mid-1900s.Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain references to violence and death by suicide.Liang Heng is born in Changsha, a large city in central... Read Son of the Revolution Summary

So You Want to Talk About Race is a 2018 non-fiction book written by Ijeoma Oluo, an American author of Nigerian descent whose columns and news articles on race have appeared in The Guardian, The Stranger, and Jezebel, among other places. This guide refers to the first edition published in 2018 by Seal Press. The title gestures to the discourse that is necessary to combat racial oppression in the United States. The book made Bustle’s... Read So You Want to Talk About Race Summary

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is a 2012 narrative nonfiction work about the relationship between animal infections and human disease. It was nominated for several awards and won the Science and Society Book Award, given by the National Association of Science Writers, and the Society of Biology (UK) Book Award in General Biology. In Spillover, Quammen’s narrative alternates between the outbreak and eventual discovery of recent emerging diseases, and the scientific discoveries... Read Spillover Summary

Ibrahim Kendi’s comprehensive history of racial thought in the US, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, was published in 2016 and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Kendi has also collaborated author Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down, Ain't Burned All the Bright) on a young adult "remix" of Stamped from the Beginning titled Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, and is well known for his 2019 book, How to... Read Stamped From the Beginning Summary

Jason Reynolds’s Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020) is a nonfiction book by the American authors Jason Reynolds and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. It is a self-described “remix” of Kendi’s 2016 National Book Award winner Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. An award-winning writer of young adult fiction and poetry, Reynolds frames America’s history of racist ideas for an audience of middle school and high school readers. Reynolds’s remix... Read Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You Summary

A loose adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s Summer of the Mariposas (2012) follows five Mexican American sisters on an epic journey from Texas to Mexico. Drawing deeply from Mexican folklore, the book’s genre blends magical realism and fantasy. The book was a 2013 Andre Norton Award Nominee, won the Westchester Fiction Award, and made the list of 2012 School Library Journal Best Books. Guadalupe Garcia McCall was born in Piedras Negras in Coahuila... Read Summer of the Mariposas Summary

Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography, tracing the steps that led up to his conversion to Christianity. This guide refers to the 1955 Harcourt Brace & Company/Harvest Books edition. Lewis was born in 1898 in Ireland and begins his story with his childhood in Belfast, where he and his family lived in a maze-like house full of empty attics and heaps of books. He was close with his older brother, and together they... Read Surprised by Joy Summary

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (2010) is a memoir written by Catholic priest Gregory (Greg) Boyle. The memoir relays Boyle’s experiences serving as the leader of the Dolores Mission Church in the gang capital of the world, Los Angeles. Boyle, a Jesuit, performed his earliest missionary work in an impoverished Bolivian village. There, Boyle gained two lifelong attributes: an unyielding desire to help the poor and the ability to speak Spanish... Read Tattoos on the Heart Summary

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom is a collection of 14 essays and interviews examining how to transform the multicultural classroom into an inclusive space dedicated to the practice of freedom for all students. “bell hooks” is Gloria Jean Watkins’s pen name, which she chooses not to capitalize so that her work is emphasized more so than her name. She is an acclaimed feminist scholar, cultural critic, writer, and educator. She’s the... Read Teaching to Transgress Summary

The Alchemist, first published in 1988, is a novel by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and translated by Alan R. Clarke. It tells the story of Santiago, a shepherd from Andalusia who dreams of a treasure buried beside the pyramids in Egypt. Heavy with allegory and including many magical elements, the novel has been described as adventure, fantasy, magical realism, and philosophical fiction as it encourages the characters (and the reader) to fulfill their Personal Legends. The... Read The Alchemist Summary

The Awakening is Kate Chopin’s second novel. It was first published in 1899 and is considered one of the first examples of feminist fiction.The novel opens in the 1890s Louisiana, at Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular among wealthy Creoles who live in nearby New Orleans. Edna Pontellier, her husband, Léonce, and their two children are vacationing at the cottages of Madame Lebrun. Léonce is a kind and devoted husband, but he is often... Read The Awakening Summary

The Berlin Boxing Club is the second novel by Robert Sharenow, also the author of My Mother the Cheerleader. It was published in 2011 and won the Association of Jewish Libraries Sidney Taylor Award.While a work of fiction, The Berlin Boxing Clubis based on a true story: that of the German boxing champion Max Schmeling, who sheltered two Jewish children during Kristallnacht—the night of Nazi-sponsored rioting against Jews that many see as the beginning of... Read The Berlin Boxing Club Summary

The artist and writer Thi Bui published her autobiographical graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, in 2017. Alternating her narrative between her present-day experiences as a new mother in New York City with her parents’ past growing up in and then escaping from Vietnam, Bui builds a complex web of intergenerational trauma and love. This is Bui’s first venture into comic book illustration. The artwork that accompanies her narrative is based on the black... Read The Best We Could Do Summary

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma is a 2014 nonfiction work by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. This guide refers to the 2015 edition published by Penguin Books. Van der Kolk, a psychiatrist specializing in various forms of trauma, has worked in trauma therapy for his entire professional career, publishing numerous scientific research studies of his own and contributing to many more. In addition to being a... Read The Body Keeps the Score Summary

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, published the essay “The Case for Reparations” in that magazine’s June 2014 issue. It was widely acclaimed and, according to the Washington Post, set a record at the time for the most-viewed article in a single day on The Atlantic website. The essay earned Coates a George Polk Award for commentary in 2014.In the essay, Coates examines the idea of the United States government paying reparations to... Read The Case for Reparations Summary

This guide refers to the 2003 Penguin Classics edition, translated by Henry Bettenson and edited by G.R. Evans. Your page numbers may vary. Please note that this guide covers only Part 1 (Books 1-10) of the 22 books of City of God. Begun in 413 AD, only a few years after the Sack of Rome, City of God is Augustine’s rejoinder to pagan misconceptions of Christianity. In the aftermath of a disastrous and unprecedented attack... Read The City of God Summary

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure is a psychology book written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and published in 2018. The nonfiction work, which expounds upon an essay the authors wrote for The Atlantic in 2015, became a bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award nominee. The book argues that parents and schools, in an overabundance of caution, have taught children... Read The Coddling of the American Mind Summary

The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by the French writer Alexandre Dumas, originally published in serial form between 1844 and 1846, which is reflected in the novel’s episodic structure, large cast of characters, and frequent shifts of scene. The novel has been translated into English several times, usually in abridged form. This guide follows the translation and abridgment by Lowell Blair, first published in 1956.Content Warning: The source material includes suicide, suicidal... Read The Count of Monte Cristo Summary

The Crucible is a Tony Award-winning play by Arthur Miller. The play is a partially fictionalized dramatization of the Salem witch trials, which took place from February 1692 to May 1693. Premiering in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy trials, Miller wrote The Crucible as an allegory for the paranoia, fear-mongering accusations, and circumstantial evidence he witnessed. Accused of being a communist himself, Miller faced questioning by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American... Read The Crucible Summary