Imani Gandy Corn

Senior Legal Analyst, @Rewire_News, 1/3 of #TeamLegal, Co-host of #BoomLawyered podcast, Opinions are yours., The Real Racist™, gandy.imani@rewire.news

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Book Recommendations:

IG

Recommended by Imani Gandy Corn

if you have an audible credit to spend, i recommend spending it on @ElieNYC's new book. It's a great book made even greater when you can listen to him read it to you. It's laugh out loud funny with so many great lines that I wrote some down before remembering I have a hard copy😆 (from X)

Finalist, ABA Silver Gavel Award for Books The New York Times bestseller that has cemented Elie Mystal’s reputation as one of our sharpest and most acerbic legal minds “After reading Allow Me to Retort, I want Elie Mystal to explain everything I don’t understand—quantum astrophysics, the infield fly rule, why people think Bob Dylan is a good singer . . .” —Michael Harriot, The Root Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past. Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm readers with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of eighteenth-century white men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media. You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don’t need to accept the “whites only” theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn’t have to be.

IG

Recommended by Imani Gandy Corn

Did I buy @IjeomaOluo's new book because she interviewed me for it? NOOOOO. I mean she DID. But I would've bought it anyway because she is a brilliant writer. You know how you there are writers you wish you could write like? Yeah. She's one of those. 😄 (from X)

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, an  “illuminating” (New York Times Book Review) history of white male identity. What happens to a country that tells generation after generation of white men that they deserve power? What happens when success is defined by status over women and people of color, instead of by actual accomplishments? Through the last 150 years of American history -- from the post-reconstruction South and the mythic stories of cowboys in the West, to the present-day controversy over NFL protests and the backlash against the rise of women in politics -- Ijeoma Oluo exposes the devastating consequences of white male supremacy on women, people of color, and white men themselves. Mediocre investigates the real costs of this phenomenon in order to imagine a new white male identity, one free from racism and sexism. As provocative as it is essential, this book will upend everything you thought you knew about American identity and offers a bold new vision of American greatness.

IG

Recommended by Imani Gandy Corn

I’m not really kidding. Ijeoma’s book is great for white people—because seriously, get a clue—but it’s also great for Black people who are sick and tired of trying to talk about race with clueless white people and end up frustrated and wanting to stab everything in sight. (from X)

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it’s hard to know where to start. How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend? In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life. "Simply put: Ijeoma Oluo is a necessary voice and intellectual for these times, and any time, truth be told." ―Phoebe Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of You Can't Touch My Hair