Kanye West during Kanye West and Donda West 'Raising Kanye' Book Signing
Kanye West doesn’t read. He’s been public about it for years, bragging about how he’s a “proud non-reader of books”—despite writing one.
That has become a problem.
Kanye’s recent tweets and interviews show that he is, to put it gently, under-educated on a number of important subjects. His statements have confused many of his supporters, and worse yet, emboldened many, many racists (check his @ replies if you need evidence).
While we know that we’re unlikely to change Kanye’s mind, hopefully we can at least help some of you. Below is a list of half a dozen books that can help clear up some of the major Kanye-provided misconceptions on major social and political issues of the day.
And in case you, like Kanye, are not up for reading, we’ve included links to the audiobooks where available.
On the Republican Party and Race
Kanye has been getting texts from his important friends spouting technically true but misleading factoids about the GOP and its relationship to African Americans. But shouting “Lincoln was a Republican!” all you want won’t change the fact that in the 1960s and ’70s, the party of Lincoln developed a conscious, deliberate strategy to win over Southern white voters by appealing to racial resentments. This plan came to be known, unsurprisingly, as the “Southern strategy,” and you can still see its impacts on the electoral map today.
Rick Perlstein’s 2008 book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America traces Richard Nixon’s ascendance, which happened thanks in large part to the Southern strategy. It’s possible Kanye has already read this one—his tweets about the Republican party seem to have disappeared from his Twitter timeline.
On Slavery
On Tuesday, Kanye had some thoughts about slavery on TMZ. He said that slavery “sounds like a choice,” since it lasted for centuries.
Um, no.
Understanding the full scope of American slavery is beyond the scope of any dozen books. But one good way to start is by looking at what the lives of enslaved people were actually like.
The Classic Slave Narratives is edited by and has an introduction from Henry Louis Gates. It contains four peoples’ stories, covering slavery in Europe, the West Indies, and America. And it has perhaps the two best-known examples of the genre, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Sadly, there’s no audiobook for this one, but trade paperbacks are very affordable.
On the Criminal Justice System
Since Kanye apparently believes that prison is the one thing that brings the races together, it’s worth examining exactly how untrue that is. There is a good chance that you’ve heard about Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindess—or at least you’ve seen Alexander breaking down her ideas in Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th. But even if you haven’t, Alexander’s book is worth reading, as an examination of how an ostensibly race-neutral set of laws had such devastating effects on people of color.
On Malcolm X
Kanye had some thoughts about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. after a friend compared Yeezy and Virgil Abloh to the hallowed pair of black leaders. “Certain icons is just too far in the past and not relatable,” Kanye told Charlamagne tha God. But both Malcolm and Martin have legacies that are alive and being engaged with and argued about every day. And Kanye didn’t have a problem meeting with someone born just a few years after Malcolm and who was in the same milieu (and who, remember, had a rather contentious relationship with Malcolm), Louis Farrakhan, and then telling an arena full of people about it.
Malcolm X’s autobiography is essential, which should go without saying. But Manning Marable’s 2011 biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is almost as important, and fills in some areas that the autobiography leaves blank. You can read (or listen to) it here.
On Class, Race, and Gender
Kanye making ill-informed statements is not new. Back in 2013, he described classism as a “new” problem. Someone should tell that to Karl Marx—author of many class analyses, including one literally called The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850—whose 200th birthday is in just a few days.
West also referred to classism as “racism’s cousin,” which is, in an American context at least, not a terrible metaphor. But it is also sexism’s cousin, and a cousin to many other types of oppression as well. And one group that has historically sat at the intersection of many of these—to the point where a member of the group invented the very term “intersectionality”—is black women.
The 1995 anthology Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought deals with the intersections of class, race, sexuality, and more in incredibly powerful ways. It’s edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and features contributions from June Jordan, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and many more crucial voices.
On Donald Trump
Kanye West likes Donald Trump for one simple reason: Trump makes Yeezy think that he too could be President someday. But Yeezy seems willfully ignorant of why so many people are shocked and offended by his support of Trump. Wayne Barrett’s 1992 book (updated with a chapter on the 2016 campaign) Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention was mostly written long before the nightmare fever dream we’re currently living in, but it tells you most of what you need to know. Barrett was perhaps the first journalist to write about Trump, exposing how a young Donald only succeeded because of his father’s connections; how he refused to rent to black tenants in his buildings; and how he attempted to buy off the writer who was investigating all of this stuff. This book covers all that, but also his business triumphs and the spectacular failures of the 1980s and early ’90s.