(Image Sarah Mirk used under CC 2.0 via)
As the lists of hate crimes compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Slate and The New York Times prove every week, bigotry in the United States persists. (As noted before, statistics on hate crimes here in Germany are hardly more heartening.) As debates over the best way to stem such crimes abound, a judge in Virginia has ordered a group of minors found guilty of defacing a historic black schoolhouse to spend the next year reading one book each month about various human rights struggles and to write a report on each, analyzing it in both historical and modern contexts.
She was given the idea by prosecutor Alejandra Rueda, who told the Times: “It occurred to me that the way these kids are going to learn about this stuff is if they read about it, more than anything. Yes, they could walk into court and plead guilty and get put on probation and do some community service, but it wasn’t really going to bring the message home.” The books from which they can choose are:
1) The Color Purple by Alice Walker
2) Native Son by Richard Wright
3) Exodus by Leon Uris
4) Mila 18 by Leon Uris
5) Trinity by Leon Uris
6) My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
7) The Chosen by Chaim Potok
8) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
9) Night by Elie Wiesel
10) The Crucible by Arthur Miller
11) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
12) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
13) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
14) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
15) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
16) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
17) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
18) Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
19) Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
20) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
21) A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind
22) Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
23) Black Boy by Richard Wright
24) The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
25) The Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt
26) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
27) Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
28) The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
29) Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
30) The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
31) The Help by Kathryn Stockett
32) Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
33) Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton
34) A Dry White Season by André Brink
35) Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides
My own personal recommendations would include Jubilee by Margaret Walker, Trash by Dorothy Allison and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, since they contributed profoundly to opening my world view to perspectives and experiences I had never before considered. Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi and Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum were among the first nationally acclaimed novels I read that credibly portrayed experiences of physical disability. Please share any titles missing from the list that have had a similar effect on you in the comments.
Painting On Scars 
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