A Holiday Gift From Sonali: Books of the Year
Dear subscribers, what a year it has been. From the June 2025 closure of YES! Media, where I lost the main sponsor of my show, Rising Up With Sonali, to pivoting into independence and freelance work, I've had quite a tumultuous few months. But, it has also been rewarding in the most unexpected ways. Hundreds of you came through to sign up for paid memberships and sustain the production of this program. And for that, I am TRULY grateful.
I honestly didn't think it was possible but you proved me wrong. ♥️♥️♥️
As I ready myself for a couple of weeks off at the end of the year to spend the holidays with my family, I want to share a gift with you: my book recommendations for the year along with free access to the videos of my interviews with the authors. Please consider purchasing and gifting copies of some or all of these books to yourself or your loved ones. In doing so, you'll be supporting independent authors and publishers!
P.S. This'll be the last email you'll get from me until January 6, 2025. Happy Holidays to you!
- My shameless first plugs are my own books: Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World is Possible, which was released in January 2025 by Seven Stories Press, and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice which came out in summer 2023 by City Lights Books. You can purchase them directly from the publishers here and here.
- Another book I covered on Rising Up With Sonali with a focus on abolition is Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons.
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Watch the video of my interview with author Dr. Brittany Friedman:
- Two history books I highly recommend are We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953 and Malcolm Lives! The Official Biography of Malcolm X for Young Readers. Watch the videos of my interviews with authors Shaun Richman and Ibram X Kendi (EXTENDED VERSION).
- Two excellent books on disinformation, censorship, propaganda, and more are Mara Einstein's Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults, and Project Censored's State of the Free Press 2025. Below is my EXTENDED interview with Mara Einstein and my conversation with Project Censored's Andy Lee Roth.
- No year-end booklist would be complete without delving into Israel's genocide of Palestinians. I had the honor this year of speaking with four incredible authors: Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad on her book The Eyes of Gaza: A Diary of Resilience; Palestinian American poet and academic, Omar Zahzah on his book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestine Liberation Struggle; Israeli academic Ilan Pappe on his book, Israel on the Brink, And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence, and Jewish American artist and activist S.A. Bachman's book of protest and poetry that she edited and illustrated called Art of Defiance: Protest Graphics and Poetry for Palestine, featuring poetry from people such as Basman Aldirawi. Watch all four video conversations below:
- I also featured books on racial justice, white supremacy, and immigration including Gabrielle Oliveira's Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life and Dina Gilio-Whitaker's Who Gets to Be Indian? Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity. Below are my interviews with the authors:
- And finally, I highly recommend books that help us change our culture and narratives around race, democracy, equity, and our common humanity: Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements by Shanelle Matthews and Marzena Zukowska and Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down by Anand Pandian. Watch the authors discuss these powerful books below:
None of this would have been possible without the support of paying subscribers!