Volunteer Continuing Education Resources:
Documentaries, TV shows, and Films
13th (Netflix)
13th systematically goes through the decades following the passage of the 13th amendment to show how black people were targeted by the media, by the government, and by businesses to create a new form of slavery. It is a movie that will infuriate you, depress you, and hopefully spur you to action against a system that has done egregious harm to our fellow citizens. – Matt Goldberg
All in my Family (Netflix)
After starting a family of his very own in America, a gay filmmaker documents his loving, traditional Chinese family's process of acceptance.
All God's Children (Vimeo)
Presents a political, social, and religious analysis of sexual orientation within the context of the traditional African American values of freedom, inclusion, and the Christian ethic.
American Tragedy (Amazon Prime)
Sue Klebold attempts to reconcile how the son she affectionately referred to as "Sunshine Boy" became a school shooter. "If love could have stopped Columbine," she says, "Columbine would never have happened."
Audrie & Daisy (Netflix)
The documentary chronicles the stories of two high school students who were sexually assaulted. Audrie, 15, was subjected to such intense cyberbullying after the incident that she committed suicide. Daisy, 14 at the time of her assault, hears about Audrie’s story and tries to reach out, only to discover she’s already gone. The film tracks the events of both traumatic events while also chronicling how the institutions meant to protect citizens failed both of these victims.
Beautiful Boy (Amazon Prime)
Based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.
The Beginning of Life: The Series (Netflix)
Using breakthroughs in technology and neuroscience, this series examines how environment affects infants -- and how infants can affect our future. -Netflix
Bobbi Jo: Under the Influence (Amazon Prime)
Bobbi Jo Reed uses her testimony as a 'blueprint of hope' to transform lives and an entire community. This true story takes an honest look at the world of addiction and provides keys to recovery in Kansas City's most dangerous neighborhood.
Border _ : A compassionate documentary on Borderline Personality Disorder (YouTube)
A compassionate documentary on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Broken Rainbow (YouTube)
1985 documentary film about the government-enforced relocation of thousands of Navajo Native Americans from their ancestral homes in Arizona. The Navajo were relocated to aid mining speculation in a process that began in the 1970s and continues to this day.
Bully (Netflix)
This eye-opening documentary tracks the stories of five different families whose children are struggling to defend themselves from school bullies.
Chasing Heroin (YouTube)
A searing, two-hour investigation places America’s heroin and opioid crisis in a fresh and provocative light — telling the stories of individual addicts, but also illuminating the epidemic’s years-in-the-making social context, deeply examining shifts in U.S. drug policy, and exploring what happens when addiction is treated like a public health issue, not a crime.
Childhood 2.0 (YouTube)
Featuring actual parents and kids as well as industry-leading experts in child safety and development, this documentary dives into the real-life issues facing kids today — including cyberbullying, online predators, suicidal ideation, and more.
Country Boys (PBS.ORG)
David Sutherland, acclaimed producer of The Farmer’s Wife, returns to rural America with Country Boys, an epic tale of two boys coming of age in eastern Kentucky’s Appalachian hills. Viewers meet Cody Perkins and Chris Johnson, classmates at an alternative high school who inhabit the same world yet are light years apart. Through intimate cinematography and extraordinary sound design that puts the viewer inside the skin of the story’s colorful and memorable characters, Country Boys traverses the emotional terrain of two boys who are about to become men, documenting their struggles to overcome hardship and poverty and find meaning in their lives.
A Dangerous Son (HBOMAX)
This film focuses on three families with a child who has a serious mental illness, and the struggles of each to find appropriate treatment.
The Day I Age Out (YouTube)
A three-part series following two foster youths as they age out of Washington State’s extended foster care system.
Every Body (AppleTV, Peacock, ITunes)
Focuses on three individuals who overcame shame, secrecy, and unauthorized surgery throughout their childhoods to enjoy successful adulthoods. Choosing to ignore medical advice to conceal their bodies and coming out as who they truly were.
Far From the Tree (Hulu)
Discover the courage of compassion through the eyes of parents journeying towards acceptance of their unique children. Based on The New York Times bestseller.
The Fight (Amazon Prime)
The Fight is a documentary about civil rights lawyers. It involves topics on abortion, families being separated, the LGBTQ community, and racial injustices.
Foster (HBO Max)
Oscar(R) winners, Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer, roam courtrooms, foster homes, juvenile halls, and the streets of Los Angeles to tell the moving human stories behind the largest county child protection agency in the United States.
Heroin(E) (Netflix)
This Oscar-nominated film follows three women- a fire chief, a judge, and a street missionary- battling West Virginia's devastating opioid epidemic.
Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County (HBOMAX)
A documentary that explores the world of children who reside in discounted motels within walking distance of Disneyland, living in limbo as their families struggle to survive in one of the wealthiest regions of America. The parents of motel kids are often hard workers who don't earn enough to own or rent homes. As a result, they continue to live week-to-week in motels, hoping against hope for an opportunity that might allow them to move up in the O.C.
How Poor People Survive in the USA (YouTube)
Many people in the United States fall through the social safety net. In the structurally weak mining region of the Appalachians, it has become almost normal for people to go shopping with food stamps. And those who lose their home often have no choice but to live in a car. There are so many homeless people in Los Angeles that relief organizations have started to build small wooden huts to provide them with a roof over their heads. The number of homeless children has also risen dramatically, reaching 1.5 million, three times more than during the Great Depression the 1930s. A documentary about the fate of the poor in the United States today.
I am Not Your Negro (Amazon Prime)
James Baldwin died in 1987, but the civil rights leaders’ work stands today as some of the most poignant and topical writing on race. I Am Not Your Negro is based on Remember This House, the book Baldwin was writing at the time of his death.
I Just Killed My Dad (Netflix)
Anthony Templet shot his father and never denied it. But why he did it is a complex question with profound implications. Explore Anthony's psyche prior to the events of June 3, 2019 and the journey of his mental and emotional aftermath.
In My Mind: Anorexia (YouTube)
Three-years ago teenager Arley Gower was diagnosed with anorexia. It’s been a long and challenging road to recovery, but through her personal diaries we learn of the strength it took, and the vital role her family played in the journey.
Kind Hearted Woman (PBS.org)
In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer’s Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Kind Hearted Woman is a special co-presentation of FRONTLINE and Independent Lens.
Life Animated (Hulu)
About 1 in 54 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network. Life Animated is about a boy who has been diagnosed with autism. It shows his journey adapting to the world and how his family helps and supports him.
Maid: Limited Television Series (Netflix)
The series is inspired by Stephanie Land's memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive. Its story focuses on a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship, subsequently struggling to provide for her daughter by getting a job cleaning houses.
Minding the Gap (Hulu)
The incredible documentary Minding the Gap chronicles the lives of three young men growing up in Rockford, Illinois who have a passion for skateboarding. But as we quickly learn through the early portion of the film, skating is far more than a hobby—it’s an outlet for anger, frustration, and desperation. Bing Liu’s doc perfectly encapsulates what it’s like to be forced to grow up when you may lack the experience or maturity to do so, and how the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself due to factors both internal and external.
Of Two Minds (Amazon Prime)
Of Two Minds is an award-winning feature documentary that explores the extraordinary lives, struggles and successes of a few of the over five million Americans living with bipolar disorder. It puts a human face on the topic, providing an intimate, sometimes painful, sometimes painfully funny, look at those who live in its shadows: our parents and children, our friends and lovers...and ourselves.
Outside the House http://outsidethehousedoc.com/
Darnell Lamont Walker’s documentary Outside The House, focuses on the barriers to discussing mental health in Black communities.
A Place at the Table (Amazon Prime and YouTube)
A documentary that investigates incidents of hunger experienced by millions of Americans, and proposed solutions to the problem.
Pray Away (Netflix)
Ex-leaders and a survivor of the so called “conversion therapy” movement speak out about its harm to the LGBTQ+ community and its devastating persistence.
Precious (available for rental on AppleTV, Amazon Prime, Google Play, etc)
In New York City's Harlem circa 1987, an abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction.
Poor Kids (YouTube)
Travel to the Quad Cities, a great American crossroads along the border of Iowa and Illinois, to explore the lives of children living in the suburbs of the nation’s heartland and growing up poor. Told from the point of view of the children themselves, this one-hour documentary offers perspective on the impact of unemployment, foreclosure and financial distress as seen through the eyes of the children affected.
The Poorest Kids In America (YouTube)
In the United States, child poverty has reached record levels, with over 16 million children now affected. Food banks are facing unprecedented demand, and homeless shelters now have long waiting lists, as families who have known a much better life have to leave their homes, sometimes with just a few day's notice. In this documentary, we meet three children whose families are struggling to get by and asks them to tell us what life in modern America really looks like through their eyes.
Rain in a Dry Land (Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Vudu)
Rain in a Dry Land is an eye-opening documentary that chronicles the lives of two Somali Bantu families who escape militants during the Somalian Civil War. They are then transported by relief services from refugee life to Springfield, Massachusetts, and Atlanta, Georgia. As they settle into newfound American life, they find themselves confronting racism, poverty, and culture shock. The documentary captures their attempts to learn more about American life and their efforts to survive in the U.S. in order to create a safe haven for their war-torn families. Rain in a Dry Land is available on Amazon Video, YouTube and Vudu.
Recovery Boys (Netflix)
In a region ravaged by opioid abuse, four young men in a farming-based rehab forge a bond as they try to reinvent their lives after years of addiction.
Rewind (Amazon Prime)
The statistics are alarming: one out of four girls and one of out of six boys are sexually abused before they are 18 years old. In 2014, the CDC reported “four-fifths (80.3%) of perpetrators were parents, 6.1 percent were relatives other than parents, and 4.2 percent were unmarried partners of parents.” In Rewind, Sasha Neuilinger shares his poignant story about his experience as a childhood victim and survivor of child sexual abuse by his uncle. Sasha has been a long time supporter and partner with CASA organizations across the United States and travels nationally as a public speaker advocating for reforms in child advocacy and child abuse prevention. His TedX talk "Trauma is irreversible. How it shapes us is our choice" has been viewed over 284,000 times. See his TedX talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_WL5iqvPlY
Sound and Fury (Prime Video, ITunes, SlingTV)
If you could make your deaf child hear, would you? Academy Award-nominated Sound and Fury follows the intimate, heart-rending tale of the Artinians, an extended family with deaf and hearing members across three generations. Together they confront a technological device that can help the deaf to hear but may also threaten deaf culture - and their bonds with each other.
Short Term 12 (Roku Chanel, Amazon Prime, Vudu)
A 20-something supervising staff member of a residential treatment facility navigates the troubled waters of that world alongside her co-worker and longtime boyfriend.
Take Care of Maya (Netflix)
As a medical team tries to understand 10-year-old Maya Kowalski's rare illness, they begin to question her parents. Suddenly, Maya is in state custody - despite a family desperate to bring their daughter home.
Take Your Pills (Netflix)
Take Your Pills is about the pill epidemic and the recent spike in ADHD medication addiction. It talks about the growing population of medicated youth and the symptoms and side effects from said drug use.
Trans (Amazon Prime)
This thoughtful documentary offers a crash course on the issues surrounding transgender Americans. - Daily Dot
Unadopted (YouTube)
What does it mean to be Unadopted? That's what Noel Anaya sets out to discover after reading a copy of his foster care file. Follow Noel in his quest for answers about his family and his experience in the foster care system. The story interweaves Noel’s own journey with three other teens who, like so many foster youth, are at an emotional crossroad that may impact the rest of their lives: whether to emancipate from the foster care system, opt into extended care, or pursue a forever family.
Undocumented in the Pandemic (YouTube, PBS.ORG)
An immigrant mother’s struggle to keep her family afloat, with her husband detained by ICE in a facility where COVID is spreading. With The Marshall Project & the Pulitzer Center.
Waiting for Superman (Hulu)
The American education system is held up to a harsh light in this documentary which follows a handful of families trying to get their children into better-performing schools, and the bureaucracy that entails.
The Wolfpack (Hulu)
The Angulo family serves as the subject of this fascinating doc that follows a group of kids, who are trapped inside their four-bedroom home in Manhattan, learning about the world from watching old movies. The family’s seven children, six brothers and one sister, were homeschooled and confined to their apartment in the city by their parents for very strange reasons.
Podcasts
All My Relations (available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify)
All My Relations is a team of folks who care about representations, and how Native peoples are represented in mainstream media. Between them they have decades of experience working in and with Native communities, and writing and speaking about issues of representation.
Believed (available on NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts)
How did Larry Nassar, an Olympic gymnastics doctor, get away with abusing hundreds of women and girls for two decades? Believed is an inside look at how a team of women won a conviction in one of the largest serial sexual abuse cases in U.S. history. It's a story of survivors finding their power in a cultural moment when people are coming to understand how important that is. It's also an unnerving exploration of how even well-meaning adults can fail to believe.
Busted: America's Poverty Myths (available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and others)
On the Media’s series on poverty is grounded in the Talmudic notion that “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Brooke Gladstone traveled to Ohio to learn from people living the varied reality of poverty today, and to unpack the myths that shape our private presumptions as well as our policy decisions. In each episode, these podcast feature the voices and complex stories of individuals, as well essential context from scholars, to lay open the tales we tell ourselves.
CaseyCast Podcast: Parental Incarceration (available on SoundCloud)
It’s a simple question.
What would you want if you were separated from your kids?
In the Foundation’s new podcast, social worker Tanya Krupat challenges listeners to place this very personal framework around the issue of parental incarceration.
Child Welfare Information Gateway Podcast Series (available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and others)
This podcast series, produced on behalf of the Children's Bureau, presents a series of interviews and group conversations intended to provide beneficial information for busy child welfare and social work professionals. The podcasts cover a wide range of topics and provide perspectives from communities served by child welfare agencies along with tips and stories from professionals about implementing new services and programs, working across agencies, and improving practice.
Code Switch
Episode: “Ask Code Switch: Parents Just Don't Understand”
Or do they? This week, we're answering some of your toughest questions about race and your parents. How do you create boundaries with immigrant parents? What dynamics might interracial couples bring to families? And why do so many Black parents want to prevent their kids from looking "too grown"? But a reminder to many of y'all out there: The real toughest questions about your parents are ones we can't answer. For those, you might just have to do something terrifying — call up the 'rents and ask them yourself.
Disability Visibility (available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and others)
This is life from a disabled lens. Disability Visibility is a podcast hosted by San Francisco night owl Alice Wong featuring conversations on politics, culture, and media with disabled people. If you’re interested in disability rights, social justice, and intersectionality, this show is for you. It’s time to hear more disabled people in podcasting and radio. Named one of the 15 best podcasts by women that you’re not listening to by Refinery 29 in 2021.
Embedded
Episode 1: "The House" and Episode 6 "We Found Joy” (available on Spotify, NPR ONE, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or NPR.org)
In Episode 1, “The House” Meet the people inside a house at the center of an HIV outbreak and addiction. In Episode 6, “We Found Joy” host Kelly McEvers goes back to Austin, Indiana to see how Joy, the nurse from the first episode, is dealing with her addiction to a painkiller called Opana.
A Fostered Life
Episode 24: "Black to the Beginning" (available on Apple Podcasts)
In the non-adoptive world, where people only know of adoption but have not actually lived as part of an adoption story, there is often a romanticization of adoption. Adoption is often sentimentalized and treated as a “happily ever after” story. But anyone living inside of an adoption story knows that adoption is a really complex topic with multiple lifelong ramifications, and there is no single “Adoption Narrative.” And while there is a growing body of work that focuses on transracial adoption and amplifying adoptees’ voices, the unique perspective of Black adoptees and Black adoptive parents and Black birth parents is one that we don’t hear much about. Dr. Samantha Coleman and Sandria Washington aim to change that.
Good Inside (available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)
Clinical psychologist and mom of three Becky Kennedy, Ph.D.—aka Dr. Becky—is out with a new weekly podcast to help give expert tips to parents everywhere. Good Inside, available on Apple and Spotify, dives into the questions parents have today on parenting, forming stronger relationships with their kids, and helping their children grow—all in under 30 minutes.
Included: The Disability Equity Podcast (available on Spotify)
A podcast from the Johns Hopkins University Disability Health Research Center that challenges stereotypes of disability by sharing stories, data, and news. Episode transcripts can be found at http://disabilityhealth.jhu.edu/included
Real Talk About Children’s Mental Health (available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Tune In)
In each episode, we get real about the unimaginable mental, social, and behavioral health challenges faced by Detroit’s most vulnerable children and families every day.
Scrambled: The Children‘s Mental Health Podcast (available on Apple Podcasts)
Anxiety, Depression, PTSD, Trauma: Children are impacted by all of these and more. Scrambled: The Children’s Mental Health Podcast is here to normalize talking about mental health and provide listeners with psychoeducation about children’s mental health. Hosted by a former television broadcaster and father alongside a therapist and mom, you will hear relatable discussion, learn about mental health, receive recommendations and tips, and enjoy guest interviews with families who have or are living with childhood mental health issues
Special Needs Kids Are People Too! (available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and others)
Welcome to the Special Needs Kids are People Too! Podcast with Amy Bodkin, EdS. Amy is an Autistic adult who also happens to be a School Psychologist turned Special Needs Consultant and Public Speaker! Amy is an Advocate for seeing every child as a person, not a diagnosis because a special needs kid is just like any other child, just more so!
Status (available on ITunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Radio Public, etc)
Status tells the human stories that immigration impacts. Somebody might be in the US on an E-1, an H-1B, a J-2, or an F-1. They might be undocumented or they may have their green card. They might be moving to Canada for a job or to the UK to escape violence in their home country. In any case, every immigrant has a story. We tell those stories and how the complex reality of immigration weaves its way into the narrative.
Supporting children who have lost a parent (available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts)
In this episode of the Emerging Minds podcast, Gill discusses the need for practitioners to develop preparedness in their work with children who have lost a parent, and to be able to have conversations with them that are supportive and reconnecting.
The Trauma Therapist Podcast (available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)
This podcast has been putting out potent episodes about trauma and mental health since 2014. It has 4.5 stars on Apple Podcast and over 300 ratings. Each episode is roughly 30 minutes long. Hosted by Guy Macpherson, Ph.D., most episodes focus on a dynamic and powerful conversation between Guy and an expert in the field of psychology and trauma. Guests range from renowned doctor Gabor Mate to well-known author and psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. Over 500 episodes span the depths of trauma, which can be accessed across podcast platforms like iTunes and Spotify.
This Land (Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and others)
Season 2
ALM – as referred to in court documents – is a Navajo and Cherokee toddler. When he was a baby, a white couple from the suburbs of Dallas wanted to adopt him, but a federal law said they couldn’t. So they sued. Today, the lawsuit doesn’t just impact the future of one child, or even the future of one law. It threatens the entire legal structure defending Native American rights.
This is Normal (available on iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and others)
'This is Normal' is a podcast where young people talk about their own mental health challenges -- and how they got through them. Because when we share our stories, we can all feel a little less alone. Part of the Kids in Crisis series by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.
You’re Wrong About
Episode: “Homelessness” (available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and others)
Mike tells Sarah what happened when Utah set out to solve one of America's most intractable problems: Homelessness.
Books
$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Kathryn J. Edin
A revelatory account of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't think it exists. After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn't seen since the mid-1990s -- households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children. Where do these families live? How did they get so desperately poor? Edin has "turned sociology upside down" ( Mother Jones ) with her procurement of rich -- and truthful -- interviews. Through the book's many compelling profiles, moving and startling answers emerge. The authors illuminate a troubling trend: a low-wage labor market that increasingly fails to deliver a living wage, and a growing but hidden landscape of survival strategies among America's extreme poor. More than a powerful expos , $2.00 a Day delivers new evidence and new ideas to our national debate on income inequality.
The A-to-Z Self-Care Handbook for Social Workers and Other Helping Professionals
by Erlene Grise-Owens
Self-care is an imperative for the ethical practice of social work and other helping professions. From A (awareness) to Z (ZZZZ--Sleep), the editors and contributors use a simple A-to-Z framework to outline strategies to help you build a self-care plan with specific goals and ways to reach them realistically.
ADHD and Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table
by Blake E. S. Taylor
Blake Taylor's mother first suspected he had ADHD when he, at only three years of age, tried to push his infant sister in her carrier off the kitchen table. As time went by, Blake developed a reputation for being hyperactive and impulsive. He launched rockets (accidentally) into neighbor's swimming pools and set off alarms in museums. Blake was diagnosed formally with ADHD when he was five years old. In ADHD and Me, he tells about the next twelve years as he learns to live with both the good and bad sides of life with ADHD.
Adopting the Hurt Child: Hope for Families with Special-Needs Kids - A Guide for Parents and Professionals
by Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky
Without avoiding the grim statistics, this book reveals the real hope that hurting children can be healed through adoptive and foster parents, social workers, and others who care. Includes information on foreign adoptions.
Appalachian Daughter
by Mary Jane Salyers
This coming-of-age novel depicts the trials, triumphs, and tragedies that befall Maggie Martin, the eldest of eight children whose family struggles to make ends meet on a hilly farm in Campbell Hollow, a narrow mountain valley in East Tennessee.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing
by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.
Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir
by Domingo Martinez
Lyrical and gritty, this authentic coming-of-age story about a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas, insightfully illuminates a little-understood corner of America. Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving, in a Texas border town in the 1980s. Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author’s boyhood spent in his sister’s hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring, complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed but fiercely protective older brother, Daniel.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
Chasing the High: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person's Experience with Substance Abuse
by Kyle Keegan
Kyle Keegan was like many teenagers: eager to fit in at school, he experimented with alcohol and drugs. Soon, his abuse of these substances surpassed experimentation and became a ruthless addiction to heroin that nearly destroyed his life. Now in recovery, Keegan tells his remarkable story in Chasing the High.
Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education
By Stephanie Land
Maid was a story about a housecleaner, but it was also a story about a woman with a dream. In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line—Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties.
Connecting With The Autism Spectrum: How To Talk, How To Listen, And Why You Shouldn’t Call It High-Functioning
by Casey “Remrov” Vormer
For a friend, family member, or coworker with autism, communication can be challenging. But Connecting with the Autism Spectrum can help you find common ground with expert tips and helpful insights about talking (and listening) to neurodiverse adults so you can make your interactions more transparent, meaningful, and rewarding for all.
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
by William Styron
A work of great personal courage and a literary tour de force, this bestseller is Styron's true account of his descent into a crippling and almost suicidal depression. Styron is perhaps the first writer to convey the full terror of depression's psychic landscape, as well as the illuminating path to recovery.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
The Evolution of the Juvenile Court: Race, Politics, and the Criminalizing of Juvenile Justice
by Barry C. Feld
The juvenile court lies at the intersection of youth policy and crime policy. Its institutional practices reflect our changing ideas about children and crime control. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court provides a sweeping overview of the American juvenile justice system’s development and change over the past century. Noted law professor and criminologist Barry C. Feld places special emphasis on changes over the last 25 years―the ascendance of get tough crime policies and the more recent Supreme Court recognition that “children are different.”
The Explosive Child
by Ross Greene
Now in a revised and updated 6th edition, the groundbreaking, research-based approach to understanding and parenting children who frequently exhibit severe fits of temper and other challenging behaviors, from a distinguished clinician and pioneer in the field.
Faces of Foster Care: Messages of Hope, Hurt and Truth
By Lisa Aguirre
Faces of Foster Care has heartfelt and frank messages from people around the country who have been involved in some way with foster care. Told like mini memoirs, their inspiring and sometimes heartbreaking stories bring us into their lives and show us unique perspectives of foster care in the United States.
Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families
by Charles L. Whitfield
Dr. Whitfield provides a clear and effective introduction to the basic principles of recovery. This book is a modern classic, as fresh and useful today as it was more than a decade ago when first published. Here, frontline physician and therapist Charles Whitfield describes the process of wounding that the Child Within (True Self) experiences and shows how to differentiate the True Self from the false self. He also describes the core issues of recovery and more. Other writings on this topic have come and gone, while Healing the Child Within has remained a strong introduction to recognizing and healing from the painful effects of childhood trauma. Highly recommended by therapists and survivors of trauma.
Healing Justice Lineages: DREAMING AT THE CROSSROADS OF LIBERATION, COLLECTIVE CARE, AND SAFETY
By Cara Page and Erica Woodland
In this anthology, Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland guide readers through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes on generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression. They call forth the ancestral medicines and healing practices that have sustained communities who have survived genocide and oppression, while radically imagining what comes next.
How It Feels to Float
by Helena Fox
Biz knows how to float, right there on the surface--normal okay regular fine. She has her friends, her mom, the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone anything--not about her dark, runaway thoughts, not about kissing Grace or noticing Jasper, the new boy. And not about seeing her dad. Because her dad died when she was seven.
But after what happens on the beach, the tethers that hold Biz steady come undone. Her dad disappears and, with him, all comfort. It might be easier, better, sweeter to float all the way away? Or maybe stay a little longer, find her father, bring him back to her. Or maybe--maybe maybe maybe--there's a third way Biz just can't see yet.
Debut author Helena Fox tells a story about love, grief, and inter-generational mental illness, exploring the hard and beautiful places loss can take us, and honoring those who hold us tightly when the current wants to tug us out to sea.
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
by Peter A. Levine
In this culmination of his life’s work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder, but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions.
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
by Andrea Elliott
In Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care. Out on the street, Dasani becomes a fierce fighter “to protect those who I love.” When she finally escapes city life to enroll in a boarding school, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning your family, and yourself?
In Their Names: The Untold Story of Victims’ Rights, Mass Incarceration, and the Future of Public Safety
by Lenore Anderson
In Their Names busts open the public safety myth that uses victims’ rights to perpetuate mass incarceration, and offers a formula for what would actually make us safe, from the widely respected head of Alliance for Safety and Justice.
It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
by Mark Wolynn
It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson
Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
killing rage: Ending Racism
by bell hooks
More than two decades before Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement roiled America, bell hooks was declaring that abolishing racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. In Killing Rage, one of our premier cultural and social critics brings the Black feminist’s voice to bear on this country’s public discourse on race, redressing the historical shunting of women’s writing in this sphere to the side. In incisive essays, hooks addresses the wide spectrum of topics dealing with race and racism in the United States: friendship between Black women and white women; psychological trauma among African Americans; and internalized racism in movies and the media. hooks tackles the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it, sharing a vision where “killing rage”―the fierce anger of Black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism―offers not only a wellspring of love and strength, but also a realistic catalyst for positive change.
Liberated to the Bone: Histories. Bodies. Futures.
By Susan Raffo
A way to deepen our understanding of the relationship between social justice and the work of healing--healing as individuals, communities, and societies.
Lost Childhoods: The Plight Of The Parentified Child
by Gregory J. Jurkovic
Lost Childhoods is an exploration of the complicated individual, family, sociocultural, and existential-ethical forces at work in the lives of parentified children—and treatment strategies that systematically address different layers of the parentification process.
A Minor Revolution: How Prioritizing Kids Benefits Us All
by Adam Benforado
Drawing on the latest research on the value of early intervention, investment, and empowerment, A Minor Revolution makes the urgent case for putting children first—in our budgets and policies, in how we develop products and enact laws, and in our families and communities. Childhood is the window of opportunity for all of us.
Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America
by Nefertiti Austin
Nefertiti Austin shares her story of starting a family through adoption as a single Black woman. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces off against stereotypes of single Black moms, and confronts the reality of what it looks like to raise children of color and answer their questions about racism in modern-day America.
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
by Resmaa Menakem
In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
by Michelle Alexander
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
No Sugar Coating: The Coffee Talk You Need About Foster Parenting
by Jillana Goble
No Sugar-Coating is a warm, straight-up guide that reads like a conversation with a knowledgeable friend. It is filled with practical suggestions interwoven with compelling narrative rooted in foster parenting experience. No Sugar-Coating offers valuable insight for those eager to learn more about foster parenting as well as an anchoring for those who have already welcomed vulnerable children through their front door.
No Visible Bruises
by Rachel Louise Louise Snyder
Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements from across the country, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.
On Their Own: What Happens to Kids When They Age Out of the Foster Care System
by Martha Shirk and Gary Stangler
Each year, as many as 25,000 teenagers "age out" of foster care, usually when they turn eighteen. For years, a government agency had made every important decision for them. Suddenly, they are on their own, with no one to count on. What does it mean to be eighteen and on your own, without the family support and personal connections that most young people rely on? For many youth raised in foster care, it means largely unhappy endings, including sudden homelessness, unemployment, dead-end jobs, loneliness, and despair. On Their Own tells the compelling stories of ten young people whose lives are full of promise, but who face economic and social barriers stemming from the disruptions of foster care. This book calls for action to provide youth in foster care the same opportunities on the road to adulthood that most of our youth take for granted-access to higher education, vocational training, medical care, housing, and relationships within their communities. On Their Own is meant to serve as a clarion call not only to policymakers, but to all Americans who care about the futures of our young people.
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”
By Héctor Tobar
A beautiful exploration of what binds us across the label of “Latino.” Tobar accurately captures the stress of migration and having your family torn across two continents; the stress of coming to a country that actively does not want us to be here. This is a book for anyone who has left home, unsure if they would ever return or see their families in person ever again. Fair warning: there will be lots of tears.
Parenting Children of Trauma: The Foster-Adoption Guide to Understanding Attachment Disorder
by Marcy Pusey
Many foster and adoptive parents are raising children with complex emotional trauma, desperate for answers to heal their families. Caught off guard, these families find themselves with shattered dreams, shattered homes, and shattered hearts, with nowhere to turn for answers. Extended family members, friends, and the greater community don't understand the challenges and can sometimes add to the problems these families face, sometimes prolonging the healing process for all.
Poverty, by America
by Matthew Desmond
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
by Monique W. Morris
The “powerful” (Michelle Alexander) exploration of the harsh and harmful experiences confronting Black girls in schools, and how we can instead orient schools toward their flourishing
Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids
by Hunter Clarke-Fields MSAE
A kinder, more compassionate world starts with kind and compassionate kids. In Raising Good Humans, you’ll find powerful and practical strategies to break free from “reactive parenting” habits and raise kind, cooperative, and confident kids.
Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America
By Gregory Smithers, Raven E. Heavy Runner
A sweeping history of Indigenous traditions of gender, sexuality, and resistance that reveals how, despite centuries of colonialism, Two-Spirit people are reclaiming their place in Native nations.Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.
The Shadow in Our Lives: One family's recovery from child sexual abuse
by Tracey Wilson Heisler
It was October 31st, 2003—Halloween. The kids had just gotten home from school, and Tracey Wilson Heisler’s family was getting ready to go trick or treating. That’s when her daughter finally confessed that she was being sexually abused. This is the story of one family’s experience with child sexual abuse—made even more difficult by the fact that the perpetrator was her father. In this compelling memoir, Tracey Wilson Heisler, MA takes us through her family’s experiences step-by-step from discovery through recovery. Then she gives us a look at what she did right and what she now wishes she had done differently. Both memoir and self-help guide, The Shadow in Our Lives: One family’s recovery from child sexual abuse is a must-read book not only for anyone who suspects abuse in their family as well as professionals working with victims and families.
The Souls of Black Folk: With the Talented Tenth and the Souls of White Folk
by W. E. B. Du Bois
Believing that one can know the "soul" of a race by knowing the souls of individuals, W. E. B. Du Bois combines history and stirring autobiography to reflect on the magnitude of American racism and to chart a path forward against oppression, and introduces the now-famous concepts of the color line, the veil, and double-consciousness.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson
In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies about Addiction and the Truth about Recovery
by David Poses
In his groundbreaking memoir, The Weight of Air, David chronicles his struggle to overcome mental illness and addiction. By age nineteen, he'd been through medical detox, inpatient rehab, twelve-step programs, and a halfway house. He saw his drug use as a symptom of depression, but the experts insisted that addiction was the problem. Over the next thirteen years, he went from one relapse to the next, drowning in guilt, shame, and secrets, until he finally found an evidence-based treatment that not only saved his life, but helped him thrive.
To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care
by Cris Beam
Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race
by Beverly Daniel Tatum
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues?
Why Does He Do That?
by Lundy Bancroft
In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship.