World Builders’ Book Club

Reads for a future rooted in love, solidarity & liberation.

The Reading List

February 2025: Liberation – How to Get Free

Feb. 2: “A Bug’s Life” – Disney Pixar

An inventive ant, Flik, sets out to find hero bugs to help defend his ant colony from an invading, exploitative band of grasshoppers led by the villainous Hopper. Instead of heroes, he recruits a band of circus bugs. Tune in to unpack the themes of oppression, liberation, and collective action in “A Bug’s Life.”
Image courtesy Walt Disney Pictures

Feb. 9: Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis

Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “Freedom is a constant struggle.”
On Bookshop.org: Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis

Feb. 16: Short Reads

The Black Panther Party 10-Point Program

The Ten-Point Program is a set of guidelines for the Black Panther Party that states their ideals and ways of operation, a “combination of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.”

Why I Won’t Vote” by W.E.B. Du Bois

Du Bois condemns both Democrats and Republicans for their indifferent positions on the influence of corporate wealth, racial inequality, arms proliferation and unaffordable health care.

Feb. 23: We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba

“Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.”
– Mariame Kaba

March 2025: Solidarity – Standing together

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next) by Dean Spade

Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea by Leah Hunt-Hendriz & Astra Taylor

April 2025

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski & Amelia Nagoski

Past World-Building Reads

January 2025 reads: Love as a Social Value

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. She builds on M. Scott Peck’s definition of love —  “the will to extend oneself to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” — to help excavate layers of lovelessness & more effectively create a life of love.

Short Read: “Nothing Personal” by James Baldwin

Baldwin’s thoughts move through an interconnected range of questions, from America’s fixation on eternal youth, to its refusal to recognize the past, its addiction to consumerism, and the lovelessness that fuels it in its cities and popular culture. 

Strength to Love by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“By reaching into and beyond ourselves and tapping the transcendent moral ethic of love, we shall overcome these evils.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.