The Cultural Resistance Reader edited by Stephen Duncombe. All you’ll ever want to read about Cultural Resistance in one place.

“Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” from Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. A non-poem by the great poet about the importance of culture and creativity in allowing us to reach places that our socialized minds tell us we can’t.

Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain edited by by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. Looking for rebellion in unlikely places: punk rock, reggae, skinhead culture.

“Emphasis on Sport,” from Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic by Bertolt Brecht. The radical playwright’s advice to his fellow artists that if they want to have an impact they they need to make their art more fun…like soccer.

Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James. Memoir of the great Caribbean intellectual on his love for cricket: an Imperialist game that, ironically, made James an anti-Imperialist.

Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci. Stuck in a fascist prison, Gramsci thought and wrote about organizing and the role of culture in politics. A bit cryptic, but full of invaluable insights.

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The Politics of Aesthetics by Jacques Ranciere. Useful discussion from a contemporary philosopher on the different ways that art can be political, from reflecting the world to rearranging our very sense of it.

“Introduction” from Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin. What does a Soviet literary scholar writing about a medieval French writer have to do with activism? One word: Carnival! A great meditation on the subversive quality of laughter and spectacle.

Combahee River Collective Statement. A manifesto written by a black feminist collective in the mid-1970s. Classic articulation of the specificity of ones opression and identity. Useful to remind us that we are always dealing with particular people in particular contexts, not abstractions.

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