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SKYCTC Learning Commons

Learning Commons Services and Resources

This is a guide to the SKYCTC Learning Commons services and resources. Find the services and resources in the yellow tabs below.

SKYCTC Learning Commons' Favorite Poems

To discover poems of your own, see a sample of library and web resources below:

Women's History Month Reading List

Learning Commons Staff Picks for Black History Month 2024

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Roots - Recommended by Taylor Herald, Writing Specialist

Roots is a groundbreaking story of history and family that galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr - Recommended by River Manley, Student Worker

An autobiography written by a reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere.

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Brown Girl Dreaming - Recommended by Cara Moffett, Librarian

Jacqueline Woodson's National Book Award and Newbery Honor winner is a powerful memoir that tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.

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Invisible Man - Recommended by Ryan Dowell, Librarian

Describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which the narrator is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion.

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The Birds of Opulence - Recommended by Gulnisa Karadshayeva, Math Tutor

A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness. Crystal Wilkinson currently teaches at the University of Kentucky and is the 2021 Kentucky Poet Laureate.

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Bluest Eye - Recommended by Melissa Glore, Student Worker

The story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different.

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The Souls of Black Folk - Recommended by Kyle Threet, Writing Coach

In this founding work in the literature of black protest, Du Bois eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind.

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Yoga for Everyone - Recommended by Jackie Travis, Math Specialist

Written by yoga teacher, social justice activist, and leading voice of the Yoga for All movement Dianne Bondy, this book offers yoga for everyone, regardless of their shape, size, ethnicity, or level of ability. You can do all 50 poses and perform all 16 sequences for one singular experience that focuses on specific physical and mental issues.

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Hidden Figures - Recommended by Kathryne LeFevre, Director of the Learning Commons

This book tells the true story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program.

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Affrilachia - Recommended by Esther French, Librarian

A groundbreaking book of poetry at the intersection of Appalachian and African American literature.

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Underground Railroad - Recommended by Ryan St. Vincent, CIT Tutor

Pulitzer-prize winning novel that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

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Between the World and Me - Recommended by Juan Hernandez-Munoz, Student Worker

Through a series of questions to his adolescent son in a letter, the author offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men.

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The Trouble Between Us - Recommended by Michael Nichols, Writing Tutor

Explores why a racially integrated women's liberation movement did not develop in the United States.

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James Baldwin: Collected Essays - Recommended by Tate Allen, Tutor

James Baldwin was a uniquely prophetic voice in American letters. His brilliant and provocative essays made him the literary voice of the Civil Rights Era, and they continue to speak with powerful urgency to us today.