5 Powerful Books that Spark Conversations about Social Justice
- unabridgedpod
- Sep 19, 2025
- 4 min read
Curated by Jen Moyers (@jen.loves.books)
If you're looking for stories that dig deep and get people talking, this list is a great place to start. Each of these five books takes on big topics—like race, addiction, inequality, and the justice system—through unforgettable characters and gripping storytelling.
From the quiet intensity of Transcendent Kingdom to the bold, imaginative world of The City We Became, these books offer plenty to unpack and discuss. Whether you've been thinking about social justice themes for a while or are just starting out, these reads are sure to lead to thoughtful conversations.
Yaa Gyasi's TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM - A Close Examination of Addiction and Its Impact on Family (Ashley's Review)
From the review: "In Transcendent Kingdom, we meet Gifty, who is a scientist working in a research lab. She pursues an in-depth study of addiction using mice, and she's measuring the ways that the mice react to exposure to Ensure, which triggers addictive behaviors in some mice. Ultimately, Gifty seeks a way to curb those addictions for the animals in her study. Her pursuit is courageous, and she faces the tasks with determination, but Gifty also recognizes the limitations of scientific study." (Click the title above to read the full review.)
From the review: "As she did in her gorgeous book Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine uses a mixture of poetry, essays, and images through Just Us: An American Conversation. The book moves between the main pieces and connective pieces that are woven alongside the text, providing sources, in-the-moment fact checks, and further reflection.
"Rankine uses the intensely personal to explore the universal. She is wrestling with her own experiences as a way to grapple with American experience. She is both keenly aware of when she has been wronged . . . but she’s reflective and vulnerable enough to admit when she wrongs others, too." (Click the title above to read the full review.)
From the review: "Wow, friends, this was a phenomenal book. I was totally captivated by the story. In Tayari Jones's An American Marriage, Celestial and Roy, who live in Atlanta, are still early in their marriage when they go to visit his family in Louisiana. Instead of staying with his parents while they are there, they decide to stay at a local inn, which becomes a choice that they will each remember forever. While they are there, Roy crosses paths with a woman who later that night is assaulted by a man. She wrongly believes that man to be Roy -- and he winds ups with a twelve-year prison sentence. The novel focuses on the struggles that come as Celestial and Roy fight to stay together in their marriage despite the endless barriers that get in their way." (Click the title above to read the full review.)
From the review: "I'm a sucker for the movie scene when a team—maybe it's gunfighters in the Old West, maybe it's superheroes fighting to save the world—comes together. There's usually been some sort of establishment of backstory, and we come to know the characters individually, diving into each origin story. And then, there's that electricity, that feeling of the whole being more than the sum of its parts, that makes you just know that the good guys (or whoever you're rooting for!) will win.
"N. K. Jemisin's The City We Became gave me that same electricity." (Click the title above to read the full review.)
From the review: "Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson is the gut-wrenching tale of Mary, a young woman accused and convicted of killing an infant in the care of her mother when she is just nine years old. Mary has been to what she calls 'baby jail' and is now in a group home with young women who are in similar to her. Her current situation in the group home shapes her interactions and reactions with the people she encounters. Throughout the novel, Mary's reality is revealed as she deals with the day-to-day events that transpire at the group home, while her past is unraveled throughout the course of the novel in interactions with her mother and other people from her present and past. Her alleged crime and the fallout have molded her into a resourceful and broken young woman. The key question at the heart of the novel is Did she? or Didn't she?, and Jackson takes readers on quite a ride as this question is answered." (Click the title above to read the full review.)
(A note to our readers: click on the hashtags above to see our other blog posts with the same hashtag.)
Interested in what else we're reading? Check out our Featured Books page.
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