Stamped was on my reading list before I saw it was the Nonfiction title for our library’s virtual book club in September. I meant to read the paper version, which I had out from the library, but listened to the audio instead so I could multitask.

I would leapfrog my bookmark forward in the paper version as I made progress. This helped me keep track of my progress visually so I could pace myself to be finished before book club, but also made the audiobook feel more like cheating than audiobooks usually do these days. I was reading a book that required a ton of emotional labor, and I was letting someone else do the reading for me.

Even listening to it rather than reading it myself, this is a really tough book to get through.

If you are familiar with a stereotype about Black people, the origin of it is explained in this book. If you think you mostly know how American history went down, this book has an additional layer of context to help you understand the racial overtones or undertones of the events that took place.

I read How to Be An Anti-Racist, which Ibram X. Kendi wrote after Stamped, so some of the ideas he introduces in Stamped were  familiar. Stamped is different because it’s a much deeper, history-focused dive into the role race has played through time in America.

If I hadn’t had the deadline of the book club, I probably would have taken months to finish this book, with frequent breaks. I barely made it through an hour of listening a day, and often had to take 1-2 day breaks in between listening. I’m still recovering from the heaviness of reading it.

Remember when Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal the Wizard, frantically working to create the intimidating smoke and mirrors of his artificial persona? Stamped is like pulling back the curtain on racism so you really see how it operates.

Behind the curtain is more of an embryonic Voldemort than the hapless Wizard of Oz, a powerful, ugly creature that refuses to die and instead keeps taking on new forms. It’s sickening and difficult to look at.

It’s no accident that one of the next books I started was a book about spiritual warfare. I’m reading it  aloud to my kids for our homeschool spiritual development. That book starts off with the pronouncement that Good has Already Won, even though our earth is still struggling.

After Stamped, you’ll need a reminder that everything will be OK in the end, but that shouldn’t stop you from reading it. We all need to know where this started in order to understand racism and to see what lengths we may need to go to bring an end to it.