Ahead, two books for your summer antiracism reading: a fact-filled thought provoker, and a middle grade novel that will have you smiling through your tears.

Just Us, by Claudia Rankine

I read Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric earlier this year. I liked the format, which included photos and other media to illustrate different ideas in the text. It made me think. A fellow book club member suggested reading Just Us for some more background on some of the ideas that Rankine discusses.

After my friend’s departure, I pick up my mistake like a snow globe and turn it over in my mind.” – Claudia Rankine

Just Us did just as the person said it would: it fleshes out ideas introduced in Citizen, and provides reference material which backs up the statements and observations Rankine makes.

There are many reasons I like Rankine’s writing. She is thoughtful. She works things over in her mind in order to file them away satisfactorily. These things we have in common connected me to her writing and kept me wanting to see what she would tackle next.

Rankine tacitly and sometimes openly acknowledges how awkward discussions about race and racism can be, even among good friends, even among people with the same skin tone.

I read this book in bursts – the material requires slow digestion. It is full of the sort of things one is apt to ruminate about. In fact, the book kind of felt like being in someone else’s ruminations, while also being mainlined to a search engine. Which serves the dual purpose of making you think, and getting you out of your own head.

Finding Junie Kim, by Ellen Oh

The book starts with a middle school-aged Korean American girl dealing with middle school problems, but it ends up telling three different stories. It’s a window into Korean and Korean American culture and a spotlight on the Korean War. It dwells on the importance of inter-generational connections and the preservation of personal history.

The author does a lot with this book. In addition to the themes I’ve already mentioned, Oh tackles history, racism, self advocacy, bullying, and family roles. If there were moments when it felt the author was doing too much with the space and time she had, I forgave her because the story is so good.

As usual, when I look to the back of a book, there is no glossary, and when I don’t, there is – and this book contains a list of the Korean words used in the story and their meanings, which I discovered after I finished the story. If you’re willing, there’s also some geography in the story, which could be supplemented by pulling out a map.

One of the reasons the story stood out for me is that Oh doesn’t act like her readers, even if they’re young, don’t experience the full range of emotions. She deals with the violence of war as well as modern day friendships with a complexity that gives the reader of any age credit for being able to understand each situation’s emotional complexity.

Finding Junie Kim is a wonderful story that takes the reader through an emotional journey. Bonus: The most unbelievable parts of it are based on a true story.

If you haven’t read much about the Korea or the Korean War, click here for more titles.