Abolition and Restorative Justice: A Book List

What is revolution? What is abolition? How do we get there and how do we take care of one another? These are the questions these books seek to answer.

Abolition is a hot topic right now. “Should we defund the police?”, “What does police and prison abolition look like?”, “Does abolition apply to more than just the police?”, “Who will protect us?”, “How will we get there?” are just a few questions that people have of abolitionists. And all of them are just concerns to have.

There are tons of articles—academic and otherwise—available online. I wanted to compile a list of books that have been integral to my understanding not only of prison and police abolition, but abolition as a whole: of gender, of sexuality, of the World. What is revolution? What is abolition? How do we get there and how do we take care of one another? These are the questions these books seek to answer. The rest requires us to imagine together.

Here is a list of books on abolition, revolution, and restorative justice:

1. Instead of Prisons: A Handbook for Abolitionists

2. The Struggle Continues by Kwame Nkrumah

3. Consciencism by Kwame Nkrumah

4. The Prison Letters of George Jackson by George Jackson

5. Die Nigger Die! by H Rap Brown/Jamil Al-Amin

6. As Black As Resistance by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson

7. Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

8. Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

9. Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism by Kwame Ture

10. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris

11. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault

12. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Davies

13. Beyond Containment by Claudia Jones

12. Sojourning For Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism by Erik S. McDuffie

14. Fumbling Towards Repair by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan

15. Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

16. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

17. Beyond Survival by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ejeris Dixon 

18. Turn This World Inside Out by Nora Samaran

19. Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

20. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

21. Undoing Gender by Judith Butler

22. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

23. Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe (from Black, White, and In Color) by Hortense Spillers

24. History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault

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