The Compassionate Reader: Lucille Clifton, Amy Sherald, more... 24 February 2026
books, literature & art that invite us to live compassionately
She Always Believed the Good about Those She Loved, 2018 by Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald is a contemporary American painter best known for her striking portraits that center everyday Black life. Using a distinctive grayscale palette for skin tones, Sherald draws attention away from race as spectacle and toward presence, character, and interiority. Through this approach, Sherald expands the tradition of American portraiture, inviting viewers to see ordinary Black lives as worthy of contemplation, care, and enduring beauty. Her exhibit, “American Sublime,” is currently on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
[ Check out Sherald’s exhibit here. ]
[ READ the full Lucille Clifton poem ]
Rev. James Lawson was one of the most influential yet unheralded heroes of the civil rights era. He rose as a strategist, teacher, and organizer in pivotal campaigns on the national stage against racial and economic injustice. Peer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., mentor to Congressman John Lewis and the Freedom Riders, and a principal architect of a nonviolent resistance movement that changed the world, this posthumous memoir “…is a gift to be treasured, from a man who has already given so much.” —Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life
[ READ the Publishers Weekly starred review of this book ]
A daughter reexamines her own family
story in The Mixed Marriage Project
From Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and a writer who “has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades” (Bryan Stevenson), comes a spirited and riveting memoir of growing up in an interracial family in 1960s Chicago and a daughter’s journey to understand her parents’ marriage—and her own identity.
[LISTEN to the NPR Fresh Air conversation with the author of this book]
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin ***ONLY $1.99!***
[ Buy Now ]
Bonus Podcast Recommendation!
Kate Bowler recently re-shared her 2022 conversation with Bryan Stevenson, an American lawyer, law professor, and human-rights advocate who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and champions justice for the poor, wrongfully condemned, and marginalized.
[ LISTEN to Bowler’s conversation with Bryan Stevenson]
I looooove Amy Sherald's work!! That painting is amazing.