Two books with very different feels: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
Both books I read initially for different courses, though I would read them again recreationally in a heartbeat.
Little Fires Everywhere: Celeste Ng explores issues of motherhood, race, gender socialization, and heteronormative expectations in this novel that takes place in Shaker Heights—a developed neighborhood in Ohio founded on its commitment to eradicating the very racial inequalities that its community members continue to perpetuate today.
The New Jim Crow: Michelle Alexander explores a modern-day version of the Jim Crow laws that function as yet another mechanism of social control over Black individuals in America: mass incarceration. Alexander argues that a social caste system exists in America, and that slavery, the Jim Crow laws originating in the South, and the War on Drugs declared by the government in the late 20th century are all factors relevant to its existence in American society today.