Book Club WG


Logo for the Book Club featuring a stylized open book with a red rose growing out from between the pages.

The Mission:
To create a community that delves into both leftist theory and explores a wide range of written works. We engage in thought-provoking discussions about essays, speeches, theory, plays, novels, short stories, poems, and more. 

Upcoming Meetings

Our book club meets the first Sunday of each month from 4:00-5:30pm on Zoom. All are welcome to join, even if you’re not yet a member of DSA.
RSVP with the buttons below to receive the meeting link in your email.


September

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

Originally published as a political pamphlet in 1848, this work documents Marx and Engels’s theories on society and politics. The Manifesto argues that at some point in history, the lower class will inevitably realize their potential and exploitation and subsequently revolt, ultimately resulting in the dismantling of class systems and capitalism.


Previous Reads

2025 Reading List

The Tulsa Race Massacre: The Dept. of Justice Review & Evaluation

The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility, and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community. This 2025 report of the massacre shows that it was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.

Consider visiting or donating to the Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

(Translated into English by Myra Bergman Ramos)
A foundational text in the field of critical pedagogy, a practice which attempts to help students question and challenge domination and the beliefs and practices that dominate.

Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

A feminist analysis of the historical transition from feudalism to capitalism, arguing that the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries were a crucial tool in subjugating women’s bodies. Federici draws connections between the oppression of women and the exploitation of the working class, highlighting how both were essential for the development of capitalism.

Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture by Oswaldo Zavala

(Translated into English by William Savinar)
The realities of violence in Mexico and along the border are obscured by the books, films, and TV series we consume. Oswaldo Zavala makes the case that the very terms we use to describe drug traffickers are a constructed subterfuge for the real narcos: politicians, corporations, and the military.

Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis by Tracy Rosenthal & Leonardo Vilchis

From two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. These are the seeds of the revolutionary movement we need to make our housing, our cities, and the world our home.

(To get involved with local tenant organizing, check out the Oklahoma Tenants Union.)

People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism by Leigh Philips & Michal Rozworski

The authors posit the idea that multinational corporations prove that modern capitalism actually relies on a large amount of centralized planning, and propose that the key to creating socialism is exploiting and transforming the existing mechanisms for that planning.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher

Fisher details how neoliberalism affects different facets of society to create and reinforce a narrative that capitalism is the only viable political and economic system, stifling any attempt to imagine an alternative.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis

A series of interviews and writings from renowned activist Angela Davis examining the connection between domestic struggles against oppression with the broader anti-imperialist struggle worldwide.

2024 Reading List

The Origin of the Family: Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels

What is Social Ecology? by Murray Bookchin

Here is a Rent Strike by Rane Stark-Buhl

How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm

The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade

2023 Reading List

Where the Bird Disappeared by Ghassan Zaqtan

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by adrienne maree brown

Sweat by Lynn Nottage

Competition v. Cooperation by Eugene V. Debs

Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Towards a ueer Marxism: A manifesto by Rojo del Arcoíris

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression by Robin D. G. Kelley

Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times by Carla Bergman

The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein


Connect with Book Club

bookclub@okcdsa.org

Follow @okcdsa on social media to find out about upcoming reads and meetings.
Become a chapter member to join the Discord server, where we host discussion threads for each month’s reading and poll members to decide what to read next.