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.
July
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
One of the foundational texts in the field of critical pedagogy, which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate. Paulo Freire’s work has helped to empower countless people throughout the world and has taken on special urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is ongoing.
August
The Tulsa Race Massacre: The Department of Justice Review and 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 breaks the silence from the justice department with a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. The report lays bare new information and shows that the massacre was the result not of uncontrolled mob violence, but of a coordinated, military-style attack on Greenwood.
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
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
2023 and Earlier
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Where the Bird Disappeared by Ghassan Zaqtan
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Connect with Book Club
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.