Books can shift culture and build movements.
The Bookshelf is our curated collection of titles that reflect Harvey & Smith Impact’s values of justice, care, and community. Every purchase supports our Microgrant Fund, providing direct aid to grassroots changemakers across New York and New England.
Read with purpose. Shop with intention. Fund the future.
New on the Shelf: Immigration, Resistance, and the Power of Story
The national conversation around immigration is louder and more hostile than ever, but many of the most critical voices remain unheard. In this urgent moment, we are turning our attention to the leaders, communities, and movements pushing back against criminalization, detention, and invisibility. These newly added titles center immigrant experience, expose the systems that shape migration, and highlight the stories that advocacy alone cannot tell. Nonprofits and grassroots groups working in this space face enormous challenges. From legal uncertainty and increased surveillance to funder fatigue and the emotional toll of crisis response, this work remains as complex as it is essential.
These books were selected to offer clarity, grounding, and perspective. Whether you are on the front lines of service, building sanctuary networks, or shaping policy and narrative, these stories provide insight and fuel for the road ahead.
Why This Book Matters
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is a vital and deeply reported account of how decades of U.S. foreign policy, civil war, and political instability in Central America shaped today’s immigration crisis. Jonathan Blitzer weaves together personal stories and historical context to show how decisions made in Washington and abroad led to the migration patterns we see now at the U.S. border.
Blitzer profiles migrants fleeing violence in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and the advocates, lawyers, and officials working within a broken system. This book gives movement leaders, educators, and policy advocates a clearer picture of how migration is not spontaneous or chaotic. It is the predictable outcome of deliberate policy choices and structural neglect.
Use this book to root your organizing in global context, strengthen messaging around root causes, and connect immigration justice work to broader conversations about U.S. responsibility, displacement, and international solidarity.
Why This Book Matters
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling is an unflinching and deeply human account of how migrants move through one of the most dangerous and misunderstood systems on earth. Anthropologist Jason De León spent years embedding with smugglers, migrants, and families affected by the underground migration economy to reveal the motivations, risks, and relationships behind human smuggling.
This book challenges the dominant narratives that reduce migrants to statistics or frame smugglers as villains. Instead, it shows a world shaped by inequality, survival, and complex moral choices. Through personal stories, field notes, and reflections on power and violence, De León gives readers a nuanced and urgent portrait of the global migration crisis from the ground level.
Soldiers and Kings is especially useful for immigration justice organizers, educators, policymakers, and movement leaders working at the intersections of border policy, humanitarian response, and narrative change. It offers a deeper understanding of the human systems behind migration and the structural forces that create them.
Use it to shape educational curricula, inform campaign messaging, or anchor public programs in real migrant experience. It is a sobering but vital read for those committed to justice and dignity at the border and beyond.
Why This Book Matters
The Immigrant Rights Movement is a practical and timely guide to how undocumented youth and immigrant-led coalitions built real political power in the face of exclusion. Walter J. Nicholls offers a grounded, movement-centered analysis of how these organizers shifted public discourse, forced policy debates, and created lasting infrastructure for advocacy. Drawing from real campaigns and community strategies, this book centers the people most impacted by immigration policy as the authors of change.
Nicholls breaks down the tactics that helped move immigrant justice from the margins to the national stage. These include moral reframing, decentralized organizing, youth-led direct action, and local-to-national coalition building. This is not a passive history. It is a blueprint for how to respond to today’s attacks on immigrant communities with clarity, courage, and organizing skill.
Use it to strengthen campaigns, design leadership development programs, or support base-building efforts rooted in lived experience. This book is especially useful for educators, youth workers, policy advocates, and anyone building community power in a hostile political environment.
Why This Book Matters
Strangers in the Land tells the sweeping, often erased story of Chinese immigration to the United States, from the earliest arrivals to the struggles of modern American-born Chinese communities. Michael Luo, a seasoned investigative journalist and descendant of Chinese immigrants, weaves together family history, legal precedent, and national policy to show how Chinese Americans have been both builders of the nation and targets of exclusion.
The book traces landmark moments in immigration history, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the rise of anti-Asian violence, and the fight for citizenship rights through the case of Wong Kim Ark. Luo’s research reveals how many of today’s immigration battles are rooted in the legal and cultural frameworks first used to exclude the Chinese.
For organizers, educators, cultural workers, and policy advocates, Strangers in the Land is more than history. It is a tool for building stronger multiracial coalitions and for understanding how anti-immigrant sentiment has long shaped American politics. Use it to inform your messaging, contextualize community engagement work, or strengthen efforts that connect racial justice to immigrant rights.
Why This Book Matters
Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States is a sharp and necessary examination of how undocumented youth have built movements for justice while navigating criminalization, exclusion, and deep systemic risk. Rafael A. Martínez centers the voices and strategies of immigrant youth who have organized in public, knowing that visibility can be both a tool and a threat. This book provides an intimate and strategic view of how undocumented youth are reclaiming power, rewriting dominant narratives, and shifting the political landscape.
Martínez breaks down the structure and evolution of undocumented youth movements, including campaign development, media tactics, and mutual support models that challenge both state control and internalized fear. The book also looks closely at how race, class, and geography shape organizing choices and access to visibility.
For anyone involved in youth organizing, immigrant justice work, or cultural strategy, Illegalized offers critical insights into how young people are creating new frameworks for rights, belonging, and resistance. It is especially useful for community educators, campaign strategists, and those leading coalitions at the intersection of immigration, race, and education.
Use it to deepen your understanding of movement formation, build trauma-informed programming, and strengthen your messaging in a time when undocumented youth continue to lead the charge for systemic change.
