Great Reads from Great Places:
Book Box Resources
Great Reads from Great Places Book Boxes
Each year Massachusetts selects a title to share with the commonwealth through Book Boxes as part of the “Great Reads from Great Places” program. Thank you for partnering with us this year to bring Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America into your community.
On this page you will find a number of resources and tools to the share the book with your community, facilitate discussions, promote the virtual Q&A, and more.
Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it.
In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.
Program Branding
Let your community know you’re a Great Reads partner! These assets are here for you to download and share with your community on social media, or in your space, with the hopes of garnering excitement for your programming and conversations.
Please use our logo for any additional publicity materials you create.
Announcement Example: “We’re happy to announce that (your organization name) is a Great Reads MA 2025 participating partner! This years’s featured book is Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, adapted and illustrated by Joel Christian Gill. Ask us about how you can participate and join the conversation!”
Program Toolkit
Tools and downloadable resources for hosting discussions and sharing the book with your patrons.
In support of our partners running successful conversations about Stamped, systematic racism, and other related issues, we have created some tools for the facilitators running conversations, as well as those who are participating in them.
We highly recommend at least two meetings with your community for these discussions. We also believe it is important to establish group norms and expectations for each conversation before they begin. Norms and expectations, also known as community promises, are crucial in conversations as they create a framework for how individuals will engage, interact, and behave within a group. They establish clear expectations, reduce ambiguity, and ensure that all members feel heard and respected.
Event Branding
Share with your community when and how you plan on hosting book discussions.
Event Description Example: Join us for a discussion series on the stunningly illustrated graphic-novel Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, adapted and illustrated by Joel Christian Gill. Participants will be provided with a free copy of the graphic novel and will have the opportunity to ask the graphic novelist questions in a virtual Q&A session in September! This discussion series is part of the 2025 MA Great Reads program, sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Register now at (insert your event link here).
These assets are here for you to download and share. Please use our logo for any additional publicity materials you create.
Virtual Q & A with Joel Christian Gill
We look forward to you and your group joining us in the Fall for a virtual Q&A with Joel Christian Gill.
Please pre-submit any questions for Joel using the button below.
Meet the Author
DR. IBRAM X. KENDI is a National Book Award-winning author of sixteen books for adults and children, including ten New York Times bestsellers—five of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor. In the summer of 2025, he joined Howard University as Professor of History and Director of its newly established Howard Institute for Advanced Study.
Dr. Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest author to win that award. He also authored the international bestseller, How to Be an Antiracist, which was described in the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” Dr. Kendi’s other bestsellers include How to Raise an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. In 2020, Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. He was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant.
His next book is Malcolm Lives! It is the first major biography of Malcolm for young readers in more than thirty years, appearing in May 2025 on the centennial of Malcolm’s birth.
Meet the Illustrator
JOEL CHRISTIAN GILL is a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize. He wrote the words and drew the pictures for Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield’s First Ride and the award-winning graphic novel series Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History, as well as 3 volumes of Tales of The Talented Tenth, which tell the stories of Bass Reeves, Bessie Stringfield, and Robert Smalls.
Gill has dedicated his life to creating stories to build connections with readers through empathy, compassion, and, ultimately, humanity. He received his MFA from Boston University and his BA from Roanoke College.