Reflective Bookshop
This shelf is curated for people who want more than decoration for the coffee table. These books speak to Black history, democracy, justice, power, grief, love, labor, and the long American habit of hiding the bill after eating the meal.
Family, Legacy, and the Story That Found Its Way Home
Start here: a personal connection, a public story, and the kind of family revelation that sounds like fiction until life slides the paperwork across the table.
Runs in the Family
This is not just a sports story. My cousin Deland McCullough discovered his mentor Sherman Smith was his biological father, a real-life journey that reshaped our family legacy and turned memory, truth, and identity into something larger than the scoreboard.
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A new curated pick for the Reflective Bookshop reading room.
New Curated Pick
Selected for Reflective Bookshop
A new addition to the Reflective Bookshop shelf for readers looking for sharp stories, cultural memory, and books that leave something behind after the last page.
Buy on BookshopLooking for My Books?
Reflective Bookshop is the curated shelf. Reflective Reads is where you can find books written by Michael Smith, including democracy primers, warnings about unchecked power, and survival fiction with political teeth.
Start here for recommendations. Go there for the books from the Reflective MVS pen directly.
The Curated Shelf
Black history, civil rights, housing, liberation, love, feminism, memory, and political truth-telling. This shelf is not random. It has a spine.
Black AF History
By Michael Harriot
Harriot dismantles America’s sanitized history with humor, rage, and truth. Black AF and unflinchingly necessary.
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The Color of Law
By Richard Rothstein
The blueprint for segregation was not accidental. Rothstein proves it was deliberate and government-backed.
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The Grift
By Clay Cane
Black Republicans went from Douglass to disaster. Cane exposes the sellouts and shows how they got there.
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107 Days
By Kamala Harris
A behind-the-scenes account of the shortest modern presidential campaign, written from inside the pressure, strategy, disappointment, and unfinished questions of 2024.
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All About Love
By bell hooks
Love as liberation. bell hooks delivers a radical, healing, and political view of love.
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The Courage to Be Disliked
By Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga
A reset for the mind and soul, built around freedom from other people’s expectations.
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Giovanni’s Room
By James Baldwin
Love, identity, and tragedy. Baldwin’s Parisian tale still cuts deep.
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The 1619 Project
By Nikole Hannah-Jones
A bold reframing of American history, centering slavery and Black resistance as foundational forces.
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Heavy
By Kiese Laymon
Laymon’s raw exploration of weight, trauma, and Black Southern identity is unforgettable.
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Medgar and Myrlie
By Joy-Ann Reid
A triumphant dual biography chronicling Medgar and Myrlie Evers and their civil rights legacy.
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Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
By Angela Y. Davis
Davis connects global liberation movements to the enduring fight for Black freedom.
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Hood Feminism
By Mikki Kendall
A searing critique of mainstream feminism and a rallying cry that starts at the margins.
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The Fire Next Time
By James Baldwin
Baldwin’s prophetic fire still burns. This slim volume reshaped America’s racial conscience.
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