In honour of Radical May, as well as International Workers' Day 2021, we're discounting a select reading list on labour organizing, activism, and the politics of work for the entire month of May. Read on for essential titles to add to your shelf this month!

“Amir reveals a world where animals are seen with different eyes—not the consumer gaze, laced with pity, indifference, and violence, but as equal resisting agents in the struggle. A promise of a future where pigs, and those of fur, fin, feather, and feelers, resist the machine of capitalist oppression. Fanciful? No. This beautiful book is a sorely needed reminder that human speciesism has cancelled other animals from the resistance, when they resisted all along.”

– Sue Coe, artist and author of Dead Meat

"May Day turns labour history into a wonderful visual experience, accessible to a wide audience; it’s a worthy heir to the grand graphic tradition pioneered by the Industrial Workers of the World over a century ago."

– Andrew Parnaby, associate professor, history, Cape Breton University

"A compelling and important book about the health of women in the workplace. I have followed Karen Messing’s work for years, and hers is a unique voice, focused on working women, using feminist research tools and theories, but striving always to understand how the social and the biological are interlaced. Want to improve working conditions and on-the-job-health for women? Read this book!"

– Anne Fausto-Sterling, professor emerita of biology and gender studies, Brown University

"Ginger Goodwin: A Worker’s Friend is brilliant in every way: a close reading of working-class history and a unique comic art style with stunning use of color. In all, this book is a great triumph for the author/artist and for its publisher."

– Paul Buhle, labour historian, editor of Wobblies!, Che, and graphic adaptations of books by Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel

"Like a spectre, fascism is protean in form yet more than a return of the past. Spanning from history to critical theory, from aesthetics to politics, and approaching fascism on a global scale, this book argues for a mindful commitment to the struggles of the present."

– Enzo Traverso, author of The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right

"It is not an exaggeration to say that this volume will occupy a vaunted place alongside the writings of C. L. R. James, Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire, Sylvia Wynter, Edouard Glissant, George Lamming, Kamau Brathwaite, Stuart Hall, and certainly Walter Rodney. And like her distinguished predecessors, Andaiye and her brilliant collaborator, Alissa Trotz, did not put this book together in order to gather dust in a library. The title says it all: The Point is to Change the World."

– Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"For me, Unsettling Canada is the most recent addition to a relatively short list of resurgent, grassroots contributions to Indigenous decolonization. Written by one of our most respected and incisive leaders and thinkers, this is a must-read for anyone serious about radically transforming the colonial relationship between Indigenous nations and the Canadian state."

– Glen Coulthard, University of British Columbia, author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

“We live in a time of colonial reconciliation amputated from truth, of extractive predation by the state and its citizenry, of denial and willful amnesia about Canada’s violent past and present. George Manuel’s decolonial vision speaks just as strongly today as during his lifetime, and it continues in the commitments of his family and his people. This new and expanded edition of Brotherhood to Nationhood reminds us of the transformative possibilities of a life’s work grounded in truth and a relentless commitment to decolonial justice. We need this book, more now than ever.”

– Daniel Justice, professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia

"1919 offers labour scholars and teachers of labour history a rare gift: a vigorously-researched labour history combined with a visually stimulating graphic novel which will spark interest in Canadian labour history for decades to come."

– CAWLS Book Prize Committee

Also available in French translation

“Reading Federici empowers us to reconnect with what is at the core of human development, women’s labor-intensive caregiving—a radical rethinking of how we live.”

– Z Magazine

"Showdown! is a fast-paced graphic narrative of one of Canada’s most important labour movements – the struggle for unions and fair working conditions in Hamilton, Ontario, culminating in the STELCO strike of 1946. Filled with detailed drawings of everyday life in the factory, on the picket line, and in the community, this is accessible history with suspense and action we all need to hear about. It should be required reading throughout Canada."

– Mary O’Connor, Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

"Susan Ferguson has been a leader in the efforts to develop social reproduction theory. With Women and Work, she now takes on the historical context for its development. Her focus on the history of the concept ‘labour’ in Marxist and feminist thought brilliantly reshapes our understanding of our past, present, and future."

– Lise Vogel, author of Marxism and the Oppression of Women

“In Leading Progress, Jason Russell has accomplished a rare feat. He has written a book that is at once an incisive overview of labour and working-class history, as well as a detailed institutional biography that vividly captures the birth and transformation of the PIPSC from one of reluctant unionism to being at the centre of many of today’s most pressing struggles for social and economic justice.”

– Carlo Fanelli, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Work and Labour Studies, York University

"A lively, colourful reminder that for generations workers in Canada have repeatedly walked off the job together to demand their rights. Great artwork takes the reader through that long and fascinating history."

– Craig Heron, author of Lunch-Bucket Lives and The Canadian Labour Movement