Books have enriched his life in many ways

Who Was Roberto Clemente? was the first book I read that I saw myself in, that actually got me to a place of wanting to read and being excited about it and engaged with it. Most of the books in school did not have young Black boys in them or Black men in them, and this was the first book I remember getting at a book fair. Part of the reason that was so impactful for me, a young Black boy adopted by a white family in a predominantly white community, was I didn't have a lot of Black mentors or Black male figures around that I was able to look to directly. And Roberto Clemente was an initial introduction for me to be able to connect with and get some of that insight.

College, for me, was the first time I had a broader Black community around me. Also being in Reno—again, a predominantly white space. For me, in thinking about it, there's a lot of influence and push around, “Should you be assimilating?” How your culture shows up—whether it's the classroom, whether it's on the field. The reason I picked Black Skin, White Masks is a lot of it talks about identity, how you're showing up, in this instance specifically around colonization and the influence and impact that has on communities, and also how you can resist that and stay true to yourself as part of it.

Forty Million Dollar Slaves is a book about professional athletes, but more so, we’ll call it the sports industrial complex. You have Black athletes who make a lot of money, but also in many ways are enslaved to institutions. And that’s being used as leverage, one, to hold over their heads, but two, the process of becoming a professional athlete and what you have to go through has a lot of parallels to processes and engagements during slavery. So, using money as a lever or justification as to why your humanity and rights shouldn't show up, and this book helps frame some of that context. A lot of the conversations and insights from the book were the conversations that were happening, so by the time I read it I was like, “These are all of the things that we talk about in the locker room.” By the time I got to this book, a lot of the foundations of it, you know them in practice; you just haven't had them put in full context across the broader sports industry.

Any book you get from Angela Davis, you’re going to be in great hands. I think what’s important here is thinking about the moment leading into the protest. At this point, I’ve done a lot of reading on systems, colonization, how communities navigate that, a lot of work around movements, the Black Panther Party. I think Angela does a phenomenal job of framing out how freedom is actually won, the work that needs to be done to actually bring that about. On a personal level, having the opportunity to get to know Angela and spend time with her—she is an icon, a pillar of the movement work, and continues to do that to this day. Thinking about the protest and the impact, this is one that everyone should pick up.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is a book everybody should read. If you haven’t yet, drop what you're doing and go read it. We know Malcolm X as the revolutionary. We know his impact on the world. The part that I think is underappreciated about Malcolm is the father, the husband, the man that he was. The part that has touched me the most: I’ve had the opportunity to get to know some of his daughters, how they talk about him as a father and how he showed up in their household. I think about myself being a father now to my daughter, and how I want to show up for her. [This book has] some phenomenal insights, learnings, and examples from Malcolm to be able to take away, and that’s something that stood out to me.