Discourse on Colonialism is the shortest book on this list and the one that will change you the most.
It is 80 pages long something you can ead in an afternoon. You will never see a banana the same way again (seriously, after Cesaire, bananas become a symbol of colonial exploitation. You cannot unsee it).
Aime Cesaire was a poet and politician from Martinique. He coined the word negritude as a fat fuck you to the French colonial project that told Black people they had no history, no culture, no value. He was also the mayor of Fort-de-France for over 50 years, which is the political equivalent of writing angry poems about the system while being the system, but he pulled it off because he was genuinely fighting for his people (unlike most politicians, who just fight for their bank accounts).
His main idea is that colonialism is not a system of economic exchange or cultural diffusion. It is thingification. The colonizer turns the colonized into a thing, an object, a tool. And the only way out is to reclaim your humanity by reclaiming your identity, even if that identity has been buried for centuries.
book recommendation: Discourse on Colonialism (1950). Short. Sharp. Will make you angry at things you did not know you should be angry about.
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