Many in the USA regard slavery and the Jim Crow laws – 250 years of brutal discrimination – as primarily African-American rather than white history. Does the rise of Black Lives Matter (BLM) reflect the failure to treat this story as a national trauma? Can BLM change the USA? And how do the issues it raises find expression in literature today?

One anti-racism activist who defends BLM is US young adult author Jason Reynolds. His million-selling books deal with the daily lives of young black Americans and depict police violence and killings. Reynolds writes rap-inspired books and wants to get boys to read and to provide black Americans with literary role models. Can literature change the USA? Reynolds talks with Nazneen Khan-Østrem about the toxicity of racism and why he believes BLM matters.