Interesting Reads on Social Justice Issues

SilverEternity

This summer I am teaching a six-week class to high school seniors on issues of social justice. My role will be to teach mini-lessons on related science concepts, but I have been tasked with finding books/essays/first-person accounts related to the topics. Primarily the class will be teaching students how to write an expository research paper but we are also asking them to read a piece of narrative literature related to their topic. For example, students who choose "Human Exploitation" will be reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. Students' papers will be related to a very specific issue under the broad topic they choose, but the idea of finding 24 books to assign after students have chosen their topic is daunting. Thus we are looking to find 6 novels/essays/memoirs relating to the broad topics students may choose from.

I'm trying to find high quality yet interesting reads for the following topics:
Energy (I'm thinking about assigning a book on the Three Gorges Dam for this topic)
Water/Sanitation
Disease
Land Use
Food Security/Nutrition

The books/essays could be fiction or non-fiction but we are looking for reading that includes some type of personal account/narrative.

Please let me know if you have any ideas. Thanks!

Lilnoobs

Well, the obvious one for Food Security/Nutrition would be one of Polan's books. I'm thinking Omnivore's Dilemma.

kaliyama

The revolution will not be funded.