Ethnic groups and multicultural studies Books

Book SynopsisWinner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award for CriticismWinner of the 2023 ASAP Book Prize, given by the Association for the Study of the Arts of the PresentExplores expressionlessness, inscrutability, and emotional withholding in Black cultural productionArguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness, Deadpan tracks instances and meanings of deadpana vaudeville term meaning dead faceacross literature, theater, visual and performance art, and the performance of self in everyday life.Tina Post reveals that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing of African American aesthetics as colorful, loud, humorous, and excessive. Beginning with the expressionless faces of mid-twentieth-century documentary photography and proceeding to earlTrade Review"In this startlingly original, theoretically nuanced, wide-ranging exploration of inexpressiveness as an underexamined performance repertoire in Black arts and culture, Tina Post makes a landmark contribution to the field of race and aesthetics. Deadpan explores the fine structure of a rhetorically intricate aesthetic technique as malleable in its uses as affect itself, and it does so with remarkable wit and precision." * Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form *"A stellar study filled with dazzling prose, poignant persuasion, ethical intervention, and intellectual adventure. While dominant US culture regards blackness as hyper-expressive, melodramatic, and spectacular, Tina Post carefully directs our attention to the subtle and sometimes inscrutable art of black inexpression. Across a sweeping repertoire—from nineteenth- century daguerreotypes to twentieth-century avant-garde performance to twenty-first century memes and beyond—she affirms ‘illegibility’s efficacy for the black subject.’ She knows and shows that expressionlessness has been vital to black aesthetics, resistance, refusal, self-defense, self-making, and world-making. As I read about deadpan, my own face was anything but: Post’s arresting arguments and gorgeous sentences made my black visage light up with intrigue, wonder, and delight." * La Marr Jurelle Bruce, author of How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity *"Tina Post’s Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression reconsiders the historical legacy of the concept outside of traditional accounts of comedy and humor studies by offering an impressive “investigation of the aesthetic affects at work at the intersection of blackness and embodied inexpressions”… the study provides an intelligent contribution to the strands of literature on black performance studies, humor studies, and visual studies at large." * Film Quarterly *"The text pulses with creativity as Post locates deadpan in theater, visual and performance art, performances of the self, and more ... With the ambition of her project and immense catalog of works, Post generates momentum for further study of Black aesthetics, affect, and modes of reserve." * Black Perspectives *"It is in Post’s creative and heterogenous readings that the force of her argument best comes across. From the surveilled, violated, and exploited black figure (Louis Agassiz’s daguerreotypes of enslaved people); to the display of black respectability (Richard Avedon’s group portrait William Casby and family, 1963); to black refusals of photographic capture (Rashid Johnson’s Jonathan with Hands, 1997); to the work of Robert Morris, who, without consciously invoking black imagery or cultural markers, embraced an “aesthetics of looming” linked to a racialized “paradigm of black threat”; to discomfiting fusions of dramatic realism and minstrelsy (Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s first play, 2010’s Neighbors); to affective indeterminacy in contemporary rap (Atlanta’s aforementioned Rich Homie Quan), Post’s readings include both “black subjects who perform expressionlessness” and white artists whose work flirts with and feeds on the imaginary of blackness." * Artforum *

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Book SynopsisHow media propagates and challenges racismFrom Black Panther to #OscarsSoWhite, the concept of race, and how it is represented in media, has continued to attract attention in the public eye. In Racialized Media, Matthew W. Hughey, Emma González-Lesser, and the contributors to this important new collection of original essays provide a blueprint to this new, ever-changing media landscape. With sweeping breadth, contributors examine a number of different mediums, including film, television, books, newspapers, social media, video games, and comics. Each chapter explores the impact of contemporary media on racial politics, culture, and meaning in society. Focusing on producers, gatekeepers, and consumers of media, this book offers an inside look at our media-saturated world, and the impact it has on our understanding of race, ethnicity, and more. Through an interdisciplinary lens, Racialized Media provides a much-needed look at the role of race and ethnicity in all phases of media productTrade Review"Racialized Media presents a timely collection of readings investigating the complex relationship between race and media. A diverse mix of established and emerging scholars highlight contemporary topics, issues, and controversies concerning media production, circulation, and consumption. From traditional media forms like film, television, and news to social media and online artifacts, the book covers a broad array of cultural objects. An informative and thorough book, Racialized Media makes a convincing case for why media and race matter and how they are essential to understanding our social world." -- Maryann Erigha, author of The Hollywood Jim Crow: The Racial Politics of the Movie Industry"In an age in which mass media platforms increasingly shape our judgments about race and decision-making even about who should hold the highest office in the land, Matthew Hughey and Emma Gonzalez-Lesser have assembled an impressive array of scholars who provide nuance and texture to our understanding of the salience and ubiquity of race across various forms of mass media. Their work is a must-read!" -- Gregory S. Parks, co-author of A Pledge with Purpose: Black Sororities and Fraternities and the Fight for Equality

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Book Synopsis2017 Wilbur Non-Fiction Award RecipientWinner of the 2018 Author's Award in scholarly non-fiction, presented by the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Winner, 2020 Kornitzer Book Prize, given by Drew UniversityExamines the oft overlooked role of non-elite black women in the growth of northern suburbs and American Protestantism in the first half of the twentieth centuryWhen a domestic servant named Violet Johnson moved to the affluent white suburb of Summit, New Jersey in 1897, she became one of just barely a hundred black residents in the town of six thousand. In this avowedly liberal Protestant community, the very definition of the suburbs depended on observance of unmarked and fluctuating race and class barriers. But Johnson did not intend to accept the status quo. Establishing a Baptist church a year later, a seemingly moderate act that would have implications far beyond weekly worship, Johnson challenged assumptions of gender and race, advocating for a politics of civic righteousTrade ReviewThis lucid and engrossing reframing of the suburbs adds to a growing body of research uncovering the overlooked and courageous social activism of working-class African-American women. Adams's work should fundamentally alter the way we talk and write about the civil rights movement in the United States, from where and when it happened, to who contributed to its real momentum. -- Morris Davis,Drew UniversityWith care and nuance, Betty Livingston Adams illuminates the social worlds and religious activism of a group of ordinary black working women who made extraordinary contributions to black public life. Well researched, engaging, and accessible, Adamss work adds new dimensions to our understanding of the history of the black womens club movement, their participation in interracial social reform and political organizing, and leadership in black churches. She has done a great service in restoring these women to a place of importance in the narrative of African American religious history. -- Judith Weisenfeld,Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion, Princeton UniversityAdams follows the fascinating careers of Violet Johnson (1870-1939) and Florence Spearing Randolph (1866-1951), black women born in the South following emancipation, who traveled to New York City to find work. * Christian Century Magazine *Contributing to scholarship on black women’s Christian activism, this well-researched book uncovers activism among black churchwomen. * Religious Studies Review *

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Book SynopsisThe Howard University protests from the perspective and worldview of its participants We Are Worth Fighting For is the first history of the 1989 Howard University protest. The three-day occupation of the university's Administration Building was a continuation of the student movements of the sixties and a unique challenge to the politics of the eighties. Upset at the university's appointment of the Republican strategist Lee Atwater to the Board of Trustees, students forced the issue by shutting down the operations of the university. The protest, inspired in part by the emergence of conscious hip hop, helped to build support for the idea of student governance and drew upon a resurgent black nationalist ethos. At the center of this story is a student organization known as Black Nia F.O.R.C.E. Co-founded by Ras Baraka, the group was at the forefront of organizing the student mobilization at Howard during the spring of 1989 and thereafter. We Are Worth Fighting For expTrade ReviewThis riveting, exceptionally well-written book is a major contribution to Black Power historiography and the history of Black student activism. Featuring appearances by future mayors of Newark and Atlanta and pioneers of hip hop, this study holds important lessons for today. -- Gerald Horne, author of Fire this Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960sLike the students whose stories populate its pages, We Are Worth Fighting For provides a challenge. It challenges conventional narratives about Howard. It challenges understandings of Black student protest in the ’80s. And it challenges the reader to wrestle with the uses and meaning of history. Cover to cover, this book reflects the state of Black Studies—a discipline that has come of age. -- Jonathan Fenderson, author of Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960sWe Are Worth Fighting For is a book about the problematics of, and is a writing against, the terms of American order that elaborates their relation to Black radicalism. The 1989 student occupation at Howard is part of the genealogy, the tradition, of Black radical struggle. It is necessary and urgent for understanding that which American order responds to, the ongoing nature of Black radical struggle. It is a radicalism worth cultivating, tending to, and fighting for. -- Ashon Crawley, author of Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of PossibilityWe Are Worth Fighting For reminds us of the insurgency of Black college students in the late 1980s and early 1990s that inspired a generation. Thoroughly researched and well constructed, this book illuminates how Howard students inspired the political and cultural rebellion of the time and shines light on this period of the Black freedom struggle. -- Akinyele Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2024 ILBA Gold Medal, Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book , given by the International Latino Book Awards Winner, 2024 ILBA Silver Medal, The Raul Yzaguirre Best Political/Current Affairs Book, given by the International Latino Book AwardsArgues that queer picture books with main characters of color can disrupt structures of power in both literature and real lifeColoring into Existence investigates the role of authors, illustrators, and independent publishers in producing alternative narratives that disrupt colonial, heteropatriarchal notions of childhood. These texts or characters unsettle the category of the child, and thus pave the way for broader understandings of childhood. Often unapologetically politically motivated, queer and trans of color picture books can serve as the basis for fantasizing about disruptions to structures of power, both within and outside literary worlds. Fusing literary criticism and close readings with historical analysis and interviews, Isabel Millán documentsTrade ReviewIn this magisterial study, Isabel Millán sweeps across all of North America—Mexico, the U.S., and Canada—to recover a genealogy of queer and trans of color picture books. With incisive questions and insightful close readings, Millán shows how picture books are sites through which queer and trans of color communities have “colored,” or reimagined, themselves to create new worlds. Comprehensive, lively, and inspiring, Coloring into Existence is a landmark in the field of children’s literature. -- Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil RightsOffers a significant and distinctive contribution to the field, building upon recent scholarship on queerness in/and children’s literature and childhood. Coloring into Existence is cutting edge and making original theoretical and scholarly interventions, speaking in important ways to growing efforts to diversify children’s literature. -- Julia L Mickenberg, author of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature

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Book SynopsisThe end of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade triggered wide-scale labor shortages across the U.S. and Caribbean. Planters looked to China as a source for labor replenishment, importing indentured laborers in what became known as coolieism. From heated Senate floor debates to Supreme Court test cases brought by Chinese activists, public anxieties over major shifts in the U.S. industrial landscape and class relations became displaced onto the figure of the Chinese labor immigrant who struggled for inclusion at a time when black freedmen were fighting to redefine citizenship.Racial Reconstruction demonstrates that U.S. racial formations should be studied in different registers and through comparative and transpacific approaches. It draws on political cartoons, immigration case files, plantation diaries, and sensationalized invasion fiction to explore the radical reconstruction of U.S. citizenship, race and labor relations, and imperial geopolitics that led to the Chinese ExcluTrade ReviewThis book will be of interest to African Americanist and Asian Americanist scholars and graduate students and, indeed, to all scholars of nineteenth and early twentieth-century US literature and history, but it will be especially useful to people interested in adapting their nineteenth-century US literature courses to reflect more transnational, multilingual perspectives. * Melus *The juxtaposition of these policies provides for intriguing analysis. It clearly shows that US history is never simply linear, as when steps toward freedom for some coincide with oppression of others. The topic is fascinating. * Choice *Offering illuminating analyses of the paranoid fantasies of Asian invasion in travelogues, political cartoons, and sensational fiction that proliferated during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Edlie L. Wong deftly probes the way in which these narratives shaped the racial formations and understandings of free and unfree labor in the American imaginary. Exploring the impact of Exclusion Laws both in the U.S. and China against the backdrop of popular culture in both nations, Racial Reconstruction provides incredibly rich insights into the global repercussions of these policies. A stellar book. -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin,author of Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded KneeWith impressive archival research,Racial Reconstructiontraces the fascinating transnational history of U.S. racial formation in the aftermath of abolition and reconstruction. Exploring the legal discourse around Asian exclusion in relation to African American inclusion, Edlie L. Wong pushes our thinking and offers new insights about how Americans decide who does and does not belong as a citizen in the United States. -- Gretchen Murphy,author of Shadowing the White Man’s Burden: U.S. Imperialism and the Problem of the Color LineRacial Reconstructionclarifies the stakes of citizenship in the US racial state, offering important insights into current debates about immigration and the shifting contours of the US labor force. It is a model for the kind of deeply historicized work necessary to elucidate the shifting contours of race in the twenty-first century. * American Literature *Racial Reconstructionis an engaging study that further illustrates how race is a comparative phenomenon in the United States, and is a useful read for those interested in how comparative racialization of African Americans and Chinese Americans permeated American literary culture. * American Nineteenth Century History *

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Book Synopsis2023 Co-Winner of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize, given by the Law and Society AssociationIllustrates how the power of narrative influences how police, prosecutors, juries, and judges constructlegal realityWrongful convictions have been studied primarily through the lenses of law, psychology, and the social sciences. Though scholarship has established canonical factors that help explain why the innocent are convicted, a very simple question has not been answered: How is it possible that prosecutors can convince juries and themselves of the guilt of an innocent defendant, often even against strong exculpatory evidence? Narratives of Guilt and Innocence seeks to address this crucial question by highlighting the narrative blueprint of a given criminal justice system and then how the power of narrative influences how police, prosecutors, juries, and judges construct legal reality and the evidence for it. That law and storytelling are connected is a common trope, but we know surprisingly littTrade Review"An admirably clear, thorough, and careful analysis of the role of narrative in the criminal trial process. Grunewald has put forth a body of work that significantly advances the field, engaging more seriously with questions of narrative than the vast majority of . . . scholarship in this area." -- Simon Stern, Director, Centre for Innovation Law & Policy, University of Toronto"An erudite and sophisticated book that displays impressive expertise on both law and narrative theory. . . . Reflects considerable intellectual sophistication on both the literary and legal sides; its analysis of wrongful conviction cases is fascinating and deftly done." -- Robert Weisberg, Edwin E. Huddleson Jr Professor of Law, Stanford Law School"This brilliant study brims with penetrating insights, challenging accepted ideas about law and the criminal process. Grunewald asks the innocence movement to see that reducing wrongful convictions requires an understanding of how the narrative imagination of police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and jurors shape perceptions of reality." -- Marvin Zalman, Wayne State University"‘All a criminal conviction requires is a narrative that conveys a plausible, coherent, and acceptable story,’ writes Ralph Grunewald. Alas, that is true. This important book provides our best analysis of how untrue stories can lead to criminal convictions. This is a study that demands our attention." -- Peter Brooks, Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus, Yale University"A must-read for those involved in criminal law and innocence projects, legal comparatists, and Law and Narrative scholars. By comparing US criminal law procedures to their German equivalents, which are based in a less adversarial system, Grunewald shows how, once convicted, it becomes virtually impossible to prove a person’s innocence. We cannot afford to not engage with this important work." -- Margareta Olson, author of From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect

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Book SynopsisThe story of white masculinity in geek culture through a history of hobby gamingGeek culture has never been more mainstream than it is now, with the ever-increasing popularity of events like Comic Con, transmedia franchising of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, market dominance of video and computer games, and the resurgence of board games such as Settlers of Catan and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Yet even while the comic book and hobby shops where the above are consumed today are seeing an influx of BIPOC gamers, they remain overwhelmingly white, male, and heterosexual. The Privilege of Play contends that in order to understand geek identity's exclusionary tendencies, we need to know the history of the overwhelmingly white communities of tabletop gaming hobbyists that preceded it. It begins by looking at how the privileged networks of model railroad hobbyists in the early twentieth century laid a cultural foundation for the scenes that woTrade Review"In this timely and important book, Aaron Trammell explores not just today's growing board game community, but its longer, more complex, and problematic genealogies and historiographies. The hobbyists from which the modern board game community developed—the train enthusiasts, the sci-fi authors, the war gamers, the role players—have strong ties through to today. And while the communities have offered safe spaces for some marginalized groups, they also participated in racist and class-based segregation. With his practiced analytical skills and detailed eye for nuance, Trammell never lets one narrative dominate, telling a refined, three- dimensional story about the development of hobby board games. Play is serious business, but Trammell's engaging tone makes it fun again too. Highly recommended." * Paul Booth, author of Board Games as Media *"I have been waiting for years for a book like The Privilege of Play. Using contemporary and historical examples, Aaron Trammell weaves together insightful theoretical analysis, archival deep dives, and sharp, poignant anecdotes to construct a compelling picture of game culture hobbyists, and the history out of which they emerged." * Shira Chess, author of Play Like a Feminist *"I read The Privilege of Play straight through. It hit pretty close to home, reading a bit like my own travelogue through the hobby, beginning with the model train sets I had as a kid, my obsession with war games as a teenager, and taking us right through my RPG days and current career in games. The Privilege of Play is a must read for anyone seriously committed to a socially just and open hobby industry. Trammel argues, and I would agree, that any hobby gaming professional looking to break down the patterns of exclusion that pervade our industry would do well to study how we arrived here." -- Christopher O’Neal, CEO of Brotherwise Games and President of Game Pathways"For nearly a decade, Aaron Trammell has been a leading voice calling for the field of game studies to attend to analog games’ (board games, card games, and tabletop roleplaying games) deep history and thriving present... Overall, The Privilege of Play expands a nascent but growing movement to study race within game cultures and provides a powerful demonstration of what archival work about play communities can reveal." -- Peter McDonald * Critical Inquiry *

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Book SynopsisReimagines how race, ethnicity, imperialism, and colonialism can be central to social science researchand methodsThere is a growing consensus that the discipline of sociology and the social sciences broadly need to engage more thoroughly with the legacy and the present day of colonialism, Indigenous/settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism in the United States and globally. In Disciplinary Futures, a cross-section of scholars comes together to engage sociology and the social sciences by way of these paradigms, particularly from the influence of disciplines of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies. With original essays from scholars such as Y?n Lê Espiritu, Sunaina Maira, Hokulani K. Aikau, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Ben Carrington, Yvonne Sherwood, and Gilda L. Ochoa, among others, Disciplinary Futures offers concrete pathways for how the social sciences can expand from the limiting frameworks they traditionally use to study race and racism, namely: the black-white binarTrade Review"The margins of sociology are at once its cutting edge. There we find innovative scholarship remaking the discipline through critical engagements with American, cultural, ethnic, gender and women's, Indigenous, postcolonial, and queer studies. A stocktaking and agenda-setting book, Disciplinary Futures brings empire, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, queer of color critique, white supremacy, and intersectionality from the periphery to the core of our concern. May sociology take heed." * Moon-Kie Jung, author of Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy: Denaturalizing U.S. Racisms Past and Present *"Much lip service is paid to the significance of engaging in inter- and multidisciplinary research, but surprisingly little or no attention is given to why it is important and how to do it. These issues are central to this volume. A diverse and stellar group of scholars illustrate how the discipline of sociology can be rethought, enriched, and expanded through a deep engagement with other disciplines. Their scholarship reveals the necessity for sociology to revitalize and reinvent itself in order to fully comprehend the positionality, experiences, and voices of racialized and marginalized groups." * Michael Omi, co-author of Racial Formation in the United States *"This is a powerful collection that challenges sociologists to confront the epistemic violence that undergirds their discipline. It challenges race-neutral and nation-bound analysis of the experiences of people of color as it calls for a critical sociology that acknowledges the injuries of racism, settler-colonialism, and imperialism in everyday experiences. This is a must-read for anyone committed to dismantling inequality." * Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, author of Servants of Globalization: Migration and Domestic Work *"The important essays in this exciting interdisciplinary volume bring valuable insights from studies of race and immigration, disability, gender and sexuality, and Indigeneity to bear upon research and methods in sociology and the social sciences.”" * Lisa Lowe, author of The Intimacies of Four Continents *

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Book SynopsisNearly a week after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, President Obama walked into the press briefing room and shocked observers by saying that Trayvon could have been me. He talked personally and poignantly about his experiences and pointed to intra-racial violence as equally serious and precarious for black boys. He offered no sweeping policy changes or legislative agendas; he saw them as futile. Instead, he suggested that prejudice would be eliminated through collective efforts to help black males and for everyone to reflect on their own prejudices. Obama's presidency provides a unique opportunity to engage in a discussion about race and politics. In The Race Whisperer, Melanye Price analyzes the manner in which Barack Obama uses race strategically to engage with and win the loyalty of potential supporters. This book uses examples from Obama's campaigns and presidency to demonstrate his ability to authentically tap into notions of blackness and whiteneTrade Review"In this book, Melanye Price masterfully explores the many ways in which the first black president, Barack Obama, navigated the complexities of racenot only as a politician but also as a candidate. The books success lies in Prices ability to peel back the layers of racial significance within President Obamas rhetorical approaches[Prices] work is extremely impressive." * Critical Dialogues *"Price has written a wonderfully rich treatment of President Barack Obamas rhetoric and his usages of race. It is a highly critical, yet restrained analysis of his presidency. This book invites readers to think closely about how politicians, especially African American politicians, use race in American national politics. More importantly, it serves as guidebook for African American voters and how they might assess the use of race in political rhetoric and discourse." -- Randal Maurice Jelks,author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of The Movement: A Biography"With The Race Whisperer Melanye Price has helped decode one of the most enigmatic and complex dynamics of the Obama Presidency." -- W. Jelani Cobb,author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress"[Price's] analysis shines new light on the price paid for black silence. If Obama is the model for black politicians going forward, how can they deliver more than symbolic benefit to black voters?" * The Historian *

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Book SynopsisAn overview of the history of American Jewry using primary sources from Latin America, theCaribbean, Canada, and the United StatesJews Across the Americas is a groundbreaking sourcebook capturing the historical diversity and culturalbreadth of American Jews across Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, and the United States. Featuringprimary documents as well as scholarly interpretations, Jews Across the Americas builds upon newdevelopments in Jewish Studies, engaging with transnationalism, race, sexuality, and gender, andhighlighting the lived experiences of those often left out of Jewish history.Jews Across the Americas features an impressively broad and far-reaching range of historical sources,including artifacts and objects that have not previously been featured as integral to Jewish history in theWestern hemisphere. Entries teach readers how to understand everything from wills andadvertisements to sermons, and hoTrade ReviewAdrianna Brodsky and Laura Leibman have assembled a valuable anthology of diverse sources that will surprise and reward all who are interested in the history of Jews in the Americas. The introductions contextualizing each original document are wonderful gems, mini history lessons of the era and specific situation coupled with thematic discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and Jewishness. Designed as a supplement to typical courses on American Jewish history, Jews Across the Americas provides a rich resource for scholars and students alike. -- Deborah Dash Moore, University of MichiganRich with visual materials, Jews Across the Americas contains primary sources from South America, North America, and the Caribbean. Collectively, they widen our vision of the diversity of Jewish life on this side of the Atlantic. With excellent introductions to each source and questions to spark discussion, this is a stellar contribution to the teaching of modern Jewish history. -- Pamela S. Nadell, author of America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today

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Book SynopsisHeartfelt personal accounts from transgender people fighting for the right to serve in the military Prior to coming out as transgender I served the first several years of my career under Don't Ask, Don't Tell, hiding my sexual orientation out of the constant fear of expulsion. I then found myself in the same predicament as when I first joined, wanting nothing more than to serve my country and do my job, but at the cost of sacrificing a major part of who I am. . . . This time, however, I decided that I could no longer sacrifice my own well-being, my own authentic self.Mak Vaden, Warrant Officer 1, U.S. Army National Guard, 2006-presentI have traveled around the world. . . . I have been on five cutters with eleven years of sea time and commanded the Coast Guard cutter Campbell. I have negotiated treaties and fostered international law enforcement cooperation. I have stopped drug smugglers and seized illegal fishing vessels on the high seas. And, I aTrade ReviewAn exquisite book about serving in the U.S. military as a transgender person, with just enough historical and sociological context to make the volume’s personal stories that much more meaningful ... A simple description can’t do justice to the beauty, elegance, and courage displayed here. Readers will want to meet and spend time with these contributors. A worthwhile collection, highly recommended for all readers. * STARRED Library Journal *With Honor and Integrity shares the pain of the closet and the triumph of transition for transgender patriots. Their stories underscore how policies of integrity and truth serve our nation best. Our nation's thanks goes to the brave souls who have blazed trails and shared their truths. -- C. Dixon Osburn, co-founder of the Servicemembers Legal Defense NetworkWith Honor and Integrity is a must-read book by two of the nation's leading experts. This volume is a badly needed contribution to our understanding of military service by transgender personnel, but it’s also much more than that, providing invaluable historical context and insightful policy analysis. Most of all, it centers transgender and gender-diverse Americans who show, in their own voices, that it’s possible to live authentically while serving in uniform. -- Aaron Belkin, Director of the Palm CenterThe world has waited too long to hear directly from the transgender patriots who have put their lives on the line to protect the rest of us. Now, at last, two leading voices in the field who have worn the uniform themselves, have brought together an extraordinary collection of first-hand accounts by active-duty service members and veterans, officers and enlisted personnel, those who have undergone transition and those who are doing so or may in the future. In the process, Máel Embser-Herbert and Bree Fram have made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of gender and military service, showing once again what it means to serve their country. -- Nathaniel Frank, author of Awakening: How Gays and Lesbians Brought Marriage Equality to AmericaThe experiences of transgender servicemembers have been all too scant in analyses of the US military's anti-LGBT history. With Honor and Integrity ameliorates this absence, powerfully demonstrating the impact of gendered military policy on the trans and gender nonconforming people who serve under its watchful eye. In their own words, the trans servicemembers that Embser-Herbert and Fram profile show the difference that supportive—or unsupportive—supervisors, colleagues, and policies can make. This extremely timely intervention is a must-read for military scholars and policymakers alike. -- Catherine Connell, author of the forthcoming A Few Good Gays: The US Military’s Incomplete Gender and Sexuality RevolutionThe editors succeed mightily in producing a volume about the challenges and rewards of military service for transgender troops that will engage a wide readership. All libraries should acquire this necessary title. -- C. Pinto * Choice *

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2021 Latinx Studies Section Outstanding Book Award, given by the Latin American Studies AssociationWinner, 2020 Latino Book Awards in the LGBTQ+ Themed SectionFinalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ StudiesCritically reimagines Chicanx art, unmasking its queer afterlife Emboldened by the boom in art, fashion, music, and retail culture in 1980s Los Angeles, the iconoclasts of queer Aztlánas Robb Hernández terms the group of artists who emerged from East LA, Orange County, and other parts of Southern California during this perioddeveloped a new vernacular with which to read the city in bloom. Tracing this important but understudied body of work, Archiving an Epidemic catalogs a queer retelling of the Chicana and Chicano art movement, from its origins in the 1960s, to the AIDS crisis and the destruction it wrought in the 1980s, and onto the remnants and legacies of these artistTrade ReviewA much-needed publication on queer Chicanx art and artists in Southern California during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a study of loss, memory, and memorialization in the wake of the AIDS crisis...Hernandez’s work to reassemble the “wreckage” of AIDS art and performance allows us to imagine archival methods beyond institutions in performative and creative ways that look to infinite and speculative recastings of history for those the archive left behind. * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *Hernández has created a methodology that is built from an understanding that archives are always flawed endeavors, especially given that so much art and performance created in response to AIDS has been lost or destroyed. Instead, he utilizes an approach that embraces degradation and incompletion. By meticulously attending to absences and failures in the work he studies, Hernández’s book offers an innovative new methodology for archival practice ... Hernández’s examination of queer Chicanx avantgarde practices is urgent and long overdue. * The Drama Review *Provides a detailed, sensitive, and textured account of the precarious histories of queer Chicanx artists during the first decades of the ongoing AIDS crisis. This remarkable book offers new ways of thinking about how to reconstruct such histories by attending to the emotional and spatial qualities of the archives, homes, detritus, mementos, and memories that Hernández explores with the reader. While Archiving an Epidemic is a groundbreaking historical recovery of queer art in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s, it is also a reflection on loss, absence, silence, and the threat of erasure. Not only will this book be an essential text in the literatures on queer art, Chicanx art, and the AIDS pandemic, it should be read by anyone confronting archives and their limits. Indeed, no one studying American art and culture of the late twentieth century can afford not to read this book. -- David J. Getsy, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoHernández queers the archive while also stepping outside its institutional limits and into the realm of the absences and shards of human loss from AIDS. In doing so, Hernández develops an alternative methodology for 'queer detrital analysis' that brings the body and space to bear. A tour de force in its archival and critical breadth, this book vividly reimagines the American avant-garde since the 1960s through queer Chicanx artists, groups, and spaces in Southern California. -- Chon Noriega, University of California, Los Angeles

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Book SynopsisMarginal workers are frequently lacking in protection.Trade ReviewAt a moment of growing unrest around work relations, this book is a breath of fresh air. Garcia offers an analysis of the possibilities and challenges of work law reform that is rich and nuanced. The book succeeds in bringing together principles of workers rights with the realities of todays economy. Garcia masterfully weaves together vivid stories about workplace settings with thought-provoking ideas about legal boundaries, policy and law reform. Garcia is simultaneously practical and a visionary. Garcia is an experienced and engaged scholar and advocate and Marginal Workers holds the promise of revitalizing political and academic discussions across multiple disciplinary fields. Marginal Workers will be of immense value to anyone interested in the future of employment and labor law. The book will serve thinkers, activists and reformers for many years to come. -- Orly LobelRuben Garcias Marginal Workers moves the bar on workers rights advocacy. This important, synthesizing work should reach legal, policy, and activist communities throughout the United States. Garcia illuminates the interstices of a statutory and regulatory system meant to protect employees, but which leaves millions of low-wage workers exposed to workplace abuse. He does not rest with analyzing the problem; he offers ideas and proposals for relaunching workers rights from a platform of first principles, not transient policy preferences. -- Lance CompaAdvanced readers will appreciate the survey of alternative strategies....recommended. * CHOICE *Garcia shows convincingly how these apparently disparate groups of workers are all subjected to exclusionary and exploitative employment practices. Particularly valuable is his emphasis on labour rights that go beyond the & core International Labour Organization rights of Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining towards universal rights that include all workers, regardless of their union or citizenship status. * Work, Employment, and Society *Table of ContentsPreface: The Place of the Law in the Workplace Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Who Are the Marginal Workers? 2. Framing Workers' Rights: The Legal and Theoretical Underpinnings for the Protection of Marginal Workers3. New Voices at Work: Unionized Workers at the Intersection of Race and Gender4. Across the Borders: How Antidiscrimination Law Fails Noncitizens and Other Marginal Workers5. Labor as Property: Guestworkers at the Margins of Domestic Legal Systems6. A Global Understanding of Worker Protection Notes Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisThe views and experiences of multiracial people as parentsThe world's multiracial population is considered to be one of the fastest growing of all ethnic groups. In the United States alone, it is estimated that over 20% of the population will be considered mixed race by 2050. Public figuressuch as former President Barack Obama and Hollywood actress Ruth Neggafurther highlight the highly diverse backgrounds of those classified under the umbrella term of multiracial. Multiracial Parents considers how mixed-race parents identify with and draw from their cultural backgrounds in raising and socializing their children. Miri Song presents a groundbreaking examination of how the meanings and practices surrounding multiracial identification are passed down through the generations. A revealing portrait of how multiracial identity is and is not transmitted to children, Multiracial Parents focuses on couples comprised of one White and one non-white minority, who were mostly first generation mixeTrade ReviewMiri Song’s Multiracial Parents …. is a long-overdue addition to the sociological literature in mixed race studies. Multiracial Parents makes an invaluable contribution to the sociology of race and ethnicity, mixed-race studies, and race and ethnic studies more generally, as well as the sociology of the family and social psychology. Song’s book would be an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses as well as for interested readers in the general public. -- American Journal of SociologyMiri Song in Multiracial Parents examines multiracial people as parents and how they racially socialize their children, including whether a multiracial identity is passed down to the next generation… Song argues that the prevalence of multiracial parents labeling their children as mixed reflects generational continuity in multiracial identity and mixed-ness gaining purchase in Britain. She also challenges the notion that a multiracial label signals an attempt by mixed race people to distance themselves from their minority status, as many parents actively maintained or revitalized their minority heritage through their parenting practices. -- Qualitative SociologySong raises critical issues about the varying structures of race, racism, and the demise and persistence of ethnicity and race as meaningful categories due to differential histories including relationships to slavery, colonialism, nationalism, religion, and indigeneity. * Journal of Asian American Research *A novel and searching look at how mixed race people contemplate and confront parenthood. Though their circumstances may seem unique, Song compellingly shows how their experiences and reflections speak volumes about how race is more widely understood. Questions of appearance, community, racism, and ancestry may take on particular forms for multiracial parents, but their power and poignancy clearly derive from the weight they hold for all of us -- Ann Morning,Author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human DifferenceA rich account of the complexities of racially classifying mixed-race children. Song strikes at the heart of where mixed-race identity and its variants - such as to identify as White or non-White - are formed. By following parents accounts, this innovative and important book helps us understand an important dimension of a world of increasing ethnoracial diversity. -- Edward E. Telles,Author of Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin AmericaAn insightful study that illuminates a neglected group: multiracial parents who are raising children. We learn how second-generation multiracials conceptualize and negotiate the meaning of race, racism, and the identity formation of their children. -- France Winddance Twine,Author of A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy

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Book SynopsisFinalist, 2020 Elliott P. Skinner Award, given by the Association of Africanist AnthropologyExamines why African care workers feel politically excluded from the United States Care for America's growing elderly population is increasingly provided by migrants, and the demand for health care labor is only expected to grow. Because of this health care crunch and the low barriers to entry, new African immigrants have adopted elder care as a niche employment sector, funneling their friends and relatives into this occupation. However, elder care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility. In The New American Servitude, Coe demonstrates how these workers often struggle to find a sense of political and social belonging. They are regularly subjected to racial insults and demonstrations of powerand effectively turned into servantsat the hands of other members of th

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Book SynopsisIn everyday language, masochism is usually understood as the desire to abdicate control in exchange for sensationpleasure, pain, or a combination thereof. Yet at its core, masochism is a site where power, bodies, and society come together. Sensational Flesh uses masochism as a lens to examine how power structures race, gender, and embodiment in different contexts. Drawing on rich and varied sourcesfrom 19th century sexology, psychoanalysis, and critical theory to literary texts and performance artAmber Jamilla Musser employs masochism as a powerful diagnostic tool for probing relationships between power and subjectivity. Engaging with a range of debates about lesbian S&M, racialization, femininity, and disability, as well as key texts such as Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs, Pauline Réage's The Story of O, and Michel Foucault''s History of Sexuality, Musser renders legible the complex ways that masochism has been taken up by queer, feminist, and critical race theorieTrade ReviewSensational Flesh explores the material aspects of powerhow, in a Foucauldian sense, it is & felt in the bodyunpacking the bodily, sensational dimensions of subjectivity. Comprehensive and exhaustive in scope, Musser leaves no stone unturned in her consideration of & masochism in all its different formulations, and in the often-contradictory ways it has been deployed. -- Jean Walton,author of Fair Sex, Savage Dreams: Race Psychoanalysis, Sexual DifferenceA lively and enlightening contribution to queer studies, investigating affect and embodiment as avenues for the radical reinvigoration of how we experience and think about raced, gendered, and sexualized subjectivities. Masterful in her engagement with queer, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory and their historical contexts, Musser provides incisive analyses that make for exhilarating and highly informative reading. -- Darieck Scott,author of Extravagant AbjectionMusser has written a book well worth reading. * Sexuality and Culture *InSensational Flesh, Amber Jamilla Musser explores the appeal of masochism via empathetic readings of historical texts, extracting meaning from writing that might otherwise appear outdated or limited in its perspective. . . . Musser does a fine job of weaving together various texts to present the reader with a nuanced view of the practice. . . . [F]or those with a basic understanding of the philosophical complexities of arguments concerning subjects, objects, and notions of the 'other,' Musser presents a compelling and deeply satisfying read. * Bitch Magazine *In a sex-positive era, Musser admirably defends black womens rights to experiment boundlessly with sensations and the erotics of power, free from the restraints of the collective memory of slavery. * Gender & Society *What does it feel like to be enmeshed in regimes of power? And how does masochism challenge and extend notions of agency, subjectivity, difference, freedom, and representation? InSensational Flesh, Musser probes such questions in an effort to distill how it feels to exist in the liminal space between agency and subjectlessness and, importantly, how to account for difference within these performances of submission. * GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments xi1 Introduction: Theory, Flesh, Practice 12 Specters of Domination: Patriarchy, Colonialism, and Masochism 313 Objectification, Complicity, and Coldness: The Story of O's Narratives of Femininity and Precarity 584 Time, Race, and Biology: Fanon, Freud, and the Labors of Race 885 Lacerated Breasts: Medicine, Autonomy, Pain 118Conclusion: Making Flesh Matter 151Notes 185Bibliography 211Index 231About the Author 255

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Book SynopsisHow activists in Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil provide inspiration and strategies for combating the gender violence epidemic in the United States How can the U.S. learn from the perspectives of anti-gender violence activists in South America and Africa as we seek to end intimate violence in this country? The U.S. has consistently positioned itself as a moral exemplar, seeking to export its philosophy and values to other societies. Yet in this book, Traci C. West argues that the U.S. has much to learn from other countries when it comes to addressing gender-based violence. West traveled to Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil to interview activists involved in the struggle against gender violence. In each of these places, as in the United States, Christianity and anti-black racism have been implicated in violence against women. In Ghana and Brazil, in particular, their Christian colonial and trans-Atlantic slave trade histories directly connect with the socioeconomic dTrade ReviewThis book is a gift. Traci C. West synthesizes scholarship, spirituality and searing analyses to challenge the ways we perceive, practice, and oppose violence. West built an international platform between book covers to transform religious, social, and political-economic institutions that structure predatory power. This book helps us to clean old wounds as it offers healing through strategic perspectives to diminish and eradicate gender violence. -- Joy James,author of Seeking the Beloved Community, and editor of The New AbolitionistsTraci West's text is radically innovative, critically startling, and defiantly embodied. Her transnational approach to gender violence takes seriously the role of religion, spirituality, culture, and the wisdom of African women leaders. It utilizes courage, wit, and vast research findings extracted from many parts of the world. -- Fulata Lusungu Moyo,Circle of Concerned African Women TheologiansAfricana women fight for their agency. Traci West acts as a griot for this Africana revolutionary becoming, documenting their journeys to freedom. She carefully recovers women’s voices lost to or drowned out by racist and sexist structures and creates a platform on and through which they can tell themselves. In ensuring their visibility Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality makes room for Africana women’s possibility and power. * The Marginalia Review of Books *Can assist faith-based anti-violence and anti-racist activists in acknowledging religion’s collusion in the social structures that perpetuate sexual & gender based violence... This is a dense book that brings together transnational feminist theological, gender studies, sociological, and activist knowledge and experiences concerning SGBV. It is daring, creative work and an engrossing read for scholars familiar with these fields. * Sociology of Religion *

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Book SynopsisFinalist, 2020 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social ProblemsHonorable Mention, 2021 Asian America Section Book Award, given by the American Sociological AssociationAn inspiring look inside immigrant youth's political activism in perilous times Undocumented immigrants in the United States who engage in social activism do so at great risk: the threat of deportation. In Organizing While Undocumented, Kevin Escudero shows why and howdespite this riskmany of them bravely continue to fight on the front lines for their rights. Drawing on more than five years of research, including interviews with undocumented youth organizers, Escudero focuses on the movement's epicentersSan Francisco, Chicago, and New York Cityto explain the impressive political success of the undocumented immigrant community. He shows how their identities as undocumented immigrants, but also as queer individuals, people of colTrade ReviewNever before have I read an empirical and theoretical book-length treatise on intersectionality as the identity politics of a US social movement, in this case, one of the most prominent: that of unauthorized immigrant youth. This highly sophisticated analysis centers the organizing of the usually-unseen Asian ethnics without papers and interrelates social axes and activist strategies by way of the undocuqueer movement. Organizing While Undocumented is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the intersection of race, legal status, queer identity, and gender in activism and for anyone seeking a model of meticulous and incisive analysis that is both razor-sharp and inspiring. -- Nadia Y. Kim, author of Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LAOrganizing While Undocumented is a timely and powerful book that makes a major contribution to contemporary debates over immigration and citizenship. The courage and tenacity of undocumented Latino and Asian youth activists shine through in this book, revealing inspiring stories of personal and societal transformation. -- Rick Baldoz, author of The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946Since the massive immigrant-rights protests of 2006, the undocumented youth movement has emerged as one of the most powerful social movements of our time. Organizing While Undocumented offers an enlightening perspective of the more nuanced aspects of identify formation and cross-issue campaigns that undergird the importance and influence of this social movement. Timely and incredibly relevant, this book is a must-read for those interested in the contemporary processes of migration, identity, and protest. -- Roberto G. Gonzales, author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in AmericaThe book does a great job highlighting how immigrant-rights activists think about and mobilize their intersectional identities to advance their civil rights agenda locally and nationally. [...] Escudero’s work will certainly be a model to conduct further work on mobilizations around immigrant rights. * Social Forces *

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2016 Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Arab American Book AwardA collection of insightful and heartbreaking essays on Muslim-American life after 9/11Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake Mustafa Bayoumi was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media as pushing an anti-American, pro-Islam agenda, and was asked by a U.S. citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. Others have endured far worse fates. Sweeping arrests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, based almost solely on their national origin and immigration status. The NYPD, with help from the CIA, has aggressively spied on Muslims in the New York area as they go about their ordinary lives, from noting where they get their hair cutTrade Review"Some of the essays were written as many as 15 years ago. Still, the policies he writes about have been much-discussed of latefrom Muslim registration programs to increased surveillance of Muslim communities." * amExpress *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: My Muslim American Life 1 PART I. MUSLIMS IN HISTORY 1. Letter to a G-Man 23 2. East of the Sun (West of the Moon): Islam, the Ahmadis, and African America 35 3. Racing Religion 48 PART II. MUSLIMS IN THEORY 4. Sects and the City 75 5. A Bloody Stupid War 78 6. The God That Failed: The Neo-Orientalism of Today's Muslim Commentators 99 PART III. MUSLIMS IN POLITICS 7. The Rites and Rights of Citizenship 121 8. Between Acceptance and Rejection: Muslim Americans and the Legacies of September 11 128 9. Fear and Loathing of Islam 140 10. The Oak Creek Massacre 148 11. White with Rage 152 vi Contents PART IV. MUSLIMS IN CULTURE 12. My Arab Problem 169 13. Disco Inferno 175 14. The Race Is On: Muslims and Arabs in the American Imagination 185 15. Men Behaving Badly 210 16. Chaos and Procedure 217 17. Coexistence 240 Conclusion: Our Muslim American Lives 253

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Book SynopsisThe essential guide to understanding how racism works and how racial inequality shapes black lives, ultimately offering a road-map for resistance for racial justice advocates and antiracists When #BlackLivesMatter went viral in 2013, it shed a light on the urgent, daily struggles of black Americans to combat racial injustice. The message resonated with millions across the country. Yet many of our political, social, and economic institutions are still embedded with racist policies and practices that devalue black lives. Stay Woke directly addresses these stark injustices and builds on the lessons of racial inequality and intersectionality the Black Lives Matter movement has challenged its fellow citizens to learn. In this essential primer, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith inspire readers to address the pressing issues of racial inequality, and provide a basic toolkit that will equip readers to become knowledgeable participants in public debate, activism, and politics. This Trade ReviewThis is the essential guide on race, racism, the BLM movement, fighting for racial justice, fighting against racial injustice, and more. I am looking at you, fellow white people! Buy this book and read it. Own it, love it, memorize it, and live it. * Ms. Magazine *An examination of the Black Lives Matter movement that bridges gaps between academic discourse and popular culture in powerful, provocative ways ... A valuable guidebook that deconstructs myths and provides actionable steps people can take to avoid complacency and complicity; essential reading on social justice. * STARRED Library Journal *Lays bare the common sense assumptions that both sustain and obscure racism..Makes it impossible for anyone to sleep on 'Black Lives Matter' and the ongoing struggle to end racism as we know it. * Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination *An accessible guide to understanding structural racism and the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement and related organizations, both within a historical context and through contemporary lenses. * Choice *This book will prove useful to anyone interested in seeing America strive to live up to its purported values of equality, liberty, and justice. [...] Stay Woke is refreshingly direct, comprehensive, inspirational, and unapologetically antiracist. * Political Science Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThe views and experiences of multiracial people as parentsThe world's multiracial population is considered to be one of the fastest growing of all ethnic groups. In the United States alone, it is estimated that over 20% of the population will be considered mixed race by 2050. Public figuressuch as former President Barack Obama and Hollywood actress Ruth Neggafurther highlight the highly diverse backgrounds of those classified under the umbrella term of multiracial. Multiracial Parents considers how mixed-race parents identify with and draw from their cultural backgrounds in raising and socializing their children. Miri Song presents a groundbreaking examination of how the meanings and practices surrounding multiracial identification are passed down through the generations. A revealing portrait of how multiracial identity is and is not transmitted to children, Multiracial Parents focuses on couples comprised of one White and one non-white minority, who were mostly first generation mixeTrade Review"Miri Song’s Multiracial Parents …. is a long-overdue addition to the sociological literature in mixed race studies. Multiracial Parents makes an invaluable contribution to the sociology of race and ethnicity, mixed-race studies, and race and ethnic studies more generally, as well as the sociology of the family and social psychology. Song’s book would be an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses as well as for interested readers in the general public." -- American Journal of Sociology"Miri Song in Multiracial Parents examines multiracial people as parents and how they racially socialize their children, including whether a multiracial identity is passed down to the next generation… Song argues that the prevalence of multiracial parents labeling their children as mixed reflects generational continuity in multiracial identity and mixed-ness gaining purchase in Britain. She also challenges the notion that a multiracial label signals an attempt by mixed race people to distance themselves from their minority status, as many parents actively maintained or revitalized their minority heritage through their parenting practices." -- Qualitative Sociology"Song raises critical issues about the varying structures of race, racism, and the demise and persistence of ethnicity and race as meaningful categories due to differential histories including relationships to slavery, colonialism, nationalism, religion, and indigeneity." * Journal of Asian American Research *"A novel and searching look at how mixed race people contemplate and confront parenthood. Though their circumstances may seem unique, Song compellingly shows how their experiences and reflections speak volumes about how race is more widely understood. Questions of appearance, community, racism, and ancestry may take on particular forms for multiracial parents, but their power and poignancy clearly derive from the weight they hold for all of us" -- Ann Morning,Author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference"A rich account of the complexities of racially classifying mixed-race children. Song strikes at the heart of where mixed-race identity and its variants - such as to identify as White or non-White - are formed. By following parents accounts, this innovative and important book helps us understand an important dimension of a world of increasing ethnoracial diversity." -- Edward E. Telles,Author of Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America"An insightful study that illuminates a neglected group: multiracial parents who are raising children. We learn how second-generation multiracials conceptualize and negotiate the meaning of race, racism, and the identity formation of their children." -- France Winddance Twine,Author of A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy

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Book SynopsisThe work at hand for bridging the racial divide in the United States From Baltimore and Ferguson to Flint and Charleston, the dream of a post-racial era in America has run up against the continuing reality of racial antagonism. Current debates about affirmative action, multiculturalism, and racial hate speech reveal persistent uncertainty and ambivalence about the place and meaning of race and especially the black/white divide in American culture. They also suggest that the work of racial reconciliation remains incomplete. Racial Reconciliation and the Healing of a Nation seeks to assess where we are in that work, examining sources of continuing racial antagonism among blacks and whites. It also highlights strategies that promise to promote racial reconciliation in the future. Rather than revisit arguments about the importance of integration, assimilation, and reparations, the contributors explore previously unconsidered perspectives on reconciliation between blacks and whites. ChaptTrade ReviewFor critical readers wondering whether racial reconciliation is possible in the United States, whether many in the country are committed to curing the nations racial divisions, and what strategies might move the nation towards healing, Ogletree and Sarats new volume presents an extraordinary collection of modern essayists, looking back at de Tocqueville and Myrdal and forward to myriad lingering barriers to equal citizenship in American life. This compelling book lays bare the many challenges to and opportunities for reconciliation in this age of systemic racial disadvantage. -- Bryan K. Fair,author of Notes of a Racial Caste BabyAt a time when we sorely need it, this book challenges us not only to confront the painful state of race relations in this country but also to do the difficult work necessary to heal the deep wounds caused by our divisions. This collection of essays, written by a dynamic group of preeminent scholars, tackles some of the toughest social problems of our day, from discrimination and mistreatment of black and brown youth in public schools and in the criminal justice system to seemingly impenetrable segregation in the pews of churches across the country on Sunday morning. -- Montré D. Carodine,Professor of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law

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Book SynopsisWinner, Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies AssociationAcross the twentieth century, national controversies involving Asian Americans have drawn attention to such seemingly unremarkable activities as eating rice, greeting customers, and studying for exams. While public debates about Asian Americans have invoked quotidian practices to support inconsistent claims about racial difference, diverse aesthetic projects have tested these claims by experimenting with the relationships among habit, body, and identity. In The Racial Mundane, Ju Yon Kim argues that the ambiguous relationship between behavioral tendencies and the body has sustained paradoxical characterizations of Asian Americans as ideal and impossible Americans. The body's uncertain attachment to its routine motions promises alternately to materialize racial distinctions and to dissolve them. Kim's study focuses on works of theater, fiction, and film that explore the interface between racializTrade Review"A beautifully written and original discussion of Asian American performance and the politics of the everyday. The Racial Mundaneillustrateshow Asian Americans, whether historically marginalized or celebrated as model minorities, have come into the public eye, and will surely open up important new dialogues on Asian American culture and racial representation." -- Josephine Lee,author of Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage"Impressive and compelling,The Racial Mundanedefamiliarizes everyday behaviors in order to expose the racial formation of Asian Americans. In this beautifully rendered, standout book, Ju Yon Kimbreaks new ground, opening the theoretical framework of race and performance in original and exciting ways." -- Shannon Steen,author of Racial Geometries of The Black Atlantic, Asian Pacific, and American Theatre"Kims methodology throughout reminds us that scholarship is its own practice and the 'theoretical elasticity'demonstrated in these studies highlights the complexity of Asian American cultural works and their unfolding critical praxis." * American Literature *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Ambiguous Habits and the Paradox of Asian American Racial Formation 1 1. Trying on The Yellow Jacket at the Limits of Our Town: The Routines of Race and Nation 25 2. Everyday Rituals and the Performance of Community 71 3. Making Change: Interracial Conflict, Cross-Racial Performance 123 4. Homework Becomes You: The Model Minority and Its Doubles 173 Afterword: The Everyday Asian American Online 231 Notes 251 Index 277 About the Author 287

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Book SynopsisA provocative, and timely, solution for ridding America of the traces of Jim Crow policies to create a truly post-racial landscapeWhen America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a post-racial society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama?In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbotham's extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separationboth historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and todaylegally, Trade Review"The book largely succeeds in proving that a longstanding racial paradigm continues to prevent equal opportunities for blacks and other people of color in this countryand demonstrating how this paradigm has survived through almost four centuries based on different means of oppression. Higginbotham liberally cites statistics and court cases, making the book an excellent addition as required reading for a university course." * California Lawyer *"A vision of enhancing racial equalityor simply lessening racial inequalityin America. By African-American legal scholar Higginbothams account, it wasnt until he entered a well-heeled private school that he encountered the N-word thrown his way. When it was, a white coach cracked down hard, issuing a zero tolerance policy for racial epithets. No more such epithets were forthcoming, though not necessarily out of any inborn kindness on the part of the man who cast that first stone. The takeaway for Higginbotham: Civil rights movements on the part of the oppressed are well and good, but whites needed to stand up against racism in order for it to cease. Things are better in some respects than in the 1960s, but, writes the author, the formula has changed. Blacksand, to a greater or lesser extent, other nonwhite ethnic groupsare no longer judged and discriminated against strictly on the basis of race, but also on factors of class, education, income and access to political power, among others. For example, regarding sports: Recruited black players could play in games, but & walk-on black players could not. Against such broadband exclusion, Higginbotham mounts a spirited defense of affirmative action policies that is backed by good case law and by common senseor at least a sense of fair play, for, as he notes, few complain about legacy students getting into a particular college, but people certainly do complain when the numbers of blackor Asian or Hispanicstudents go up, particularly if there is a perception that they are somehow undeserving. America may be trending toward justice, but that trend is slow. Otherwise, Higginbotham asks elsewhere in this searching argument, why is there a disproportionate number of homeless blacks? A book worthy of a wide audience and wide discussion." * Kirkus Reviews *"Higginbotham's extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation - both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today - legally, economically, educationally, and socially....Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow's ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behavior and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally." * Philadelphia Tribune,Bobbi Booker *"Ghosts of Jim Crowmakes the historical connection between white racism and the law for the continuity in anti-black discrimination. F. Michael Higginbotham contends that the legal construction of race, segregation, and white racial privilege created the template for institutional racism." * Journal of African American History *"I suggest this book for everyone. It was interesting to see how the ghosts of Jim Crow are still lurking where they really shouldn't be." * Goodreads,Patrice Hoffman *"Ghosts of Jim Crow is an important work at a crucial time for our nation. Higginbotham offers scholarly insight into how America's race problem was created with a compelling prescription for its elimination." -- Benjamin Todd Jealous,President & CEO of the NAACP"Ghosts of Jim Crowclearly understands that the most effective approach will dismantle both the cultural underpinnings of white superiority and black inferiority as well as the legal and structural cornerstones of racial inequality. If we are going to become 'one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,' and free ourselves of the ghosts of Jim Crow, we will need our common paths illumined by Higginbotham's capacious wisdom and compassion." -- Alex Mikulich * National Catholic Reporter *"In Ghosts of Jim Crow, Higginbotham provides a thoughtful and perceptive discussion on the role of race in America today. His keen legal analysis and compelling narrative has resulted in a fascinating examination of how far we have come as a nation, but more importantly, of how far we have to go." -- Barbara A. Mikulski,U.S. Senator for Maryland"Rarely do Americans have the chance to speak freely about race to people beyond their own group. Higginbothams analysis provides a clear understanding of what it will mean to have a truly post-racial society in America, and what Americans of all races will need to do to bring about such a society. Ghosts of Jim Crow also provides an excellent foundation for robust dialogue among Americans about issues involving race and racism, from notions about racial superiority and inferiority to the unfortunate, continuing separation of the races, and victimization of African Americans. Higginbothams work reflects a level of honesty one rarely encounters because it challenges Americans, regardless of point of view, to look in the mirror and think about preconceived notions." -- Freeman A. Hrabowski, III,President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County"Using the fiftieth anniversary of the 1954 Brown decision as his focus, legal-scholar Higginbotham addresses the legacy of Americas racial past and its impact on race equity today. What he wants is a new conversation on race that acknowledges the old paradigm of whites at the top and blacks at the bottom of a racial hierarchy, a model that continues to this day. Higginbotham reviews the history of slavery and Jim Crowlegalized segregation and its contemporary adaptations, with the objective of dismantling the old model that is manifested in significant black separation. He focuses on false notions of white superiority, black separation and white isolation, and black victimization. Changes in the law now place proof of disparate impact over proof of intent and go beyond the employment arena, but Higginbotham argues that we must consider our racial history and legal practices that continue to reduce racial inequality. If the courts and the nation as a whole valued racial diversity as a compelling state interest, affirmative action would be seen as an active tool to reduce racial isolation, which undercuts the pursuit of racial equity." -- Vernon Ford * Booklist Online *Table of ContentsPart I: Creating the Paradigm: Racial Hierarchy1. Constructing Racial Categories from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War 2. Maintaining White Dominance during Reconstruction3. Preventing Black Excellence between Plessy and BrownPart II: Sustaining the Paradigm: White Isolation and Black Separation and Subordination4. Maintaining Racial Segregation in Schools and Neighborhoods from Brown to the 21st Century 5. Victimizing Blacks in the 21st Century Part III: Ending the Paradigm: Building a Post-Racial America6. Black Empowerment and Self-Help7. Integration and Equality

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2021 Latinx Studies Section Outstanding Book Award, given by the Latin American Studies Association Winner, 2020 Latino Book Awards in the LGBTQ+ Themed Section Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies Critically reimagines Chicanx art, unmasking its queer afterlife Emboldened by the boom in art, fashion, music, and retail culture in 1980s Los Angeles, the iconoclasts of queer Aztlánas Robb Hernández terms the group of artists who emerged from East LA, Orange County, and other parts of Southern California during this perioddeveloped a new vernacular with which to read the city in bloom. Tracing this important but understudied body of work, Archiving an Epidemic catalogs a queer retelling of the Chicana and Chicano art movement, from its origins in the 1960s, to the AIDS crisis and the destruction it wrought in the 1980s, and onto the remnants and legacies of these artists in the current moment. Hernández offers a vocabulary for this multi-modal avant-gardeone that contests the heteromasculinity and ocular surveillance visited upon it by the larger Chicanx community, as well as the formally straight conditions of traditional archive-building, museum institutions, and the art world writ large. With a focus on works by Mundo Meza (195585), Teddy Sandoval (19491995), and Joey Terrill (1955 ), and with appearances by Laura Aguilar, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, and even Eddie Murphy, Archiving an Epidemic composes a complex picture of queer Chicanx avant-gardisms. With over sixty imagesmany of which are published here for the first timeHernández's work excavates this archive to question not what Chicanx art is, but what it could have been.Trade ReviewA much-needed publication on queer Chicanx art and artists in Southern California during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a study of loss, memory, and memorialization in the wake of the AIDS crisis...Hernandez’s work to reassemble the “wreckage” of AIDS art and performance allows us to imagine archival methods beyond institutions in performative and creative ways that look to infinite and speculative recastings of history for those the archive left behind. * Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture *Hernández has created a methodology that is built from an understanding that archives are always flawed endeavors, especially given that so much art and performance created in response to AIDS has been lost or destroyed. Instead, he utilizes an approach that embraces degradation and incompletion. By meticulously attending to absences and failures in the work he studies, Hernández’s book offers an innovative new methodology for archival practice ... Hernández’s examination of queer Chicanx avantgarde practices is urgent and long overdue. * The Drama Review *Provides a detailed, sensitive, and textured account of the precarious histories of queer Chicanx artists during the first decades of the ongoing AIDS crisis. This remarkable book offers new ways of thinking about how to reconstruct such histories by attending to the emotional and spatial qualities of the archives, homes, detritus, mementos, and memories that Hernández explores with the reader. While Archiving an Epidemic is a groundbreaking historical recovery of queer art in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s, it is also a reflection on loss, absence, silence, and the threat of erasure. Not only will this book be an essential text in the literatures on queer art, Chicanx art, and the AIDS pandemic, it should be read by anyone confronting archives and their limits. Indeed, no one studying American art and culture of the late twentieth century can afford not to read this book. -- David J. Getsy, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoHernández queers the archive while also stepping outside its institutional limits and into the realm of the absences and shards of human loss from AIDS. In doing so, Hernández develops an alternative methodology for 'queer detrital analysis' that brings the body and space to bear. A tour de force in its archival and critical breadth, this book vividly reimagines the American avant-garde since the 1960s through queer Chicanx artists, groups, and spaces in Southern California. -- Chon Noriega, University of California, Los Angeles

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Book SynopsisA startling examination of the deliberate criminalization of black youths from the 1930s to todayA stark disparity exists between black and white youth experiences in the justice system today. Black youths are perceived to be older and less innocent than their white peers. When it comes to incarceration, race trumps class, and even as black youths articulate their own experiences with carceral authorities, many Americans remain surprised by the inequalities they continue to endure. In this revealing book, Carl Suddler brings to light a much longer history of the policies and strategies that tethered the lives of black youths to the justice system indefinitely. The criminalization of black youth is inseparable from its racialized origins. In the mid-twentieth century, the United States justice system began to focus on punishment, rather than rehabilitation. By the time the federal government began to address the issue of juvenile delinquency, the juvenile justice system shifted its prTrade Review"Suddler avoids jargon, so the narrative is accessible; the details in the book will provide starting points for many research papers. This is a book for those interested in law enforcement, New York City, African American studies, masculinity studies, late 20th-century US history, and, sadly, current events." -- Choice"A convincing, impressive book. Suddler bobs and weaves from discussing police actions to talking about the political, social, and media narratives that helped shape police logics and behavior. Along the way, he also explores how juvenile courts, jails, and other parts of the New York criminal punishment system also shaped Black kids’ experiences and constructed and 'reinforced a good kid/bad kid binary' in which race was 'the focus of youth criminality' ... The history Suddler tells here speaks some urgent truths not just about the history of racialized punishment in America but also about the treatment of Black children and young adults by law enforcement officers and other unofficial but legally sanctioned agents of violence today" * The Journal of African American History *"For anyone looking to understand the historical roots of our contemporary regime of racialized youth criminalization, Carl Suddler’s Presumed Criminal will be essential reading ... his examination casts an important lens into the construction of an enduring racist juvenile justice system which persists today." * Gotham: A Blog for New York City History *"In this powerful, timely, and deeply unsettling recovery of America’s criminal justice past, Suddler shines vital new light on the present. By brilliantly revealing the nation’s postwar effort to deal with troubled young people more humanely, this book forces us to face the extent to which the presumption of black criminality utterly undermined that effort and thereafter ensured that black boys and girls would forever be ensnared in a fundamentally unjust juvenile justice system." -- Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water"The great value of this work is not only its rich historical analysis, but that this subject, this history, speaks so clearly and directly to the experiences of black youth today." -- Hasan Kwame Jeffries, author of Bloody Lowndes"A timely and critically important origins story of how black youth became over-policed and under-protected in one of the most liberal cities in America. They were victims of institutional racism and an increasingly hostile police force that refused to protect their right to protest and organize for racial justice. Young people’s bitter awakening to racial consciousness at the end of a police baton is, as Carl Suddler skillfully shows, the starting point for understanding why stop-and-frisk first made its debut in New York City over a half-century ago." -- Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness"Provides a direct historical context not only to understand mass incarceration but particularly the anti-black violence against black youth and the BlackLivesMatter movement." -- Shannon King, author of Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?"Suddler does an excellent job of illustrating the struggles black youth faced in New York City in the early to mid-20th century. His effective way of contextualizing the atmosphere of that time gives the reader a vivid look into everyday struggles that the black community faced." * Journal of Youth and Adolescence *

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Book SynopsisThe story of racial hierarchy in the American film industry The #OscarsSoWhite campaign, and the content of the leaked Sony emails which revealed, among many other things, that a powerful Hollywood insider didn't believe that Denzel Washington could "open" a western genre film, provide glaring evidence that the opportunities for people of color in Hollywood are limited. In The Hollywood Jim Crow, Maryann Erigha tells the story of inequality, looking at the practices and biases that limit the production and circulation of movies directed by racial minorities. She examines over 1,300 contemporary films, specifically focusing on directors, to show the key elements at work in maintaining "the Hollywood Jim Crow." Unlike the Jim Crow era where ideas about innate racial inferiority and superiority were the grounds for segregation, Hollywood's version tries to use economic and cultural explanations to justify the underrepresentation and stigmatization of Black filmmakers. Erigha exposes the key elements at work in maintaining Hollywood's racial hierarchy, namely the relationship between genre and race, the ghettoization of Black directors to black films, and how Blackness is perceived by the Hollywood producers and studios who decide what gets made and who gets to make it. Erigha questions the notion that increased representation of African Americans behind the camera is the sole answer to the racial inequality gap. Instead, she suggests focusing on the obstacles to integration for African American film directors. Hollywood movies have an expansive reach and exert tremendous power in the national and global production, distribution, and exhibition of popular culture. The Hollywood Jim Crow fully dissects the racial inequality embedded in this industry, looking at alternative ways for African Americans to find success in Hollywood and suggesting how they can band together to forge their own career paths.Trade Review"Offers a provocative lens for understanding how entrenched the industrys racial imbalances areand how the lack of people of color in top studio roles only perpetuates this inequality." * The Atlantic *"#OscarsSoWhite was a spotlight on the obvious. The Hollywood Jim Crow is an important and eloquent extension of that conversation." * Film Comment *"Aconvincing analysis of structural barriers and attitudes that obstruct black filmmakers in today's culture. .. .A meaningful tribute to the achievements of pioneer directors and a sharp call for studios to keep trying harder to acknowledge structural racism." * Kirkus Reviews *"Erigha analyzes the barriers that black filmmakers face in Hollywood . . . this well-written work demonstrates a cogent understanding of institutional racism . . . Anyone seeking to study, and dismantle, structures of oppression will appreciate this clarifying read." * STARRED Library Journal *"The superhero blockbuster Black Panther is the most recent exception to Hollywoods golden rule: the only color that matters is green, and in the name of green, one should downplay Black. Maryann Erigha confronts the implications of this rule in The Hollywood Jim Crow, which traces how the conflation of race and economics works, in the minds of the white men who dominate the industry, to marginalize Black stories and Black talent at the movies. Through a careful analysis of more than a decade of box office data, film budgets, and incriminating insider statements about the role race plays in shaping industry decision-making, Erigha exposes the centrality of ghettoization processes in a key American cultural forum." -- Darnell Hunt,Co-editor of Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities"Draws important conclusions about genre production, career trajectories, and occupational segregation by race and gender in one of the world’s most high-profile industries... I can recommend this book to anyone teaching or researching on work and occupational careers, inequality in popular culture, symbolic or colorblind racism, of the production of culture in the film industry." * Social Forces *"Erigha’s study is a tour de force in six acts, taking on the topics of how racial hierarchy is maintained, how blackness is labeled ‘unbankable,’ why black directors are often marginalized, how black films are ‘ghettoized,’ what backstage assumptions are made concerning market success, and how a new, equitable Hollywood could be formed." * Journal of American Ethnic History *"In Maryann Erigha’s probing, razor-sharp, and damning The Hollywood Jim Crow, what is and is not predictable about hitmaking gets flipped. In making her argument, Erigha relies on quantitative data, public interviews, and (anonymized) private emails ... she finds Black directors and actors trying to navigate a two-tiered system in which they’re cordoned off into lower-cost (and, therefore, almost always lower-profit) genres." * Public Books *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis book is a gift. Traci C. West synthesizes scholarship, spirituality and searing analyses to challenge the ways we perceive, practice, and oppose violence. West built an international platform between book covers to transform religious, social, and political-economic institutions that structure predatory power. This book helps us to clean old wounds as it offers healing through strategic perspectives to diminish and eradicate gender violence. -- Joy James,author of Seeking the Beloved Community, and editor of The New AbolitionistsTraci West's text is radically innovative, critically startling, and defiantly embodied. Her transnational approach to gender violence takes seriously the role of religion, spirituality, culture, and the wisdom of African women leaders. It utilizes courage, wit, and vast research findings extracted from many parts of the world. -- Fulata Lusungu Moyo,Circle of Concerned African Women TheologiansAfricana women fight for their agency. Traci West acts as a griot for this Africana revolutionary becoming, documenting their journeys to freedom. She carefully recovers women’s voices lost to or drowned out by racist and sexist structures and creates a platform on and through which they can tell themselves. In ensuring their visibility Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality makes room for Africana women’s possibility and power. * The Marginalia Review of Books *Can assist faith-based anti-violence and anti-racist activists in acknowledging religion’s collusion in the social structures that perpetuate sexual & gender based violence... This is a dense book that brings together transnational feminist theological, gender studies, sociological, and activist knowledge and experiences concerning SGBV. It is daring, creative work and an engrossing read for scholars familiar with these fields. * Sociology of Religion *

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Book SynopsisIn Managing Inequality, Karen R. Miller examines the formulation, uses, and growing political importance of northern racial liberalism in Detroit between the two World Wars. In the wake of the Civil War, many white northern leaders supported race-neutral laws and anti-discrimination statutes. These positions helped amplify the distinctions they drew between their political economic system, which they saw as forward-thinking in its promotion of free market capitalism, and the now vanquished southern system, which had been built on slavery. But this interest in legal race neutrality should not be mistaken for an effort to integrate northern African Americans into the state or society on an equal footing with whites. During the Great Migration, which brought tens of thousands of African Americans into Northern cities after World War I, white northern leaders faced new challenges from both white and African American activists and were pushed to manage race relations in a more formalized Trade Review"Managing Inequality is urgent historical reading. In our contemporary political culture, public officials regularly insist they are colorblind amidst evidence of persistent racial inequality. Karen Miller powerfully demonstrates that this 'colorblind' discourse emerged in the early 20th century among liberal politicians who wanted to maintain segregationist practices and structures but avoid charges of racism. Miller details the role Northern racial liberalism played in the creation of the modern unequal metropolis. In the process, this book provides a much-needed lens on the situation Detroit and other cities face today." -- Jeanne Theoharis,Brooklyn College"This is a very smart book. Millers impressive work lives in the space between the (often paternalistic) assumptions animating northern racial liberalism and the more expansive vision of a racially egalitarian city that inspired African American activists in the early decades of the 20th century. Returning to the history of Detroit in the critical interwar years,Managing Inequality brings novel insights into how state sponsored programs and initiatives especially around housing and employment mobilized a rhetorical liberalism that in reality masked real subordination. Indeed, anyone who has ever pondered the creation of official interracial commissions in northern centers like Detroit will find shrewd answers in these pages. Millers analysis is supple and nuanced, highly attentive to the historical record. She keeps a number of balls in the air simultaneously and the result is a book that resists easy answers about the use of race neutral ideologies, both past and present." -- Angela D. Dillard,University of Michigan"With crisp prose and an expert use of historical evidence, Karen R. Miller makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the intersections between early twentieth-century urban history and U.S. racial discourses." * Journal of American History *"Examines the transformation, uses, and growing political importance of northern racial liberalism, the notion that all Americans should be politically equal but that the state should not enforce racial equality by interfering with existing social or economic relations." * Journal of Economic Literature *"In her captivating study of interwar Detroit, Karen Miller sets out to uncover the origins of color-blind racism. Color-blind racism, she argues, is key to understanding modern American politics but is itself not properly understood. In particular, its historical originshave often been misconstrued by historians of the postwar period." * Labor *"With her tightly woven narrative about interwar Detroit, Miller offers an important contribution to the literature on the struggle for civil rights in the North." * Against the Current *"In her work,Managing Inequality, Karen R. Miller unearths the roots of modern colorblind discourse." * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 African American Migration and the Emerging Discourse of Northern Racial Liberalism 24 2 Protecting Urban Peace: Northern Racial Liberalism and the Limits of Racial Equality 64 3 Between Ossian Sweet and the Great Depression: Tolerance and Northern Racial Liberal Discourse in the Late 1920s 97 4 "Living Happily at the Taxpayers' Expense": City Managers, African American "Freeloaders," and White Taxpayers 129 5 "Let Us Act Funny": Snow Flake Grigsby and Civil Rights Liberalism in the 1930s 163 6 Northern Racial Liberalism and Detroit's Labor Movement 205 7 "Better Housing Makes Better Citizens": Slum Clearance and Low-Cost Housing 237 Conclusion 262 Notes 273 Bibliography 305 Index 317 About the Author 331

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theater ResearchExplores the intersection and history of American literary realism and the performance of spiritual and racial embodiment. Recovering a series of ecstatic performances in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American realism, Realist Ecstasy travels from camp meetings to Native American ghost dances to storefront church revivals to explore realism's relationship to spiritual experience. In her approach to realism as both an unruly archive of performance and a wide-ranging repertoire of media practicesincluding literature, photography, audio recording, and early filmLindsay V. Reckson argues that the real was repetitively enacted and reenacted through bodily practice. Realist Ecstasy demonstrates how the realist imagining of possessed bodies helped construct and naturalize racial difference, while excavating the complex, shifting, and dynamic possibilities emTrade ReviewThis book’s significance lies in Lindsay Reckson’s ability to rethink literary tropes and tactics through a profound attention to embodiment—bodily gesture, comportment, performance, reenactment. Realist Ecstasy traces how bodies come undone into practices that threaten the very category of the real. Theoretically fascinating and solidly grounded, Reckson’s work places performance in conversation with photography and the literary, forcing each to account for one another across her archival ensemble. -- Rebecca Schneider, author of Performing Remains

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Book SynopsisHow black women have personified art,expression,identity, and freedom through performanceWinner, 2016 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, presented by the Modern Language Association for an outstanding scholarly study of African American literature or cultureWinner, 2016 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchWinner, 2016 Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American theater, drama, and/or performance studies, presented by the American Society for Theatre ResearchTracing a dynamic genealogy of performance from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Uri McMillan contends that black women artists practiced a purposeful self-objectification, transforming themselves into art objects. In doing so, these artists raised new ways to ponder the intersections of art, performance, and black female embodiment.McMillan reframes the conceTrade Review"Uri McMillans magisterial debut book engages while naming a two-century-long tradition of black womens performance art in the United States, intervening in the problematic racialization and gendering of particular art historical traditions buttressed by the presumed absence of black womens aesthetic and political enactments." * Theatre Journal *"Uri McMillan's magisterial debut book engages while naming a two-century-long tradition of black women's performance art in the United States...Part of the greatness of this book is its complicated engagement with racialized, gendered, and sexualized objecthood as method, the risk-taking practices whereby the historically unfree recalculate the possibilities objecthood for smuggling in liberatory alternatives." * Theatre Journal *"Embodied Avatarsdestabilizes the boundaries between art, objecthood, and survival within the last two centuries [....] Readers are left with the reverberating echoes of not only the black women artists profiled, but the resonances of their multiple avatars, becoming a fierce atonal chorus. Performing objecthood becomes a transformative human strategy in the face of searing dehumanization. Rather than arguing for another iteration of the human as a salvageable category, McMillans innovative scholarship illuminates a complex and obstinate way of being, a being that strikingly prefers not to." * Women & Performance *"Roll over Joseph Beuys, tell Yves Klein the news! Embodied Avatarsradically disrupts prevailing histories, definitions, and genealogies of performance art by focusing on black women who, over the course of two centuries, sought to turn their degraded bodies into dissident tools of emancipation and social critique. Recognizing the first modern stage of black performativity as the auction block, Uri McMillan reveals how black women turned objectification into objecthood, enabling them to remake, disguise, remold the self into an object of resistance, an embodied nightmare to the American dream. Full of eye-popping analytical turns and thrilling theoretical high wire acts, this book is both brilliant scholarship and a performance to be reckoned with." -- Robin D. G. Kelley,author of Thelonious Monk"Embodied Avatarspresents a sweeping and charismatic investigation of the ways in which Black women have strategically staged versions of 'themselves as modes of public, personal, and critical performance and as interventions in art, expression, identity, identification, and freedom.This vibrant and energetic study of art, performance, and embodiment is far-reaching, profound, lively, and engaging." -- Stephanie Leigh Batiste,author of Darkening Mirrors"Uri McMillan takes us on a journey to unexpected terrain. With powerful alchemy, he reveals how black women performance artists work on multiple registersthrough seduction, trickery, the comfort of the seemingly familiarto enact possibility, or what he theorizes as performance & in the service of a certain type of freedom. Meticulously researched and rigorously theorized, Embodied Avatarsis a model of interdisciplinary scholarship grounded in archival work and impressive textual analysis. This book is certain to forge new paths of inquiry and debate in performance, gender and sexuality studies, and black cultural studies." -- Nicole R. Fleetwood,author of Troubling Vision"AlthoughEmbodied Avatarsis an art historical text, the author displays an admirable dexterity across discipline and epistemologies: the mixture of art history, disability studies, object-oriented ontology, and discourses of black subjectivity is deft and, at times, dazzling." * QED *"Uri McMillans Embodied Avatars is a masterfully multilayered exposition of black womens performance art from the nineteenth century to the present. McMillan not only centers black women within traditional and feminist performance art, but also challenges black hegemonic ideas about objectification in performance." * Journal of African American History *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Performing Objects 1 1. Mammy Memory: The Curious Case of Joice Heth, the Ancient Negress 23 2. Passing Performances: Ellen Craft's Fugitive Selves 65 3. Plastic Possibilities: Adrian Piper's Adamant Self-Alienation 95 4. Is This Performance about You? The Art, Activism, and Black Feminist Critique of Howardena Pindell 153 Conclusion: "I've Been Performing My Whole Life" 197 Notes 227 Index 275 About the Author 283 McMillan_i_283.indd 9 7/30/15 9:04 AM

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Book SynopsisIn A Great Conspiracy against Our Race, Peter Vellon explores how Italian immigrants, a once undesirable and swarthy race, assimilated into dominant white culture through the influential national and radical Italian language press in New York City. Racial history has always been the thorn in America's side, with a swath of injusticesslavery, lynching, segregation, and many other illsperpetrated against black people. This very history is complicated by, and also dependent on, what constitutes a white person in this country. Many of the European immigrant groups now considered white also had to struggle with their own racial identities. Examining the press as a cultural production of the Italian immigrant community, this book investigates how this immigrant press constructed race, class, and identity from 1886 through 1920. Their frequent coverage of racially charged events of the time, as well as other topics such as capitalism and religion, reveals how these papers constructed a racialTrade ReviewPowerfully affirms the centrality of race to immigration history and contributes to a better understanding of how societal pressures and internal desires to & fit in shape immigrants responses to their host country. The story of Italian Americans in particular illustrates & the tremendous cost of an assimilation process that inculcates the values of white over black, reminding us of the powerful legacy of race hatred and prejudice that still haunts American society today. * Journal of American History *[] Vellon has written a book that compels attention of anyone interested in immigrant identity formation and the politics of race in the United States. * Italian American Review *Full of nuance, finely attuned to transnational influences, and attentive to change over time, Vellons work is a noteworthy contribution to understanding how immigrants fit into, learned, and used the U.S. racial system. -- David Roediger,University of KansasThe enormous amount of research Vellon has performed in the archives of Italian (American) mainstream and radical newspapers is inestimable. . . . Vellon unearths rhetoric about race and Italian immigration that truly advances the fields of Italian American history and whiteness studies. . . . The book is poised to function as a vital contribution to ethnic history and will become an important resource for upcoming scholars. -- Mary Jo Bona,Stony Brook UniversityThe subject of Peter Vellons work, the construction of race and racial difference in the late 19th century and early 20th century Italian American mainstream and radical press in New York City, is fertile ground for exploration, given the ways in which Italian immigrants and their descendants have interacted with non-whites and particularly African Americans over the last century and more. Vellon scrutinizes articles on race and on various racial populations in the United States from a wide range of these newspapers, most of which have never been translated, and he breaks new ground discerning Italian immigrants attitudes towards Native Americans and Asian immigrants. Vellons book is an important and meaningful contribution to existing scholarship on Italian immigrants, on immigrants generally, and on the construction of race and race relations in the United States. -- Michael Topp,The University of Texas at El PasoPeter Vellon offers a convincing narrative of the road to whiteness articulated by the Italian American press, and reveals how the definition of whiteness has been critical to American culture, in this case, through the Italian American experience. * Journal of American Ethnic History *[A] concise yet thoroughly researched book. . . . An important contribution to Italian American studies specifically and immigrant and racial history in general. * Choice *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. The Italian Language Press and the Creation of an Italian Racial Identity 15 2. The Italian Language Press and Africa 37 3. Native Americans, Asians, and Italian Americans: Constructions of a Multilayered Racial Consciousness 57 4. The Education of Italian Americans in Matters of Color 79 5. Defending Italian American Civility, Asserting Whiteness 105 Epilogue 129 Notes 135 Index 163 About the Author 172

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2020 Senior Book Prize, given by the Association of Feminist AnthropologyWinner, 2020 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, given by the Society for Medical AnthropologyHonorable Mention, 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, given by the Society for Humanistic AnthropologyFinalist, 2020 PROSE Award in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category, given by the Association of American PublishersA troubling study of the role that medical racism plays in the lives of Black women who have given birth to premature and low birth weight infantsBlack women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income white women in the United States. Dána-Ain DavTrade ReviewDavis explores how medical racism impacts black women... The work is unique in that it is the first to focus on the subject as it relates to professional working women and provides evidence that black women across all classes still have a higher rate of premature births than other women. * Library Journal *As a white NICU nurse, I came to read Reproductive Injustice because I suspected I was participating in medical racism, but had never learned the relevant history to identify how, or critical race theory to know what to do about it. Reading Dr. Davis’ work, it was devastatingly easy for me to see how current practices in my NICU workplace reflected racist ideologies born from American slavery. As the work repeatedly ‘[reiterates] racism’s grammar,’ Reproductive Injustice gave me the vocabulary to begin to challenge it. * Words of Choice *Reproductive Injustice provides a powerful look at the disturbing and lingering disparity in premature births occurring among black women... Davis presents a deterritorialized ethnography that covers time and space: her fieldwork with mothers, birth workers, and hospital staff illuminates a rich narrative encompassing black women’s reproduction, the history of the March of Dimes, and development of the neonatal intensive care unit. A must read for students of anthropology, sociology, and medicine, particularly practitioners working with pregnancy and childbirth. * Choice *Davis brings context to the large-scale statistics and inferences that are built of individuals’ stories. Part of the afterlife of slavery has been the tendency to explain away statistics by singling out black women and blaming their individual behaviors, treating each woman in isolation rather than pointing to systemic inequities and toxic stress and their effects on health. Telling multiple individuals’ stories in aggregate works against this tendency; it creates a picture of structural racism … [and] paints an alarming picture of how medical racism affects black women’s health and black infant prematurity. * Christian Century *As anthropologists, we should hope that Reproductive Injustice finds audiences outside of the academy, as it is an excellent example of the continuing relevance of the discipline, generally—and ethnography, specifically—in contemporary conversations about race in the United States. * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *What makes Davis’ timely contribution in Reproductive Injustice especially powerful is her careful and well-documented insistence that we must understand the racial disparities in birth outcomes—and in particular, higher rates of premature birth among Black women—as a product of structural racism and its numerous manifestations in medicine and everyday life. * Social Force *Reproductive Injustice [...] highlights the troubling role medical racism plays regarding Black women who have given birth to premature and low weight infants, as well as their families. * Journal of African American History *[An] essential reading for social workers and anyone interested in understanding health disparities [...] A call to action to medical providers, social workers, and those involved in health disparities research, practice, and/or advocacy. * Journal of Women and Social Work *

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Book SynopsisNearly a week after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, President Obama walked into the press briefing room and shocked observers by saying that Trayvon could have been me. He talked personally and poignantly about his experiences and pointed to intra-racial violence as equally serious and precarious for black boys. He offered no sweeping policy changes or legislative agendas; he saw them as futile. Instead, he suggested that prejudice would be eliminated through collective efforts to help black males and for everyone to reflect on their own prejudices. Obama's presidency provides a unique opportunity to engage in a discussion about race and politics. In The Race Whisperer, Melanye Price analyzes the manner in which Barack Obama uses race strategically to engage with and win the loyalty of potential supporters. This book uses examples from Obama's campaigns and presidency to demonstrate his ability to authentically tap into notions of blackness and whiteneTrade ReviewIn this book, Melanye Price masterfully explores the many ways in which the first black president, Barack Obama, navigated the complexities of racenot only as a politician but also as a candidate. The books success lies in Prices ability to peel back the layers of racial significance within President Obamas rhetorical approaches[Prices] work is extremely impressive. * Critical Dialogues *Price has written a wonderfully rich treatment of President Barack Obamas rhetoric and his usages of race. It is a highly critical, yet restrained analysis of his presidency. This book invites readers to think closely about how politicians, especially African American politicians, use race in American national politics. More importantly, it serves as guidebook for African American voters and how they might assess the use of race in political rhetoric and discourse. -- Randal Maurice Jelks,author of Benjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of The Movement: A BiographyWith The Race Whisperer Melanye Price has helped decode one of the most enigmatic and complex dynamics of the Obama Presidency. -- W. Jelani Cobb,author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress[Price's] analysis shines new light on the price paid for black silence. If Obama is the model for black politicians going forward, how can they deliver more than symbolic benefit to black voters? * The Historian *

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Book SynopsisWhat is the relationship between race and space, and how do racial politics inform the organization and development of urban locales?In Race and the Politics of Deception, Christopher Mele unpacks America's history of dealing with racial problems through the inequitable use of public space. Mele focuses on Chester, Pennsylvaniaa small city comprised of primarily low-income, black residents, roughly twenty miles south of Philadelphia. Like many cities throughout the United States, Chester is experiencing post-industrial decline. A development plan touted as a way to save the city, proposes to turn one section into a desirable waterfront destination, while leaving the rest of the struggling residents in fractured communities. Dividing the city into spaces of tourism and consumption versus the everyday spaces of low-income residents, Mele argues, segregates the community by creating a racialized divide. While these development plans are described as socially inclusive and economically revTrade ReviewChristopher MelesRace and the Politics of Deceptionprovides an interesting and highly readable political and economic history of Chester, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city located in the southeastern corner of the state, between Philadelphia and Wilmington. * American Journal of Sociology *Race and the Politics of Deceptionunmasks the brutal, insidious, and predatory politics of a political machine that raped and plundered the City of Chester, Pennsylvania...Meles research is rich and substantive. * Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Reviews *A strength of the book is a good number of concrete accounts of how the local politics of urban development is consistently and strategically anchored in the ideologies and rhetoric of race. * Choice *Race and the Politics of Deception is a classic study which painstakingly details cities development and demise alongside their being inextricably tied to race and space. Mele's relational approach outlining contemporary urban social lifedeindustrialization, globalization, and continued structural inequalityadds to the social history of cities and the structural inequality plaguing American cities and their residents. A great read! -- Marlese Durr,co-editor of Race, Work, and Family in the Lives of African AmericansRace and the Politics of Deception makes a strong contribution to urban studies in exploring the dynamics of urban change within broader contexts of racial and historical inequity. Its nuanced analyses of the historical, local politics of Chester would be a fantastic teaching resource in history, urban studies, and sociology departments alike. In particular, the text serves as a prime teaching tool for historical methodologies that seek to explore race and racial politics. -- Tali Ziv,City & SocietyBy not only recounting a tale of past racism and urban development, but examining how a & new racism inscribes an old white supremacy onto the boneyards of contemporary spaces of exploitation, Mele neatly explains how contemporary white supremacynot the Donald Trump alt-right kind, but the Hillary Clinton/Paul Ryan neoliberal marketized brandwill continue to haunt us all. -- Corey Dolgon * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *In our current political moment, Race and the Politics of Deception reminds us exactly how racial deceptions continue to make America unequal, not just unequal American cities. . . . Ultimately, Meles careful analysis warns us that the strategic manipulation of race and racist ideologies for profit not only undermines cities like Chester, but poses a growing threat to American democracy itself. -- Jacob S. Rugh * Contexts *Mele weaves an engaging, coherent, and persuasive story of racial politics from beginning to end. The book uncovers perverse path-dependent patterns of racial segregation that originated in a much earlier historical period, but that are both persistent and difficult to change. -- Daniel T. Lichter * American Journal of Sociology *Meles book paints a compelling picture of the Republican political 'machine' that dominated local, county and state politics . . . He has demonstrated how business, politics and crime are seamlessly integrated into the body politic, making them often indistinguishable from one another. . . .As demonstrated by this book, urban ethnography, when undertaken with the care and skill that Mele brings to the subject matter, can provide a window into the darkest corners of urban decay. -- Frederick T. Martens, former Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission,Criminal Law and Criminal Justice BooksThe first impression you get when readingRaceand the Politics of Deceptionis the feeling that youre reading a literary work . . . Meles easy-going and fluid treatment of tricky concepts, like color-blindness,post-raciality, and blockbusting, to name a few, renders them accessible to a wider audience, thusmaking the reading process even more enjoyable. -- Elyes Hanafi * Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography *Urban America continues to be segregated and unequal. Mele demonstrates that this geography of inequality is deeply rooted in a historical legacy of racially motivated political decisions to maintain economic power and control. He clearly shows us that those claiming race neutrality are playing the game of political deception. For urban development, race, and history scholars, this book is a must-read. * Contemporary Sociology *What distinguishes Mele's telling from similar accounts of other cities is his focus on the agency and intentionality of urban elites and other members of the local Republican Political Machine in Chester. He uses the term race strategiesto describe the strategic deployment of racial stereotypes, stigmatization, scapegoating, and color-blind ideology as a means of stirring racial animus, diverting attention from political corruption, or justifying neoliberal development policies. -- Steven Tuttle * Sociology of Race and Ethnicity *A warning to all who think they fully understand the forces that created white suburbs and poor inner citiesyou do not, and you need to read this book! It makes a compelling argument, backed up with detailed data, on how the politicians, business leaders, and developers in a typical American city manipulated race to their own endsnamely profit, not redevelopment. This book is a fascinating and often disturbing look at how racial inequality shapes urban America. -- Nancy Denton,co-author of American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the UnderclassThe characters and antagonisms in Mele’s account are very much alive for the reader, rendering it a powerful exposition of the intricacy of local politics and the immediate context of racism, activism, and broader economic changes. * City & Society *

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Book SynopsisThe end of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade triggered wide-scale labor shortages across the U.S. and Caribbean. Planters looked to China as a source for labor replenishment, importing indentured laborers in what became known as coolieism. From heated Senate floor debates to Supreme Court test cases brought by Chinese activists, public anxieties over major shifts in the U.S. industrial landscape and class relations became displaced onto the figure of the Chinese labor immigrant who struggled for inclusion at a time when black freedmen were fighting to redefine citizenship.Racial Reconstruction demonstrates that U.S. racial formations should be studied in different registers and through comparative and transpacific approaches. It draws on political cartoons, immigration case files, plantation diaries, and sensationalized invasion fiction to explore the radical reconstruction of U.S. citizenship, race and labor relations, and imperial geopolitics that led to the Chinese ExcluTrade ReviewThis book will be of interest to African Americanist and Asian Americanist scholars and graduate students and, indeed, to all scholars of nineteenth and early twentieth-century US literature and history, but it will be especially useful to people interested in adapting their nineteenth-century US literature courses to reflect more transnational, multilingual perspectives. * Melus *The juxtaposition of these policies provides for intriguing analysis. It clearly shows that US history is never simply linear, as when steps toward freedom for some coincide with oppression of others. The topic is fascinating. * Choice *Offering illuminating analyses of the paranoid fantasies of Asian invasion in travelogues, political cartoons, and sensational fiction that proliferated during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Edlie L. Wong deftly probes the way in which these narratives shaped the racial formations and understandings of free and unfree labor in the American imaginary. Exploring the impact of Exclusion Laws both in the U.S. and China against the backdrop of popular culture in both nations, Racial Reconstruction provides incredibly rich insights into the global repercussions of these policies. A stellar book. -- Shelley Fisher Fishkin,author of Writing America: Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded KneeWith impressive archival research,Racial Reconstructiontraces the fascinating transnational history of U.S. racial formation in the aftermath of abolition and reconstruction. Exploring the legal discourse around Asian exclusion in relation to African American inclusion, Edlie L. Wong pushes our thinking and offers new insights about how Americans decide who does and does not belong as a citizen in the United States. -- Gretchen Murphy,author of Shadowing the White Man’s Burden: U.S. Imperialism and the Problem of the Color LineRacial Reconstructionclarifies the stakes of citizenship in the US racial state, offering important insights into current debates about immigration and the shifting contours of the US labor force. It is a model for the kind of deeply historicized work necessary to elucidate the shifting contours of race in the twenty-first century. * American Literature *Racial Reconstructionis an engaging study that further illustrates how race is a comparative phenomenon in the United States, and is a useful read for those interested in how comparative racialization of African Americans and Chinese Americans permeated American literary culture. * American Nineteenth Century History *

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Book SynopsisExamining writing by Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and gay and lesbian Americans after 1968, this book compares and historicizes what might be characterized as the minority literatures within US minority literature.Trade Review"[] Patells brief assessment of each author or text provides a useful stepping stone for other scholars who can build on his work, so the book concludes by opening up the debate and paving the way for others to join in." * The Review of English Studies *"Emergent U.S. Literatureswill be anessentialtext for understanding the historical forces at work in the ways in which we define American literature today. An ambitious piece of scholarship, Cyrus Patell draws from an impressive knowledge of major works in emergent literatures, showing us not only how these literatures have developed in conversation with each other but also pushing us to think about the cosmopolitan nature of creative expression." -- Min Hyoung Song,author of The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American"InEmergent U.S. LiteraturesCyrus R.K. Patell makes a key distinction between the previously preferred term multiculturaland newly favored wordcosmopolitanwhen describing what he calls & emergent literatures." * American Literary Scholarship *"Patells close reading of a wide array of writersJessica Hagedorn, Leslie Marmon Silko, Paul Monette, and N. Scott Momaday, among othersis skillful and sensitive." * American Literature *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Theorizing the Emergent 1 1 From Marginal to Emergent 19 2 Nineteenth-Century Roots 47 3 The Politics of Early Twentieth-Century U.S. Literary History 89 4 Liberation Movements 115 5 Multiculturalism and Beyond 187 Conclusion: Emergent Literatures and Cosmopolitan 235 Conversation Notes 241 Index 271 About the Author 285

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Book SynopsisTells the riveting narrative of the growth, disappearance, and eventual rediscovery of one of the largest free black communities of the nineteenth centuryIn 1966 a group of students, Boy Scouts, and local citizens rediscovered all that remained of a then virtually unknown community called Weeksville: four frame houses on Hunterfly Road. The infrastructure and vibrant history of Weeksville, an African American community that had become one of the largest free black communities in nineteenth century United States, were virtually wiped out by Brooklyn's exploding population and expanding urban grid. Weeksville was founded by African American entrepreneurs after slavery ended in New York State in 1827. Located in eastern Brooklyn, Weeksville provided a space of physical safety, economic prosperity, education, and even political power for its black population, who organized churches, a school, orphan asylum, home for the aged, newspapers, and the national African Civilization Society. NotabTrade Review"In Brooklyn's Promised Land: The Free Black Community of Weeksville, New York, Judith Wellman, an emeritus professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, reanimates this black nationalist enclave in the boroughs eastern Beford Hills, which by the Civil War had more than 500 residents." * New York Times *"The author uses a variety of sources and biography to paint a multifaceted picture of Weeksvillean important symbol of African Americans struggle for equality and justice during a time when the nation did not want them to have either." * The Journal of American History *"Brooklyn's Promised Land is local history at its best. It sheds light on the politics, family life, and economic strivings of a remarkable independent black community all but lost to history." * Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University *"A comprehensive history of Weeksville, Brooklyn's nineteenth and early twentieth century free black community, is long overdue. Judith Wellman's meticulously researched and clearly written social history finally charts this story through the lives of teachers, ministers, activists, a woman doctor, and ordinary citizens. What an important contribution to the lexicon of books on New York, African American history, and the history of the preservation of African American historic sites and museums." * Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, Distinguished Professor, State University of NY College at Oneonta *"Fascinating and meticulously researched. . . . It highlights the experiences of a community founded on black nationalist principles during a time of instability in American race relations, and it highlights the power of blacks in carving out their own community in Brooklyn." * Jane Dabel, California State University, Long Beach *"In this fascinating and groundbreaking book, Judith Wellman opens wide a window on not just one long-forgotten community of black New Yorkers, but also more broadly upon the diverse, sometimes surprisingly successful lives of urban African Americans in the nineteenth century. Rooted in fine-grained research, written with grace and a fine eye for the telling detail, this book should serve be a model for historians struggling to wrest the realities of antebellum black life from scant documentary records, and the willful forgetting of the larger society." * Fergus M. Bordewich, author of America's Great Debate *"Judith Wellman has skillfully demonstrated how the success of her subjects transcends their important local history and enriches our understanding of free black life in nineteenth-century America. Brooklyns Promised Land is a welcome addition to the growing literature on free African Americans in the U.S. and New York in particular, and merits a place on the shelf of any serious student of antebellum black life." * American Historical Review *"Not a novel, but nevertheless a fascinating story of Weeksville, the little-known community of free blacks in what is today Crown Heights. Nearly lost to demolition, Weeksville was rediscovered in 1966 and is today home to several restored houses and a handsome new welcome center. Wellman tells the whole story, from the villages roots in the 1830s to its near fall into oblivion in the late 20th century." * Newsweek.com *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Brooklyn's Promised Land, Weeksville, 1 1835-1910: "A Model for Places of Much Greater Pretensions" 1. "Here Will We Take Our Stand": Weeksville's Origins, 13 from Slavery to Freedom, 1770-1840 2. "Owned and Occupied by Our Own People": Weeksville's 49 Growth: Family, Work, and Community, 1840-1860 3. "Shall We Fly or Shall We Resist?": From Emigration to the 97 Civil War, 1850-1865 4. "Fair Schools, a Fine Building, Finished Writers, Strong 137 Minded Women": Politics, Women's Activism, and the Roots of Progressive Reform, 1865-1910 5. "Cut Through and Gridironed by Streets": Physical Changes, 183 1860-1880 6. "Part of This Magically Growing City": Weeksville's Growth 211 and Disappearance, 1880-1910 7. "A Seemingly Viable Neighborhood That No Longer Exists": 226 Weeksville, Lost and Found, 1910-2010 Notes 241 Index 279 About the Author 295 Maps appear as an insert following page 136.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is the essential guide on race, racism, the BLM movement, fighting for racial justice, fighting against racial injustice, and more. I am looking at you, fellow white people! Buy this book and read it. Own it, love it, memorize it, and live it." * Ms. Magazine *"An examination of the Black Lives Matter movement that bridges gaps between academic discourse and popular culture in powerful, provocative ways ... A valuable guidebook that deconstructs myths and provides actionable steps people can take to avoid complacency and complicity; essential reading on social justice." * STARRED Library Journal *"Lays bare the common sense assumptions that both sustain and obscure racism..Makes it impossible for anyone to sleep on 'Black Lives Matter' and the ongoing struggle to end racism as we know it." * Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination *"An accessible guide to understanding structural racism and the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement and related organizations, both within a historical context and through contemporary lenses." * Choice *"This book will prove useful to anyone interested in seeing America strive to live up to its purported values of equality, liberty, and justice. [...] Stay Woke is refreshingly direct, comprehensive, inspirational, and unapologetically antiracist." * Political Science Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisHow interracial couples in Brazil and the US navigate racial boundaries How do people understand and navigate being married to a person of a different race? Based on individual interviews with forty-seven black-white couples in two large, multicultural citiesLos Angeles and Rio de JaneiroBoundaries of Love explores how partners in these relationships ultimately reproduce, negotiate, and challenge the us versus them mentality of ethno-racial boundaries. By centering marriage, Chinyere Osuji reveals the family as a primary site for understanding the social construction of race. She challenges the naive but widespread belief that interracial couples and their children provide an antidote to racism in the twenty-first century, instead highlighting the complexities and contradictions of these relationships. Featuring black husbands with white wives as well as black wives with white husbands, Boundaries of Love sheds light on the role of gender in navigating life married to a person of a dTrade Review"Boundaries of Love is a theoretically sophisticated contribution to the sociological literature on race and interracial intimacy. Osuji provides use with the concept of romantic careers"a brilliant way to understand how Blacks and Whites in Brazil and the United States negotiate the meaning of their previous and current emotional and sexual relationships. Osuji's transnational comparative study of interracial couples challenges us to think critically about the ways that these unions leave white supremacy intact in cosmopolitan urban centers of Los Angeles and Rio de Janiero." -- France Winddance Twine,author of Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil"Despite dramatically distinct histories and ideologies of race and intermarriage, Chinyere Osujis in-depth portrayal of the experiences of these couples and their families reveals startling consistencies and differences across the two societies. Boundaries of Love deftly compares how race operates across these two societies and interrogates how national ideologies, race, gender and other social categories together produce particular meanings of race-mixing. This nuanced and pathbreaking study is sure to challenge previous notions of interracial marriage." -- Edward Telles,author of Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America"Her study is comparative and qualitative, rich in detail gleaned from interviews with 103 interracial couples in both locations... Accessible writing and intrinsic interest make this book suitable for all levels." * Choice *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBailey's aims are ambitious. She's not interested in just shining a light on misogynoir; she's interested in its destruction. In a voice that is scholarly yet accessible, she tackles media culture from television and film to Tumblr to YouTube web series, to hashtags, revealing how different media contribute to, transform and/or challenge the pervasive circulation of misogynoir and, importantly, how Black people deploy digital activism to resist. * NPR Books *In her new book, Misogynoir Transformed, Bailey takes an in-depth look at the histories and contemporary manifestations of racist misogyny toward Black women in media, analyzing everything from YouTube web series and Tumblr archives to Black women in Hollywood. Through a combination of thorough research and nuanced cultural criticism, Bailey analyzes how various forms of media have upheld, troubled, and transformed misogynoir. * Bitch.com *In this much-anticipated text, Moya Bailey examines misogynoir—a term she coined—and how Black women work to disrupt racist misogyny, to reclaim their autonomy and to tell their own stories, particularly in precarious digital spaces. * Ms.com *Misogynoir Transformed is a resounding, deftly reported manifesto centering the work of transformative Black women seeking one another in a culture that refuses to see us and center us. Moya Bailey reminds us that we are our liberators and have always had the tools to seek, see and celebrate ourselves. -- Janet Mock, New York Times bestselling author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing CertaintyMisogynoir Transformed is meticulously researched and an extraordinary example of Black feminist studies as an interdisciplinary project. It is brilliant in its exploration of the ways in which Black women, especially queer, nonbinary, agender, gender variant and trans women resist misogynoir in various media in their roles as 'digital alchemists.' The book underscores the urgency of reimagining how we define women's social movements given the use of social media platforms among Black women and girls in their mitigation of misogynoir. -- Beverly Guy-Sheftall, editor of Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist ThoughtMoya Bailey has written a powerful book that explores the reach and impact of her groundbreaking idea—misogynoir. Bailey centers her analysis on what she calls the margins of Black womanhood, illustrating both the many ways misogynoir has negatively shaped the life chances of Black women, and the many ways cis, queer and trans Black women and nonbinary, agender and gender variant Black folks are using digital tools to resist harm, define their complexity and create new narratives of Black women’s lives, health and futures. Using a series of case studies, Bailey details how Black women are using practices she labels digital alchemy to create new spaces, ideas and counter publics that empower Black women. Misogynoir Transformed is an important Black queer feminist text that implores us to think differently and expansively about Black women, resistance and power in the 21st century. -- Cathy J. Cohen, author of Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American PoliticsGroundbreaking scholar in LGBTQ+ studies, Dr. Moya Bailey...is the author of Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance, [which] focuses on queer and trans Black women, examining their use of social media to combat anti-Black misogyny. * Diverse, Issues in Higher Education *In sum, Misogynoir Transformed is a timely, significant work that squarely advances Black feminist literature into the fields of 21st-century communication and social interaction studies. The author introduces several terms into the feminist lexicon—misogynoir, digital alchemy, worldbuilding—all of which create a strong foundation for more in-depth ethnographic inquiry that will be useful for researchers, practitioners, and activists examining racial and gender disparities to work toward a more equitable future. * Choice *Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey’s excellent collection of essays Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance provides important insight into how black women utilize digital media to amplify their voices amid vitriol from a white, cisgender, and heteronormative majority…Bailey successfully provides a captivating glance into Black women’s digital and offline resistance in the wake of an array of relevant social justice movements. * Synoptique *[Bailey's] book is a good example of how to build theory through defining terms and tracing their trajectory alongside currently accepted terminology and concepts. * Communication Research Trends *

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Book SynopsisWhat is the relationship between race and space, and how do racial politics inform the organization and development of urban locales?In Race and the Politics of Deception, Christopher Mele unpacks America's history of dealing with racial problems through the inequitable use of public space. Mele focuses on Chester, Pennsylvaniaa small city comprised of primarily low-income, black residents, roughly twenty miles south of Philadelphia. Like many cities throughout the United States, Chester is experiencing post-industrial decline. A development plan touted as a way to save the city, proposes to turn one section into a desirable waterfront destination, while leaving the rest of the struggling residents in fractured communities. Dividing the city into spaces of tourism and consumption versus the everyday spaces of low-income residents, Mele argues, segregates the community by creating a racialized divide. While these development plans are described as socially inclusive and economically revTrade Review"Christopher MelesRace and the Politics of Deceptionprovides an interesting and highly readable political and economic history of Chester, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city located in the southeastern corner of the state, between Philadelphia and Wilmington." * American Journal of Sociology *"Race and the Politics of Deceptionunmasks the brutal, insidious, and predatory politics of a political machine that raped and plundered the City of Chester, Pennsylvania...Meles research is rich and substantive." * Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Book Reviews *"A strength of the book is a good number of concrete accounts of how the local politics of urban development is consistently and strategically anchored in the ideologies and rhetoric of race." * Choice *"Race and the Politics of Deception is a classic study which painstakingly details cities development and demise alongside their being inextricably tied to race and space. Mele's relational approach outlining contemporary urban social lifedeindustrialization, globalization, and continued structural inequalityadds to the social history of cities and the structural inequality plaguing American cities and their residents. A great read!" -- Marlese Durr,co-editor of Race, Work, and Family in the Lives of African Americans"Race and the Politics of Deception makes a strong contribution to urban studies in exploring the dynamics of urban change within broader contexts of racial and historical inequity. Its nuanced analyses of the historical, local politics of Chester would be a fantastic teaching resource in history, urban studies, and sociology departments alike. In particular, the text serves as a prime teaching tool for historical methodologies that seek to explore race and racial politics." -- Tali Ziv,City & Society"By not only recounting a tale of past racism and urban development, but examining how a & new racism inscribes an old white supremacy onto the boneyards of contemporary spaces of exploitation, Mele neatly explains how contemporary white supremacynot the Donald Trump alt-right kind, but the Hillary Clinton/Paul Ryan neoliberal marketized brandwill continue to haunt us all." -- Corey Dolgon * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *"In our current political moment, Race and the Politics of Deception reminds us exactly how racial deceptions continue to make America unequal, not just unequal American cities. . . . Ultimately, Meles careful analysis warns us that the strategic manipulation of race and racist ideologies for profit not only undermines cities like Chester, but poses a growing threat to American democracy itself." -- Jacob S. Rugh * Contexts *"Mele weaves an engaging, coherent, and persuasive story of racial politics from beginning to end. The book uncovers perverse path-dependent patterns of racial segregation that originated in a much earlier historical period, but that are both persistent and difficult to change." -- Daniel T. Lichter * American Journal of Sociology *"Meles book paints a compelling picture of the Republican political 'machine' that dominated local, county and state politics . . . He has demonstrated how business, politics and crime are seamlessly integrated into the body politic, making them often indistinguishable from one another. . . .As demonstrated by this book, urban ethnography, when undertaken with the care and skill that Mele brings to the subject matter, can provide a window into the darkest corners of urban decay." -- Frederick T. Martens, former Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission,Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books"The first impression you get when readingRaceand the Politics of Deceptionis the feeling that youre reading a literary work . . . Meles easy-going and fluid treatment of tricky concepts, like color-blindness,post-raciality, and blockbusting, to name a few, renders them accessible to a wider audience, thusmaking the reading process even more enjoyable." -- Elyes Hanafi * Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography *"Urban America continues to be segregated and unequal. Mele demonstrates that this geography of inequality is deeply rooted in a historical legacy of racially motivated political decisions to maintain economic power and control. He clearly shows us that those claiming race neutrality are playing the game of political deception. For urban development, race, and history scholars, this book is a must-read." * Contemporary Sociology *"What distinguishes Mele's telling from similar accounts of other cities is his focus on the agency and intentionality of urban elites and other members of the local Republican Political Machine in Chester. He uses the term race strategiesto describe the strategic deployment of racial stereotypes, stigmatization, scapegoating, and color-blind ideology as a means of stirring racial animus, diverting attention from political corruption, or justifying neoliberal development policies." -- Steven Tuttle * Sociology of Race and Ethnicity *"A warning to all who think they fully understand the forces that created white suburbs and poor inner citiesyou do not, and you need to read this book! It makes a compelling argument, backed up with detailed data, on how the politicians, business leaders, and developers in a typical American city manipulated race to their own endsnamely profit, not redevelopment. This book is a fascinating and often disturbing look at how racial inequality shapes urban America." -- Nancy Denton,co-author of American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass"The characters and antagonisms in Mele’s account are very much alive for the reader, rendering it a powerful exposition of the intricacy of local politics and the immediate context of racism, activism, and broader economic changes." * City & Society *

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Book SynopsisExplores how young people from communities targeted in the War on Terror engage with the political, even while they are under constant scrutiny and surveillance Since the attacks of 9/11, the banner of national security has led to intense monitoring of the politics of Muslim and Arab Americans. Young people from these communities have come of age in a time when the question of political engagement is both urgent and fraught. In The 9/11 Generation, Sunaina Marr Maira uses extensive ethnography to understand the meaning of political subjecthood and mobilization for Arab, South Asian, and Afghan American youth. Maira explores how young people from communities targeted in the War on Terror engage with the political, forging coalitions based on new racial and ethnic categories, even while they are under constant scrutiny and surveillance, and organizing around notions of civil rights and human rights. The 9/11 Generation explores the possibilities and pitfalls of rights-based organizing Trade ReviewMairas vivid ethnographyThe 9/11 Generationintroduces the political work forged by Muslim and Arab American youth. With their own brand of political organizing, these young people contest the uncomplicated way the categories & Muslim and & youth are framed as dangerous in the post-9/11 era. Through their committed activism that bridges race and faith, a lesson that draws on the civil rights struggle of the last century, they are engaging in a critique of empire and, ultimately, actively finding ways to change the world. -- Junaid Rana,author of Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian DiasporaSunainaMarr MairasThe 9/11 Generationis predictably excellent and essentiala book that leads us through the impact of the Global War on Terror on Afghan American, Arab American and South Asian American youth. This is an ethnography with teethgripping and urgent. -- Vijay Prashad,author of Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today"Begins an important inquiry into what America has become. A must read." * Choice *

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