Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisThe contributors to The Pandemic Divide analyze and explain the myriad racial disparities that came to the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic while highlighting what steps could have been taken to mitigate its impact.Trade Review"Required, essential reading for Americans trying to reconcile their pandemic experiences." (starred review) -- Tina Panik * Library Journal *"The Pandemic Divide should appeal to anyone with an interest in social and cultural politics, and moreover policy. In a world that is continually racialised and then derided for being so, this book is an urgent reminder of how deep rooted systems operate in sinister ways to continually exploit, undermine, and undervalue whole swathes of the population." -- Georgia Bisbas * Lancet Infections Diseases *"Disturbing but proactive...." -- Andrew Robinson * Nature *"Wright, Hubbard, and Darity offer compelling sociological, economic, and epidemiological data to show that that structural racism has undeniable consequences on the health and mortality of racial and ethnic minorities. The Pandemic Divide is a useful text for students, educators, and researchers to understand why the COVID-19 pandemic impacted certain populations more than others." -- Gwenetta Curry * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Table of ContentsA Note on Terminology ix Foreword / Mary T. Bassett xi Introduction. Six Feet and Miles Apart: Structural Racism in the United States and Racially Disparate Outcomes during the COVID-19 Pandemic / Lucas Hubbard, Gwendolyn L. Wright, and William A. Darity Jr. 1 Section I: COVID-19 in Context 1. How Systemic Racism and Preexisting Conditions Contributed to COVID-19 Disparities for Black Americans / Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards, Melissa J. Scott, and Paul A. Robbins 29 2. Labor History and Pandemic Response: The Overlapping Experiences of Work, Housing, and Neighborhood Conditions / Joe William Trotter Jr. 46 Section II: COVID-19 and Institutions 3. “God Is in Control”: Race, Religion, Family, and Community during the COVID-19 Pandemic / Sandra L. Barnes 69 4. COVID-19, Race, and Mass Incarceration / Arvind Krishnamurthy 87 Section III: COVID-19 and Financial Disparities 5. Housing, Student Debt, and Labor Market Inequality: COVID-19, Black Families/Households, and Financial Insecurity / Fenaba R. Addo and Adam Hollowell 111 6. Race, Entrepreneurship, and COVID-19: Black Small-Business Survival in Prepandemic and Postpandemic America / Henry Clay McKoy Jr. 129 7. COVID-19 Effects on Black Business-Owner Households / Chris Wheat, Fiona Greig,and Damon Jones 186 8. Closing Racial Economic Gaps during and after COVID-19 / Jane Dokko and Jung Sakong 210 Section IV: COVID-19 and Educational Disparities 9. Latinx Immigrant Parents and Their Children in Times of COVID-19: Facing Inequities Together in the “Mexican Room” of the New Latino South / Marta Sánchez, Melania DiPietro, Leslie Babinski, Steve Amendum, and Steven Knotek 231 10. COVID-19, Higher Education, and Social Inequality / Adam Hollowell and N. Joyce Payne 256 11. The Rebirth of K-12 Public Education: Postpandemic Opportunities / Kristen R. Stephens, Kisha N. Daniels, and Erica R. Phillips 276 Postscript: COVID-19 and the Path Forward / Eugene T. Richardson 295 Contributors 301 Index 307

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn The Williamsburg Avant-Garde Cisco Bradley chronicles the rise and fall of the underground music and art scene in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn between the late 1980s and the early 2010s. Drawing on interviews, archival collections, musical recordings, videos, photos, and other ephemera, Bradley explores the scene’s social, cultural, and economic dynamics. Building on the neighborhood’s punk DIY approach and aesthetic, Williamsburg''s free jazz, postpunk, and noise musicians and groups---from Mary Halvorson, Zs, and Nate Wooley to Matana Roberts, Peter Evans, and Darius Jones---produced shows in a variety of unlicensed venues as well as in clubs and cafes. At the same time, pirate radio station free103point9 and music festivals made Williamsburg an epicenter of New York’s experimental culture. In 2005, New York’s rezoning act devastated the community as gentrification displaced its participants farther afield in Brooklyn and in Queens. WithTrade Review"The Williamsburg Avant-Garde is the most comprehensive study to date of one of the most important music scenes of the past 30-plus years." -- Dave Mandl * The Wire *"Well-researched. . . . Drawing on these first-hand accounts as well as on his access to the personal archives of some of the artists involved, Bradley provides a lively account of the neighborhood’s vital experimental music movement from its underground beginnings in various squats and abandoned industrial sites to its eventual dissolution in the face of rising rents and gentrification." -- Daniel Barbiero * Point of Departure *"One of the most important strengths of The Williamsburg Avant-Garde is that it elaborates with equal care, regardless of idiom or generation, on the intentions, ideas and aesthetic strategies of the highly diverse range of artists who could find a platform there. . . . What makes Bradley’s archeology at the same time so urgently contemporary is that so many of the artists covered are alive and active right now, even if a good number of them may still be underground." -- Patrick Brennan * Arteidolia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Locating the Williamsburg Avant-Garde 1 Part I. Utopian Spaces for Sound 1. The Emergence of the Williamsburg Scene: Warehouses, Squatter Parties, and Punk Roots, 1988–1994 21 2. Pirate Radio and Jumping the River: The Williamsburg Loft Scene, 1997–2004 55 3. Art Galleries, Clubs, and Bohemian Cafés: The Williamsburg DIY, 2001–2006 100 Part II. Commercial DIY and the Last Underground Venues 4. A Point of Confluence: The Downtown Scene Comes to Zebulon, 2004–2006 145 5. A New Generation Emerges: Zebulon, 2005–2012 189 6. A Fractured Landscape: The Last Avant-Garde Music Spaces of Williamsburg, 2005–2014 228 Afterword. Art, Experiment, and Capital 263 Notes 271 Art Sources for the Williamsburg Avant-Garde 335 Bibliography 343 Index 367

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism from the 1970s to the present. Schalk shows how Black people have long engaged with disability as a political issue deeply tied to race and racism. She points out that this work has not been recognized as part of the legacy of disability justice and liberation because Black disability politics differ in language and approach from the mainstream white-dominant disability rights movement. Drawing on the archives of the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women’s Health Project alongside interviews with contemporary Black disabled cultural workers, Schalk identifies common qualities of Black disability politics, including the need to ground public health initiatives in the experience and expertise of marginalized disabled people so that they can work in antiracist, feminist, and anti-ableist ways. Prioritizing an understanding of disability Trade Review"With Sami Schalk’s incredible book, Black Disability Politics, we begin to move into a different kind of book doing intrinsically connected work—a rigorously researched look at all the ways that disabled people’s concerns have been foundational to Black resistance organizing. . . . If knowing your history is a key ingredient to success, Black Disability Politics presents a deeply researched and still incredibly readable map of the past, with implications for the shimmering future. This, along with what I can only describe as a muscular clarity in her writing, was incredible as a beginner to the topic to feel my understanding grow as I read, and that is only possible in the capable hands of a great writer like Schalk." -- S. Bear Bergman * Xtra! *"Sami Schalk explores the histories and essential lessons of Black disabled labor, politics and movements. This is a long-overdue and essential volume." -- Karla Strand * Ms. *"Black Disability Politics is a profound exploration and documentation of a cultural topic that has gone overlooked throughout the entire history of the Black American experience. . . . A deeply important view of the fight for the rights of disabled Black people in America since the 1970s." -- Jordannah Elizabeth * New York Amsterdam News *"This book will be of particular interest to undergraduate and graduate students because it invites continued exploration of Black disability studies and politics. Recommended. Undergraduates through faculty." -- S. Burch * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Black Health Matters 1 1. “We Have a Right to Rebel”: Black Disability Politics in the Black Panther Party 23 2. Fighting Psychiatric Abuse: The BPP and the Black Disability Politics of Mental and Carceral Institutions 48 Praxis Interlude One. Anti-ableist Approaches to Fighting Disabling Violence 69 3. Empowerment through Wellness: Black Disability Politics in the National Black Women’s Health Project 81 4. More Than Just Prevention: The NBWHP and the Black Disability of HIV/AIDS 110 Praxis Interlude Two. Approaches to Disability Identity in Black Disability Politics 129 5. Black Disability Politics Now 140 (Not a) Conclusion. The Present and Futures of Black Disability Politics 154 Notes 161 Bibliography 187 Index 199

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Deathlife, Anthony B. Pinn analyzes hip hop to explore how Blackness serves as a framework for defining and guiding the relationship between life and death in the United States. Pinn argues that white supremacy and white privilege operate based on the right to distinguish death from life. This distinction is produced and maintained through the construction of Blackness as deathlife. Drawing on Afropessimism and Black moralism, Pinn theorizes deathlife as a technology of whiteness that projects whites’ anxieties about the end of their lives onto the Black other. Examining the music of Jay-Z; Kendrick Lamar; Tyler, the Creator; and others, Pinn shows how hip hop configures the interconnection and dependence between death and life in such a way that death and life become indistinguishable. In so doing, Pinn demonstrates that hip hop presents an alternative to deathlife that challenges the white supremacist definitions of Blackness and anti-Blackness moTrade Review“Not since Orlando Patterson’s magisterial exploration of social death have we had as monumental an engagement with the ideas of life, death, and Blackness as Anthony Pinn delivers in his groundbreaking book Deathlife. Pinn uses hip hop’s struggles between life and death, and with life as death, to illumine both the white quest for immortality through slaying Blackness, and the Black hunger for meaning by staring nothingness in the eye. Deathlife captures the way that Blackness and being, and Blackness and nonbeing, have had no useful distinction in the lexicon of white supremacy, while brilliantly arguing for a rationale of Black existence that sees no value in separating life from death. A transcendent work of astonishing originality.” -- Michael Eric Dyson“Anthony B. Pinn shows how Black critical theory’s focus on the antagonism between the human and Blackness can be heard in hip hop and popular culture. His concept of deathlife—the merging together of death and life—underscores how the sphere of the (white) human relies on the fantasy of cordoning off life from death. Whiteness, Pinn argues, needs Black deathlife in order to understand life and death.” -- Joseph R. Winters, author of * Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Paradigms of Death (or Life) and Deathlife 1 Part I. Signifying Deathlife 1. The Orphic Hustler 45 2. The Anithero 73 Part II. Consuming Deathlife 3. Bacchic Intent 97 4. Zombic Hunger 125 Epilogue. Two Types of Melancholia 149 Notes 165 Discography 201 Bibliography 207 Index 223

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Stay Black and Die, I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and media from the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment. Drawing on psychoanalysis, affect theory, and black studies, Durham explores the black mother as both a lost object and a found subject often obscured when constituting a cultural legacy of genius across history. He analyzes the works of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, Marvin Gaye, Octavia E. Butler, and Kendrick Lamar to show how black cultural practices and aesthetics abstract and reveal the lost mother through performance. Whether attributing Douglass’s intellect to his matrilineage, reading Gaye’s falsetto singing voice as a move to interpolate black female vocality, or examining the women in Ellison’s life who encouraged his aesthetic interests, Durham demonstrates that melancholy becomes the catalyst for genius and genius in turn is a signifier of the maternal. Using psychoanalysis to deveTrade Review“What haunts and inspires black creativity in an antiblack world? In Stay Black and Die, I. Augustus Durham offers a gendered vernacular psychoanalytic reading of this question, which is to say that he offers a lush blues of genius’s complicated sustenance and insistence. And right there in this blues is the centrality of black femaleness—the maternal—that dapples the engagement with the object that is and is not lost. This richly researched book showcases genius as a notion traced through its motherline and, as such, Durham’s brilliance is a stay in every sense of the word: a hold, a refusal, a plea, and an inhabitance, a longing in which one can linger.” -- Kevin Quashie, author of * Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being *“I. Augustus Durham adds a fundamentally new and truly insightful spin to studies in blackness and melancholy. Bringing melancholy into the realm of nonromanticized genius, he moves seamlessly between the study of literature and the study of music. His analysis of music videos also makes his approach to black melancholy and genius a deep study of affect that refuses any boundaries between the literary, the sonic, and the visual. I am certain that Durham’s theorization of melancholic genius will become a portable, widely cited idea.” -- Margo Natalie Crawford, author of * Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *Table of ContentsFigures viii Echo | I xi Thank | You; or, Acknowledgments xix Color | Blackness 1 Read | Frederick 39 Travel | Ralph 79 Man | Marvin 117 Woman | Gan 151 Love | Kendrick 179 Study | Us 213 Notes 225 Bibliography 273 Index 309

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner of the 2022 Latino/a Section Best Book Award, given by the American Sociological AssociationHonorable Mention for the Robert E. Park Award, given by the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological AssociationFinalist for the 2021 C. Wright Mills Award, given by the Society for the Study of Social ProblemsRace, place, and identity in a changing urban America Over the last five decades, South Los Angeles has undergone a remarkable demographic transition. In South Central Dreams, eminent scholars Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor follow its transformation from a historically Black neighborhood into a predominantly Latino one, providing a fresh, inside look at the fascinatingand constantly changingrelationships between these two racial and ethnic groups in California. Drawing on almost two hundred interviews and statistical data, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor explTrade ReviewSouth Central’s evolution from almost entirely African American to mostly Latino is a bellwether for an important part of a changing America. Through statistical and ethnographic analysis, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor describe that change at several levels, showing how Black-Latino relations challenge traditional notions of ethnic succession and assimilation. Rather, they reveal how residents have formed an identity based on their shared home and a minority linked fate, to organize and empower their communities. -- Edward Telles, co-author of Durable Ethnicity: Mexican Americans and the Ethnic CoreSouth Central LA looms large in the American imagination. Media reports of racial violence, drug trafficking and Gangster Rap music, dominate portrayals of this iconic Black and Latinx community. But as is so often the case with media depictions of marginalized urban communities, such images are largely distortions of the reality experienced by those who called South Central home. Drawing on interviews with residents, stories from those who have witnessed this community transform from predominantly Black to predominantly Latinx, and demographic and economic data that offer quantitative measures of a community in transition, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor provide texture, nuance and flavor so that outsiders can appreciate that South Central is so much more than has been depicted in films and news reports. This book captures the vibrancy, dynamism and complexity that makes South Central unique, and it reminds us that beyond the challenges and hardships facing its residents, there is also a heart and a spirit that makes this much maligned space special and unique. -- Pedro A. Noguera, author of The Trouble With Black Boys: ...And Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public EducationSouth Los Angeles is a dynamic urban space shaped by decades of demographic change, cultural sedimentation, and multi-ethnic home-making. In South Central Dreams, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor beautifully capture the soul of the area through a mixed-method study that places quantitative data in dialogue with informant voices. The result is a must-read volume that complicates popular notions about Black-Brown relations and provides important lessons for sociological theory. -- Darnell M. Hunt, co-editor of Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial RealitiesSouth Central Dreams offers a penetrating look at immigration, adaptation, and social change in a poor urban community shifting from black to brown. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor masterfully document how the specifics of place and time shape the actions of ordinary people as they transcend social difference to construct a common identity and transform a stigmatized urban quarter into a cherished place called 'home.' This book moves well beyond the usual cliches of a fraught relationship between Blacks and Latinos and offers a model for how community studies should be done, hopefully one that will be emulated in other cities throughout the nation. -- Douglas Massey, author of American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the UnderclassBravo! In this book, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor document a powerful new age of Latino politics. In South Central Los Angeles, Latino youth have blended the immigrant insights of their elders with the experiences of their African American classmates, neighbors, and friends, expanding the possibilities of Brown/Black solidarity by forging a brand-new political identity. 'We are South Central!,' they exclaim, embracing as their own every struggle that has determined the conditions of life in their community. -- Kelly Lytle Hernandez, author of City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor breathe life into the understudied and underappreciated complexities of South Los Angeles. Through the historical analysis of the friends, families, organizers and activists of our neighborhoods, we are shown not just our past, but our future as well. Especially in a time of racial reckoning in this country, and after an administration that spent its entire four years picking at the fabric of a delicate bond of solidarity across communities of color, South Central Dreams stands out as an important commentary on identity and civic engagement with implications for not only Los Angeles, but the rest of the country. -- Congresswoman Karen Bass, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (2019-2020)Two of our most esteemed scholars of immigration have given us a new paradigm for how to think about race, place, and identity. This book takes a deep dive into the lives of first- and second-generation Latinx immigrants as they shape home and identity alongside their Black neighbors in South LA. Rather than retelling the classic narrative of immigrant assimilation, this book shows the tensions and negotiations that go into making home in a multi-racial community and the power of shared struggle. The authors’ relational perspective allows them to explore the ways Latinx identity is shaped by Blackness and gives us new insights into how people set roots, find friends, and forge identities around urban anchors like community gardens, parks and neighborhood markets. -- Natalia Molina, author of How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial ScriptsSouth Central Dreams is a major contribution to both Latinx and Los Angeles Studies. By revisiting community residents in South Central Los Angeles a full generation after Latinos began moving into the area, the authors provide a nuanced and careful portrait of neighborhood life with important implications for Brown/Black spaces across the U.S. -- Laura Pulido, co-author of A People's Guide to Los Angeles

Read more less

Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture AssociationWinner, 2021 Nancy Baym Annual Book Award, given by the Association of Internet ResearchersAn explanation of the digital practices of the Black Internet From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places Blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a clTrade Review"In the early days of the internet, much consternation was expressed over the digital divide, the conviction that low-income people, especially African Americans, were missing out on the tech revolution. This concern was rooted in a view of African Americans as uninformed, inert vessels needing to be filled with “authoritative” information. Brock provides a bracing corrective to this limited perception, noting the creative, even transgressive uses African Americans make of the web and social media as opposed to the “productive” usages urged by white technocrats ... He questions the claim that internet browsers and search tools are color-blind, pointing out that neither search results nor marketing patterns are race neutral ... It is on Black Twitter that significant community conversations and information-sharing now take place, amplifying Black political power (think #BlackLivesMatter) but also facilitating cultural conversations and connections ... enlightening." * STARRED Booklist *"An interdisciplinary and multimodal work critical to any scholar researching race and technology and the ways these two seemingly distinct categories are inextricably intertwined. Brock seamlessly ties together rigorous linguistic work with internet and computational studies through the critical techno-cultural discourse analysis (CTDA) lens, which gives readers a cultural and racial framework for our analyses of technology. He calls for researchers to stop only studying the intersections of race and technology by virtue of absence, deficit, and/or resistance. “Racism,” Brock writes, “is not the sole defining characteristic of Black identity.” […] Distributed Blackness is primarily a call for joy." * Media Industries *"In a much-needed addition to digital studies, Distributed Blackness centers Black Internet users in its analysis and emphasizes how they share the joys of their everyday lives online ... a valuable contribution that will certainly enrich future scholarship on both Black and mainstream Internet culture." * Communication Booknotes Quarterly *"Distributed Blackness offers a valuable take on Black online identity—a much needed one, at that, given the lack of focused research on the topic ... Relevant and timely; I believe it will be a staple in research on African American identity and will generate much conversation in the years to follow." * Iperstoria *"Distributed Blackness is required reading. No one understands how technologies of race and the digital must be framed and reimagined right now better than André Brock. This book disrupts and defines the tremendous expanse and range of Blackness on the internet, and will make anyone who thinks they know the history of the web reconsider. While the problems of race and racism on the internet are inescapable, Brock helps us re-center joy, power, love, and resistance too." -- Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism"A brilliant, theoretically rigorous, witty, joyful, and full-throated analysis of black digital culture and infrastructure. Grounded in the black intellectual tradition and modeling a new path for digital media theory, every page offers important new frameworks and formations for understanding how race makes and is made by technology. This is the definitive book on Black Twitter." -- Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan"A timely and lively intervention in our understanding of Blackness in the digital age. André Brock historicizes and theorizes Black life with careful attention to the fullness of both digitality and Blackness. A necessary addition for anyone thinking about race, intersectionality, communications, or the internet." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom, author if Thick and Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

Read more less

Book SynopsisCritics have routinely excluded African American literature from ecocritical inquiry despite the fact that the literary tradition has, from its inception, proved to be steeped in environmental concerns that address elements of the natural world and relate nature to the transatlantic slave trade, plantation labor, and nationhood. Toni Morrison''s work is no exception. Toni Morrison and the Natural World: An Ecology of Color is the first full-length ecocritical investigation of the Nobel Laureate''s novels and brings to the fore an unequaled engagement between race and nature. Morrison''s ecological consciousness holds that human geographies are enmeshed with nonhuman nature. It follows, then, that ecology, the branch of biology that studies how people relate to each other and their environment, is an apt framework for this book. The interrelationships and interactions between individuals and community, and between organisms and the biosphere, are central to this analysis. They highl

Read more less

Book SynopsisDraws together essays that examine evolving attitudes about race, sports, and athletic activism in the US. This anthology links post-World War II African American protest movements to a range of contemporary social justice interventions.Trade ReviewSports and the Racial Divide provides a rich sociohistorical account of the role sports and athletes play in contemporary political activism." - John N. Singer, associate professor of sport management in the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn the summers of the early 1970s, Morris Ardoin and his siblings helped run their family's roadside motel in a hot, buggy, bayou town in Cajun Louisiana. Theirs is a tale of suspense, awkward romance, naughty French lessons, and an insider's take on a truly remarkable, not-yet-homogenized pocket of American culture.Trade ReviewIts details impressive, Stone Motel is a layered memoir, both nostalgic and forthright in recalling family struggles." - Laura Leavitt, Foreword Reviews"One of the three best gay biography books of all time." - bookauthority.org"Morris Ardoin knew he had to escape the hostile world into which he was born before he could find himself as a gay man. He succeeded in this quest, only to discover, as this brave, complex memoir makes clear, that his past remains an inextricable part of the person he has become." - Daniel Burr, The Gay & Lesbian Review"Focusing on tradition, family, and food, Morris Ardoin’s Stone Motel will resonate with those searching for personal identity in an unaccepting time or place. Intensely personal and incredibly emotional, there is a sense of victory in his survival." - Valerie J. Andrews, School of Communication and Design, Loyola University New Orleans"Stone Motel is much more than a memoir; it is a meditation on the intersection of place and identity. Ardoin elevates the classic coming-of-age story to an art form with authenticity and wisdom, all the while never wandering too far from his Cajun roots." - Frank Perez, author of Treasures of the Vieux Carré and other books about New Orleans

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines the new forms of racism in American life and the political responses to themTrade Review"Her book offers a refreshing view of the politics on the ground, where people matter more than identities and the ideologies embedded within them." Ms. Magazine "Collins' lucid observations form the backdrop of her sustained engagement with nationalism, feminism, and racism in a collection that includes signature essays on topics as diverse as American national identity, the contemporary relevance of Afro centrism, and women's agency in black community politics." - Signs "Collins's work is always a pleasure to read. She deftly weaves historical analyses, popular culture, literature, and theory to produce a complex portrait of ongoing and systematic racism, relentlessly highlighting the interconnected dynamics of gender inequality as well as other systems of oppression. Each of these essays makes clear that any political response to racism must incorporate an intersectional approach." Gender and Society "The book can serve as good primer...Hill Collins' writing is always composed with a synthesis of historical analyses, popular culture, literature and theory that is often lacking in other academics' social scientific treatises. Any of the six essays within the text makes a clear case that either an organized-collective or individual response to racism, sexism, or capitalism must incorporate an intersectional approach." Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society "The six essays in this volume explore the political realities of the period from the end of Black Power to the ascendancy of hip hop. They focus on the relationship between new racial formations and on political responses to them...A theme of the volume is Hill's endeavour to theorise intersectionality, and she focuses on the intersections between race, nation, and gender, to a lesser extent, social class. The aim of this book is to make a case for anti racist group based political struggles that respect individual and human rights which embrace a global analysis of how our lives are interconnected, and are informed by feminism and nationalism." Sage Race Relations Abstracts "In her new book Patricia Hill Collins reminds us why she is one of the most prolific and insightful sociologists to diagnose contemporary racial and sexual politics."-The African American Review, Spring 2008

Read more less

Book SynopsisA survey and interpretive study of one of the defining issues in America's past Americans have vigorously debated and interpreted the role of slavery in American life for as long as enslaved people and their descendants have lived in North America. Contemporaries and later writers and scholars up to the present day have explored the meaning of slavery as a system of labor, an ideological paradox in a "free" political and social order, a violent mode of racial exploitation, and a global system of human commodification and trafficking.To fully understand the various ways in which slavery has been depicted and described is a difficult task. Like any other important historical issue, this requires a thorough grasp of the underlying history, methodological developments over time, and the contemporary politics and culture of historians' own times. And the case of slavery is further complicated, of course, by changes in the legal and political status of African Americans in the 20th and 21st centuries.Slavery: Interpreting American History, like other volumes in the Interpreting American History series, surveys interpretations of important historical eras and events, examining both the intellectual shifts that have taken place and various catalysts that drove those shifts. While the depth of Americans' historiographical engagement with slavery is not surprising given the turbulent history of race in America, the range and sheer volume of writing on the subject, spanning more than two centuries, can be overwhelming. Editors Aaron Astor and Thomas Buchanan, together with a team of expert contributors, highlight here the key debates and conceptual shifts that have defined the field. The volume will be an especially helpful guide for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, professional historians new to the field, and other readers interested in the study of American slavery.Trade Review"Writing interesting and engaging historiographical surveys of a topic such as slavery is difficult. Yet, this volume succeeds. In its prose and content, Slavery: Interpreting American History will appeal to both specialists and nonspecialists alike."—Hilary Green, author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890"Slavery: Interpreting American History is more than a collection of exceptional essays on the historiography of American slavery. The essays connect to and enhance major interpretations in the field. Both seasoned scholars and those new to the topic will find great value in this book."—Justin Behrend, author of Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War

Read more less

Book SynopsisJournalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture. Rooted in his role as senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett's work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America and a scholar whose writing reached an unparalleled number of African American readers.This critical biography—the first in-depth study of Bennett's life—travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist endeavors. Drawing extensively on Bennett's previously inaccessible archival collections at Emory University and Chicago State, as well as interviews with close relatives, colleagues, and confidantes, Our Kind of Historian celebrates his enormous influence within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction, by Rosalind C. Morris Part 1 Text "Can the Subaltern Speak?" revised edition, from the "History" chapter of Critique of Postcolonial Reason, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Part 2 Contexts and Trajectories Reflections on "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Subaltern Studies after Spivak, by Partha Chatterjee Postcolonial Studies: Now That's History, by Ritu Birla The Ethnical Affirmation of Human Rights: Gayatri Spivak's Intervention, by Drucilla Cornell Part 3 Speaking of (Not) Hearing: Death and the Subaltern Death and the Subaltern, by Rajeswawri Sunder Rajan Between Speaking and Dying: Some Imperatives in the Emergence of the Subaltern in the Context of U.S. Slavery, by Abdul JanMohamed Subalterns at War, by Michele Barrett Part 4 Contemporaneities and Possible Futures: (Not) Speaking and Hearing Biopower and the New International Division of Reproductive Labor, by Pheng Cheah Moving from Subalternity: Indigenous Women in Guatemala and Mexico, by Jean Franco Part 5 In Response In Response: Looking Back, Looking Forward, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Appendix Can the Subaltern Speak? Bibliography Contributors Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhen French sociologist Loïc Wacquant signed up at a boxing gym in a black neighborhood of Chicago''s South Side, he had never contemplated getting close to a ring, let alone climbing into it. Yet for three years he immersed himself among local fighters, amateur and professional. He learned the Sweet science of bruising, participating in all phases of the pugilist''s strenuous preparation, from shadow-boxing drills to sparring to fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament. In this experimental ethnography of incandescent intensity, the scholar-turned-boxer fleshes out Pierre Bourdieu''s signal concept of habitus, deepening our theoretical grasp of human practice. And he supplies a model for a carnal sociology capable of capturing the taste and ache of action.This expanded anniversary edition features a new preface and postface that take the reader behind the scenes and reveal the making of this classic ethnography. Wacquant reflects on his path to, and uses of, fieldwork based on apprenticeship. He traces the genealogy and draws the anatomy of habitus and explicates how he deployed it as method of inquiry. The postface retraces the trials and tribulations of his gym mates in and out of the gym over the past thirty years, and reflects on what they reveal about the economics of prizefighting, masculinity, and the passion that binds boxers to their craft.Body and Soul marries the analytic rigor of the sociologist with the stylistic grace of the novelist to offer a compelling portrait of a bodily craft and of life and labor in the black American ghetto at century''s end. A subtle investigation and provocative extension of habitus, this expanded anniversary will intrige and excite students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities.Trade ReviewIt is a well-written, insightful and above all fascinating account which draws the reader in, combining sociological insight with good stories about strong characters. * The Sociological Review *The combination of erudition and a sense of what it feels like to box are immediate characteristics of Wacquant's accessible and vibrant textual strategy. It's a sweet yet scientific style. * Thesis Eleven *A compelling demonstration of a methodology that seeks to reveal the layers of the pugilistic habitus through the researcher's own experiences. * Theory & Psychology *Body and Soul paints a multidimensional picture through prose that is captivating and poetic.... A compelling statement about ghetto life, sports, and male camaraderie * Symbolic Interactionism *[R]eveals a remarkable ethnographic and theatrical eye... a model account of a personal, embodied sociology. * American Journal of Sociology *Loic Wacquant's Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer is perhaps the best yet sociology of the body—its theorizing is less explicit than is the acuteness of the observations...a provocative, exhilarating, maddening, and profoundly idiosyncratic effort. * Contemporary Sociology *Body & Soul not only sets a new standard for scholarly research and writing on sport. It is a virtuoso performance that could--if properly read and disseminated and emulated--put the study of sport at the center of all sociological theorizing and analysis. * Social Forces *[A] sociological tour de force...sure to be widely used as an exemplar of how to conduct participant observation research.... It is packed with fruitful conceptual and theoretical discussions. * Qualitative Sociology *A fresh and authoritative treatment. * The Ring: The Bible of Boxing *Body & Soul will pull you into the deep rhythms of boxing and should certainly earn a place in the canon of literature in the ring. * Los Angeles Times *This remarkable and courageous book gives life to Pierre Bourdieu's adage that we 'learn by body: A Frenchman in Chicago sets out to learn about the black ghetto but not through detached observation: he joins the local gym and labors to become a boxer for whom, as for his buddies, 'fighting is my life, my woman, my love.' Though he yearns to become a pro, he never loses sight of the sociology in his quest. Bravo for sticking with science, for this book spells out a stunning lesson in the carnal sociology of where we are and what we are doing. * Jerome Bruner, author of Making Stories *Body & Soul is a dazzling renewal of the endangered craft of narrative, participant sociology. Wacquant's taut rendering of the tension between the haven of the gym and the engulfing ghetto forms the backdrop for an absorbing exploration of the opposition between the manly discipline of the gym and the short, nasty brutalities of the ring. The result is a truly unique and powerful document that successfully translates the gritty routines and grim dignities of social existence without destroying or demeaning its subject. * Orlando Patterson, author of Rituals of Blood *Body & Soul is a gem, destined for a life of classics like Street Corner Society (though much fleshier and juicier and denser), studied over and over again as a pattern to follow, though defying the ability, imagination, and, indeed, humanity of the would-be followers. An act impossible to match. A poem in prose, a work of love and wisdom rolled into one: this is how ethnography should be written, were the ethnographers capable of writing like that. * Zygmunt Bauman, author of Liquid Modernity *A truly exceptional, even historic, piece of research. Brilliantly conceived, beautifully written. personally impassioned and, on multiple levels-sociological theory, social policy, ethnographic methodology-an inspiring book. It gives a bittersweet appreciation of what young black men born in 20th-century urban American ghettos might have become on a larger scale. were they given not an easier route but a more challenging, institutionally honored and indigenously supported rite of passage to adulthood. * Jack Katz, author of Seductions of Crime *With a sociological imagination inspired by Bourdieu and writing that is electric, Wacquant brings to life the pain, sweat, and discipline of boxing, as well as the vivid language, small triumphs, and gritty masculine camaraderie of those who devote themselves to it in rundown gyms on Chicago's South Side. With respect and affection for those who mentored him, he takes us into a lifeworld that offers to some an alternative to the deadly streets of urban wastelands. * Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Veiled Sentiments *Table of ContentsPREFACE TO THE EXPANDED ANNIVERSARY EDITION: WHEN SOCIAL SCIENCE MEETS THE SWEET SCIENCE PROLOGUE THE STREET AND THE RING An Island of Order and Virtue "The Boys Who Beat the Street" A Scientifically Savage Practice The Social Logic of Sparring An Implicit and Collective Pedagogy Managing Bodily Capital FIGHT NIGHT AT THE STUDIO "You Scared I Might Mess Up 'Cause You Done Messed Up" Weigh-in at the Illinois State Building An Anxious Afternoon Welcome to Studio Pitiful Preliminaries Strong Beats Hannah by TKO in the Fourth Make Way for the Exotic Dancers "You Stop Two More Guys and I'll Stop Drinkin'" "BUSY" LOUIE AT THE GOLDEN GLOVES POSTFACE FORGING THE PUGILISTIC HABITUS: REFLECTIONS ON BECOMING A PRIZEFIGHTER Pathway to the ethnographic craft Habitus comes to the gym For epistemic reflexivity: from flesh to text Appendix: Genealogy and anatomy of habitus THE AFTERLIVES OF CHICAGO PRIZEFIGHTING ACROSS THREE DECADES What they became after the Woodlawn gym closed On the social and symbolic structures of prizefighting Boxing life on the internet and death in a chicago ring Post scriptum: on pugilistic piety LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A NOTE ON ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND TRANSCRIPTION INDEX

Read more less

Book SynopsisAs early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, she reveals nostalgia’s capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments. Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remTrade Review"Part Afrofuturistic, part academic, this book will make you rethink how you understand Black history and storytelling." --BookRiot"Essential." --Ms. Magazine"Author Badia Ahad-Legardy finds unique ways to explore the beauty, positivity, and triumph of people descended from Africa, creating an archival collection of visual art and culture, literature and performance to demonstrate how the Black experience is not just a depressing string of incidents that drives us through our lives. " --New York Amsterdam News"If you’ve been waiting for a book that steps out of trauma-time and the perpetual present of slavery clear-eyed and with its critical faculties alight, you’ve found it. Badia Ahad-Legardy breathes gentle and sweet smelling fresh air into stale corners in her book on Afro-Nostalgia, which cogently analyzes and affectively affirms Black cultural producers and chefs who treat the past less as an ongoing traumatic wound and more as a surrealistic space of black historical regenerative possibility and happiness. A gem."--Avery Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination"An important dissection of looking beyond the traumas of the past to find the happiness that existed (and exists) within the Black community. " --Library Journal"This thoroughly researched book seeks and sheds light on the spaces where Black joy can live and flourish. Though its tone is academic, its insights reach far beyond the classroom.... a worthy addition to any multicultural studies library and to readers interested in American culture." --Museum of Americana"Afro-Nostalgia does an excellent job of making visible the operation of Afro-nostalgia in contemporary Black culture as a counter to the negative affect produced by Black history as trauma." --American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction. Ten Thousand Recollections: Afro-Nostalgia and Contemporary Black Aesthetics 1. (Nostalgic) RETRIBUTION: The Power of the Petty in Contemporary Narratives of Slavery 2. (Nostalgic) RESTORATION: Utopian Pasts and Political Futures in the Music of Black Lives Matter 3. (Nostalgic) REGENERATION: Absent Archives and Historical Pleasures in Contemporary Black Visual Culture 4. (Nostalgic) RECLAMATION: Recipes for Radicalism and the Politics of Soul (Food) Postscript: A Future of Black Nostalgia Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisJohn Barrington was a shepherd to over 750 Blackface ewes who graze 2,000 acres of some of Britain’s most beautiful hills overlooking the deep dark water of Loch Katrine. The yearly round of lambing, dipping, shearing and the sales is marvelously interwoven into the story of the glen, of Rob Roy in whose house John lived, of curling when the ice is thick enough, and of sheep dog trials in the summer. Whether up on the hills or along the glen, John knows the haunts of the local wildlife: the wily hill fox, the grunting badger, the herds of red deer, and the shrews, voles and insects which scurry underfoot. He sets his seasonal clock by the passage of birds on the loch, and jealously guards over the golden eagle’s eyrie in the hills. Paul Armstrong’s sensitive illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to the evocative text.Trade ReviewMr Barrington is a great pleasure to read. One learns more things about the countryside from this account of one year than from a decade of "The Archers" - THE DAILY TELEGRAPHPowerful and evocative... a book which brings vividly to life the landscape, the wildlife, the farm animals and the people who inhabit John's vista. He makes it easy for the reader to fall in love with both his surrounds and his commune with nature. - THE SCOTTISH FIELDAn excellent and informative book.... not only an account of a shepherd's year but also the diary of a naturalist. Little escapes Barrington's enquiring eye and, besides the life cycle of a sheep he also gives those of every bird, beast, insect and plant that crosses his path, mixing their histories with descriptions of the geography, local history and folklore of his surroundings. - TLSThe family life at Glengyle is wholesome, appealing and not without a touch of the Good Life. Many will envy Mr Barrington his fastness home as they cruise up Locah Katrine on the tourist steamer. - THE FIELDI read John Barrington's book with growing delight. This working shepherd writes beautifully about his animals, about the wildlife, trees and flowers which surround him at all times, and he paints an unforgettable picture of his glorious corner of Western Scotland. It is a lovely story of a rather wonderful life. - JAMES HERRIOT

Read more less

Book SynopsisNON-FICTION WINNER OF THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE FOR CARIBBEAN LITERATURE AND A FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION What does it mean to belong? All her life, Tessa McWatt has been asked, ‘What are you?’ Born in Guyana to a family with Scottish, African, French, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, and Native American heritage, she grew up in a white suburb, out of place, longing to fit in. As an adult, she moved to the UK, still pursued by questions about her identity. In this deeply personal reckoning with race and belonging, Tessa interweaves her own experiences as a mixed-race woman with a stark and unvarnished history of slavery and indenture, as well as observations on literature and popular culture. This powerful memoir of being mixed race in a predominantly white society is a necessary exploration of who and what we truly are.Trade Review‘Eloquent and moving.’ -- Barbara Taylor * The Guardian *‘Political, personal, intellectual, and critical.’ -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other‘This remarkable meditation on beautiful, human bodies formed by the violence of slavery and by colonial shame resists categorisation, even as it shows up the ways in which categories of race and identity are no more than empty methods of social control. Reading this book I felt a profound sense of relief: that someone as wise as Tessa McWatt had the compassion and courage to write it. Though she doesn’t spare us, her ancestors or herself, as she travels from British Guiana to China, India and Scotland, we must go with her: and realise the power of recovering female lineage, and realise that there is no centre, except the one we ourselves can make with all the various stories we contain. It is a deeply moving, urgent and important book.’ -- Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young‘She is one of our greatest black female writers … She’s a deeply thoughtful woman and deeply radical in her thinking. She’s not on the fence about her politics.’ -- Monique Roffey * The Observer *‘Interrogating our ideas of race through the lens of her own multi-racial identity, critically acclaimed novelist Tessa McWatt turns her eye on herself, her body and this world in a powerful new work of non-fiction.’ -- Layla Saad, author of Me and White Supremacy‘Superb.’ -- Emma Dabiri, author of Don’t Touch My Hair‘Stunningly beautiful … Her flowing, lyrical first-person prose is as close to poetry as prose can be, deeply evocative and laden with imagery without weighing the narrative down … Deeply compelling and strikingly original.’ -- Becky Long * The Irish Times *‘Shame on Me offers alternative routes into black life and suggests that there’s still space for … reflections on the politics of race presented in tangential ways.’ -- Colin Grant * TLS *‘Executed with mellifluous scholarship and an eagle’s eye for affecting detail.’ -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * Brixton Review of Books *‘Heartstopping and wise, exquisitely written, compellingly told, Shame on Me rises to a crescendo of such beauty and grace in its final chapter — a call to activism and resistance — that it left me breathless with the intensity of my own listening.’ -- Rebecca Stott, author of In the Days of Rain‘A brave indictment, both passionate and reflective, of the category of race and the prison that identity can become.’ -- Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad, and Sad‘There have been many books about race and identity in recent years, but none quite like this one. Shame On Me is part memoir, part essay, and partly a challenge to think beyond the current parameters of “identity” in our contemporary world. Told from the perspective of a writer whose own inheritance confounds established identities at every turn, it is a perceptive, poignant and deeply profound meditation on how the race-thinking of the plantation continues to structure our sense of ourselves “all the way down”. It is an essential intervention on behalf of those of us who wish to confront and overcome the resurgence of racism today.’ -- Anshuman Mondal, Professor of Modern Literature at UEA‘Shame on Me is one of the most moving and intellectually profound books of its kind. As an ‘anatomy,’ it operates with surgical precision upon the necrotic legacies of race, affirming kinship and solidarity against the ongoing violence of silence and denigration. Courageously intimate and beautifully written, it is everything I admire in Tessa McWatt.’ -- David Chariandy, author of I've Been Meaning to Tell You‘Poignant, provocative, beautifully written, Tessa McWatt's new memoir Shame on Me is an important, original and deeply thoughtful book. McWatt asks the toughest, most searching of questions about race and belonging and offers answers that surprise and challenge us. I loved it.' -- Jill Dawson, author of The Language of Birds‘Her prose is lyrical and haunting ... McWatt forcefully demonstrates how we all have a stake in dismantling the status quo and creating new paths towards true freedom: “a place outside both the master’s house and the field”. Shame on Me is a tale of our time, yet also timeless.’ -- Shu-Ling Chua * The Saturday Paper *‘Powerful and provocative.’ * Sunday Life *‘Beautifully written, profoundly moving, and deeply reflective.’ * 2020 OCM Bocas Prize jury citation *‘Beautifully written and courageously told.’ * 2020 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury citation *‘This is a fierce, remarkable and poetic take on racial identity.’ -- Susan Dale * Bad Form *‘A personal and powerful exploration of history and identity.’ * The Globe and Mail ‘Books of the Year’ *Praise for Higher Ed: ‘[C]ombines campus novel (historically a distinctly white-male genre) with a Zadie Smith-like sense of a thoroughly multicultural London … satirises with sharp wit the precariousness of academic life.’ * The Age *Praise for Higher Ed: ‘A wryly passionate, slyly political and engrossing concatenation of London lives, that only a Londoner by choice could have written.’ * China Miéville *

Read more less

Book SynopsisBelly to the Brutal sings a corrido of the love between mothers and daughters, confronting the learned complicity with patriarchal violence passed down from generation to generation. This poetry edges into the borderlands, touching the realm of chorahumming, screaming, rhythmtransporting the words outside of patriarchal and racist constructs. Drawing from curanderisma and a revived wave of feminist brujería, Jennifer Givhan creates a healing space for Brown women and mothers. Each poem finds its own form, interweaving beauty and devastation to create a pathway out of the systems that have for too long oppressed women. The poems dwell in the thick language of motherfear, where love grows too / in the shining center of the wound. This poetry of invocation moves toward a transformation of violence that is ultimately redemptive.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA beautifully-illustrated 54-card oracle deck that reimagines the iconic game of Lotería by using the traditional symbols for divination, reflection, and healing. La Rosa. La Muerte. El Nopal. These are just a few of the 54 iconic symbols that appear in the beloved card game Lotería, also known as Mexican Bingo. Since reaching modern-day Mexico in 1779, the deck has seen many artful incarnations, and across Latinx cultures, it has served the multilayered purpose of practicing the Spanish language, bringing loved ones together, and of course, trying our luck. But Lotería Remedios enters the cards into the canon of cartomancy: it uses the traditional symbols for divination, reflection, and self-healing. Here author Xelena González, a member of the Tap Pillar Coahuiltecan Nation, is continuing the work of her great-grandmother, a curandera sought-after and highly respected for her abilities. Through beautiful illustrations and lyrical written remedios, L

Read more less

Book SynopsisA profound book of essays from a celebrated master of the form. Darkness is not empty, writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanityand witness the humanity of othersin a time of darkness. One of the most celebrated essayists of his generation, Cole here plays variations on the essay form, modeling ways to attend to experiencenot just to take in but to think critically about what we sense and what we don't. Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole's writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow iTrade Review"What we see is an individual taking stock of their surroundings, a mode that Cole has mastered. To read this book is to enjoy the generosity of his thought, to be invited into a contemplation of your inner life, to embrace the complexity of others, and to see in the darkness not only despair but also understanding and even refuge.” -- Simukai Chigudu * Guardian *"A collection of essays that bursts with unrestrained humanity. . . . Cole’s eighth book is technically excellent, and more importantly, it blazes a wholesome style to living and being alive. It holds many truths, some conflicting, because this is what humanity is." * Open Country *“This collection of Cole’s feels rawer and more personal than those that have come before—Blind Spot and Known and Strange Things—layering as it does his art essays with homages to lost friends and analysis of his own 2012 novel, Open City. . . . The feeling of sadness that obviously motivated the [newest] essays, the feeling of being weighed down by all one is called to see—the phrase is bearing witness, after all—is made lighter by the example of other artists, the potential for joy in sensing all the world is." * New Republic *“Fashioned from a cache of his travel, lyric, critical, and personal essays, Black Paper argues “for the urgency of using our senses—interpreted as capaciously as possible—to respond to experience, embrace epiphany, and intensify our ethical commitments.” * Nation *"The novelist and critic travels through genres and across the globe in these thoughtful, powerful essays about the lives of migrants and man’s inhumanity." * Observer *"In essays ranging on topics from Edward Said to the US-Mexico border to 'Black Panther,' Cole interrogates what it means to bear witness in a turbulent world." * New York Times *“Black Paper is not simply a collection. There is an identifiable through-line which brings these multiple essays together into a unified text: namely, a reckoning with aesthetic experience when one is surrounded by darkness. If impaired vision is the issue in his earlier Blind Spot, total loss of sight is what is at stake here. Can we become comfortable seeing in the dark, or even seeing darkness and welcoming what is there to be found? . . . Through the artful vehicle of his precise prose, Cole has arrested us. He has made us stop, ponder, and pay attention.” * Los Angeles Review of Books *"The celebrated author of Open City explores the ways we retain our humanity and different ways of thinking about the colour black." * Guardian *"The lingering tone of this collection is enigmatic but consolatory; a book for our troubling times. Black Paper reinforces the idea of Cole as a public intellectual, but one who works on his own terms." * US Studies Online *”Cole asserts that we should make more expansive and subtle use of all our senses in taking in the world. Indeed, read as a whole, these stories ‘collectively argue for using our senses – interpreted as capaciously as possible – to respond to experience, embrace epiphany, and intensify our ethical commitments.’” * Aesthetica *"For those coming to [Cole's] nonfiction for the first time, his exuberant prose speaks for itself." * ALH Online Review *"From scrutiny of a colonial-era photograph in 'Restoring Darkness' to 'Experience,' in which he considers human senses and our cultural understandings, Cole's engaging collection of essays reassembles the visual kaleidoscope of life now in sharp, exacting prose. Cole should be seen and attentively read." * Booklist *“In this erudite collection of observations written over the past three years, art historian Cole meditates on art, identity, politics, and literature to decipher ‘the fractured moment in our history.’ . . . Offering a window into his articulate worldview, Cole brings into sharp relief the very humanity he seeks.” * Publishers Weekly *“Dense and provocative, the essays in Black Paper are a reminder that darkness cannot last forever, and even within it, there is meaning and hope.” * Foreword *“[Teju Cole is] an emissary for our best selves. He is sampling himself for our benefit, hoping for enlightenment, and seeking to provide pleasure to us through his art. May his realm expand.” * Norman Rush, New York Review of Books, on Known and Strange Things *“The places he can go, you feel, are just about limitless.” * Dwight Garner, New York Times, on Every Day Is for the Thief *“He takes in news from African countries and American cities; but also, by necessity and interest, Asian, European and Latin American culture and history. In short, the world belongs to Cole and is thornily and gloriously allied with his curiosity and his personhood.” * Claudia Rankine, New York Times Book Review, on Known and Strange Things *“The forms of resistance depend on the culture they resist, and in our era of generalizations and approximations and sloppiness, Teju Cole’s precise and vivid observation and description is an antidote and a joy. This is a book written with a scalpel, a microscope, and walking shoes, full of telling details and sometimes big surprises.” * Rebecca Solnit, on Known and Strange Things *"Cole’s erudition, eclecticism, and empathy are remarkable, but it is his capacity for lyrical writing that stays with the reader and marks him out as one of the most significant cultural figures of our times." * Tortoise *"Cole deftly warps and wefts his engagements with 17th-century painter Caravaggio, starting in the 1970s–80s as a boy in Lagos, Nigeria and later as a journalist traveling to view as many of the artist's works as possible during the immigration crisis in Italy that has swept up so many asylum seekers from Africa. Elegantly and urgently, Cole brings readers full circle. What links the essays in the book is Cole’s understanding that people 'make images in response to disaster. Seeing is part of . . . coming to terms.' He importunes readers to reach beyond tragedy and discover a new language. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Part One After Caravaggio Part Two: Elegies Room 406 Mama’s Shroud Four Elegies Two Elegies A Letter to John Berger A Quartet for Edward Said Part Three: Shadows Gossamer World: On Santu Mofokeng An Incantation for Marie Cosindas Pictures in the Aftermath Shattered Glass What Does It Mean to Look at This? A Crime Scene at the Border Shadow Cabinet: On Kerry James Marshall Nighted Color: On Lorna Simpson The Blackness of the Panther Restoring the Darkness Part Four: Coming to Our Senses Experience Epiphany Ethics Part Five: In a Dark Time A Time for Refusal Resist, Refuse Through the Door Passages North On Carrying and Being Carried Epilogue Black Paper Acknowledgments Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWomen have been at the dawn of the blues since Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey were singing about hard knocks and tough love in smoky bars. This book gives an overview of the early days of the blues and its development from the Mississippi Delta to the home of electric blues, Chicago, to becoming the vibrant global musical movement it is today. In addition, there are exclusive interviews with dozens of the women leading the Blues today. With an introduction by acclaimed music writer Zoe Howe, this book explores the pioneers who created the blues from the 1920s onwards, as well as providing exclusive interviews with around 30 extraordinary women who take the blues to new heights today.Trade Review"Jennifer Noble is an insightful blues enthusiast whose wealth of knowledge of blues music is second to none. Through this rare book about women in blues, the reader encounters many of the talented ladies Jennifer has met on her photographic journey - from Irma Thomas to Ivy Ford - illuminated with wonderfully informative dialogue from the artists themselves to complement her photos. This is not just another coffee table book: it is a must read for all blues aficionados!" -Blues Matters Magazine; "Jennifer Noble's photographs make you fall in love with these Blues Women. She captures the essence of their soul. I have fallen in love with them as well and was so inspired that I started Women of the Blues Foundation. Thank you, Jennifer Noble for bringing me into a world of extraordinary women." -Lynn Orman Weiss, Founder Women of the Blues Foundation and Women of the Blues Records; "Jennifer Noble has been photographing blues in Chicago for more than 30 years so she knows a thing or two about the scene. In 50 Women in the Blues, she highlights-you guessed it-50 women of the blues-from the legendary trailblazers like Memphis Minnie, Big Mama Thorton, Sippie Wallace and Bessie Smith to present day blues queens such as Shemekia Copeland, Joanna Connor, Thornetta Davis, Mary Lane, Sister Cookie and many, many more. Even I, who likes to think I know everything there is to know about the women who sing the blues, met a few women I didn't know in this delightful book." -Chicago Blues News; "50 Women in the Blues is a worthy addition to the crop of blues music titles vying for attention out there. Indeed, its format and integrity make it an essential introduction and potential reference work for blues fans everywhere. More than a typical coffee-table book, this is a dip-in whenever you fancy book that holds the power to interest, grip, entertain and inform, and that can't be bad!" - Iain Patience, Elmore Magazine; "...the book is produced in hardback, and as the notes say 'The book gives an overview of the early days of the blues and its development from the Mississippi delta to Chicago to the global music it is today'. So for all of us who love the blues this book is a must have. One of the best produced books on the blues you'll ever find." - Peta Clack, Blues in Britain magazine; "Given the times we live in, it's a little surprising there haven't been more books focusing on blueswomen. Whether this book of photographs and (relatively brief) essays and interviews, featuring the work of photographer Jennifer Noble, with assistance from British author and freelance writer Zoe Howe, represents part of a larger movement to correct that oversight remains to be seen, but it's a tantalizing prospect. Noble's photographs are straightforward and unpretentious, she's not a high art photographer but a portraitist, interested in capturing the spirit of the moment and in these cases the spirit and brio of her subjects - appropriately the dominant mood is joyful: this music is a celebration - of life, of womanly power, of perseverance and survival. In recent years, authors such as Angela Y. Davis (Blues Legacies and Black Feminism)... have produced important works that have focused on the social significance of women's voices and performance styles in the blues, and although it does not aspire to the scope of such works, this collection of photographs should nonetheless be recognized as another, in what one hopes is an ongoing initiative, scholarly and otherwise, to recognize, study and celebrate this vital facet of living blues history. After all, in a very real sense, the history of the blues is women's history as well - or as Zoe Howe reminds us in her introduction: "Years of oppression couldn't stop them. Violence couldn't cow them. Religion didn't suppress them and social conditioning couldn't inhibit them... a woman is the blues and the blues is a woman." - David Whiteis, Living Blues Magazine.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat is race and why does it matter? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? America’s foremost novelist reflects on themes that preoccupy her work and dominate politics: race, fear, borders, mass movement of peoples, desire for belonging. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Toni Morrison’s most personal work of nonfiction to date.Trade ReviewMorrison’s new book of essays, The Origin of Others, shows that the sick, sad world in which her novels are set is an old one—one that she yearns to lean out of, one we’re falling right back into instead. The Origin of Others is, at once, a critique, memoir, and writer’s notebook; the Nobel Prize–winning author explicates the observations and inspirations behind some of her most prized novels. The book draws from her Norton Lectures, in which she discusses race, borders, history, and other literary heavyweights such as Flannery O’Connor and Ernest Hemingway. Readers could consider this book a companion to her Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, if they want a pellucid look at the racial minefield throughout American literature. -- Kaila Philo * The Millions *It is hard not to want more than an afternoon with her incisive mind…Her essays are richly embellished with anecdote and memory, but grounded in literary analysis. Morrison looks to literature as a potent site of prejudicial tuition…Drafted in the months before Brexit and Donald Trump, it is hard not to see The Origin of Others as politically prescient. -- Beejay Silcox * The Australian *For those who want to understand better the process of inventing others, its literary past, and the tendency in us all to dismiss others clamoring for a sense of belonging, The Origin of Others is a must-read. Morrison’s fans will appreciate her hauntingly clear reading of the times, even while she remains true to her literary aesthetic. New readers can look to this text as a foray into the mind of one of the greatest thinkers of our time. With the same revolutionary simplicity as Martin Buber’s I and Thou, Morrison reminds us once again that whatever can be said of the self is always determined by how one stands in relation to the other. -- Audrey Thompson * Christian Century *If you’ve ever wanted to take a peek into the brilliant mind of Toni Morrison, look no further than her latest book. In The Origin of Others, Morrison dissects all the thematic elements that frequent her work, and sheds light on what inspires her and what keeps her up at night. Based on her Norton Lectures, the renowned novelist delves deep into how literature has shaped society’s perceptions of race over the years, as well as how some of her most beloved books came to be. Plus, it has a brilliant introduction from Ta-Nehisi Coates! -- Gina Mei * Shondaland *Pulitzer– and Nobel Prize–winning novelist Morrison analyzes the language of race and racism and the classification of people into dehumanizing racial categories in American culture… Lyrically written and intelligently argued, this book is on par with Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination and The Black Book. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *This is an intriguing and timely series of reflections on race, fear, belonging and otherness. -- Louise Kennedy * The ARTery *This volume collects the great novelist’s Norton lectures at Harvard University, giving those of us who didn’t get to attend a glimpse at Morrison’s thoughts on race and otherness, and how these things affect literature and lives around the world. * The Millions *[A] slender but profound volume. -- Tom Beer * Newsday *The Origin of Others is a must read. -- Tara Block * PopSugar *From legendary writer and thinker Toni Morrison comes a book that deals with one of the thorniest topics of our time: race…What is race? What motivates us to construct otherness? What makes us so afraid of one another? Probing, brilliant, and beautifully rendered, The Origin of Others is destined to become one of the major sociological texts of our time. -- Elizabeth Kiefer * Refinery29 *Every literature lover who dreams of studying with Toni Morrison will devour The Origin of Others, a new collection of her Harvard lectures on race, literature, and otherness. -- Angela Carone * San Diego Magazine *What is sure to be her most personal and self-reflecting work in nonfiction yet, Morrison delves further into the themes that have always been crucial to her canon: race, politics, history, identity, et al. -- Maura M. Lynch and Jinnie Lee * W Magazine *Morrison explores how cultures, societies, and individuals develop the notion of the Other, the reasons for it, the perceived benefits of distinguishing based on what many insist are racial traits despite the slipperiness of concepts of race…In this slim volume, Morrison shares again her enormous talent for examining the complexity of race and racial identity, the inhumanity that results from ‘othering’ a fellow human being, the justifications for cruelty that has resulted in romanticized images of slavery and oppression, and how the perversity of racism reverberates through centuries. -- Vanessa Bush * Booklist *Melding memoir, history, and trenchant literary analysis, Nobel Prize laureate Morrison offers perceptive reflections on the configuration of Otherness…As sharp and insightful as one would expect from this acclaimed author. * Kirkus Reviews *May be [Morrison’s] most comprehensive look at race in America to date. * Pacific Standard *[Morrison] traces through American literature patterns of thought and behavior that subtly code who belongs and who doesn’t, who is accepted in and who is cast out as ‘Other.’ …The Origin of Others combines Toni Morrison’s accustomed eloquence with meaning for our times as citizens of the world. -- Nell Irvin Painter * New Republic *The Origin of Others gives readers around the world a chance to take a peek inside the insightful mind of one of America’s most celebrated novelists… Equal parts challenging and engaging, reading The Origin of Others is like learning from the literary legend herself. -- Sadie Trombetta * Bustle *It is hard not to read Toni Morrison’s The Origin of Others in the light of recent disturbing political developments in the U.S… Morrison considers the fetishization of skin color and the questions posed by our era of mass migration, and offers elegant reminders of some well-known but still unpalatable facts… She shows how a single word choice in a Hemingway novel can exploit and fortify any number of racialized fetishes and revulsions, and she also explains, with a dispassionate attention to technique, why and how Hemingway made such choices as a writer, the useful short cuts they allowed him to take for the purposes of narrative and character and mood. -- Lidija Haas * The Guardian *Morrison trains her well-aimed pen at the themes that only a titan such as herself can so gracefully take on like race, fear, borders and the mass movement of people, for example. -- Lesley-Ann Brown * NBC News *Toni Morrison is the one of the great contemporary analysts of race and identity…Here she develops in a more concerted way than we find in her earlier work the means by which racist ideologies obliterate the possibility of knowing others, and stifle the chance we are afforded to gain knowledge of ourselves…Morrison draws on a series of episodes from [America’s] literature and history, and examines them in relation to salient moments from her own life. The resulting work is transformative, exhilarating, distressing. And acutely and urgently necessary…The Origin of Others is full of insights. They are made all the more persuasive by Morrison’s elegant, plangent prose, and by her refusal to exclude herself from those mythologies of otherness of which we are all the unhappy legatees. To read this wise, probing and inspiring book is to acquaint yourself with a writer who is a foe of that inheritance and a vital friend of the human project. -- Matthew Adams * The National *In a series of essays that provides equally unique insights into American literary history and Morrison’s own mind, The Origin of Others explores how otherness, particularly racial difference, is socially constructed, and the ways Morrison has always worked to explore and confound that construct through her writing. -- Emily Lever * The Literary Show Project *The Nobel Prize–winning novelist employs literary criticism, history, and memoir to illustrate how power imagines difference in order to legitimize oppression… As Barack Obama completed a two-term presidency, and his attorneys general launched investigations into police brutality across the country, it seemed reasonable to assume that the United States was finally preparing to acknowledge and address the structural racism that underpins its society. The intervening year has exposed that as a dangerous assumption, and made required reading of a book that, in any sane version of the present, should have marked how much progress had recently been made and how far was yet to go. -- Ben Eastham * Art Review *[Morrison] is doing what she does best, using historical, personal and current events to explore how racism continues to divide society. Drawing on issues of globalization and the mass movement of people, she explores how the presence of others contributes to belonging. The book is as good as I had expected. Morrison’s narrative is both powerful and chilling as she takes us on a journey that shocks and enlightens but forever reminds us that, ‘The definition of Americanness (sadly) remains color for many people.’ -- Kalwant Bhopal * Times Higher Education *A slim volume that contains multitudes. It can be read in one sitting, yet it’s a book that readers will likely return to frequently for its conceptual richness, catholic knowledge, and political imagination…Literature, Morrison argues throughout The Origin of Others, is central to shaping social imaginations of hate, and conversely, literature has the potential to help us envision better worlds and better futures…Morrison deftly moves between literary analysis, personal memoir, historical research, critical theory, and politics. And moreover, she does so with incredible clarity and grace. Her intended audience is not specialists in narrow fields, but wide and broad publics…We live in a regime in which nation-states can blind us from seeing the tragedies and genocides unfolding beyond our artificial borders. Toni Morrison's latest book challenges us in subtle and profound ways to see beyond such artifices. We need literary fictions to see the many violences of our political fictions. -- Ryan Poll * PopMatters *In this era of stark division, distrust and state-sponsored xenophobia, it is hard to imagine a more timely and laudable message than the plea for understanding, with its separation of the fact of culture from notions of racial essentialism, and its implicit faith in the importance, and transformative power, of literature. -- Clifford Thompson * Times Literary Supplement *The autobiographical moments in The Origin of Others are the most interesting paragraphs within this book. Peeking into the life of this Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s personal life to understand her concerns for black America, provides a logical solution in shaping black identity—control our narrative… The Origin of Others moved me to be more conscious of what type of language and behavior I, a hip-hop journalist and aspiring historian, put into the world. -- Darryl Robertson * VIBE *A painful and powerful study of race as it affected [Morrison’s] writing and her reading. The book is clear and challenging. Attitudes are eloquently investigated. -- Eavan Boland * Irish Times *There is another aspect to otherness: how we cope, survive, rationalize and discriminate by creating, in our minds and habits, others. No book addresses this more profoundly than Toni Morrison’s small book of essays, The Origin of Others…It’s Trumpism that makes her insights essential now…Morrison addresses the ‘romancing of slavery’ in our literature and history. She looks carefully at what ‘being or becoming a stranger’ means in American life. She analyzes our fetishes with darkness, our preoccupations with blackness and the tropes we perpetuate regarding Africa: menace, depravity, incomprehensibility. This is not easy, comforting reading for a Christmas morning, but it is a book we need to be talking about. -- Jon M. Sweeney * America *Morrison expertly dissects the nuanced conversations around race and why they matter. -- Shalayne Pulia * InStyle *Morrison has much to say about events that are not only on the American mind, but the global one, as she ranges over nostalgic returns to slavery, the pervasive use of racial epithets by white writers, and the forced migration of an unprecedented number of displaced people…In The Origin of Others, Morrison revisits ways of reading American literature, but also expands her scope to ponder the meaning of race itself, and how it lodges itself in both individual and collective imaginaries. -- Yogita Goyal * Los Angeles Review of Books *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Inheritance is anthropologist Elizabeth A. Povinelli's graphic memoir in which she explores her family's history and the events, traumas, and social structures that define our individual and collective pasts and futures.Trade Review“With the understanding of a scholar and the storytelling instincts of a novelist, Elizabeth A. Povinelli has brought a rare degree of scope and insight to the graphic memoir form. Relatively few illustrated works are so complex and insightful, so intricately concerned with families, nationalities, and politics. An extraordinary book.” -- Michael Cunningham, author of * The Hours *“A melancholy yet often darkly funny reflection on the intersections of biography, geography, kinship, and history, The Inheritance is a genuinely original work that made an impact on this reader and will leave a lasting mark on the field.” -- Naisargi N. Dave, author of * Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics *"An inspired use of the graphic format to weave a narrative with a power beyond words alone." (Starred Review) * Kirkus Reviews *"This book is memoir, art, and anthropology, as it cleverly addresses the interplay between individual lives and collective experiences, thus inviting a more open and associative mode of interpretation than most academic monographs.… This text handles complex and contested social themes through sparing text and provocative imagery and as such is a unique contribution to the conversation on the legacies of European immigration to the United States." -- Caroline DeVane * Europe Now *"This is a fascinating study of family persona and their changing relationships, but it is not just an engaging family history. The book is also an analysis of the historical context, 'the patterns of violence, dislocation, racism and structural inequality' (p. xi) that shape US society." -- Louise Lamphere * Journal of Anthropological Research *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Preface xi Act I 1 Act II Papa The Vorburgers Gramma Act III Reading List

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review“However revealing Union is on her feed, she’s even more so on the page. Blurring the line between public and private, many chapters in You Got Anything Stronger? hinge on the very act of disclosure, the moments where Union relatably brings social media more in line with real life” — New York Times “You Got Anything Stronger? continues the project of unshackling. It’s soul-baring work.” — Washington Post "Heartfelt, vulnerable, witty, and sincere." — CNN “Union deftly writes about the life-changing diagnosis that led her to surrogacy as a path to moth­erhood; the impact of cracking open her family’s life for all to see; and how she discovered who she is beyond others’ projections. . . She makes you wish she were your best friend, her number saved in your favorites—a kindred spirit always ready to share real talk over a round of shots.” — Essence “In so many ways, You Got Anything Stronger? is about digging deeper into the genre of celebrity memoir—literally giving us something more potent—because Union is honest without crossing her own boundaries of privacy, passionate about social issues without being condescending, and owns up to her own mistakes and struggles while maintaining a really radiant and admirable self-love throughout the book.” — Shondaland "In her follow-up to her debut memoir, We’re Going to Need More Wine, actor and writer Gabrielle Union picks up where she left off, delving deep into her journey to conceive daughter Kaavia, her experience as a stepmom, and the rest — ugly, beautiful, and in-between. Break out the liquor, folks, because you’re going to want a stiff drink to go with this dish." — Bustle “You Got Anything Stronger? is a boundary-pushing, self-discovery inducing lesson on vulnerability” — Parade Even more open and relatable than her first. This time around the actor and author is opening up about her surrogacy journey, fighting against racial inequality in Hollywood, and her iconic Bring It On character, Isis. Grab a glass of your drink of choice and settle in, because reading Union's essays is every bit as satisfying as a nice, long chat with your best friend. — Popsugar Funny, tender, and so good. — Mindy Kaling, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Why Not Me? These essays are brimming with veracity, humor, and daring sincerity that becomes contagious. In depictions of motherhood, Hollywood, and even the most devastating realities, Union keeps a remarkably steady hand; she speaks with the warmth of a late night phone call. — Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age This is an absolute must-read. Gabrielle doesn’t just open up—she opens up conversations we need to be having. — Sunny Hostin, New York Times bestselling author of Summer on the Bluffs and I Am These Truths Here is that rare book that will not only touch your heart, but also send you back out there to stand up for yourself and others. — Meena Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ambitious Girl This book is a masterclass in authenticity and vulnerability, and I loved it! I drank up the words on the pages because this is Gabby’s heart wide open in print. It is a stunning read that is deeply humanizing and I’m inspired by the courage and humor in it. It’s just so DAMB GOOD! — Luvvie Ajayi Jones, New York Times bestselling author of Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual Gabrielle Union has written another wonderful book that pulls no punches. The searing honesty of You Got Anything Stronger? is a gift to readers. Union faces head-on the different ways women become mothers and partners in an emotionally resonant and universal way. Her voice is relatable, warm, and sharp. You owe it to yourself to curl up with this book and to pass it along to a friend. — Tressie McMillan Cottom, Professor and MacArthur Fellow Gabrielle Union is serving us another stellar memoir. . . She gets even deeper in this series of essays that detail what her life is like now, including her experience with surrogacy and racism in the entertainment industry. — Cosmopolitan, "15 Compelling Fall 2021 Books to Add to Your Reading List" The star actor and producer demonstrates her dedication to empowering young Black women and other marginalized people. As these essays ably show, Union is a dynamic role model for young Black women in all walks of life. — Kirkus Reviews Union returns with more wise, intimate personal stories. . . The respect with which she writes about the people in her life is a true testament to her character. Always smart, inviting, and generous with emotion, Union's second exquisite memoir reads like a conversation with your most enlightened, thoughtful friend. — Booklist (starred review)

Read more less

Book SynopsisCompelling and inspirational, Alien Nation is a celebration of immigration and an exploration of culture shock, isolation and community, loneliness and hope, heartbreak and promise—it’s a poignant reminder of our shared humanity at a time we need it greatly, and a thoughtful, entertaining tribute to cultural diversity.Trade ReviewA moving look at what the American dream means today. — Publishers Weekly

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) has gained worldwide visibility as a grassroots social justice movement distinguished by a decentralized, non-hierarchal mode of organization, and in 2020 Black Lives Matter protests across the country shook America''s moral conscience to its core. M4BL rose to prominence in part thanks to its protests against police brutality and misconduct directed at Black Americans. However, its animating concerns are far broader, calling for a wide range of economic, political, legal, and cultural measures to address what it terms a war against Black people, as well as the shared struggle with all oppressed people. Yet despite the significance of the social, political, and economic goals of M4BL, as well as the innovative organizational leadership strategies it employs, M4BL has so far received little sustained philosophical attention. The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives brings philosophical analysis to bear on the aims, strategies, policy pTrade ReviewFor scholars and laity in the fields of race studies or philosophy, this book offers an important examination of the theoretical foundations and issues of social and political philosophy. The uniqueness of this book is that the essays offer both support for and critiques of the foundational assumptions and arguments underlying different scholarly/activist positions. The volume also provides a theoretical discussion of how to move away from leadership--oriented activism/scholarship and toward democratic/cooperative-oriented activism/scholarship. Though clearly rooted in philosophy, chapters are accessible to readers of all levels. This would be an excellent book for class discussion and student research. * L. L. Lovern, Valdosta State University, CHOICE *This volume is evidence of the fruitfulness of philosophical reflection on and engagement with social movements, as well as being an important contribution to the literature on racial justice. For those looking for philosophical insights into the Movement for Black Lives, this book is essential reading. * Andrew Valls, Criminal Law and Philosophy *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I - The Value of Black Lives 1. What "Black Lives Matter" Should Mean, Brandon Hogan 2. "And He Ate Jim Crow": Racist Ideology as False Consciousness, Vanessa Wills 3. He Never Mattered: Poor Black Males and the Dark Logic of Intersectional Invisibility, Tommy J. Curry Part II - Theorizing Racial Justice 4. Reconsidering Reparations: The Movement for Black Lives and Self-Determination, Olúfemi O. Táíwò 5. The Movement for Black Lives and Transitional Justice, Colleen Murphy Part III - The Language of M4BL 6. Positive Propaganda and the Pragmatics of Protest, Michael Randall Barnes 7. Value-Based Protest Slogans: An Argument for Reorientation, Myisha Cherry 8. The Movement for Black Lives and the Language of Liberation, Ian Olasov Part IV -M4BL, Anti-Black Racism, and Punishment 9. Can Capital Punishment Survive if Black Lives Matter?, Michael Cholbi and Alex Madva 10. Sentencing Leniency for Black Offenders, Benjamin S. Yost Part V - Strategy and Solidarity 11. The Violence of Leadership in Black Lives Matter, Dana Francisco Miranda 12. Speaking For, Speaking With, and Shutting Up: Models of Solidarity and the Pragmatics of Truth Telling, Mark Norris Lance 13. Sky's the Limit: A Case-Study in Envisioning Real Anti-Racist Utopias, Keyvan Shafiei

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow are the human and institutional systems fundamental to succeeding in academia?In graduate school we are trained how to be scholars, and maybe how to be effective teachers. But there is much more to being a college or university faculty member--and most of it is left to figure out on one''s own. This job isn''t hard because the core scholarship is hard, but because of the complex mix of activities that scholars must figure out how to juggle. These are dominated by human and institutional structures within departments, universities, societies, and professional communities. Succeeding and thriving as an academic calls for developing wider, non-academic insights and skills into how these operate and how to operate effectively with, and within, them. Functioning as an academic is about the relationships we develop with our communities of students, campus colleagues, professional peers, and our university administrative and support staff--the people who enable faculty members to functionTable of ContentsTitle Page Dedication Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: The Nature of Academe Section 1 Intro: Your Individual Path as an Academic 1 Postdoc: A Postdoc's Job Is to Get a Job 2 Assistant Professor: Making It to Tenure 3 Success: Tenure 4 Thriving in Academe When You Are Not a White, Heterosexual Man 5 Non-tenure Track Teaching Faculty Section 2 Intro: University Operations 6 University Administrative Systems 7 Working with the Staff Section 3 Intro: The Next Generation 8 Mentoring 1: Vision and Philosophy 9 Mentoring 2: Specific Challenges 10 Teaching: Being Good While Surviving Section 4 Intro: Professional Communities 11 Publishing Ecosystems 12 Who Put the Peer in Peer Review--Being Part of the System 13 Professional Communities 14 Conclusion: Thriving in Academe Appendix 1: Useful Resources Appendix 2: Mottoes for Memorable Mentoring Literature Cited

Read more less

Book SynopsisLooks at the rollout of one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history to show how local governments play a complex role. China''s high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history. Despite global media coverage, we know very little about the political process that led the government to invest in the railway program and the reasons for the striking regional and temporal variation in such investments. In Localized Bargaining, Xiao Ma offers a novel theory of intergovernmental bargaining that explains the unfolding of China''s unprecedented high-speed railway program. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews, original data sets, and surveys with local officials, Ma details how the bottom-up bargaining efforts by territorial authoritieswhom the central bureaucracies rely on to implement various infrastructure projectsshaped the allocation of investment in the railway system. Demonstrating how localities of different types invoke institutional and extra-institutional sources of bargaining power in their competition for railway stations, Ma sheds new light on how the nation''s massive bureaucracy actually functions.Trade ReviewLocalized Bargaining is an important addition to the literature, providing insights into one of the most salient aspects of Chinese politics-the triangulated relationship between top decision makers, local bureaucrats, and the masses. Ma is to be applauded for providing insight into "a regularized, controllable mechanism" for the bottom up articulating of interests. * Karl Yan, Journal of Contemporary Asia *Overall, the author has conducted solid fieldwork and collected a wealth of first-hand information, which is not easy to do in China. The book's target group consists of political scientists and geographers. It not only sheds light on the politics behind the largest infrastructure project in human history, but also echoes some of the more general questions of political and geographical studies in general. * Guo Jie, Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, EURASIAN GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMICS *Drawing on interviews and a variety of new data sources, Localized Bargaining tells a compelling tale of the politics that drives the allocation of infrastructure in the absence of democracy—those who lobby for projects, it shows, are not citizens, but intermediary recipients such as local governments and functional departments. This is an indispensable book for understanding how bureaucratic bargaining and 'fragmented authoritarianism' works in China's infrastructure-fueled development. * Yuen Yuen Ang, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor *This empirically rich book uncovers how the non-monolithic political system in China creates opportunities for local authorities to participate in the policy making of the central authority. Xiao Ma convincingly demonstrates that Chinese local governments are able to seek policy benefits because of the fragmented authorities of the decision-making bureaucracy. This insightful book makes an important contribution to understanding distributive politics in authoritarian states. * Yongshun Cai, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology *Seen from the outside, China's high-speed rail network epitomizes the centralized power of the party-state. Ma's pathbreaking study, which takes us inside the politics of railway development, reveals a far more complex picture. With rich quantitative and qualitative evidence, Ma traces the interplay of bottom-up and top-down agency and formal and informal rules, reshaping our understanding of 'who gets what, when, and how.' * Kyle A. Jaros, Associate Professor of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame *Xiao Ma significantly advances our understanding of bureaucracy. His investigation of the massive infrastructure investment in the Chinese high-speed rail system reveals not only the role of bureaucracy in maintaining authoritarian rule but also the mechanisms by which it does so. His rich account reveals that what seems to be top-down authority is actually a complex of bargains in which local actors transform the intentions of the centralized state: the 'cardinals,' those with significant institutional power in local territorial politics, try to impose their agenda while the 'clerics,' those with less institutional power, try to get their voices heard by mobilizing protests. This extraordinary in-depth study represents a new account of how to think about bureaucracy not only in China and not only in the developing world—but wherever major infrastructure is at issue. * Margaret Levi, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University *Ma's book offers an insightful demonstration of localised bargaining, and thus has theoretical significance and current relevance. * Bingzhao Chang, PhD candidate at the School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Nanjing University, China Perspectives *Table of ContentsDedication Acknowledgements Abbreviations List of Figures List of Tables Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Bureaucracies and Localized Bargaining Chapter 3: Local Ambitions in Central Policymaking Chapter 4: The "Cardinals" and the "Clerics" Chapter 5: The Political Geography of High-speed Railways Chapter 6: The Power of the Masses Chapter 7: Conclusion Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis text offers a compendium of knowledge and perspectives from leading researchers dedicated to examining various forms of racism and their distinctions and impact on racial groups. Each chapter promotes both evidence and practice-based research that cultivates improvements in the daily lives of people affected by racism. The text also advocates for the facilitation of systemic change on the individual, organizational, community, and greater societal levels. With this advocacy perspective, the authors aim to advance community empowerment and advocacy to address and eliminate both racism and white supremacy. The authors identify the link between racism and social determinants of both physical/mental health and social well-being aiming to foster development of an anti-racist social work framework that promotes access to resources and opportunities that encompass transdisciplinary collaboration among the workforce. From a historical perspective, the book also examines the link between hTrade ReviewFinally, a textbook for the social work profession that dares to challenge the unyielding stain of American racism and its many attributes. The text provides readers with multiple historical references and perspectives about race and racism in our society. Research cited within the text supports that disparities exist in every institutional system due to policies, practices, and attitudes that are deeply rooted in long-held biases and beliefs about race. The authors explain the role that the social work profession must engage in to become an antiracist profession in bending the arc of justice towards equality and equity for all. * Mildred "Mit" C. Joyner, DPS, MSW, LCSW, National Association of Social Workers President *Drs. Teasley, Spencer, and Bartholomew are thought leaders in social work and theology on race, racism, and oppression. They have done an excellent job in providing a comprehensive overview of race, racism, and oppression within the social work profession. The authors draw from history, theoretical concepts, and frameworks to enhance the reader's knowledge of race, racism, and race relations in social work. The book explores how structural racism and white supremacy intersect and impact the other 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work. The writings in this book support classroom learning and interventions and makes an important contribution to the social work profession. * James Herbert Williams, PhD, Arizona Centennial Professor of Social Welfare Services, School of Social Work, Arizona State University *Although systemic racism is undoubtedly at the core of the social problems reflected in each of the twelve 'original' grand challenges, the move to include 'Eliminate racism' as a separate and explicit Grand Challenge is to be applauded. That said, the task is monumental. This book provides invaluable direction and serves as a resounding and well-informed call to action for the social work profession to make significant progress on what has been a dark stain on this country. * Darla Spence Coffee, PhD, MSW, Former President and CEO of the Council on Social Work Education *Table of ContentsIntroduction Section I History, Racism, & Social Work Education Chapter 1 The Meaning and Function of Race & Racism: A Conceptual Understanding Chapter 2 Antiracism Social Work: History and the Challenge Ahead Chapter 3 Using Personal-Professional Narratives as a Technique for Teaching Chapter 4 Eradicating Racism: Social Work's Most Pressing Grand Challenge. Section II Racism and Individual and Family Wellbeing Chapter 5 Ending Racism: A Critical Perspective Chapter 6 Ensure the Healthy Development for Youth: Expansions and Elaborations for Equity Chapter 7 Ensuring Healthy Development for All Youth: Prevention Of Psychosis Chapter 8 Closing the Health Gap: Addressing Racism, Settler Colonialism and White Supremacy Chapter 9 Integrating AASW&SW's Grand Challenges of Productive Aging with Anti-Racism and Health Equity Lenses to Improve Population Health Chapter 10 Racism and the Grand Challenge of Ending Family Violence Among Black Families SECTION III Eliminating Racism through Strengthening the Social Fabric Chapter 11 Beyond Colorism: The Impact of Racialization in U.S. Latinxs Chapter 12 Confronting the History of Racism Against Asian Americans in the U.S. Chapter 13 Strengthening the Social Responses to the Human Impacts of Environmental Change Chapter 14 Race and Racism in the Homelessness Crisis in the United States: Historic Antecedents, Current Best Practices and Recommendations to End Racial Disparities in Housing and Homelessness Chapter 15 Eradicating Social Isolation: Focus on Social Exclusion and Racism Section IV Progressive Approaches to Eliminating Institutional, Social Policy, and Economic Racism Chapter 16 Juvenile Justice for Achieving Equal Opportunity and Justice Chapter 17 From Mass Incarceration to Smart Decarceration 561 Chapter 18 Reducing Racialized Barriers to School Success for All Children & Youth Chapter 19 Reversing Extreme Inequality Chapter 20 White Supremacy and American Social Policy: Implications for Racism-Centered Policy Practice Chapter 21 Policy, Practice and Institutional Barriers to FCAB for All Related to Race (Racism) in the U.S.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1964 Malcolm X was invited to debate at the Oxford Union Society at Oxford University. The topic of debate that evening was the infamous phrase from Barry Goldwater''s 1964 Republican Convention speech:Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. At a time when Malcolm was traveling widely and advocating on behalf of blacks in America and other nations, his thirty minute speech at the Oxford Union stands out as one of the great addresses of the civil rights era. Delivered just months before his assassination, the speech followed a period in which Malcolm had traveled throughout Africa and much of the Muslim world. The journey broadened his political thought to encompass decolonization, the revolutions underway in the developing world, and the relationship between American blacks and non-white populations across the globe-including England. Facing off against debaters in one of world''s most elite institutions, he delivered a revoTrade ReviewMalcolm Xat teh Oxford Union provides in-depth analyses of the debate through its themes of extremism and moderation, justice and virtue ... The early chapters of Ambar's book, slowed down by lengthy quotations, occasionally lack brio; but Ambar's deft readings of Malcolm's use of humour, rhetorical devices and language begin to drive the narrative. He teases out the nuances of the speech, while highlighting its contemporary relevance. * Douglas Field, The Times Literary Supplement *It is no mean feat to engage the reader's attentin for 170 pages on a speech that is reproduced in a mere 11, and Ambar is to be congratulated on pulling it off [...] We still find ourselves asking just what, in the months leading up to his (Malcom X) assasination, did he stand for? This book certainly helps us to answer that question. * Hakim Adi, Times Higher Education *Table of ContentsPrologue 1964 ; 1 Introduction: "This is an interesting despatch" ; 2 Extremism: "The revolution is now on the inside of the house" ; 3 Liberty: "Please forward by any means necessary" ; 4 Moderation "It is no part of the moderate to refuse to fight" ; 5 Justice "To take up arms against a sea of troubles" ; 6 Virtue "Authentic Revolutionary"

Read more less

Book SynopsisA critique of 30 years of antidiscrimination law in the United States, this book explains why equal opportunity and affirmative action policies have failed to improve black employment since the 1964 Civil Rights Act.Table of ContentsList of Tables Acknowledgments 1: Introduction 2: Recruitment Practices 3: Recruitment Discrimination 4: Employment Discrimination Law 5: Antidiscrimination Policy: Theoretical Considerations 6: The Effects of Antidiscrimination Programs 7: Minority Employment Opportunities Author Index Subject Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat is the opposite of freedom? The author answers this question with definitive force: slavery. Examining this overlooked phenomenon - one of action from slavery and toward freedom - he deepens our understanding of freedom itself and the origin of our political ideals.Trade Review"Freedom as Marronage is an exciting, well-conceived, and passionately argued work of political theory and Africana thought. Roberts's distinctive understanding of freedom is especially welcome in the context of political theory and philosophy, where slavery still appears largely (if at all) as either a metaphor or a signpost of moral and political progress. As he shows, thinking through the legacies of enslavement and the flight from it is essential to understanding freedom in a postcolonial, post-apartheid, post-civil rights moment." (Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia)"

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisShows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of racial integration in residential neighborhoods after World War II - away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship.Trade Review"A creative, vital entry point to explore the tangle of federal mortgage financing, housing reform, and deep-seated racism.... This well-written, much-needed study brings together the realms of urban history, race relations, and economic opportunity." - Choice "Freund's book unravels the ties that bound (and bind) race and property, and, in the process, shows how that linkage altered white racial ideals and politics in postwar America." - Andrew Wiese, Journal of American History"

Read more less

Book SynopsisOver the past few decades, India has experienced a sudden and spectacular urban transformation. Gleaming business complexes encroach on fields and villages. Giant condominium communities offer gated security, indoor gyms, and pristine pools. Spacious, air-conditioned malls have sprung up alongside open-air markets. In Landscapes of Accumulation, Llerena Guiu Searle examines India's booming developments and offers a nuanced ethnographic treatment of late capitalism. India's land, she shows, is rapidly transforming from a site of agricultural and industrial production to an international financial resource. Drawing on intensive fieldwork with investors, developers, real estate agents, and others, Searle documents the new private sector partnerships and practices that are transforming India's built environment, as well as widely shared stories of growth and development that themselves create self-fulfilling prophecies of success. As a result, India's cities are becoming ever more inaccess

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Closing Door is the first major critique of the effect of conservative policies on urban race and poverty in the 1980s. Atlanta, with its booming economy, strong elected black leadership, and many highly educated blacks, seemed to be the perfect site for those policies and market solutions to prove themselves. Unfortunately, not only did expected economic opportunity fail to materialize but many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement were lost. Orfield and Ashkinaze painstakingly analyze the evidence from Atlanta to show why black opportunity deteriorated over the 1980s and outline possible remedies for the damage inflicted by the Reagan and Bush administrations. The Closing Door is a crucial breath of fresh air . . . an important and timely text which will help to alter the 'underclass' debate in favor of reconsidering race-specific policies. Orfield and Ashkinaze construct a convincing argument with which those who favor 'race-neutrality' will have to contend. In re

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review“An absorbing work of ethnography. . . that looks at the complex power and social dynamics at work in a system where success seems both scarce and an absolute imperative. Strikes a nice balance between academic and popular audiences." * Chicago Tribune *"[Race at the Top] is particularly good at demonstrating the tensions that stem from striving for achievement, including the resentments and complaints of white families who feel that Asians are displacing them from top positions. This portrait of an educational race to the top is a deep investigation into how parents and communities compete in the zero-sum game of social mobility through education." * Choice *"[Warikoo] makes an important contribution to the critical study of class-specific processes of racialization in general and the ambivalent role of racism in upper-middle-class liberal milieus in particular." * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“This is an indispensable study for anyone — including scholars, policy makers, and educators — who yearns to better understand how race, culture, and educational choices play out in a rarefied suburban milieu.” * The Arts Fuse *“In her typically cogent and engaging writing style, Warikoo has also captured a fundamental shift in the academic status hierarchy.” * Prudence Carter, Brown University *"As uncomfortable as the question might be, we must ask whether changing demographics in America’s most competitive high schools and colleges will affect our educational values. In a truly postracial society, the answer would be no. But as Tufts University sociologist Natasha Warikoo argues in her new book, Race at the Top, an ethnography of how Asian and white parents approach childrearing, high-school education, and each other in the tony suburban community of Woodcrest', Asian immigrant parents differ strikingly from their native-born neighbors." * The Hedgehog Review *"In a time in immigrant integration/assimilation research that positions Asian Americans as White-adjacent and socioeconomically equivalent to Whites, Race at the Top presents an alternative account of how the racial dynamics between an immigrant group one could argue is approaching socioeconomic equivalence to Whites and Whites actually plays out." * Sociology of Race and Ethnicity *“In communities across the country, white and Asian parents argue over whose style of parenting is naturally better. Rather than consider such either/or questions, Warikoo effectively demonstrates that each group is making strategic choices that best advance their own children. As she passionately writes, the real argument should be how to support the children being left behind.” * Pawan Dhingra, Amherst College *“This powerful book is a significant addition to our understanding of envisioned pathways to success among Asian American immigrant parents and youth in the US, as well as the continued and contested power of whiteness in the current historic moment. Warikoo underscores key ways in which Asian parents benefit from the historically ‘locked in’ system of race exclusion that makes privileged spaces like Woodcrest possible in the first place.” * Lois Weis, author of "Class Warfare: Class, Race and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools" *“Warikoo’s powerful new book is a must-read for all social scientists of immigration, education, and inequality in the US, as well as for parents who want to do ‘the best for their kids’ while creating an inclusive society. This first-rate analysis will be on course syllabi for years to come.” * Michèle Lamont, Harvard University *“A vivid portrait of a key class segment of American society; one that has the imprint of an immigrant influence, and that grapples with change as a result of that influence. Race at the Top is a game-changing study that deserves a wide audience.” * Tomás R. Jiménez, Stanford University *“In this eye-opening book, Warikoo deftly guides us through the difficult waters of race, class, and achievement pressure—and how they intersect—in an East Coast suburb. She brings to this exploration many talents, including the ability to vibrantly convey people's stories and a keen understanding of both parenting and research. This is a very insightful, engaging, and important book.” * Richard Weissbourd, author of "The Parents We Mean to Be" *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction: Good Parenting in an Age of Migration Chapter 1: Chasing Excellence in the Suburbs Chapter 2: Tensions over the "Right" Way to Achieve Academic Excellence Chapter 3: The Racial Divides of Extracurricular Excellence Chapter 4: Emotional Well-Being: Happiness and Status Chapter 5: The "Right" Way to Parent Conclusion: The Anxieties of Parenting and the American Dream Acknowledgments Appendix A: Research Methods Appendix B: Student and Parent Interview Questions Notes References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Using only scraps of historical evidence, Nobles thoroughly succeeds in tracing the life of an individual African American-Betsey Stockton-and simultaneously illuminating the end of slavery in the North. Nobles is a gifted writer, an excellent historian, and an imaginative researcher, and his well-timed book is a pleasure to read." * Shane White, author of Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street's First Black Millionaire *Table of ContentsPrologue 1 Given, as a Slave 2 She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton 3 A Long Adieu 4 A Missionary’s Life Is Very Laborious 5 Philadelphia’s First “Coloured Infant School” 6 From Ashes to Assertion 7 Betsey Stockton’s Princeton Education 8 A Time of War, a Final Peace Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe area of Los Angeles known as South Central is often overshadowed by dismal stereotypes, problematic racial stigmas, and its status as the home to some of the city's poorest and most violent neighborhoods. Amid South Central's shifting demographics and its struggles with poverty, sociologist Pamela J. Prickett takes a closer look, focusing on the members of an African American Muslim community and exploring how they help each other combat poverty, job scarcity, violence, and racial injustice. Prickett's engaging ethnography relates how believers in this longstanding religious community see Islam as a way of life, a comprehensive blueprint for individual and collective action, guiding how to interact with others, conduct business, strive for progress, and cultivate faith. Prickett offers deep insights into the day-to-day lived religion of the Muslims who call this community home, showing how the mosque provides a system of social support and how believers deepen their spiritual pracTrade Review"Smart and highly original, Believing in South Central details how a small Muslim community in South Central, Los Angeles, makes meaning of their faith in the midst of a changing racial landscape and a declining community of believers. Prickett brings nuanced analysis, beautiful prose, and seamless narration together in this ethnography that will expand scholars' understanding of how African Americans practice their Islamic faith outside Arab and South Asian Muslim communities."--Ula Y. Taylor, author of The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of IslamTable of ContentsIntroduction: Living a Muslim Way of Life in South Central Chapter One: “Our Test Is Living a Community Life” Chapter Two: “Don’t Move. Improve” Chapter Three: “Money Is Funny” Chapter Four: “Why Not Just Use a Cucumber!” Chapter Five: “That’s What They Think of Us” Conclusion: “Allahu Akbar” Methods Appendix Acknowledgments Notes References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisUnlike other multi-ethnic nations, Thailand has maintained relative stability despite its 80 languages. In this study of the relations among politics, geography and language, Smalley shows how Thailand has maintained national unity through an elaborate social and linguistic hierarchy.Table of ContentsTables Figures Maps Acknowledgments Introduction: Thailand's Sociolinguistic Anomalies Pt. I: Languages of the Nation as a Whole 1: The Languages of Thailand at Home and Abroad 2: Standard Thai: Variations about a Norm 3: Social Dimensions of Standard Thai 4: Multidimensional Varieties: Ranges and Media Pt. II: Major Regional Languages 5: Kammuang (Northern Thai) 6: Lao (Northeastern Thai) 7: Paktay (Southern Thai) and Thaiklang (Central Thai) Pt. III: Marginal Regional Languages 8: Tai Yai (Shan), Sgaw (Karen), Phlow (Karen), plus Non-regional Phlong (Karen) 9: Northern Khmer plus Non-marginal Kuy 10: Pattani Malay Pt. IV: Other Language Categories 11: Development and Displacement of Tai Languages and Dialects 12: Languages of Thai Towns and Cities: Chinese Languages 13: Marginal Languages in the Hierarchy: Mon, Pray, plus Non-marginal Mal 14: Marginal Languages Adapting to the Hierarchy: Hmong (Meo, Miao) 15: Enclave Languages Pt. V: Trans-Language Issues 16: Writing and Education 17: Change and Development 18: Language and Ethnicity 19: Minority Problem as Thai Problem Appendix A: Languages in the Hierarchy Appendix B: Language Population Estimates Appendix C: Symbols Notes References Index

Read more less