Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisHistorically, Black Americans have easily found common ground on political, social, and economic goals. Yet, there are signs of increasing variety of opinion among Blacks in the United States, due in large part to the influx of Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, and African immigrants to the United States. This book tells their story.Trade Review"Black Mosaic addresses a significant, and often-neglected, subject in African American politics.The prose is engaging and accessible, the scholarship is first-rate, and the conclusions are illuminating.As our nation becomes increasingly diverse, this subject will only become more important over time." -- Vincent Hutchings,author of Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability"Smiths exceptional book provides a solid theoretical as well as an empirical road map for scholars wishing to increase their understanding of how Black Americans, Blacks from the Americas, as well as African immigrants conceptualize and think about the meaning of blackness. Black Mosaic surely will become required reading for students and scholars in the field." -- Ronald E. Brown,Associate Professor of Political Science, Wayne State University"This book is a welcome addition to scholarship on the politics of race and ethnicity in the United States. Candis Watts Smiths analysis reveals the complexity of Black racial identity within the context of greater ethnic diversity, and provides a robust and theoretically rich explanation for the boundaries of Black identity. Black Mosaic is a signal contribution and essential reading for scholars of American politics." -- Jane Junn,author of The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and ImmigrationTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Black on Black History 19 2 Diasporic Consciousness: Theorizing Black Pan-Ethnic Identity and Intraracial Politics 45 3 From Group Membership to Group Identification 69 4 Broadening Black Identity: Evidence in National Data 110 5 Politicizing Identities: Linking Identity to Politics 133 6 Perspectives on Intraracial Coalition and Conflict 175 Conclusion: My President Is Black? 197 Appendix A: Presentation of Survey Items and Variable Measures 206 Appendix B: Interview Respondent Characteristics 210 Appendix C: Semistructured Interview Guide 214 Notes 219 Bibliography 249 Index 267 About the Author 277

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Book SynopsisExplores the racialization of immigrants from post-Soviet states and the nuances of citizenship for this new diaspora. Mapping representations of post-1980s immigration from the former Soviet Union to the United States in interviews, reality TV shows, fiction, and memoirs, Claudia Sadowski-Smith shows how this nationally and ethnically diverse group is associated with idealized accounts of the assimilation and upward mobility of early twentieth-century arrivals from Europe. As it traces the contributions of historical Eastern European migration to the emergence of a white racial identity that continues to provide privileges to many post-Soviet migrants, the book places the post-USSR diaspora into larger discussions about the racialization of contemporary US immigrants under neoliberal conditions. The New Immigrant Whiteness argues that legal status on arrivalas participants in refugee, marriage, labor, and adoptive migration impacts post-Soviet immigrants' encounters with growing socioTrade ReviewSadowski-Smith excels in her comparative analysis of former Soviet immigrants—who are unquestionably white but have segmented access to citizenship based on their legal status—and other immigrant groups similarly associated with upward mobility. -- CHOICEThis multi-layered, cross-disciplinary book makes us aware of the shades of whiteness that tend to be systematically erased when subjected to the binary color line that historically defines racial difference in the US. Looking at areas of representation as diverse as reality TV, literature, and international adoption, Sadowski-Smith's study of immigration from the post-Soviet region makes a persuasive argument for a subtle, relational understanding of race and ethnicity as flexible, historically shifting categories. -- Anikó Imre,University of Southern CaliforniaThis amazingly rich book provides a much-needed window into the diverse Post-Soviet diaspora and offers a new understanding of how immigrant whiteness and race work today. Sadowski-Smith's original interdisciplinary approach and cross-ethnic comparative research make The New Immigrant Whiteness stand out in the field of migration studies. Scholars and students seeking to understand the transnational cultures, gender and family dynamics, and migration and adaptation strategies of contemporary European migrants need to start with this book. -- Erika Lee,University of Minnesota

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

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Book Synopsis2024 College Language Association Book Award Winner2023 Hooks National Book Award Winner (Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change)Honorable Mention, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present 2023 Book PrizeHonorable Mention, 2023 John W. Frick Book Award (American Theatre and Drama Society)Finalist, 2022 George Freedley Memorial Award of the Theatre Library Association.Finalist, Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History (ASTR)Finalist, ATHE Outstanding Book AwardA bold rethinking of the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of Black theaterFreedom, Now! This rallying cry became the most iconic phrase of the Civil Rights Movement, challenging the persistent command that Black people waitin the holds of slave ships and on auction blocks, in segregated bus stops and schoolyardsfor their long-deferred liberation. In Black Patience, Julius B. Fleming Jr.Trade ReviewDemonstrates how temporality as an analytic helps us understand the dynamics of antiblack racism within a political economy of black subjugation. By uncovering little-known plays or unexpected black spaces where plays were produced, Julius Fleming expands the Civil Rights Movement’s literary canon and indexes the multiple registers of ‘patience’ mobilized by blacks and whites within white supremacy and black resistance. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Black Patience is a tour de force. * E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women *Offers crucial insight into debates about black political action by carefully and convincingly locating progress in the ephemerality of the now. Adding a distinctive and powerful addition to the history and critical understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, Julius Fleming details the impact of direct action in the present to establish the importance of black theatre to black freedom. * Soyica Diggs Colbert, Georgetown University *Creating a new framework to understand the classical phase of the civil rights movement is no easy task given the number of published books on the topic. However, through his focus on temporality and the links between time and affect—patience is, definitionally, about time—Fleming has done just that. * Journal of Southern History *Fleming successfully accomplishes what he describes as a key purpose of the book: “to map a new cultural and political history of the Civil Rights Movement” (41). * American Literary History *

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Book Synopsis2024 College Language Association Book Award Winner2023 Hooks National Book Award Winner (Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change)Honorable Mention, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present 2023 Book PrizeHonorable Mention, 2023 John W. Frick Book Award (American Theatre and Drama Society)Finalist, 2022 George Freedley Memorial Award of the Theatre Library Association.Finalist, Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History (ASTR)Finalist, ATHE Outstanding Book AwardA bold rethinking of the Civil Rights Movement through the lens of Black theaterFreedom, Now! This rallying cry became the most iconic phrase of the Civil Rights Movement, challenging the persistent command that Black people waitin the holds of slave ships and on auction blocks, in segregated bus stops and schoolyardsfor their long-deferred liberation. In Black Patience, Julius B. Fleming Jr.Trade ReviewDemonstrates how temporality as an analytic helps us understand the dynamics of antiblack racism within a political economy of black subjugation. By uncovering little-known plays or unexpected black spaces where plays were produced, Julius Fleming expands the Civil Rights Movement’s literary canon and indexes the multiple registers of ‘patience’ mobilized by blacks and whites within white supremacy and black resistance. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Black Patience is a tour de force. * E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women *Offers crucial insight into debates about black political action by carefully and convincingly locating progress in the ephemerality of the now. Adding a distinctive and powerful addition to the history and critical understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, Julius Fleming details the impact of direct action in the present to establish the importance of black theatre to black freedom. * Soyica Diggs Colbert, Georgetown University *Creating a new framework to understand the classical phase of the civil rights movement is no easy task given the number of published books on the topic. However, through his focus on temporality and the links between time and affect—patience is, definitionally, about time—Fleming has done just that. * Journal of Southern History *Fleming successfully accomplishes what he describes as a key purpose of the book: “to map a new cultural and political history of the Civil Rights Movement” (41). * American Literary History *

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Book SynopsisPROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category WinnerA framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital eraIn an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That iterations of Black visual art, such as Bert Williams's 1916 silent film short A Natural Born Gambler or the performances of Josephine Baker from the 1920s, are merely a quick YouTube search away has transformed how scholars teach and research Black performance. While Black Ephemera celebrates this new access, it also questions the crisis and the challenge of the Black musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global export. Using music and sound as its primary texts, Black Ephemera argues that the cultural DNA of Black America has become obscured in the transformation from analog to digital. Through a cross-reading of the relationship between the digital era and culture produced in the prTrade ReviewCovers, citations, and samples spill over the boundaries of form and technology in order to differently reveal the irrepressible, transformative Black archive. Neal displays his archeological talents in demonstration of Black music's ability to return, to sustain, and to answer. Vibrating with relation, Black Ephemera reveals the fact of Black genius and the dense possibility of Black forever through those wise and committed enough to listen * Shana L. Redmond, author of Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson *A majestic study of the idea and practice of Black archives. As Mark Anthony Neal analyzes the sonic, digital, literary, and visual, he unveils the power of Black maroon archives, which preserve the opacities, sonic disruptions, and glimpses of possibility that are not meant to be consumed. Black Studies needs this brilliant analysis of the uncontainable wind of Black culture, the wind that blows through open windows. * Margo Natalie Crawford, author of Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *In Black Ephemera, Neal conducts an impressive symphony of memory work. The digital frontier transformed what an archive looks like, how it functions, where it lives, and who gets access to it … As chapters diverge in theme and latitude, the book assumes the feel of a mixtape. There’s one on the pioneering Memphis record label Stax. There’s another chapter on the distillation of Black women’s trauma through pop culture, and one about how collective Black mourning is produced, shared, and preserved digitally. The whole is an impressive totem, and guide, to the importance of holding on to things forgotten in our haste to the future. * Wired *Black music is part of the cultural fabric of society, and Neal offers critical insights into how one can think and learn about it. Valuable for artists, archivists, and historians as well as music students and enthusiasts. -- J. T. Pekarek, Indiana University Northwest * CHOICE *

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Book SynopsisPROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category WinnerA framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital eraIn an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That iterations of Black visual art, such as Bert Williams's 1916 silent film short A Natural Born Gambler or the performances of Josephine Baker from the 1920s, are merely a quick YouTube search away has transformed how scholars teach and research Black performance. While Black Ephemera celebrates this new access, it also questions the crisis and the challenge of the Black musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global export. Using music and sound as its primary texts, Black Ephemera argues that the cultural DNA of Black America has become obscured in the transformation from analog to digital. Through a cross-reading of the relationship between the digital era and culture produced in the prTrade ReviewCovers, citations, and samples spill over the boundaries of form and technology in order to differently reveal the irrepressible, transformative Black archive. Neal displays his archeological talents in demonstration of Black music's ability to return, to sustain, and to answer. Vibrating with relation, Black Ephemera reveals the fact of Black genius and the dense possibility of Black forever through those wise and committed enough to listen * Shana L. Redmond, author of Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson *A majestic study of the idea and practice of Black archives. As Mark Anthony Neal analyzes the sonic, digital, literary, and visual, he unveils the power of Black maroon archives, which preserve the opacities, sonic disruptions, and glimpses of possibility that are not meant to be consumed. Black Studies needs this brilliant analysis of the uncontainable wind of Black culture, the wind that blows through open windows. * Margo Natalie Crawford, author of Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *In Black Ephemera, Neal conducts an impressive symphony of memory work. The digital frontier transformed what an archive looks like, how it functions, where it lives, and who gets access to it … As chapters diverge in theme and latitude, the book assumes the feel of a mixtape. There’s one on the pioneering Memphis record label Stax. There’s another chapter on the distillation of Black women’s trauma through pop culture, and one about how collective Black mourning is produced, shared, and preserved digitally. The whole is an impressive totem, and guide, to the importance of holding on to things forgotten in our haste to the future. * Wired *Black music is part of the cultural fabric of society, and Neal offers critical insights into how one can think and learn about it. Valuable for artists, archivists, and historians as well as music students and enthusiasts. -- J. T. Pekarek, Indiana University Northwest * CHOICE *

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Book SynopsisFinalist for The Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre Research.Silver Medal Winner of The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Non-Fiction Book Award, given by the International Latino Book Awards.Honorable Mention for the Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book, given by the International Latino Book Awards.A queer genealogy of the famous performance space and the nuyorican aesthetic One could easily overlook the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a small, unassuming performance venue on New York City's Lower East Side. Yet the space once hosted the likes of Victor Hernández Cruz, Allen Ginsberg, and Amiri Baraka and is widely credited as the homespace for the emergent nuyorican literary and aesthetic movement of the 1990s. Founded by a group of counterculturalist Puerto Rican immigrants and artists in the 1970s, the space slowly transformed the Puerto RicTrade ReviewA thrilling meditation on the seldom-acknowledged wild and wily ways artists of color in the 1990s and 2000s queered Nuyorican poetic performance by astutely reconnecting with its corporeally fluid founding aesthetics. Karen Jaime’s The Queer Nuyorican is a timely and seductive invitation to explore nuyorican aesthetics as an inclusive, mobile, inspiringly contentious Open Room. * Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, author of Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails *Karen Jaime’s assessment of the aesthetics cultivated and mobilized at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe takes a groundbreaking turn to render queer contributions as central to the artistic, cultural, and political legacy and future of this beloved institution. Bringing to light previously unexamined archival materials and offering a proximity of analysis only possible from the vantage point of a creative participant in the scene, Karen Jaime allows us to discover the Nuyorican anew. This intimate and rigorous volume will shape all future scholarship on the Cafe and the nuyorican aesthetic. * Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin *The Queer Nuyorican has the potential to make readers hopeful for a queer future through its particular connection to the queer past. The book’s chapters, organized by artistic subjects, make for a gratifying read for specialists, as well as more general audiences, allowing for a more queer, and racially diverse, view of the field. * The Journal of American Drama and Theatre *"The Queer Nuyorican is an extremely compelling book. By positioning herself so centrally and working with such a rich and heretofore underutilized archive, Karen Jaime transforms our perception of this leading Puerto Rican, Latinx, African American, and queer of color institution in New York City." * Latino Studies Journal *

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Book SynopsisFinalist for The Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre Research.Silver Medal Winner of The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Non-Fiction Book Award, given by the International Latino Book Awards.Honorable Mention for the Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book, given by the International Latino Book Awards.A queer genealogy of the famous performance space and the nuyorican aesthetic One could easily overlook the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a small, unassuming performance venue on New York City's Lower East Side. Yet the space once hosted the likes of Victor Hernández Cruz, Allen Ginsberg, and Amiri Baraka and is widely credited as the homespace for the emergent nuyorican literary and aesthetic movement of the 1990s. Founded by a group of counterculturalist Puerto Rican immigrants and artists in the 1970s, the space slowly transformed the Puerto RicTrade ReviewA thrilling meditation on the seldom-acknowledged wild and wily ways artists of color in the 1990s and 2000s queered Nuyorican poetic performance by astutely reconnecting with its corporeally fluid founding aesthetics. Karen Jaime’s The Queer Nuyorican is a timely and seductive invitation to explore nuyorican aesthetics as an inclusive, mobile, inspiringly contentious Open Room. * Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, author of Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails *Karen Jaime’s assessment of the aesthetics cultivated and mobilized at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe takes a groundbreaking turn to render queer contributions as central to the artistic, cultural, and political legacy and future of this beloved institution. Bringing to light previously unexamined archival materials and offering a proximity of analysis only possible from the vantage point of a creative participant in the scene, Karen Jaime allows us to discover the Nuyorican anew. This intimate and rigorous volume will shape all future scholarship on the Cafe and the nuyorican aesthetic. * Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin *The Queer Nuyorican has the potential to make readers hopeful for a queer future through its particular connection to the queer past. The book’s chapters, organized by artistic subjects, make for a gratifying read for specialists, as well as more general audiences, allowing for a more queer, and racially diverse, view of the field. * The Journal of American Drama and Theatre *"The Queer Nuyorican is an extremely compelling book. By positioning herself so centrally and working with such a rich and heretofore underutilized archive, Karen Jaime transforms our perception of this leading Puerto Rican, Latinx, African American, and queer of color institution in New York City." * Latino Studies Journal *

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Book SynopsisWinner, Diamond Anniversary Book Award, awarded by the National Communication AssociationWinner, 2022 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet ResearchersTraces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black feminist thoughtBlack women are at the forefront of some of this century's most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black women's relationship to technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly listen to Black women, Steele points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United States and its ability to decenter white supremacy and patriarchy in a conversation about the future of technology. Using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor, Digital Black Feminism walks readers through the technical skill, communicative expertise, and entrepreTrade ReviewWith this accessible volume, Catherine Knight Steele has offered readers a compelling explanation of Black feminist technoculture. Black women have long been at the forefront of technological advances, creation and dialogue; Steele skillfully traces their influence into the present and future. * Ms. Magazine *First, Steele positions Black women online as central to the future of communication technology just as they've been central to its past. Second, per its title, Digital Black Feminism traces and critically examines a evolutionary shift in Black feminism thought, one driven and enabled by new technology … For a book with heft, it strikes an impressive balance of accessibility and intellectual innovation. * NPR Books *This book is a must-read in a time when we need to redouble our commitments to social justice. Catherine Knight Steele helps us understand and celebrate the powerful work that Black feminists do to make the world a better place. * Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism *Critically engages the digital possibilities of contemporary Black feminist thought and, in doing so, charts important new directions for Black feminism and technoculture. Steele argues that Black women’s creation of Digital Black Feminism reflects a sophisticated digital praxis that builds upon yet stands apart from historical traditions of Black feminist thought and hip hop feminism. A must-read book for understanding the possibilities and limitations of digital spaces for social justice projects. * Patricia Hill Collins, author of Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment *Steele’s careful consideration of what and whom to research, particularly with regard to Black women and other marginalized groups, is an ethical model that other social media researchers should take seriously as well. Digital Black Feminism moves the work of digital black feminism from the margins to the center, where the personal is not only political but digital. * Film Quarterly *Steele emphasizes how digital Black feminists specifically broaden traditional conceptualizations of activism, complicate ideas of appropriate allegiances, and actively engage with contradictions in Black communities…The author’s analysis of contemporary Black feminist digital enclaves and counter publics and her engagement with current practices and vernacular within Black communities make the text topical and compelling. -- K. Gentles-Peart, Roger Williams University * Choice *Digital Black Feminism provides a framework for Black women to rightfully occupy a space in our society that acknowledges and values their existence, positioning Black feminists at the center of digital studies from the standpoint of Black women. * Resources for Gender and Women's Studies *Digital Black Feminism reemphasizes the history of marginalization of Black women in the field of technology that acts as tools for social justice by and for Black women, including physical and virtual beauty shops, digital platforms for storytelling, and creative works. Steele’s examination and definitive conversations regarding digital Black feminism are intuitive, inspiring, and engaging. * Journal of Popular Culture *

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Book SynopsisWinner, Diamond Anniversary Book Award, awarded by the National Communication AssociationWinner, 2022 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet ResearchersTraces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black feminist thoughtBlack women are at the forefront of some of this century's most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black women's relationship to technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly listen to Black women, Steele points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United States and its ability to decenter white supremacy and patriarchy in a conversation about the future of technology. Using the virtual beauty shop as a metaphor, Digital Black Feminism walks readers through the technical skill, communicative expertise, and entrepreneurial acumen of Black women's laborborn of survival strategies and economic necessityboth on and offline.Positioning Black women at the center of our discourse about the past, present, and future of technology, Steele offers a through-line from the writing of early twentieth-century Black women to the bloggers and social media mavens of the twenty-first century. She makes connections among the letters, news articles, and essays of Black feminist writers of the past and a digital archive of blog posts, tweets, and Instagram stories of some of the most well-known Black feminist writers of our time. Linking narratives and existing literature about Black women's technology use in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century, Digital Black Feminism traverses the bounds between historical and archival analysis and empirical internet studies, forcing a reconciliation between fields and methods that are not always in conversation. As the work of Black feminist writers now reaches its widest audience online, Steele offers both hopefulness and caution on the implications of Black feminism becoming a digital product.Trade ReviewWith this accessible volume, Catherine Knight Steele has offered readers a compelling explanation of Black feminist technoculture. Black women have long been at the forefront of technological advances, creation and dialogue; Steele skillfully traces their influence into the present and future. * Ms. Magazine *First, Steele positions Black women online as central to the future of communication technology just as they've been central to its past. Second, per its title, Digital Black Feminism traces and critically examines a evolutionary shift in Black feminism thought, one driven and enabled by new technology … For a book with heft, it strikes an impressive balance of accessibility and intellectual innovation. * NPR Books *This book is a must-read in a time when we need to redouble our commitments to social justice. Catherine Knight Steele helps us understand and celebrate the powerful work that Black feminists do to make the world a better place. * Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism *Critically engages the digital possibilities of contemporary Black feminist thought and, in doing so, charts important new directions for Black feminism and technoculture. Steele argues that Black women’s creation of Digital Black Feminism reflects a sophisticated digital praxis that builds upon yet stands apart from historical traditions of Black feminist thought and hip hop feminism. A must-read book for understanding the possibilities and limitations of digital spaces for social justice projects. * Patricia Hill Collins, author of Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment *Steele’s careful consideration of what and whom to research, particularly with regard to Black women and other marginalized groups, is an ethical model that other social media researchers should take seriously as well. Digital Black Feminism moves the work of digital black feminism from the margins to the center, where the personal is not only political but digital. * Film Quarterly *Steele emphasizes how digital Black feminists specifically broaden traditional conceptualizations of activism, complicate ideas of appropriate allegiances, and actively engage with contradictions in Black communities…The author’s analysis of contemporary Black feminist digital enclaves and counter publics and her engagement with current practices and vernacular within Black communities make the text topical and compelling. -- K. Gentles-Peart, Roger Williams University * Choice *Digital Black Feminism provides a framework for Black women to rightfully occupy a space in our society that acknowledges and values their existence, positioning Black feminists at the center of digital studies from the standpoint of Black women. * Resources for Gender and Women's Studies *Digital Black Feminism reemphasizes the history of marginalization of Black women in the field of technology that acts as tools for social justice by and for Black women, including physical and virtual beauty shops, digital platforms for storytelling, and creative works. Steele’s examination and definitive conversations regarding digital Black feminism are intuitive, inspiring, and engaging. * Journal of Popular Culture *

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Book SynopsisWINNER, 2022 John Hope Franklin Prize, given by the American Studies Association HONORABLE MENTION, 2022 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women''s Studies AssociationReveals the troubling intimacy between Black women and the making of US global powerThe year 1968 marked both the height of the worldwide Black liberation struggle and a turning point for the global reach of American power, which was built on the counterinsurgency honed on Black and other oppressed populations at home. The next five decades saw the consolidation of the culture of the American empire through what Erica R. Edwards calls the imperial grammars of blackness.This is a story of state power at its most devious and most absurd, and, at the same time, a literary history of Black feminist radicalism at its most trenchant. Edwards reveals how the long war on terror, beginning with the lateCold War campaign against organizations like the Trade ReviewBrilliantly maps the transformations in black women’s expressive culture in response to COINTELPRO, the war on drugs, and the long war on terror. A necessary, timely history of state power and black feminist radicalism, The Other Side of Terror is, at once, a critique of empire and its myriad violence, a refusal of servitude, and a poetics of dissent. As Edwards demonstrates persuasively and eloquently: radical black feminist thought is indispensable to our collective effort to survive. * Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals *In this highly informed and deeply researched interrogation of the global security state after 9/11, Erica Edwards asks us to read black women and black women’s expressive culture as both resistant to and complicit in American global power. To expose and critique the American security regime and the cultures of imperialism, Edwards turns to a tradition of black feminist radicalism and the insurgent texts of black feminists such as Alice Randall, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Naylor, and Nikki Finney. This is a brave and unsettling book, one that makes us think about black women not as fringe actors or minority figures, but as major players in the global arena. * Mary Helen Washington, author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s *Erica R. Edwards presents a powerful analysis connecting politics and literature…This is a brilliant book that is likely to produce endless new insights. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *

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Book SynopsisWINNER, 2022 John Hope Franklin Prize, given by the American Studies Association HONORABLE MENTION, 2022 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women's Studies AssociationReveals the troubling intimacy between Black women and the making of US global powerThe year 1968 marked both the height of the worldwide Black liberation struggle and a turning point for the global reach of American power, which was built on the counterinsurgency honed on Black and other oppressed populations at home. The next five decades saw the consolidation of the culture of the American empire through what Erica R. Edwards calls the imperial grammars of blackness.This is a story of state power at its most devious and most absurd, and, at the same time, a literary history of Black feminist radicalism at its most trenchant. Edwards reveals how the long war on terror, beginning with the lateCold War campaign against organizations like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Liberation ATrade Review"Brilliantly maps the transformations in black women’s expressive culture in response to COINTELPRO, the war on drugs, and the long war on terror. A necessary, timely history of state power and black feminist radicalism, The Other Side of Terror is, at once, a critique of empire and its myriad violence, a refusal of servitude, and a poetics of dissent. As Edwards demonstrates persuasively and eloquently: radical black feminist thought is indispensable to our collective effort to survive." * Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals *"In this highly informed and deeply researched interrogation of the global security state after 9/11, Erica Edwards asks us to read black women and black women’s expressive culture as both resistant to and complicit in American global power. To expose and critique the American security regime and the cultures of imperialism, Edwards turns to a tradition of black feminist radicalism and the insurgent texts of black feminists such as Alice Randall, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Naylor, and Nikki Finney. This is a brave and unsettling book, one that makes us think about black women not as fringe actors or minority figures, but as major players in the global arena." * Mary Helen Washington, author of The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s *"Erica R. Edwards presents a powerful analysis connecting politics and literature…This is a brilliant book that is likely to produce endless new insights." * Ethnic and Racial Studies *

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Book SynopsisA stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiersThough both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomedmarking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb Willis explores the crucial role of photography in (re)telling and shaping African American narratives of the Civil War, pulling from a dynamic visual archive that has largely gone unacknowledged.With over seventy images, The Black Civil War Soldier contains a huge breadth of primary and archival materials, many of which are rarely reproduced. The photographs are supplemented with handwritten captions, letters, and other personal materials; Willis not only dives into the lives of black Union soldiers, but also includes Trade ReviewIn a troubled age, when the past is increasingly called into question, we are all history buffs now. To that end, this remarkable book fills an enormous gap in our collective understanding of the past, a page-turner that will break your heart. Willis, professor and chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, centers extraordinary and largely unknown images of Black Civil War soldiers within a reported narrative that highlights the enormous hardships they faced and the contributions they made. She makes history feel like a family album. * Fortune Magazine, named one of the "Best Books of 2021, so far" *The book aims to bring these stoic portraits of black soldiers to life – with personal stories, to family members back home, and interviews with historians and personal observations from a skilled photography expert. It’s what Willis calls the African American experience, as well as resilience. * The Guardian *The scholar, author, curator, and photographer Deborah Willis makes a fascinating contribution to that conversation with The Black Civil War Soldier, her new book from NYU Press. In it, Willis gives a face and a story to some of the war’s most overlooked figures, from the Black men fighting for their freedom from slavery to the women who educated and tended to those men on the battlefield. * Vogue.com *Memorable images abound in [this] historical catalog of American photography. Essential...a book that invites rereading. * STARRED Kirkus Review *[S]heds light on the experience of black Civil War soldier through never-seen-before photographs from the 19th century. * Daily Mail *The book reminds us that even the ultimate fight for freedom — when Blacks and some whites were on the same side — equality even then was barely a notion. * New York Daily News *Willis, department chair for photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, had noticed a dearth of images of Black servicemen from the era. For The Black Civil War Soldier, she pulled together photographs, letters, and diary entries to shed light on not only what Black servicemen were experiencing, but also what Black teachers, Black doctors, Black children, and other members of the community were. * Philadelphia Inquirer *Together, this narrative and the photographs make an astounding book that show an often-little-told human side of the War Between the States. * Goshen News *At a time when victory in the Civil War was anything but assured, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass urged the North to arm African American soldiers to fight against the forces that had enslaved them in the Confederate South. In doing so, he recognized the vital visual argument for citizenship that a uniformed Black man would make with ‘the brass letter, US’ on his belt and an ‘eagle on his button.’ Now, in this breathtaking volume, the scholar Deborah Willis reveals to us the fullness of their humanity through a photographic record she interprets through the paper trail they left behind. At once intimate and panoramic, The Black Civil War Soldier is both a major contribution to Civil War studies and an album of our ancestors’ journey at the critical hour of American history that belongs to all of us as the descendants of their sacrifice. * Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University *In the unmatched research presented in The Black Civil War Soldier, a wealth of lush images, majestic fashion, narrative elements, and crucial pictorial details—books, uniforms, guns among them—perform for the camera a telling contradiction to the underlying horror embedded in the text, and points to the formidable role of photography that Dr. Deborah Willis has long championed. Through the lives of these soldiers, sailors, doctors, and nurses as well as the stories of cooks, teachers, wives, and lovers, Dr. Willis weaves a compelling narrative through the photographic record where courage and activism, or what she has called ‘difficulty and desire,’ shines through * Kellie Jones, author of South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. *Deborah Willis’s vivid accounts of Black soldiers’ sacrifices on the battlefield and their compassion for those on the home front make this book a must read for all Americans. Skillfully employing photographs and other printed materials as equal sources of history, Willis’s nuanced depictions capture the urgent desire for freedom and full citizenship of more than 190,000 Black soldiers and sailors who volunteered for the Union. In The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship, Deborah Willis once again gives us a deeply researched, visually arresting, and textured chronicle of Black people at a crucial turning point in US history. * Francille Rusan Wilson, author of The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890–1950 *The legendary photographer, curator, and historian Deb Willis has been shifting the way I see and think of images and historical representation for decades. The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict, her gorgeous and meticulously researched photobook, is expansive, yet it also manages to convey the intimacy of a beloved family heirloom. It is an impassioned tribute to America’s Black soldiers and their families during the Civil War. It is also an insistence that we consider the many ramifications of conflict and racism. This is a monumental work, as well as a monument to the undying quest for freedom. * Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize *Enacts a visual curation of black Civil War history as few besides Willis are so expertly capable of. As deeply reflective about the telling of African American history using images, and given to a conception of African American men and women as “soldiers” within a strenuous physical and moral campaign against slavery, The Black Civil War Soldier is the handsomest picture book and more. * Civil War Book Review *The Black Civil War Soldier’s rich assemblage of tangible evidence and memory provides both material culture readers and general audiences an expanded resource for absorbing and reflecting upon this history. * Winterthur Portfolio *Combining period images, selections from the letters, diaries, memoirs, and other writings of men and women from the period, and a well-written narrative text, Prof. Willis has produced an excellent look at the Civil War and its aftermath, concentrating on the role of African Americans in military and naval service. * The NYMAS Review *

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, Theology and Religious Studies PROSE Award A powerful insight into the historical and cultural roles of the Black churchIf we are in a post-racial era, then what is the future of the Black Church? If the US will at some time in the future be free from discrimination and prejudices that are based on race how will that affect the church's very identity?In The Ground Has Shifted, Walter Earl Fluker passionately and thoroughly discusses the historical and current role of the Black church and argues that the older race-based language and metaphors of religious discourse have outlived their utility. He offers instead a larger, global vision for the Black church that focuses on young Black men and other disenfranchised groups who have been left behind in a world of globalized capital. Lyrically written with an emphasis on the dynamic and fluid movement of life itself, Fluker argues that the church must find new ways to use race as an emancipatory instrument if it is to reTrade ReviewFluker has a fresh approach to deal with the subject and provides new insights on the subject. It is meticulously researched and well-referenced. Walter Earl Fluker's scholarship is unmatchable. * The Washington Book Review *An exuberant, thought-provoking assessment of the dilemmas facing black churches. [A] passionate analysis and call for change. * STARRED Publishers Weekly *An important and perceptive contribution to the literature on religion and race. * Choice *Flukers book is thoroughly interesting as he studies the history and present of the black church Fluker brings us a work for todays church and a charge to connect that church to the world house. * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *[T]imely and fascinating...The Ground Has Shifteddoes a masterful job of blending black religious thought, literature, critical theory, memoir, and personal experience. * Religion Dispatches *An excellent conversation starter to inspire holistic freedom for all people. -- The Journal of African American HistoryThe Ground Has Shifted analyses the ramifications of post-racialism in the black church and emphasizes the various ways that religious leaders and scholars can engage and re-evaluate critical questions; thus, coming up with clear and concise solutions towards historical problems of race, and sexualized and gendered politics of the church … The author paves a way for a new generation of church leaders, scholars, and activists for them to reclaim the black church’s historical identity of being the pivotal force within the community, while also instilling character, civility, and a sense of community among its congregants once again. -- Black TheologyThe Ground Has Shifted addresses questions being posed by a historical Black Church caught between its piety, the politics of respectability, and a cataclysmic shifting of the taken-for-granted realities of a besieged/blessed people. I will buy and teach this book as often as I can. What an amazing contribution to the literature. -- Barbara A. Holmes,President Emerita of United Theological Seminary of the Twin CitiesThis is the most decisive statement on post-racialism, the American dilemma, and black church positive agency. On each page, Fluker's writing moans and wails us out of southern African American religiosity, up north into the fragmentation of black urban life, and into an ethical world of hope for an America becoming. A defining direction and persuasive proposal on how to get us to healthy community. -- Dwight N. Hopkins,author of Being Human: Race, Culture, and ReligionWalter Fluker is the towering theorist of the Black Church and the unapologetic lover of the black prophetic tradition. This powerful and timely book is sophisticated, subtle, and rich. And it soars with a deep, long memory alive in the present a present that reeks of a 'cultural asylum' that he notes the Black Lives Movement is shattering! -- Dr. Cornel WestFlukers judicious use of personal reflection provides an exciting affirmation that our black lives and our black churches really do matter as important standpoints for engaging spirituality, renewing the national imaginary, and enhancing the human condition. -- Cheryl Townsend Gilkes,Colby CollegeThe Ground Has Shifted puts forward a passionate challenge to the Black Church and all those who profess to stand in the prophetic Black Church tradition. It is a powerful and provocative treatment of the role and place of this venerable institution and the Gospel that gives it life. But more than that, the book offers a blueprint for a way forwarda pathway that involves "reclaiming [our] humanity through the integrity of the act"; to find beauty and grace in the dark places of what it means to live in this world without the burdens of ghosts. Beautiful written; passionately argued. A must read! -- Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.,author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American SoulThis is a very important work that challenges all who read it to continue to search for answers to the growing crisis of faith in the black community, answers that will provide a viable way forward for black Christians and their churches in the challenging years ahead. * The Journal of Religion *

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Book SynopsisDocuments the origins, actions, and impacts of the Black Student Union in the state of Washington during the tumultuous late 1960s.Washington State Rising documents the origins, actions, and impact of the Black Student Union (BSU) in Washington from 1967 to 1970. The BSU was a politicized student organization that had chapters across the West Coast and played a prominent role in the student wing of the Black Power Movement. Through accounts of Black student struggles at two different college campuses in Washington, one urban and one rural, Marc Arsell Robinson details how the BSU led highly consequential protest campaigns at both institutions and beyond, which led to reforms such as the establishment of Black Studies programs, increased hiring of Black faculty and staff, and new initiatives to recruit and retain students of color.Washington State Rising is the first book to document 1960s Black student activism in the Pacific Northwest and includes eTrade ReviewIlluminates and broadens our understanding of the important role that Black students played in the Black Power Movement in the racially homogeneous regions of the Pacific Northwest. The book’s expertly curated sources document the experiences of black students at the University of Washington and Washington State University, and it illustrates the ways in which they organized through the Black Student Union and Black Studies Movement to agitate for progressive curricular and social change. -- Dwayne Mack, author of Black Spokane: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland NorthwestContributes new dimensions to the history of African Americans in the Pacific Northwest while broadening understanding of how the Black Power movement unfolded across the nation. Showing the innovative tactics and pivotal accomplishments of the BSU on Seattle’s University of Washington campus, the book also explores the struggles of Black students at Washington State University, a nearly all-White campus located far from any Black community. Both case studies enrich the literature on Black student activism. -- James Gregory, University of WashingtonRich, interesting, and original. Makes a strong contribution to the broad history of the Black Power and the Black Student Movements. -- Brian Purnell, Bowdoin CollegeFeatures fascinating oral histories with former BSU members to illuminate the understudied experiences of the Black Power movement on campuses in the Pacific Northwest. Robinson is an impressive writer and storyteller. -- Matthew Delmont, author of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and AbroadUncovers new facets of the Black Power movement and its local manifestation in Washington state in an accessible and engaging way. -- Akinyele Omowale Umoja, author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom MovementSet within the context of the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, and the women’s movement, Washington State Rising reiterates an important historical phenomenon. Local activism has ramifications well beyond local borders. On this point, Robinson brings his story full circle to Black Lives Matter. * BookTrib *Robinson explores late 1960s Black student activism in his urban hometown of Seattle and rural college town of Pullman in this well-researched look at the origins and influence of the Black Student Union in Washington state. His scholarly monograph broadens understanding of Jim Crow North... [and] engaging interviews with former BSU members enhance the narrative. * Washington State Magazine *

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Book SynopsisTraces the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese AmericansAs one of the oldest groups of Asian Americans in the United States, most Japanese Americans are culturally assimilated and well-integrated in mainstream American society. However, they continue to be racialized as culturally Japanese foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance in a multicultural America where racial minorities are expected to remain ethnically distinct. Different generations of Japanese Americans have responded to such pressures in ways that range from demands that their racial citizenship as bona fide Americans be recognized to a desire to maintain or recover their ethnic heritage and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. In Japanese American Ethnicity, Takeyuki Tsuda explores the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generations and the extent to which they remain connected to their ancestral cultural heritage. He also places Japanese Americans inTrade Review"In drawing and reflecting upon the voices and experiences of different generational cohorts, Tsuda not only fills a void in Japanese American studies but expands our very understanding of the concept of 'ethnic heritage.' Adeptly parsing processes of assimilation, transnationalism, racialization, and multicultural discourse, Tsuda engages the factors that shape the retention and refashioning of ancestral culture." -- Michael Omi,University of California, Berkeley"Using the keyword `generation, Tsuda deftly explores notions of transnational ethnicity among contemporary Japanese Americans, moving beyond internment to provide an insightful analysis of how modern Japanese Americans have created new identities and communities in the American cultural landscape." -- K. Scott Wong,author of Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War"[The books] main strength is its comparison in ethnic heritage of four different generations of Japanese Americans. None of the previous books on this subject has compared three or more generations in the formation of ethnicity among members of one or more ethnic groups." * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisHONORABLE MENTION, HARRY SHAW AND KATRINA HAZZARD-DONALD AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING WORK IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE STUDIES, GIVEN BY THE POP CULTURE ASSOCIATIONA view of transatlantic slavery's afterlife and modern Blackness through the lens of ageAlthough more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time and time again, excuses for police brutality and aggressionparticularly against Black children concern the victim appearing as a threat. But why and how is the perceived appearance of Black persons so completely separated from common perceptions of age and time? Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life posits age, life stages, and lifespans as a central lens through which to view Blackness, particularly with regard to the history of transatlantic slavery. Focusing on Black literary culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Habiba Ibrahim examines how thTrade Review"This truly revelatory book uncovers the flesh of black age. Through a focus on black untimeliness, Habiba Ibrahim reveals a counter-history of modernity. Ibrahim adds vital new dimensions to the study of blackness as an alternative relation to time. This tremendous book reveals that black life is a state of being alienated from the time of one’s own body and a radical refusal of patriarchal adulthood." * Margo Natalie Crawford, author of Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics *"Habiba Ibrahim’s Black Age opens up powerful new vocabularies and paradigms for thinking about Black cultural expression—and indeed Black life. Through beautifully argued analyses of literary texts, Ibrahim produces startling and profound insights into age, temporality, modernity, race, subjectivity, and the very category of the human." * Gayle Wald, author of It’s Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television *"Ibrahim’s dialectic of exclusion and reclamation advances an alternative way to discern the relationship between the past and the present... Black Age points us to new ways of thinking and interpreting what time it is." -- ALH Online Review * American Literary History Online Review *

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Book SynopsisA story of resistance, power and politics as revealed through New York City's complex history of police brutalityThe 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was the catalyst for a national conversation about race, policing, and injustice. The subsequent killings of other black (often unarmed) citizens led to a surge of media coverage which in turn led to protests and clashes between the police and local residents that were reminiscent of the unrest of the 1960s. Fight the Power examines the explosive history of police brutality in New York City and the black community's long struggle to resist it. Taylor brings this story to life by exploring the institutions and the people that waged campaigns to end the mistreatment of people of color at the hands of the police, including the black church, the black press, black communists and civil rights activists. Ranging from the 1940s to the mayoralty of Bill de Blasio, Taylor describes the significant strides made in curbing policTrade Review"Taylor provides an essential history of the now, showing how current struggles for racial justice have emerged out of a long history of police abuse, protest, and inadequate reforms." -- Alex Vitale,author of The End of Policing"The time is ripe for this kind of book; and this history delivers the most informed and reasonable voice to an unprecedented and eager public readership. I can hardly wait to teach this book in my lectures and seminars in African American, urban and ethnic history and public policy. The American reading public has been presented with a precious gift by Professor Clarence Taylor: Bravo!" -- Komozi Woodard,author of A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics"This timely and urgent account of the long reign of police terror inflicted on Black New Yorkers also tells a heroic and largely unheralded story of resistance. In fighting for justice, Black New Yorkers have sought a fundamental redefinition of policing. Clarence Taylor's book is needed now more than ever." -- Martha Biondi,author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City"This well-researched, well-told book provides thoughtful context for the current American reckoning with police brutality." * Publishers Weekly *"Clarence Taylor offers a judicious history of black New Yorkers’ efforts to confront police brutality since the 1940s." * Journal of American Ethnic History *"Fight the Power offers a clear sense of the intractable nature of anti-Black police violence and harassment in New York over the span of generations and of some of the ways that Black folks pushed reform of that system." * The Journal of African American History *

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Book SynopsisA glimpse into the diverse stories of Black Jews in the United States What makes a Jew? This book traces the history of Jews of African descent in America and the counter-narratives they have put forward as they stake their claims to Jewishness. The Soul of Judaism offers the first exploration of the full diversity of Black Jews, including bi-racial Jews of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent; adoptees; black converts to Judaism; and Black Hebrews and Israelites, who trace their Jewish roots to Africa and challenge the dominant western paradigm of Jews as white and of European descent. Blending historical analysis and oral history, Haynes showcases the lives of Black Jews within the Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstruction and Reform movements, as well as the religious approaches that push the boundaries of the common forms of Judaism we know today. He illuminates how in the quest to claim whiteness, American Jews of European descent gained the freedom to express their identity flTrade ReviewHaynes...surveys an underreported aspect of contemporary American Judaism in an accessible book. [The author] provides detailed information about the origins, history, culture, and differences of discrete categories of black Jews. [A]good introduction to the subject. * Publishers Weekly *In his new beautiful book,The Soul of Judaism,Bruce Haynes brings together his expertise in sociology, Jewish studies, and African-American studies to explore the history and situation of Jews of African descent in the United States. In doing so, he also adds to the large literature on the racialization of European-heritage Jews in the West. * Reading Religion *Haynes presents a balanced, nonjudgmental synopsis of diverse blocs of Jews of African descent whose self-imposed nomenclature reveals whether traditional Halakah affects what is and what is not permissive religious behavior in the everyday practice of traditional Judaism … cholarly but reader friendly, the book confronts the dynamics of separation, integration, and acculturation of Jews of African and Caribbean heritage into the political, religious, and social history of American Jewry, primarily Ashkenazi and Sephardi. In sum, the author adroitly portrays the present and future colorization of American Jews. -- CHOICEThis eye-opening look at the different ways Jews of African descent view themselves not only challenges readers’ thoughts about how Jews identify as white in the New World, it also offers the intriguing perspective of Black Jews who feel they are the true descendants of the biblical chosen people… “The Soul of Judaism” is highly recommended for anyone who thinks seriously about Judaism and Jewish identity in the contemporary world. -- The ReporterThe caliber of thought and conceptualization that has gone into this book is staggering. Haynes hasnt just located a color line thats segregated Jewish communities from one another and limited Jewish Studies scholarship, hes crashed clear through it. His careful language regarding the trickiest matters of race, ethnicity, and religious identity will be tools we all utilize in the next several waves of scholarship as Jewish Studies grapples with its color issue, as it now must. After hearing the voices represented in this book there is no going back. Welcome to 21st century Judaism. -- Michael Alexander,Maimonides Chair in Jewish Studies, University of California, RiversideThis book is a revelation. By exploring blackness in Judaism, Bruce Haynes opens up important questions about racism, antisemitism, and the immense variety of Jewish experience, both religious and racial. Jews in the US and in the diaspora have to recognize that Judaism is not white. We have to embrace the African (and Asian, and Latin@) dimensions of Jewish identity and history. Jews who see themselves as black will find The Soul of Judaism both enlightening and welcoming. Jews who consider themselves white will find their souls are more black than they realized. As rising antisemitism and negrophobia join forces once again around the world, it is immensely valuable to learn how deeply blackness and Judaism are conjoined, as they have been for millennia. -- Howard Winant,Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa BarbaraIn a highly readable and intellectually engaging book, Haynes examines, among other contentions, how the ‘whitening’ of Jewish identity continues to limit the claims of black Jews and black Hebrews, the formalized and strengthened factors that influence black Americans who convert to Judaism, and the approaches blacks and Jews use to navigate diverging interests of two stigmatized group identities. * Journal of American History *The Soul of Judaism tells us as much about the ‘soul of America’ as it does about the interesting investments made over time by those seeking to deconstruct and bypass the hard-and-fast borders that often make it impossible for many of us to think of black identity and Jewish identity at one and the same time. * American Journal of Sociology *The Soul of Judaism is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date… [it] should stand on the shelves of everyone who is interested in the shifting dynamics of religion, ethnicity and race in America. * Nova Religio *

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Book Synopsis2015 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the Anna Julia Cooper/CLR James Award for Outstanding Book in Africana Studies presented by the National Council for Black Studies Demonstrates how Harlemite's dynamic fight for their rights and neighborhood raised the black community's racial consciousness and established Harlem's legendary political culture In Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway?, Shannon King vividly uncovers early twentieth century Harlem as an intersection between the black intellectuals and artists who created the New Negro Renaissance and the working class who found fought daily to combat institutionalized racism and gender discrimination in both Harlem and across the city. New Negro activists, such as Hubert Harrison and Frank Crosswaith, challenged local forms of economic and racial inequality in attempts to breakdown the structural manifestations that upheld them. Insurgent stay-at-home black mothers took negligent landlords to court, complaining to magistrates about Trade ReviewMoving past grim depictions of Harlem as a ghetto or romantic views of Harlem as the Black Mecca, Shannon King captures the neighborhood's history from below. Harlem, he shows us, was a community born from struggles for justice. King has written a rich and telling account of how Harlem's activists fought for good jobs, challenged exploitative landlords, and resisted police and reformers who targeted 'vice.' Attentive to institutions and politics, to movement building and structural racism, to interracial conflict and intraracial divisions, this is a dynamic history of a community in formation. -- Thomas J. Sugrue,author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the NorthThis is a fabulous study of Harlem, peeling back the layers of a place we thought we knew so well; no longer assuming but demonstrating precisely how the 'Negro Mecca' took shape within the crucible of angst and ambition. . . . A wonderful piece of urban and political history. -- Davarian L. Baldwin,Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies, Trinity CollegeWhose Harlem is this, Anyway? Community and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Erais a synthetic masterpiece, drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary literature to produce a grassroots picture of black Harlems genesis from 1900 to 1930. * American Historical Review *Historians will find it a perspective orchestration of individuals and movements, and students will find inspiration to grapple with the persistence of structural racism and to assert and expand individual and community rights. * Journal of American History *Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era is a synthetic masterpiece, drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary literature to produce a grassroots picture of black Harlems genesis from 1900 to 1930. -- David Huyssen * American Historical Review *A fine-grained account of community politics, Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? is a welcome alternative to accounts of the New Negro era that focus only on the arts and prominent leaders. . . . Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, King argues that the activism associated with later eras had roots in battles for Harlem tenants rights, workers rights, and consumers rights, and for freedom from overzealous reformers and policing based on white stereotypes rather than concern for the communitys safety. -- James Davis * The Journal of American History *Highly attuned to the intraracial politics of class and gender that contested the meanings of community rights, Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? . . . This excellent, highly original work adds a new dimension to the study of black neighbourhood politics in the early decades of the twentieth century through its exploration of community rights thought and activism. -- Daniel Matlin * Journal of American Studies *Through this book, labor educators can explore the historical roots of present-day issues such as the racial wealth gap and the Black Lives Matter movement, and can examine how grassroots activism around community issues confronted racism. -- Will Cooley * Labor Studies Journal *Historian King demonstrates in his excellent study that during the New Negro era, especially between WWI and the beginning of the Great Depression, blacks in Harlem vigorously fought for their community rights against tremendous odds of white discrimination.A must read for those interested in urban civil rights and race in the 20th-century US. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * Choice *Whose Harlem Is This, Anyway? Community Politics and Grassroots Activism during the New Negro Era is a synthetic masterpiece, drawing on a wide array of primary and secondary literature to produce a grassroots picture of black Harlems genesis from 1900 to 1930. * American Historical Review *This book deserves much praise for these scholarly contributions, as well as the questions it raises regarding Harlems positionality to other urban black communities. * H-Net *Historians will find it a perceptive orchestration of individuals and movements, and students will find inspiration to grapple with the persistence of structural racism and to assert and expand individual and community rights. * Journal of American History *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The Making of the Negro Mecca: Harlem and the Struggle for Community Rights 13 2 "Not to Save the Union but to 'Free the Slaves'": Black Labor Activism and Community Politics during the New Negro Era 53 3 "Colored People Have Few Places to Which They Can Move": Tenants, Landlords, and Community Mobilization 93 4 "Maintaining 'a High Class of Respectability' in Negro Neighborhoods": Contestation and Congregation in Harlem's Geography of Vice and Leisure during the Prohibition Era 121 5 "Demand the Dismissal of Policemen Who Abuse the Privileges of Their Uniform": Racial Violence, Police Brutality, and Self-Protection 153 Conclusion 187 Notes 191 Select Bibliography 231 Index 247 About the Author 255

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Book SynopsisHow black Americans use digital networks to organize and cultivate solidarityUnrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, after Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in August 2014. Many black Americans turned to their digital and social media networks to circulate information, cultivate solidarity, and organize during that tumultuous moment. While Ferguson and the subsequent protests made black digital networks visible to mainstream media, these networks did not coalesce overnight. They were built and maintained over years through common, everyday use.Beyond Hashtags explores these everyday practices and their relationship to larger social issues through an in-depth analysis of a trans-platform network of black American digital and social media users and content creators. In the crucial years leading up to the emergence of the Movement for Black Lives, black Americans used digital networks not only to cope with day-to-daTrade ReviewA masterwork of ethical, nuanced research on race and new media. Skillfully assembling analyses of multiple online media platforms, users, and practices, Florini examines how the 'interstitial hustle' of Black podcasters engaging audience across Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, and merchandising sites enables safety, political activism, and innovative content. -- André Brock, Jr., Georgia TechRanging across a host of new media, Beyond Hashtags places blackness at center of our understanding of digital distribution. In expanding what we think about politics, journalism, and society, Florini honors the expansive network of people working across media platforms to produce discourses around black identity and culture. -- Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern UniversityWell suited for myriad human communication contexts… This is an engaging and accessible look into an often ignored yet painfully important element of the networked century. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Scholarship Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association''s Section on Race, Class, and GenderHonorable Mention, 2018 Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association''s Latina/o Sociology SectionHow Latina teachers are making careers and helping students stay in touch with their roots.Latina women make up the fastest growing non-white group entering the teaching profession at a time when it is estimated that 20% of all students nationwide now identify as Latina/o. Through ethnographic and participant observation in two underperforming majority-minority schools in Los Angeles, as well as interviews with teachers, parents and staff, Latina Teachers examines the complexities stemming from a growing workforce of Latina teachers. The teachers profiled use Latino cultural resources and serve as agents of ethnic mobility. They activTrade ReviewGlenda Flores has crafted a milestone study on Latinas in the classroom. Interrogating familiar cultural practices as assets not deficits and Latino parents as allies not obstacles, Professor Flores brings out the 'difference' Latina teachers make in racially diverse schools. Moving well beyond a dialectic of European American teacher and Latino student, she deals with the everyday challenges of diversity with white, Latino, African American, and Asian students, parents, educators, and administrators and the types of coalitions and tensions that evolve along interracial lines. Timely, astute, and heartfelt, Latina Teachers is essential reading. -- Vicki L. Ruiz,author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century AmericaVividly detailed, offering stimulating ethnography and insightful analysis of the quiet but important transformations today underway in the classrooms of Latina teachers. Glenda Flores does not shy away from acknowledging the multiple challenges facing Latino children in U.S. schools, but her focus on Chicana/Latina teachers shines light on the unique contributions and doors that these teachers are opening for Latino children. This book makes significant contributions to the sociology of work, race/ethnicity and occupations, and it is a must read for anyone interested in understanding an asset perspective of Latino education. -- Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo,author of Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens

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Book SynopsisHow local Black and Brown communities can resist gentrification and fight for their interestsDespite promises from politicians, nonprofits, and government agencies, Chicago's most disadvantaged neighborhoods remain plagued by poverty, failing schools, and gang activity. In Building a Better Chicago, Teresa Irene Gonzales shows us how, and why, these promises have gone unfulfilled, revealing tensions between neighborhood residents and the institutions that claim to represent them. Focusing on Little Village, the largest Mexican immigrant community in the Midwest, and Greater Englewood, a predominantly Black neighborhood, Gonzales gives us an on-the-ground look at Chicago's inner city. She shows us how philanthropists, nonprofits, and government agencies struggle for power and controloften against the interests of residents themselveswith the result of further marginalizing the communities of color they seek to help. But Gonzales also shows how these communitTrade ReviewBuilding a Better Chicago is not just about Chicago. Teresa Irene Gonzales speaks to urban community development writ large, uncovering how a core foundational piece of these conversations—trust—marginalizes dissent, invalidates local sentiment, and devalues reasonable concerns over process. Grounded in contemporary policy debates, Building a Better Chicago shows that mistrust is a powerful tool. It might be hard for urban elites to read, but through careful examples and analysis Gonzales shows us how collective skepticism holds value for community organizers—from vouchsafing planning processes to bridging social capital across other neighborhood communities. As a result, this book is a must-read for growth-minded policymakers, scholars of cities, and grassroots urban activists. -- Jonathan Wynn, author of Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and NewportTeresa Gonzales animates a powerful account of how state-actors direct the benefits of urban redevelopment towards White, urban elites and away from communities of color. In that respect, Chicago is like many cities across the United States. However, she shows how 'collective skepticism' allows for productive resistance as Black and Mexican-American residents from low-income communities stake claim to their neighborhoods and their city—forcing their voices and interests to be heard. * Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court *...this case study allows readers to clearly envision the complexity and discord that occur when economically impoverished neighborhoods seek empowerment. * Choice *This book is a prime example of a brilliantly written ethnography that allows the reader to become immersed in the microcosm of urban redevelopment politics in Chicago while raising critical questions about how existing power inequalities can be challenged. * Mobilization *Building a Better Chicago represents a valuable addition to the literatures on neighborhood development, community organizations, and urban activism…The book represents an important source for anyone who wishes to better understand urban politics and neighborhood change in low-income and racialized communities today. * American Sociological Association *This excellent addition to the literature on urban development challenges existing assumptions and invites us all to take Gonzales’s lead and imagine what a better world might look like. * Social Forces Levine Review BaBC *Gonzales makes an important contribution to the literature on the role of institutional stakeholders in the urban redevelopment process. She offers a critique of dominant approaches to neighborhood revitalization that rely on planning strategies that are perceived as top-down by residents and grassroots groups. * Journal of Urban Affairs *Gonzales provides unique insight into how communities can advocate for themselves and demand accountability from politicians and agencies in their midst. The result is an important contribution to our understanding of redevelopment and the tensions that exist between institutional and grassroots organizations within urban revitalization. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisA toolkit for understanding how Asian Americans influence, consume and are reflected by mainstream media. Asian Americans have long been the subject and object of popular culture in the U.S. The rapid circulation of cultural flashpointssuch as the American obsession with K-pop sensations, Bollywood dance moves, and sriracha hot saucehave opened up new ways of understanding how the categories of Asian and Asian American are counterbalanced within global popular culture. Located at the crossroads of these global and national expressions, Global Asian American Popular Cultures highlights new approaches to modern culture, with essays that explore everything from music, film, and television to comics, fashion, food, and sports. As new digital technologies and cross-media convergence have expanded exchanges of transnational culture, Asian American popular culture emerges as a crucial site for understanding how communities share information and how the meanings of mainstTrade ReviewIn a world of increased transnational flows of media, information, and bodies,Global Asian American Popular Culturesis a highly welcome addition to scholarship that is increasingly considering the ways in which Asian America participates in a globalized perspective of identity and culture....With the repeated erasure of Asian American experiences both domestically and globally, the essays in this collection do crucial work in teasing out the ways in which Asian Americans negotiate their position within racialized power structures through their own creative works, mainstream media representation, engagement with their communities, their own familial experiences, and the relatively new digital landscape....This volume opens up conversations about the ways in which Asian American identities cross national borders through transnational flows of culture, thereby infusing the field of Asian American studies with a breath of fresh air. -- Cynthia Wang, California State University, Los Angeles * International Journal of Communication *A welcome and necessary book, Global Asian American Popular Cultures is nothing short of impressive. Working at the very cutting edge of contemporary Asian American cultural studies, the essays collected here are thoughtful and innovative and represent some of the most incisive voices in Asian American studies. An invaluable toolkit for a new generation of thinkers interested in how to do Asian American cultural critique. -- Anita Mannur,co-editor of Eating Asian AmericaThe delightfully diverse depictions of Asians, with pieces that coverEast Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian experiences, contain rich research that elegantly weaves descriptive narratives of subjects lived experiences. * International Journal of Communication *

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Book SynopsisTraces the role of the aggravated felony in today's deportation regimeIn immigration courts across America, a non-citizen convicted of an aggravated felony will almost certainly face deportation with no access to asylum. However, despite the ominous-sounding name, aggravated felonies need not be either aggravated or felonies. The term encompasses more than thirty offenses, ranging from check fraud and shoplifting to filing a false tax return. The recent expansion in the list of such offenses has resulted in astronomical rates of deportation. This book chronicles the rise of the use of the aggravated felony, known by lawyers as the immigration law death penalty, to criminalize and then deport immigrants. Immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies are subject to mandatory detention and almost certain deportationand are ineligible for almost all forms of legal relief from removal. Furthermore, immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies can be detained for months or even years without Trade Review"Due to the aggravated felony provisions of US immigration law, a legal permanent resident of the United States convicted of a crime—that is neither severe nor even a felony—can be deported with no due process. Despite the severity of these provisions and the fact that tens of thousands of legal permanent residents have been deported under these provisions, few people have heard of aggravated felonies. This theoretically rich and deeply researched book brings aggravated felony provisions from the shadows to the spotlight. Sarah Tosh makes a cogent case that we need to abolish these racially biased and harmful provisions. This book is indispensable for any student or scholar of immigration or critical race theory. " * Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism *"In immigration law today, there is nothing more harmful to migrants than having ICE throw two words in their direction: aggravated felony. Looking well past the legal arguments, Tosh turns the aggravated felony from a technical legal concept to real-life anxiety. Through immigration court observations and interviews, Tosh shows the damning impact of adding immigration consequences to criminal legal processes, revealing the modern immigration law system’s reliance on criminal history to be rife with bias and short on justice. But through it all, Tosh also finds passionate advocates whose strategic thinking slows ICE’s efforts—and sometimes even carries the day for migrants. " * César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants *"Through extensive interviews and direct observations, Tosh exposes the injustices at the heart of the American deportation regime and the strategies of legal resistance mobilized to resist it. " * Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing *"A powerful and illuminating in-depth examination of the history, politics, and social factors behind the ‘aggravated felony’ legal category. Tosh’s rich analysis deconstructs this invented category, laying bare how it operates as a mechanism to funnel racialized immigrants to deportation. Tosh’s original charting of lawyers’ and advocates’ creative strategies to get around the most detrimental effects of the aggravated felony also seeds hope for pushing back against inherently discriminatory and unjust criminal and immigration laws. Invaluable. " * Nancy Hiemstra, author of Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime *

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Book SynopsisTraces the role of the aggravated felony in today's deportation regimeIn immigration courts across America, a non-citizen convicted of an aggravated felony will almost certainly face deportation with no access to asylum. However, despite the ominous-sounding name, aggravated felonies need not be either aggravated or felonies. The term encompasses more than thirty offenses, ranging from check fraud and shoplifting to filing a false tax return. The recent expansion in the list of such offenses has resulted in astronomical rates of deportation. This book chronicles the rise of the use of the aggravated felony, known by lawyers as the immigration law death penalty, to criminalize and then deport immigrants. Immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies are subject to mandatory detention and almost certain deportationand are ineligible for almost all forms of legal relief from removal. Furthermore, immigrants convicted of aggravated felonies can be detained for months or even years without Trade Review"Due to the aggravated felony provisions of US immigration law, a legal permanent resident of the United States convicted of a crime—that is neither severe nor even a felony—can be deported with no due process. Despite the severity of these provisions and the fact that tens of thousands of legal permanent residents have been deported under these provisions, few people have heard of aggravated felonies. This theoretically rich and deeply researched book brings aggravated felony provisions from the shadows to the spotlight. Sarah Tosh makes a cogent case that we need to abolish these racially biased and harmful provisions. This book is indispensable for any student or scholar of immigration or critical race theory. " * Tanya Golash-Boza, author of Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism *"In immigration law today, there is nothing more harmful to migrants than having ICE throw two words in their direction: aggravated felony. Looking well past the legal arguments, Tosh turns the aggravated felony from a technical legal concept to real-life anxiety. Through immigration court observations and interviews, Tosh shows the damning impact of adding immigration consequences to criminal legal processes, revealing the modern immigration law system’s reliance on criminal history to be rife with bias and short on justice. But through it all, Tosh also finds passionate advocates whose strategic thinking slows ICE’s efforts—and sometimes even carries the day for migrants. " * César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants *"Through extensive interviews and direct observations, Tosh exposes the injustices at the heart of the American deportation regime and the strategies of legal resistance mobilized to resist it. " * Alex S. Vitale, author of The End of Policing *"A powerful and illuminating in-depth examination of the history, politics, and social factors behind the ‘aggravated felony’ legal category. Tosh’s rich analysis deconstructs this invented category, laying bare how it operates as a mechanism to funnel racialized immigrants to deportation. Tosh’s original charting of lawyers’ and advocates’ creative strategies to get around the most detrimental effects of the aggravated felony also seeds hope for pushing back against inherently discriminatory and unjust criminal and immigration laws. Invaluable. " * Nancy Hiemstra, author of Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime *

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Book SynopsisUncovers how the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican II affected African American Catholics in Atlanta The history and practices of African American Catholics has been vastly understudied, and Black Catholics are often written off as a fringe sector of the religious population. Yet, Catholics of African descent have been a part of Catholicism since the early days of European exploration into the New World. In the Shadow of Ebenezer examines how the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Vatican Council affected African American Catholics in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on the historic Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the Old Fourth Ward. Our Lady of Lourdes is a neighbor of major historic Black Protestant churches in the city, including Ebenezer Baptist Church, a block away, which during the Civil Rights era was the pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. Featuring archival and oral history sources, the book examines the religious and cultural life of the parishioners of Our Lady of LourdesTrade ReviewWell-crafted studies of Black Catholic institutions are rare enough. To have such a study of a Black Catholic parish in Atlanta during the civil rights movement is an occasion for celebration. -- John McGreevy, Charles and Jill Fischer Provost and Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, Notre Dame UniversityUrgent and exciting. Mickens beautifully fills a huge gap in our knowledge of Black Catholicism. -- Diana Hayes, Professor Emerita, Georgetown University

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Book SynopsisIn the decades leading up to the end of U.S. slavery, many free Blacks sat for daguerreotypes decorated in fine garments to document their self-possession. People pictured in these early photographs used portraiture to seize control over representation of the free Black body and reimagine Black visuality divorced from the cultural logics of slavery. In Picture Freedom, Jasmine Nichole Cobb analyzes the ways in which the circulation of various images prepared free Blacks and free Whites for the emancipation of formerly unfree people of African descent. She traces the emergence of Black freedom as both an idea and as an image during the early nineteenth century. Through an analysis of popular culture of the periodincluding amateur portraiture, racial caricatures, joke books, antislavery newspapers, abolitionist materials, runaway advertisements, ladies' magazines, and scrapbooks, as well as scenic wallpaperCobb explores the earliest illustrations of free Blacks and rTrade ReviewPicture Freedom provides a unique and nuanced interpretation of nineteenth-century African American life and culture. Focusing on visuality, print culture, and an examination of the parlor, Cobb has fashioned a book like none other, convincingly demonstrating how whites and blacks reimagined racial identity and belonging in the early republic. -- Erica Armstrong Dunbar,author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum CityBeautifully written and theoretically sophisticated,Picture Freedomis an absolute gem in its engagement with nineteenth-century visual culture, black subjectivity, and representations of freedom. Through exciting archival work that brings to light a stunning photographic history, Cobb centers black women in the history of nineteenth-century visual culture as consumers and producers of ideas and images of emancipation. One of the books most significant contributions is its astute theorization of the relationship between photographic practices, black interiority, and public culture. I love this book! -- Nicole R. Fleetwood,author of Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and BlacknessThis notion of the domesticated in its most politicized registercitizenshipis at stakePicture Freedom: Cobb reminds us in ways both telling and unforgiving that & Black freedom is not Black citizenship. * Journal of American History *This is a book that will become one of the most influential sources for African American visual culture. * Winterthur Portfolio *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Parlor Fantasies, Parlor Nightmares 1 1 "A Peculiarly 'Ocular' Institution" 28 2 Optics of Respectability: Women, Vision, and the Black Private Sphere 66 3 "Look! A Negress": Public Women, Private Horrors, and the White Ontology of the Gaze 111 4 Racial Iconography: Freedom and Black Citizenship in the Antebellum North 148 5 Racing the Transatlantic Parlor: Blackness at Home and Abroad 193 Epilogue: The Specter of Black Freedom 221 Notes 225 Index 257 About the Author 265 Color images appear as an insert following page 110

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Book SynopsisAn artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive cultureIn a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the proper depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionisma representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation.Arguing against the need for positive representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultuTrade Review[C]ompelling. It shows how art can be a powerful instrument for reflecting how a social identity can be made to assume a certain social meaning and how it can be used to question the identity in this way making it malleable to transformation. Anyone interested in identity representation and culture, particularly of an ethnic or racial nature, will find much to inform and challenge them in Harpers tightly argued and well-referenced book. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *Opens up possibilities for revising our notions of representation.Abstractionist Aestheticsis a valuable contribution to ongoing conversations about race, politics, and aesthetics. * ASAP/Journal *A riveting polemic on the politics of abstraction in black art. Moving among examples in a range of medialiterature, music, visual art, and filmwith fine-tuned readings,Abstractionist Aestheticsis a devastating critique of the all-too-common presumption that variants of realism are the only effective option for a black art that would respond to the history of racial deprivation. -- Brent Hayes Edwards,author of The Practice of Diaspora: Literature,Translation, and the Rise of Black InternationalisBeautifully argued with unexpected twists and turns, Phillip Brian Harper exposes how our prefabricated notions of the sounds, sights, and feeling of blackness dictate our often parochial reactions to artistic efforts to engage and broaden the places assigned to black Americans. A momentous and magnificent book. -- Michael Awkward, Gayl Jones Professor of Afro-American Literature and Culture, University of Michigan

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Book SynopsisInsists on the importance of embodiment and movement to the creation of Black socialityLinking African diasporic performance, disability studies, and movement studies, Falling, Floating, Flickering approaches disability transnationally by centering Black, African, and diasporic experiences. By eschewing capital's weighted calculus of which bodies hold value, this book centers alternate morphologies and movement practices that have previously been dismissed as abnormal or unrecognizable. To move beyond binaries of ability, Hershini Bhana Young traverses multiple geohistories and cultural forms stretching from the United States and the Mediterranean to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Africa, as well as independent and experimental film, novels, sculptures, images, dance, performances, and anecdotes. In doing so, she argues for the importance of differential embodiment and movement to the creation and survival of Black sociality, and refutes stereotypic notioTrade ReviewA stellar work of scholarship. Young is fearless in her questions and generous in her thinking, providing readers with the tools to imagine, critique, and speculate alongside her. She powerfully demonstrates the necessity of reading disability in context and transforms our understandings of disability and performance. * Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip *Falling, Floating, Flickering demonstrates that Black sociality emerges from and can be reconsidered by foregrounding differential embodiment. Throughout the book, moments of tension, moving through rich theoretical ideas and difficult lived and performed embodiments, are followed by moments of relief, where Hershini Bhana Young offers not simply places to rest, but places to be invigorated. Reading this work is incredibly pleasurable, and I am grateful for its clarity and capaciousness. * Keguro Macharia, author of Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora *

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Book SynopsisInsists on the importance of embodiment and movement to the creation of Black socialityLinking African diasporic performance, disability studies, and movement studies, Falling, Floating, Flickering approaches disability transnationally by centering Black, African, and diasporic experiences. By eschewing capital's weighted calculus of which bodies hold value, this book centers alternate morphologies and movement practices that have previously been dismissed as abnormal or unrecognizable. To move beyond binaries of ability, Hershini Bhana Young traverses multiple geohistories and cultural forms stretching from the United States and the Mediterranean to Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and South Africa, as well as independent and experimental film, novels, sculptures, images, dance, performances, and anecdotes. In doing so, she argues for the importance of differential embodiment and movement to the creation and survival of Black sociality, and refutes stereotypic notioTrade ReviewA stellar work of scholarship. Young is fearless in her questions and generous in her thinking, providing readers with the tools to imagine, critique, and speculate alongside her. She powerfully demonstrates the necessity of reading disability in context and transforms our understandings of disability and performance. * Alison Kafer, author of Feminist, Queer, Crip *Falling, Floating, Flickering demonstrates that Black sociality emerges from and can be reconsidered by foregrounding differential embodiment. Throughout the book, moments of tension, moving through rich theoretical ideas and difficult lived and performed embodiments, are followed by moments of relief, where Hershini Bhana Young offers not simply places to rest, but places to be invigorated. Reading this work is incredibly pleasurable, and I am grateful for its clarity and capaciousness. * Keguro Macharia, author of Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora *

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

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Book SynopsisA powerful history of student protests and student rights during the desegregation eraIn the late 1960s, protests led by students roiled high schools across the country. As school desegregation finally took place on a wide scale, students of color were particularly vocal in contesting the racial discrimination they saw in school policies and practices. And yet, these young people had no legal right to express dissent at school. It was not until 1969 that the Supreme Court would recognize the First Amendment rights of students in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines case. A series of students' rights lawsuits in the desegregation era challenged everything from school curricula to disciplinary policies. But in casting students as troublemakers or as culturally deficient, school authorities and other experts persuaded the courts to set limits on rights protections that made students of color disproportionately vulnerable to suspension and expulsion. Troublemakers traces the history of blacTrade ReviewThose who associate student protest only with institutions of higher education will find this work enlightening. Schumaker makes a compelling case that from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, high school students in several states were instrumental in redefining students' constitutional rights. Using the "lens of race," she focuses on how these protests propelled racial reform in different school systems. -- Choice

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Book SynopsisA curious figure stalks the pages of a distinct subset of mass-market romance novels, aptly called desert romances. Animalistic yet sensitive, dark and attractive, the desert prince or sheikh emanates manliness and raw, sexual power. In the years since September 11, 2001, the sheikh character has steadily risen in popularity in romance novels, even while depictions of Arab masculinity as backward and violent in nature have dominated the cultural landscape. An Imperialist Love Story contributes to the broader conversation about the legacy of orientalist representations of Arabs in Western popular culture. Combining close readings of novels, discursive analysis of blogs and forums, and interviews with authors, Jarmakani explores popular investments in the war on terror by examining the collisions between fantasy and reality in desert romances. Focusing on issues of security, freedom, and liberal multiculturalism, she foregrounds the role that desire plays in contemporary formations of U.Trade Review"Jarmakanis monograph is of particular interest to feminist literary scholars, especially those working with romance novels and/or with post-9/11 fiction." * Feminist Theory *"An Imperialist Love Story is a cutting edge piece of scholarship, exploring the fascinating tension between a resurgence in popular desert romances at a cultural moment in which Arab masculinity is understood as violent and threatening. Offering a radical reinterpretation of the power of mass-market engagements with the Middle East,Jarmakanianalyzes the role that fantasy and desire play in the construction of U.S. imperialism. Beautifully written and enjoyable to read, this book will generate debate in many different circles, for many years to come." -- Sarah Gualtieri,author of Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora"Jarmarkani investigates & desert romances, i.e., pulp novels set in an imagined & Arabiastan and prominently featuring a sheikh or prince who is powerfully virile yet deeply sensitive and gratifyingly susceptible to the charms of the Western heroine." * Choice *Table of ContentsContents Preface vii Acknowledgments xxi Introduction: The Romantic Sheikh as Hero of the War on Terror 1 1. "To Catch a Sheikh" in the War on Terror 43 2.DesertIs Just Another Word for Freedom 79 3. Desiring the Big Bad Blade: The Racialization of the Sheikh 117 4. To Make a Woman Happy in Bed ... 155 Conclusion: The Ends 189 Notes197 Bibliography241 Index257 About the Author267

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Book SynopsisExplores how humanitarian aid workers help and hinder the care of unaccompanied children as they arrive in the United StatesEvery year, tens of thousands of children cross into the United States without a legal guardian at their side, often fleeing violence and poverty in their countries of origin. In Unaccompanied, Emily Ruehs-Navarro shows us one aspect of their heartbreaking journeys, as seen through the eyes of the aid workers who trybut too often failto help them. Drawing on interviews with aid workers, migrant children, and others, Ruehs-Navarro follows unaccompanied youth as they seek help from a wide range of professionals. From legal relief organizations to family reunification specialists, she shows us how different aid workers may choose to work for, with, or against unaccompanied immigrant youth, deciding whether they should be treated as refugees, child dependents, or, in some cases, criminals. Ruehs-Navarro highlights how aid workers, anTrade Review"Emily Ruehs-Navarro takes us on a compelling sociological journey that maps out what drives youth to migrate by themselves and what they encounter when they arrive at the U.S border. Using multiple qualitative methods, she illuminates the ways in which border securitization, racialized child welfare, and humanitarianism intersect to shape how we think of and respond to unaccompanied migrant youth. Integrating the experiences and perspectives of both youth and the professionals who work with them, this valuable book brings into focus the complex landscape of aid they operate in and the contradictions and possibilities they navigate to access aid. " -- Lorena Garcia, author of Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity"This work is important because it demonstrates the conditional nature of humanitarian legal aid toward youth and highlights the continued traumatization of youth even after crossing the border." * Sociology of Race of Ethnicity *

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Book SynopsisTraces the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese AmericansAs one of the oldest groups of Asian Americans in the United States, most Japanese Americans are culturally assimilated and well-integrated in mainstream American society. However, they continue to be racialized as culturally Japanese foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance in a multicultural America where racial minorities are expected to remain ethnically distinct. Different generations of Japanese Americans have responded to such pressures in ways that range from demands that their racial citizenship as bona fide Americans be recognized to a desire to maintain or recover their ethnic heritage and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. In Japanese American Ethnicity, Takeyuki Tsuda explores the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generations and the extent to which they remain connected to their ancestral cultural heritage. He also places Japanese Americans inTrade ReviewIn drawing and reflecting upon the voices and experiences of different generational cohorts, Tsuda not only fills a void in Japanese American studies but expands our very understanding of the concept of 'ethnic heritage.' Adeptly parsing processes of assimilation, transnationalism, racialization, and multicultural discourse, Tsuda engages the factors that shape the retention and refashioning of ancestral culture. -- Michael Omi,University of California, BerkeleyUsing the keyword `generation, Tsuda deftly explores notions of transnational ethnicity among contemporary Japanese Americans, moving beyond internment to provide an insightful analysis of how modern Japanese Americans have created new identities and communities in the American cultural landscape. -- K. Scott Wong,author of Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War[The books] main strength is its comparison in ethnic heritage of four different generations of Japanese Americans. None of the previous books on this subject has compared three or more generations in the formation of ethnicity among members of one or more ethnic groups. * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisAn introduction to antiracism, a powerful tradition crucial for energizing American democracyOn August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a rally of white nationalists and white supremacists culminated in the death of a woman murdered in the street. Those events made clear that racism is alive and well in the United States of America. However, they also brought into sharp relief another American tradition: antiracism. While racists marched and chanted in the streets, they were met and matched by even larger numbers of protesters calling for racism's end. Racism is America's original and most enduring sin, with well-known historic and contemporary markers: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality. But racism has always been challenged by an opposing political theory and practice. Alex Zamalin's Antiracism tells the story of that opposition. The most theoretically generative and politically valuable source of antiracist thought has been the blacTrade Review"[D]escribes the history of U.S. movements to contest racism...As an introduction to the intellectual history and political theory of antiracism, Zamalins book is ideal..." * Library Journal *"The author provides valuable historical context on the social construct of racial identity....Zamalin's vision is pragmatic with a touch of idealism. He doesn't necessarily place moral superiority on nonviolence over more militant tactics, and he recognizes that black rebellion intensifies resistance from a conservative status quo. As he insists throughout, it is not enough to believe that you are not racist; you must actively work against racism in all its institutional and insidious forms." * Kirkus Review *"A spirited and learned introduction to a vital topic. Antiracism combines a long historical sweep with deep consideration of what Dr. King once called the 'fierce urgency of now.' Drawing impressively on cultural as well as political sources it reminds readers of the centrality of struggles against structural inequalities, not just against ugly racist opinions, to initiatives for racial justice." -- David Roediger, Author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All"Alex Zamalin provides a comprehensive account of the philosophical underpinnings and practices of anti-racism in the United States. Theoretically nuanced and politically astute, this little book offers a primer on American anti-racism past and present. A fine tool for teaching and political work." -- David Theo Goldberg, Author of Are We All Postracial Yet?"This isby farthe best introduction to the profoundly important topic of Anti-Racism." -- Gerald Horne, Author of The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism"Zamalin’s book is an impressive introduction to antiracist thought and practice. In the wake of increasing white terrorist massacres, it could not come at a better time." * New Political Science *

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Book SynopsisAgainst Wind and Tide tells the story of African American's battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816 with the intention to return free blacks to its colony Liberia. Although ACS members considered free black colonization in Africa a benevolent enterprise, most black leaders rejected the ACS, fearing that the organization sought forced removal. As Ousmane K. Power-Greene's story shows, these African American anticolonizationists did not believe Liberia would ever be a true black American homeland.In this study of anticolonization agitation, Power-Greene draws on newspapers, meeting minutes, and letters to explore the concerted effort on the part of nineteenth century black activists, community leaders, and spokespersons to challenge the American Colonization Society's attempt to make colonization of free blacks federal policy. The ACS insisted the plan embodied empowerment. The United States, they argued, would never accept free blacks as citizensTrade ReviewAgainst Wind and Tide probes more deeply into the history of black opposition to the American Colonization Society's program of removal than any previous work. Power-Greene skillfully weaves together a number of important historical strands of the antebellum period that illuminate just how central the debate over Liberian colonization was in relationship to African American identity and presence in the United States. Significantly, he pays close attention to the place of Haiti as an alternative site for African American migration and identity formation, detailing how crucial the black republic was to any discussion of Afro-Atlantic destiny. -- Claude Clegg,Indiana UniversityPower-GreenesAgainst Wind and Tideis successful in engaging the historical literature on emigration and colonization and in revealing the schemes mounted by racist colonizationists and the black and white resistance to the movement. * Journal of African American History *Well-written and cogently argued,Against Wind and Tideis a must-read for scholars interested in the African Colonization Movement. * American Historical Review *Against Wind and Tideis a fine contribution to the story of African colonization movements in early American history. * The Journal of American History *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments xiii Preface xvii Introduction 1 1 "The Means of Alleviating the Suffering": Haitian Emigration and the Colonization Movement, 1817-1830 17 2 "One of the Wildest Projects Ever": Abolitionists and the Anticolonizationist Impulse, 1830-1840 46 3 "The Cause Is God's and Must Prevail": Building an Anticolonizationist Wall in Great Britain, 1830-1850 63 4 Resurrecting the "Iniquitous Scheme": The Rebirth of the Colonization Movement in America, 1840-1854 95 5 "An Undue Illusion": Emigration, Colonization, and the Destiny of the Colored Races, 1850-1858 129 6 "For God and Humanity": Anticolonization in the Civil War Era 158 Epilogue 193 Notes 201 Index 239 About the Author 247

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Book SynopsisExplores the numerous ways in which the expanding and rapidly changing demographics of Black communities in the United States call into question the very foundations of political identity that has united African Americans for generations.Trade ReviewBlack Mosaic addresses a significant, and often-neglected, subject in African American politics.The prose is engaging and accessible, the scholarship is first-rate, and the conclusions are illuminating.As our nation becomes increasingly diverse, this subject will only become more important over time. -- Vincent Hutchings,author of Public Opinion and Democratic AccountabilitySmiths exceptional book provides a solid theoretical as well as an empirical road map for scholars wishing to increase their understanding of how Black Americans, Blacks from the Americas, as well as African immigrants conceptualize and think about the meaning of blackness. Black Mosaic surely will become required reading for students and scholars in the field. -- Ronald E. Brown,Associate Professor of Political Science, Wayne State UniversityThis book is a welcome addition to scholarship on the politics of race and ethnicity in the United States. Candis Watts Smiths analysis reveals the complexity of Black racial identity within the context of greater ethnic diversity, and provides a robust and theoretically rich explanation for the boundaries of Black identity. Black Mosaic is a signal contribution and essential reading for scholars of American politics. -- Jane Junn,author of The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and ImmigrationTable of ContentsContents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Black on Black History 19 2 Diasporic Consciousness: Theorizing Black Pan-Ethnic Identity and Intraracial Politics 45 3 From Group Membership to Group Identification 69 4 Broadening Black Identity: Evidence in National Data 110 5 Politicizing Identities: Linking Identity to Politics 133 6 Perspectives on Intraracial Coalition and Conflict 175 Conclusion: My President Is Black? 197 Appendix A: Presentation of Survey Items and Variable Measures 206 Appendix B: Interview Respondent Characteristics 210 Appendix C: Semistructured Interview Guide 214 Notes 219 Bibliography 249 Index 267 About the Author 277

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Studies!Explores Black representation in fantasy genres and comic booksCharacters like Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage, Miles Morales, and Black Lightning are part of a growing cohort of black superheroes on TV and in film. Though comic books are often derided as naïve and childish, these larger-than-life superheroes demonstrate how this genre can serve as the catalyst for engaging the Black radical imagination.Keeping It Unreal: Comics and Black Queer Fantasy is an exploration of how fantasies of Black power and triumph fashion theoretical, political, and aesthetic challenges toand respite fromwhite supremacy and anti-Blackness. It examines representations of Blackness in fantasy-infused genres: superhero comic books, erotic comics, fantasy and science-fiction genre literature, as well as contemporary literary realist fiction centering fantastic conceits.Darieck Scott offers a rich meditTrade ReviewScott reflects on the importance of fantasy in comic books in this brisk and insightful meditation ... this analysis is rich and rewarding. * Publishers Weekly *This fabulously written reconsideration of fantasy goes beyond readings of Black queer comics to reveal the value of becoming fantastical—of living in a ‘habitable imaginary’ where dreams are substantiated. I came looking for insights about Luke Cage and Black Panther . . . only to find liberation and Black queer life. * Jennifer Brody, Stanford University *A primer in counter-intuition and bold imagination that dares to embrace the radical possibility of black happiness. Writing with razor-sharp wit and blistering erudition, Scott rewrites the meaning of fantasy to reveal its power as an intellectual and political tool for reimagining blackness beyond an antiblack world. His captivating excavations of black fantasy in the comic genre provide not only a space of pleasure and possibility, but a tool for living a different kind of black futurity. * Tina Campt, Brown University *Scott does an amazing job in the conclusion of providing some context as well as personal revelation, that allows the reader to feel like they too are part of this conversation and creation…Overall, Scott’s Keeping it Unreal: Black Queer Fantasy and Superhero Comics is a well-constructed engagement of various scholarly sources in the understanding and construction of ourselves, of others, and of life through the use of fantasy. * Ethnic and Racial Studies *In Keeping It Unreal, Scott doubles down on his belief that even in a whitewashed landscape, Black comic book heroes and their influence warp the foundation of how the industry operates, whether seen in superheroes or in porn. Ultimately, as a powerful reflection of the Black body’s identity, he argues that within these fantasy-acts lies a deep-rooted recognition of Black humanity that cannot be erased or denied. * Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society *

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Book SynopsisUtilizes Brown's life to illuminate the concept of freedom as it developed in the United States in the early national and antebellum yearsTrade Review"With this meticulously sourced and carefully reasoned portrait, Armstead reclaims an outstanding American who helped freedom grow." * Booklist *"Armstead explores the meaning of northern African American identity through her deft decoding of a ten-volume diary left by James F. Brown...Recommended for historians of antebellum America or the social aspects of horticulture and for those interested in historical diaries. Incipient researchers will learn the differences among term, life, and wage slaves and much else" * Library Journal *"Overall, this is an informative study of antebellum New York State." -- R. Douglas Hurt * New York History *"An enlightening examination of a period of American history that seems to have slipped from public scrutiny...Armstead's review of the status of American horticulture during the first half of the nineteenth century makes this volume intriguing reading for gardeners." -- Marilyn K. Alaimo * Chicago Botanic Garden *"Myra Young Armstead brings to life James Brown, a self-possessed African American citizen of the pre-Civil War United States, and gives us anew understanding of the meaning of freedom in antebellum America. As a master gardener in rural upstate New York, James Brown charted a life of complex alliances across racial lines and advocacy on behalf of fellow African Americans. Armstead's wonderful work of recovery illuminates a path to freedom in the rural North that we have known little about." * Leslie M. Harris, Emory University *"This is far more than a book about a gardener though it is a fascinating story about nineteenth-century American horticulture. Freedom's Gardener tells us about the opportunities and limits that framed the lives of African Americans in places like New York's Hudson Valley. And a good read to boot." * James Grossman, University of Chicago *"Freedom's Gardener is an excellent example of how historians can transform one person's life into a story that illustrates the larger picture for both scholars and a broader audience." * Journal of American History *"Freedom's Gardener is beautifully researched, bursting with detail." * The New York Times *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I. LIFE AS A SLAVE 1.What Can a Man Do? 2.Into the Promised Land Part II. FREE MAN AND FREE LABORER 3.A Horticultural Community 4. A Gardening Career 5. Cultural Meanings of Gardening 6. Escaping Wage Slavery Part III. FREE MAN AND CITIZEN 7. A Whiggish Sensibility 8. James F. Brown, Voting Rights Politics, and Antislavery Activism 9. The Informal Politics of Association Conclusion Notes About the Author

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Book SynopsisHonorable Mention, 2020 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre ResearchArgues that Ricanness operates as a continual performance of bodily endurance against US colonialismIn 1954, Dolores Lolita Lebrón and other members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party led a revolutionary action on the chambers of Congress, firing several shots at the ceiling and calling for the independence of the island. Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance begins with Lebrón's vanguard act, distilling the relationship between Puerto Rican subjectivity, gender, sexuality, and revolutionary performance under colonial time. Ruiz argues that Ricannessa continual performance of bodily endurance against US colonialism through different measures of timeuncovers what's at stake politically for the often unwanted, anticolonial, racialized and sexualized enduring body. Moving among theatre, experimental video, revolutionary protest, phTrade ReviewRuiz’s relentless pressure on how fields of knowledge depend upon spatial containment eviscerates the collusion between epistemology and place. Her dazzling intellectualism models the necessarily daring edges one must seek out in discussions about aesthetics and politics. This beautifully written book encourages the demands of nonlinear thinking, the challenging pleasures of scholarship, and offers a more expansive sense of what activism can be. Ricanness is erudition for the people. -- Alexandra T. Vazquez, author of Listening in Detail: Performances of Cuban MusicRicanness accomplishes a sustained dislocation of the hierarchies of the senses. It is an ontology of life and death, mixed with lipstick, champagne, sweat, vulgarity, and survival. It is a poetics of time and temporality. This poetics is worked out phenomenologically, aesthetically, and politically through the uncompromising stance Ruiz takes toward the violent history echoing across the unbroken Rican spirit. -- Tavia Nyong'o, author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life[Ruiz] uses the example of Puerto Rico to push theory forward—challenging it, extending it, upending it. * Choice *At once challenging and generous, forcefully-argued and nuanced, Ruiz’s work demonstrates how endurance, suspension, and waiting characterize Rican subjectivities, and how aesthetic performance both reveals and confronts the colonial (and postcolonial) logics that inform these subjectivities. * Social Text *In shifting away from more traditional disciplinary approaches that have pervaded the field from its beginnings, Ricanness [...] turned to the promise of the aesthetic in order to understand and move beyond the confines of political discourse that limits resistance to the realm of grand political acts. * Latino Studies *Sandra Ruiz pushes us to consider how Puerto Ricans are not only forced to constantly endure subjection and violence, but also how they cultivate an existence that punctures, even if only momentarily, the stranglehold of colonialism on their lives and deaths. In Ricanness, death becomes an insurgent force under the restrictive time and limited horizon imposed by colonial rule. * Centro Journal *Ruiz’s book is groundbreaking as she skillfully weaves together philosophy (specifically phenomenology and existentialism), performance studies, psychoanalysis, gender and queer studies, and Puerto Rican studies, to address major blind spots in each of these fields. * Women & Performance *Ruiz’s expertly wound theoretical frame unfurls itself in her sumptuous close readings. Moving roughly chronologically while capturing alternate time looping under coloniality, she analyzes performance across media, including photography, political protest, durational performance art, plays, poetry, and experimental video. * Theatre Journal *A profoundly necessary and timely book ... Though her book focuses on Ricans in the diaspora, her theorization of alternative ways of being through anticolonial performance is not bound by colonially imposed borders between here (US) and there (Puerto Rico) ... Ricanness offers so much not only to the fields of performance studies and Puerto Rican studies, but also to Ricans like me, Ricans wanting “a relational way to imagine, dream, and construct alternate forms of living under colonialism, across bodies of water. * The Drama Review *Ruiz complicates the conventional gendered connotations of masculinized impotence and/or endurance by reading these states through the framework of colonial/national personhood. Throughout the book, Ruiz underscores how many performances of Ricanness entail a reckoning with gendered violence and a confrontation with the unfulfilled and violent promises of redemptive masculinities ... In inviting us to appreciate the aesthetic as a politic, and to understand Rican survival as an artful and embodied working upon an unending loop in colonial time, Ruiz invigorates Latinx studies engagements with performance and provides us with theories we can use to situate further performances of Ricanness. * American Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisThe third edition of the foundational volume in Asian American studiesWho are Asian Americans? Moving beyond popular stereotypes of the model minority or forever foreigner, most Americans know surprisingly little of the nation's fastest growing minority population. Since the 1960s, when different Asian immigrant groups came together under the Asian American umbrella, they have tirelessly carved out their presence in the labor market, education, politics, and pop culture. Many times, they have done so in the face of racism, discrimination, sexism, homophobia, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Today, contemporary Asian America has emerged as an incredibly diverse population, with each segment of the community facing its unique challenges. When Contemporary Asian America was first published in 2000, it exposed its readers to the formation and development of Asian American studies as an academic field of study, from its inception as part of the ethnic consciousness movement of the 1960s to Trade ReviewBrings together some of the most important scholarship in Asian American Studies. Contemporary Asian America is a superbly organized anthology, presenting topics ranging from immigration, family, and community to activism, identity, sexuality, race relations and transnationalism. The new research and updated materials on previously understudied Asian ethnic groups are most valuable. Anyone interested in the experiences of Asians in the United States will find much here that is illuminating. The breadth and depth of this volume makes it an excellent reader for undergraduate and graduate level courses in Asian American Studies. -- Xiaojian Zhao,University of California, Santa BarbaraA thoughtfully assembled collection of readings that carefully brings together central themes in Asian American Studies. A great resource for those looking for a lively introduction to the field. -- Nazli Kibria,Boston University

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2018 Section on Asia and Asian America Book Award presented by the American Sociological Association Traces the religious adaptation of members of an important Indian Christian church the Mar Thoma denomination as they make their way in the United States. This book exposes how a new paradigm of ethnicity and religion, and the megachurch phenomenon, is shaping contemporary immigrant religious institutions, specifically Indian American Christianity. Kurien draws on multi-site research in the US and India to provide a global perspective on religion by demonstrating the variety of ways that transnational processes affect religious organizations and the lives of members, both in the place of destination and of origin. The widespread prevalence of megachurches and the dominance of American evangelicalism created an environment in which the traditional practices of the ancient South Indian Mar Thoma denomination seemed alien to its American-born generation. Many of the young adults lTrade Review"Like Prema Kuriens previous books, this one is thoroughly researched, tackling a huge topic with impressive scholarship. And it poses an unsettling question: Is a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it version of Christianity the wave of the future? Or is America big enough to embrace a growing multiplicity of ethno-religious traditions?" -- Robert Wuthnow,Princeton University"Though rooted in analysis of Mar Thoma, Kuriens work provides a useful theoretical language for thinking about big-picture immigration trends. As such, this book is a must read for those interested in immigration, migration, and transnationalism broadly as well as religion." * Choice *"It is continually amazing that immigrants’ religious lives have not received more attention within the sociology of immigration. Prema Kurien’s latest book, Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch, takes on a key topic within the sociology of immigration and of religion — namely, how immigrants across generations form religious belonging both with and separate from the mainstream… Overall, Kurien’s book furthers the case that religion serves as an agent, not merely a context or setting, and can be a central vehicle through which to study immigration." -- International Migration Review"Kurien’s Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch supplies the field with an important sociological account of the transnational religious and ethnic contestations within the Mar Thoma church, a Syrian Christian church based in Kerala. Her extensive ethnographic research, dating back to 1999, is a refreshingly data-rich study that is longitudinally oriented in its inclusion of the extensive history of the Mar Thoma church since its inception in the early decades of the Christian era. It is also a geographically cross-sectional study in its attention to the transnational intersections between the Mar Thoma church in India and in the United States. Kurien’s data reveals that research on religion and ethnicity in the United States must account for generational differences and specific nuances of a particular ethnic denomination’s negotiations in multicultural America." -- Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies"The book illustrates the immense payoff of a transnational, global approach for understanding the movements of religion and people. Many works focus on transnationalism to be sure, but this book convincingly shows why it is an absolute necessity. Such an approach over many years of study provides us a rich tale of change and causality." * American Journal of Sociology *"Kurien has produced a readable, fascinating book about ethnicity, gender, and religion ‘in motion.’ She draws on a rich body of interview data to explore the contentious relationships that shape and re-shape the global, diasporic faith-based communities… As always, Kurien adopts a sophisticated approach to transnationalism that highlights the back and forth direction of change and that recognizes the longue duree of globalization. Most importantly, she shows social changes wrought by immigration are always, if only partly, a matter of immigrant agency." -- Sociology of Religion"Many Americans miss the significant presence of Indian Christians who worship in immigrant ethnic faith communities or in predominantly white evangelical ones that often rely on their presence to promote their racially-inclusive vision. Kurien provides a fascinating look into this overlooked community, insightfully revealing the challenges of recreating a religious culture thousands of miles from its origin, adapting to an increasingly global and diasporic community, and retaining among the second-generation an identity with a religious culture that appears backward and insular compared to its bigger, flashier, and more racially integrated counterpart. An absolute must-read." -- Jerry Z. Park,Associate Professor of Sociology, Baylor University"With careful fieldwork done over decades in two countries, Prema Kuriens work will serve as a model for how to do sociological and ethnographic work within immigrant communities that remain in robust connection to their countries of origin, even as they try to find their footing in their new home. A must read for all who seek to understand the transformation of American religious life under the pressures of migration and globalization!" -- John J. Thatamanil,Associate Professor of Theology and World Religions, Union Theological Seminary

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Book SynopsisThe struggles African American women and their adolescent daughters face in living healthy, active livesFrom heart disease and diabetes to HIV and obesity, Black women and girls face serious health risks, lagging behind their white counterparts by every measure of health, well-being, and fitness. In Black Women's Health, Michele Tracy Berger shows us why this is the case, exploring how the health needs of Black women and girls are uniquely rooted in their experiences with racism, sexism, and class discrimination. Drawing on interviews with mothers and their daughters, as well as compelling medical data, Berger provides insight into the larger patterns that place Black women at such high risk on a national level. She shows how Black mothers communicate with their daughters about health, sexuality, and intimacy, including how they attempt to promote healthy living standards even as they navigate widespread, systemic challenges. Ultimately, Berger highlights the important role that familyTrade ReviewMichele Tracy Berger provides an insightful and innovative approach to understanding relational and historical factors influencing health and wellbeing for Black mothers and their adolescent daughters. Through first grounding readers in intersectionality and highlighting the significance of Black women-led health initiatives, such as First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Campaign, Berger grounds readers in the critical importance of centering Black women’s perspectives to shift the paradigm of health and wellness. She then guides the reader through her rigorous qualitative research findings, organized by the worldviews of her focus group participants. Black Women's Health appropriately highlights the multidimensional characteristics of Black mothers, daughters, as well as the strengths and challenges of their dynamic contextualized relationships. This is a must read for any individual or group committed to positively influence the lives of Black women and girls. -- Cheryl L. Woods Giscombe, Melissa and Harry LeVine Family Professor of Quality of Life, Health Promotion and Wellness, The University of North Carolina at Chapel HillThe indelible bond between mother and daughter is both spiritual and physical. For Black mothers and daughters to engage in the exchange of herstories around health, as eloquently woven together by Michele Tracy Berger, elevates the collective narrative of Black girls’ and women’s health, seamlessly filling in the research gaps of Black women’s ways of knowing and demonstrating why Black women researchers are needed in discourse around Black women’s health. Berger’s focus on the lived experiences of Black girls’ and women is central to understanding the complexities of their lives. Rarely are Black girls and women in intimate conversation around health and sexuality; and while the conversations can unravel prior beliefs and knowledge, women’s words have the power to uncover, build and fortify.This effort, while centering Black Feminist and intersectionality scholarship, will do the same for efforts to address Black girls’ and women’s health. -- Jameta Nicole Barlow, Assistant Professor of Writing, Women's Leadership and Health Policy and Management, George Washington University

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