Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisAs an African American cultural anthropologist and CEO of an urban research institute, D.B. Maroon is intimately involved with the nation’s struggle to realize its promises equally for all people. Her work is to put those stories into the big picture of American culture—past, present, and future. Intersectional, personal, and hard-hitting in places, while ultimately centering on truth, love and perseverance, Black Lives, American Love weaves the stories of America’s pursuits with Maroon’s own experiences. The result is a personal biography of America offered from the thoughtful viewpoint of a Black anthropologist. The essays take on some of the country’s fiercest debates and most profound challenges with an unflinching style: from the invention of race and debates about the 1619 project, to the rippling impacts of resurgent White Nationalism, the birth of Black Lives Matter Movement, and the ongoing traumas of police brutality. Yet within its pages is the hopeful continuance of the Black community, the striving for better, the grappling with the hurt in order to soothe it with love, and to heal it with peace.Black Lives, American Love is arelentless truth-telling about America’s failures to its Black population—yet itis also a discussion on how we might all do more to secure America’s still vastlybeautiful possibilities of liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all rather than afew.

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Book SynopsisIn his anticipated second poetry collection, Doppelgangbanger, Cortney Lamar Charleston examines the performance of Black masculinity in the U.S., and its relationship to family, love and community. With the wit and musicality fitting of a 90s baby raised during the Golden age of hip-hop, Cortney Lamar Charleston grapples with the landscapes of Chicago’s South Side and surrounding suburbs, and the tensions that impact a Black boy’s struggle through self-destructive definitions of manhood. While the language in these poems is playful, Charleston’s vulnerability invites readers to intimately witness the speaker’s journey from adopted persona to an authentic self that defies traditional molds.Trade ReviewWith stunning knowledge and sharp vulnerability, Cortney Lamar Charleston has rendered a classical epic of love, war, and self-discovery, in the tradition of Milton, Homer, and Virgil if they were Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. —Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro “Cortney Lamar Charleston burns his signature into these stanzas. With an unrelenting intimacy, he dares us into a narrative we think we know—Black boy vs. the scheming wiles of the city vs. the rest of his life—then backhand slaps us toward a singular experience marked by choices that can only guide the life of one man.” —Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art “Cortney Lamar Charleston is one of our most necessary observers of Black boyhood in all its beauty and difficulty. These poems sing to us of us.” —Nate Marshall, author of Finna

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Book SynopsisA meditation on freedom making in the academy for women scholars of color. Weaving personal narrative with political analysis, Community as Rebellion offers a meditation on creating liberatory spaces for students and faculty of color within academia. Much like other women scholars of color, Lorgia García Peña has struggled against the colonizing, racializing, classist, and unequal structures that perpetuate systemic violence within universities. Through personal experiences and analytical reflections, the author invites readers—in particular Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian women—to engage in liberatory practices of boycott, abolition, and radical community-building to combat the academic world’s tokenizing and exploitative structures.García Peña argues that the classroom is key to freedom-making in the university, urging teachers to consider activism and social justice as central to what she calls “teaching in freedom”: a progressive form of collective learning that prioritizes the subjugated knowledge, silenced histories, and epistemologies from the Global South and Indigenous, Black, and brown communities. By teaching in and for freedom, we not only acknowledge the harm that the university has inflicted on our persons and our ways of knowing since its inception, but also create alternative ways to be, create, live, and succeed through our work.Trade Review"A life-saving and life-affirming text, Community as Rebellion offers us the trenchant analysis and fearless strategy radical scholar-activists have long needed. But Lorgia García Peña’s intervention is especially valuable at this moment, as we collectively consider how our most important social institutions might be reimagined beyond the strongholds of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and racial capitalism more broadly."—Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom is a Constant Struggle“Community as Rebellion is a must read for anyone serious about confronting institutional racism, sexism, and elitism. Lorgia García Peña, one of her generation's most brilliant scholar-activists, challenges us to confront academia as a ‘colonial and colonizing’ space as the first step toward resistance and transformation. Her own experiences undergird her analysis and serve as a powerful call to action.” —Barbara Ransby, author of Eslanda“Lorgia García Peña is one of the few courageous and brilliant intellectuals grounded in rigorous and visionary grassroots education. This pedagogical guide for genuine freedom struggles is so badly needed in our neo-fascist times!”—Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary“Some key words that I think of when I think of Lorgia García Peña and her work: brilliant, courageous, loving, stubborn, ferocious, truth-teller. Community as Rebellion combines piercing diagnosis with an invitation to think about how we organize resistance and mobilize communities…. Generative and powerful.”—Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University“Unflinching, brilliant, and absolutely necessary. In these pages, Lorgia García Peña shares her experiences—and others’—to reflect on what it means to be ‘the stranger’ in academia: that sole symbol for diversity that still remains an outsider. Unwavering in its clarity and compassion, this powerful book reminds us that true belonging comes from actively building communities unafraid to center care and rebellion. Everyone should read this.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King"‘What does it mean to teach for freedom?’ Dr. García Peña asks and boldly beckons us toward its practice across the policed borders of discipline, nation, theoretical traditions, and entrenched racial categories. A capacious thinker, rigorous researcher, brilliant activist, and path-breaking scholar, Dr. García Peña calls on us not simply, as she writes, to ‘mind the historical gaps’ for long-subjugated stories but alerts us to the ways these gaps have been historically mined in extractive ways in the service of colonial projects and neoliberal calls for diversity. Her astonishing work gathers us under its broad canopy to plot and persevere toward communal rebellion and renewal.” —Deborah Paredez, Columbia University“With characteristic clarity, courage, and conviction, Lorgia García Peña draws on her remarkable history as an engaged scholar and committed activist to demonstrate the necessity of living in community and accompanying others as keys to both personal liberation and social transformation.” —George Lipsitz, author, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness“Community as Rebellion is partly an incisive and deeply personal expose of the neoliberal university and its racializing and patriarchal practices of denigrating women of color scholars while extracting their intellectual, administrative, and emotional labor. But it is, above all, a mandate to transform higher education that begins with recognizing our mutual obligations to each other and to the world we study, extending 'community' beyond the ivory tower, and co-creating with our students new, autonomous intellectual spaces. Lorgia García Peña wrote this book not from a dream or an abstract theory but from building rebel communities for over a decade. She knows that there can be no free education without freedom.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination"Community as Rebellion is a powerhouse of a manifesto that tells the truth about structural violence in academia and invites us to do the hard work of dismantling white supremacy as we learn, teach and labor within oppressive institutions. By breaking the code of silence that upholds the university’s racism, colonialism, elitism and sexism, Lorgia Garcìa Peña creates much needed space for marginalized communities to disrupt and transform the politics and praxis of knowledge production. A love letter to ethnic studies and a roadmap for enacting change, this is the book so many of us have been waiting for."— Crystal M. Fleming, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, SUNY Stony BrookTable of ContentsTable of Contents:1. On being “the One”: The first chapter relates the challenges of being tokenized within the academy as a women of color scholar. The chapter provides personal examples and posits a proposition to contrast the individualistic model of success with one of community.2. Complicity: This chapter lays out what the author considers a structure of complicity that sustains unequal labor practices that systematically affect women of color. Based on a series of interviews and autoethnographic interventions, the chapter takes on tenure, labor appropriation, mentoring as some of the main sites of complicity. 3. Freedom: This chapter proposes teaching as an act of freedom making and offers practical examples of how to teach in/for freedom, how to create communities that promote collective learning and engage in justice-making practices in the classroom that can lead to long-term positive changes in our society.4. Ethnic Studies as Rebellion: This final chapter meditates on ethnic studies as a critical site from which to fight against the hegemonic practices of exclusion that uphold Eurocentric and Euro-American knowledge as the only way to see the world while relegating knowledge that comes from everywhere else to the periphery. The chapter is an invitation to rebel through centering subjugated knowledge and the epistemologies of oppressed peoples.

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Book SynopsisDiamond Sharp’s Super Sad Black Girl is a love letter to her hometown of Chicago, where the speaker finds solace and community with her literary idols in hopes of answering the question: What does it look like when Black women are free? Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks appear throughout these poems, counseling the speaker as she navigates her own depression and exploratory questions about the “Other Side,” as do Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, and other Black women who have been murdered by police. Sharp’s poetry is self-assured, playful, and imaginative, reminiscent of Langston Hughes with its precision and brevity. The book explores purgatorial, in-between spaces that the speaker occupies as she struggles to find a place and time where she can live safely and freely. With her skillful use of repetition, particularly in her series of concrete poems, lines and voices echo across the book so the reader, too, feels suspended within Sharp’s lyric moments. Super Sad Black Girl is a compassionate and ethereal depiction of mental illness from a promising and powerful poet.Trade Review“I’ve never read a collection of writing—poetry or otherwise—that spoke so clearly to what it feels like to live with a bipolar brain. Diamond Sharp has done what has often felt like the impossible: she has translated what so many of us have experienced into something so jaw droppingly familiar and achingly beautiful that you can’t escape the truth of it. More than just merely “feeling seen,” this collection made me feel heard and held and understood. Sharp is a master of her craft and this book is a testimony and a song.” —Bassey Ikpi, author of I’m Telling the Truth but I’m Lying “Deeply interior, alarmingly vivid, and full of dreamlike lyricism, this singular debut invites a reclamation of confessionalism for Black girls living—trying to live—today. Armed with Gwendolyn’s deceptive simplicity and some Henny and anchored by Sharp’s musical, crystalline voice and the subtle comedy of truth, Super Sad Black Girl is a wholly original collection that begs to be read, felt, and read again.” —Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro “Diamond Sharp’s debut work offers the dazzling, taut simplicity of Lucille Clifton with a voice all her own. Here, the poet mines the interiority of a Black woman perpetually in flight while living with bipolar disorder, flitting smartly between mania, psychosis, stability, social exile and belonging. With Sharp’s stunningly controlled meditation on Black women’s abiding fugitivity while in conversation with Chicago luminaries Hansberry, Brooks, and Walker, as well as Black women slain at the hands of police, Super Sad Black Girl offers the notion that maybe the freest place for Black women is not a definitive physical plane but in the company of one another.” —Erika Dickerson-Despenza, playwright, educator, and organizer “Although Sharp has an extensive background in music criticism, there’s little doubt that poetry is her raison d’être. Her poems are funny, unpretentious, and profoundly self- accepting.” —M.T. Richards, Chicago Magazine

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Book Synopsis“Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard.” —Claudia Tate, from the introductionLong out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century. Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art.Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.Trade Review“Black Women Writers at Work features conversations with 14 Black writers from across the bounds of literary form. Tate pulls together Black women playwrights, novels, poets, and essayists to compile one of the most textured collections in the 20th century. Writers like Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, and Toni Morrison share space under one cover thanks to Tate’s editorial creativity. Black Women Writers at Work joins works like The Black Woman, Homegirls, and But Some of Us Are Brave as a landmark Black feminist text featuring the words of some of the most notable literary figures in the tradition.” —Baltimore Beat“When this classic collection was published in 1984, the writers Claudia Tate interviewed were engaged in the creative work that produced new Black feminist terrains. Today Black Women Writers at Work serves as a much-needed reminder that the imagination always blazes trails that lead us toward more habitable futures.”—Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom is a Constant Struggle”This is a gorgeous and essential collection of writings from a group of the most important Black women writers. I have turned to repeatedly over the past thirty years and I'm thrilled that Haymarket has republished it for another generation to treasure.”—Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine”[A] rare, rich source books for writers, readers, teachers, students—all who care about literature and the creation of it... This collection transcends its genre. It becomes a harbinger book, a book of revelation, of haunting challenge, opening on to central concerns not only of writing, but of life, of living, today.” —Tillie Olson, from the Foreword “Tate’s probing, provocative and insightful questions set a new standard for the interview as a genre.”—Valerie Smith, Princeton University

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Book SynopsisA collection of love poems addressed to an adverb, Anon meditates on the temporal “at once” between desire and language. From the playful verses of Slovenia's Tomaž Šalamun to the brushstrokes of an Edo period painting, Two Gibbons Reaching for the Moon by Japan's Ito Jakuchu, a character for the displaced Beloved emerges in this tapestry of time and art across borders. In Anon, the Beloved reflects: How might translating a human experience, from one language to the next, be an act of longing for the anonymous Other? Or how might this longing for beauty, and the wordless face, heal us both? How might Eros, in exile, respond? With these questions, Vietnam's Mekong delta becomes the book's central force. Endangered gibbons swing from the ruins of ecocide, and each image―rose, ape, and river―weaves itself into an undercurrent of postcolonial time.

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Book SynopsisThe third in the Girls Guide to the World series, Asian Girls are Going Places is a gift book with a difference: it features practical advice (and more) from author Michelle Law and her interviewees that specifically targets the joys, fears and obligations unique to Asian women travelling the world.Separated into chapters that deal with solo travel, family travel, the best places to celebrate Lunar New Year, where to find good Asian food around the globe, romance or relationships, safety and privilege, the sage and entertaining advice is all told through Michelle’s signature offbeat, comedic style, and accompanied by eye-popping illustrations and design.It’s a book that’s at once cool and collected, yet not afraid to take on the weird, funny and, at times, gross aspects of travel. But you don't need to have any concrete travel plans to get a lot out of this book. Each chapter includes anecdotes from Michelle, interviews with other experienced Asian female travellers, handy lists, stunning illustrations by Hong Kong artist Joey Leung Kay-yin, and comes with a page of beautiful stickers, making it either an impressive gift to be treasured at home or a luxurious ‘treat yourself’ item that can be read on the go.Asian Girls are Going Places is a handy, laugh-out-loud and deeply relatable travel companion for Asian women that will be at the top of their packing list.

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Book SynopsisWhile searching for the origins of Canada’s most famous fried dish, journalist Justin Giovannetti Lamothe finds a reflection not only of the country’s intricate history, but also of his own neglected cultural roots.The recipe is deceptively simple—fried potatoes, cheese curds, gravy—but the story behind it is as rich and complex as Canada itself. Poutine is the closest thing we have to a national dish. As its popularity has spread across the country and beyond, it has become what the baguette is to France: a kind of national symbol, as immediately Canadian as the toque, beaver or hockey puck.Yet the odd, winding history of poutine has never been written—until now. Following lore about the dish’s rise from the road-side chip wagons of rural Quebec, award-winning journalist Justin Giovannetti Lamothe tells a story that mirrors the growth of modern Canada and the shifting cultural gap between La Belle Province and its English-speaking neighbours.As the son of an anglophone mother and a francophone father, Giovannetti Lamothe is perfectly suited to the task: much of his childhood was spent on the outskirts of Trois-Rivières, a stone’s throw from the region where—according to local lore—poutine was invented sometime in the 1950s or ’60s. As he tracks poutine’s origins and wanderings, he also reveals the evolving nature of his relationship to his father and, with this, to the Québécois heritage he once drifted away from.After reading the delectable Poutine, you’ll never see—or taste—this humbly famous food in quite the same way again.

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Book Synopsis'Race Is Everything' looks at ideas of 'racial science' in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, and how art was influenced by it. It looks at race in general, but with a particular concentration on attitudes towards and representations of people of African and Jewish descent. David Bindman argues that behind all racial ideas is the belief that outward appearance, and especially skull-shape, can be correlated with inner character and intelligence, and that these could be used to create a seemingly scientific hierarchy of races. The book considers many aspects, including the skull as a racial marker; ancient Egypt as a precedent for Southern slavery; Darwin, race and aesthetics; the 'Mediterranean race'; the visual aspects of eugenics; and the racial politics of Emil Nolde.

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Book SynopsisAs the call for a new understanding of our national history gets louder, this book turns the received imperial story of Britain on its head. Britain's Empire recounts the long overlooked narrative of the resisters, revolutionaries and revolters who stood up to the might of the Empire. Richard Gott recounts the Britain's misdeeds from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the Indian Mutiny, spanning the globe from Ireland to Australia, telling a story of almost continuous colonialist violence. Recounting events from the perspective of the colonized, Gott unearths the all-but-forgotten stories excluded from mainstream British histories.Trade ReviewVivid and startling ... Gott's achievement is to show, as no historian has done before, that violence was a central, constant and ubiquitous part of the making and keeping of the British Empire * Guardian *His message is stark but Gott is never shrill. He writes as a scholar, not an accuser. * Red Pepper *A tour de force. * History Today *A welcome, even necessary, corrective. * the Independent *Stimulating, inspirational and much needed. * Morning Star *Pungent and provocative ... a rich compendium of revolt * Scotland on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisIn the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter the call for the abolition of the police became a central demand for the movement. In this extraordinary, revelatory memoir, Derecka Purnell recounts her own path towards abolitionism. Her story starts in St. Louis, where she was often unhoused and experienced food insecurity, and where calling 911 was often the only option in a crisis. She describes her political awakening and activism through watching the aftermaths of events including Hurricane Katrina, the murder of Trayvon Martin and the uprising in her hometown of Ferguson following the death of Michael Brown. Through Harvard Law School she comes to see that that solution can be found not just in the debate on better policing but the end of the policing itself. Through her own story she makes a powerful, passionate argument for rethinking a fair, equal society where there is no place for state violence and racial repression. Purnell confronts the history of police as a means to capture runaway slaves and uphold white supremacy, to the over-policing and murder of Black people in today's cities. She argues that the police are doing exactly what they were created to do and, in response, imagines new systems that work to address the root causes of violence instead. A revolutionary book about the hope for freedom, Becoming Abolitionists will inspire readers to imagine and create new communities that can guarantee safety, equality, and real justice for all.Trade ReviewAt once specific and sweeping, practical and visionary, Becoming Abolitionists is a triumph of political imagination and a tremendous gift to all movements struggling towards liberation. Do not miss its brilliance! -- Naomi Klein, author of This Changes EverythingWith deep insight and moral clarity, Purnell shares her compelling journey of political education and personal transformation, inviting us not only to imagine a world without police, but to muster the courage to fight for the more just world we know is possible. Becoming Abolitionists is essential reading for our times. -- Michelle Alexander, bestselling author of The New Jim CrowOne of the most perceptive and passionate thinkers of any generation, Derecka Purnell, has written a genuinely revolutionary text for our times-one that resists easy answers or solutions and never shies from the hard questions. She proves that abolition is not an event or a utopian dream state, but rather a journey of assembly struggling to create new worlds of freedom as we fight the unfree world we inhabit. Beautifully written, passionate, honest, Becoming Abolitionists charts a journey we all must take if we plan to survive, let alone live together. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom DreamsA vital resource for anyone committed to the struggle for social justice, written by one of the sharpest and most inspiring voices to emerge in a generation. Taking readers on a journey from her childhood in St. Louis to the protests in Ferguson, the halls of Harvard, the streets of Soweto and beyond, Derecka Purnell's heart-rendering analysis gives us the tools to envision a new society with endless possibilities. Even more, Purnell's extraordinary blend of personal memoir, history, and critical theory provides a roadmap to build a safer and more just world. Like the Autobiography of Angela Davis, Becoming Abolitionists is sure to remain an essential text for decades to come. -- Elizabeth Hinton, author of America on Fire and From the War on Poverty to the War on CrimePurnell is undoubtedly one of the most important writers and activists of our generation, offering us a vivid, moving and compelling book for anyone interested in one of the most urgent issues of our times. Purnell weaves experiences of racism and resistance to articulate a blistering critique of racial capitalism, state power and imperialism, taking readers on a journey towards the radical alternatives to police and prisons which have shaped Black political movements in the 21st century -- Adam Elliott-Cooper, author of Black Resistance to British PolicingDerecka Purnell has one of the most exciting minds of a generation, and Becoming Abolitionists gives us all an excuse to praise her. This book is an explosion of deep intellect matched with great love, showing a journey toward radical politics that embraces the messiness. Derecka does not expect we all wake up and become abolitionists immediately--it didn't happen that way for her--but by showing both her intellectual and emotional path toward abolitionist thinking, she provides a roadmap that is also compassionate to those moving in a slower lane. But with an argument rooted in history, criticism guided by deep care, and writing that pulses with urgency, Becoming Abolitionists will convince you that is exactly what we all need to do before you even put the book down. -- Mychal Denzel Smith, author of Invisible Man Got The Whole World WatchingBecoming Abolitionists brilliantly lays out the connections between policing and other forms of oppression and shows why even well-meaning "reforms" won't get us where we need to go. This profound, urgent, beautiful, and necessary book is an invitation to imagine and organize for a less violent and more liberatory world. Everyone should read it. -- Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist but We’ll Miss It When It’s GoneA beautiful invitation to understand what is possible if we commit to unlearning our dependence on police and address the underlying injustices that cause harm in our communities. This is the book we have been waiting for and knew we needed to advance abolitionist efforts. Purnell is the abolitionist writer of her generation -- Bettina Love, author of Abolitionist TeachingPart memoir & part manifesto for our times. Beautifully written, the book takes the reader on a personal journey from the Midwest to South Africa with a pit stop in New England. As a member of the 'Trayvon Generation,' Derecka offers us invaluable insights into how young activists are navigating and challenging current injustices. If you've been curious about the modern abolitionist movement, this book is a must read! -- Mariame Kaba, bestselling author of We Do This Til We Free UsArgues convincingly that police departments and prisons are irredeemably implicated in racist ideologies and the perpetuation of violence despite long-standing efforts at reform . . .An informed, provocative, astute consideration of salvific alternatives to contemporary policing and imprisonment * Kirkus Starred Review *[Purnell] draws convincing parallels between the past and the present to demonstrate that today's policing systems are vestiges of this oppressive framework ... even if you disagree with her, you are compelled to listen. -- Nesrine Malik * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisForty years after the defeat of Nazism, and twenty years after the great wave of decolonization, how is it that racism remains a growing phenomenon? What are the special characteristics of contemporary racism? How can it be related to class divisions and to the contradictions of the nation-state? And how far, in turn, does racism today compel us to rethink the relationship between class struggles and nationalism?This book attempts to answer these fundamental questions through a remarkable dialogue between the French philosopher Etienne Balibar and the American historian and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. Each brings to the debate the fruits of over two decades of analytical work, greatly inspired, respectively, by Louis Althusser and Fernand Braudel. Both authors challenge the commonly held notion of racism as a continuation of, or throwback to, the xenophobias of past societies and communities. They analyze it instead as a social relation indissolubly tied to present social structures-the nation-state, the division of labor, and the division between core and periphery-which are themselves constantly being reconstructed. Despite their productive disagreements, Balibar and Wallerstein both emphasize the modernity of racism and the need to understand its relation to contemporary capitalism and class struggle. Above all, their dialogue reveals the forms of present and future social conflict, in a world where the crisis of the nation-state is accompanied by an alarming rise of nationalism and chauvinism.

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Book SynopsisMore than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England's Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. When hundreds of thousands of Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, they brought with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition; and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working-class America and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself. Born Fighting is the first book to chronicle the epic journey of this remarkable ethnic group and the profound but unrecognised role it has played in shaping the social, political and cultural landscape of America from its beginnings through to the present day.Trade ReviewAn extraordinary and ambitious book, written with power and perfect clarity * Scotland Magazine *Powerful stuff . . . an absorbing book * BBC Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine *An entertaining and thought-provoking read * Scottish Field *A comprehensive account of the effect the Scots-Irish had on the American people of today . . . a scholarly work * Scottish Home and Country *Certainly provides some illuminating historical perspectives . . . definitely worth a read * Morning Star *

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Book SynopsisThe subject of race, and exactly what this means, has become more important since 9-11 than ever before. Alana Lentin traces its development through political history right up to modern debates about ethnicity and xenophobia, and considers the implications of a ‘raceless’ and truly multicultural society. Thought-provoking and intelligent, this invaluable resource exposes the earliest roots of racist thought, and reveals how it has tenaciously remained a part of our everyday lives.

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Book SynopsisOxford University has attracted and produced many of the world's most original thinkers over the centuries. It boasts heads of states, academics, writers, actors, scientists, philosophers and many other luminaries among its alumni. On any tour of the University and colleges famous ex-students - Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher - to name a few are often mentioned - but what about its Black scholars? The University has a long but little known history of attracting Black scholars from Africa, the Caribbean, America and even Australia since the matriculation in 1873 of Christian Fredrick Cole, who became the first African to practise in an English court. He was followed by other outstanding personalities: Alain Locke, the 'Father of the Harlem Renaissance' and the first Black scholar to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1907; Kofoworola Moore, the first African woman to graduate from the University in 1935; Eric Williams, the great historian of the Caribbean, who was elected Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Oxford's Black alumni include statesmen, lawyers and teachers. More recently, Oxford-educated African American women have risen to high office in the United States. Students from all parts of Africa, the Caribbean and the Commonwealth have made significant contributions and left lasting legacies in the fields of politics, literature, science and the arts. Uncovering the stories of prominent and lesser-known Black students at Oxford, Pamela Roberts reveals a hitherto undocumented strand in the University's history and its relationship with the wider world.

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Book SynopsisSince the 1980s, austerity, gentrification and structural racism have wreaked havoc on inner-city communities, widening inequality and entrenching poverty. In Terraformed, Joy White offers an insider ethnography of Forest Gate — a neighbourhood in Newham, east London — analysing how these issues affect the black youth of today. Connecting the dots between music, politics and the built environment, it centres the lived experiences of black youth who have had it all: huge student debt, invisible homelessness, custodial sentences, electronic tagging, surveillance, arrest, ASBOs, issues with health and well-being, and of course, loss. Part ethnography, part memoir, Terraformed contextualises the history of Newham and considers how young black lives are affected by racism, neoliberalism and austerity.Trade Review"Joy’s deep dive into the history of Newham is strengthened through the level of care given to telling the stories of its people. To read Terraformed is to understand the past and present of Black people in Britain, defined by one borough.""Joy White’s radical contextualisation of the hyper-local makes painfully perfect sense of everyday inequalities."

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Book SynopsisIn this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family--the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes--all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life, and love. In the Hospital My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons. No one had the time & our solution to it was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital & I didn't want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale, bad plot, great wifi in the atypical cafe. My mother was in the hospital & she didn't want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn't trust my father to be it. You always forget something, she said, even when I do the list for you. Even then. Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles.Trade ReviewWINNER OF THE A. POULIN, JR. POETRY PRIZE ON NPR BOOKS'S LIST OF 'POERTY TO PAY ATTENTION TO: 2017'S BEST VERSE' ON TRACK FOUR JOURNAL'S LIST OF 'TEN OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED POETRY COLLECTIONS BY PEOPLE OF COLOR IN 2017' "What does Millennial poetry look like? One answer might be this wild debut from Chen Chen. He seems to run at the mouth, free-associating wildly, switching between lingo and 'higher' forms of diction. Nothing's out of bounds or off limits, no culture too 'pop' to find its place in poetry ... nor anything too silly to point the way toward serious aims. And yet this is a deeply serious and moving book about Chinese-American experience, young love, poetry, family, and the family one makes amongst friends." --NPR Books "The collection, as the title itself suggests, is about 'further possibilities,' about revising, reinventing, and reimagining the relational modes we currently have. If we are all tasked with being 'someone 'for' someone else--a son, a friend, a partner, a student, a dear love,' we cannot afford to be complacent or static in the ways that we inhabit and think about those relations. Interdependence is at the heart of Chen's writing, and if we are to survive in these troubled times, we must continue to believe that there really are new ways to find the impossible honey." --Up the Staircase Quarterly "The word 'stanza' means one thing when it refers to a poem: a snippet of text, a line or several. In Italian, it means 'room.' Poet Chen Chen combines those definitions when he writes, thinking: what should be in the room of this poem? In his earlier work, he began to answer that question with pieces that explored his own intersecting identities, parts of himself that other people told him could not exist at once..." --PBS Newshour "Chen Chen refuses to be boxed in or nailed down. He is a poet of Whitman's multitudes and of Langston Hughes's blues, of Dickinson's 'so cold no fire can warm me' and of Michael Palmer's comic interrogation. What unifies the brilliance of When I Grow up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities is a voice desperate to believe that within every one of life's sadnesses there is also hope, meaning, and--if we are willing to laugh at ourselves--humor. This is a book I wish existed when I first began reading poetry. Chen is a poet I'll be reading for the rest of my life." --Jericho Brown "Chen Chen is already one of my favorite poets ever. Funny, absurd, bitter, surreal, always surprising, and deeply in love with this flawed world. I'm in love with this book." --Sherman Alexie "The radioactive spider that bit Chen Chen [isn't that how first books get made?] gave him powers both demonic and divine. The bite transmitted vision, worry, want, memory of China, America's grief, and People magazine, as well as a radical queer critique of the normative. What a gift that bite was--linguistic, erotic, politic and impolitic, idiosyncratic and emphatic. What a blessing and burden to write out of the manifold possibilities of that contact." --Bruce Smith "I so deeply love this poet's imagination where old shoes might walk back up the steps of a house, where one speaker pledges 'allegiance to the already fallen snow' and another says 'Let's put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, // & continue meeting as if we've just been given our names.' In precise and gorgeous language, Chen Chen shows us that the world is strange and bright with ardor. He reminds us of the miracle of the sensual and sensory. This is a book I will return to whenever I forget what a poem can do, whenever I am in need of song or hope. If a peony wrote poems in a human language, I think that these would be his poems. If the rain wrote poems... I mean: this is an important work by an astonishing and vital voice." --Aracelis Girmay

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Book SynopsisIn this third iteration of the classic work The Impacts of Racism on White Americans (1981, 1996), a new generation of scholars make the case that racism often negatively affects Whites themselves, especially during the Trump era. In 1981, Impacts introduced an alternative understanding of racism, arguing that it went beyond white-black and/or inter-race relations. Instead, the book proposed that the problem of race in the U.S. is fundamentally one of white identity and culture and that racism has substantial negative effects on White Americans. This volume advances these propositions through three key areas: (1) Trump-era cultural and institutional racism, bolstered by the use of historical notions of racial hierarchy; (2) institutional and interpersonal racism, which in turn drive individual racist behaviors; and finally, (3) racism’s interactional sequences and how they impact anti-racism efforts. As each chapter author explores an iteration of these racisms, they also explore how racist attitudes produce disadvantage among White Americans. Table of Contents1. Introduction. Impacts of Racism on White Americans in the Age of Trump (Benjamin P. Bowser and Duke W. Austin).- 2. Economy: Racism’s Continuing Costs to Whites: A Second Look (Michael Reich).- 3. Housing: From Segregation to Isolation: White Americans in the Age of Trump (Jacob S. Rugh).- 4. Health: Dying of Whiteness (Jonathan M. Metzl).- 5. Government: Calling on Racism to Run Federal and State Governments (Robert Fantina).- 6. Foreign Policy: A Double-Edged Sword: A History of Racism in U.S. Foreign Policy (Chris Danielson).- 7. Gender: White Women in the Age of Trump (Charlotte Dunham).- 8. Social Psychology: Taking White Racial Emotions Seriously: Revisiting the Cost of Racism to White Americans (Lisa Spanierman and D. Anthony Clark).- 9. Media: Fox News, Racism, and White America in the Age of Trump (Kalemba Kizito).- 10. Sports: Racism and Sports: Fear of a Black Planet (Scott N. Brooks, Stacey M. Flores, and Jorge Ballesteros).- 11. Education: The Impact of Racism on White Teachers (Patricia A. Maloney).- 12. Social Movements: White Responses to Racist and Anti-Racist Movements (Pamela Oliver).- 13. Affirmative Action: Not the Impact of Racism on Whites that Some Assume (Fred L. Pincus).- 14. Summary: Racism’s Impacts on White Americans in the Age of Trump (Benjamin P. Bowser and Duke W. Austin).- 15. Conclusion and Reflections: Impacts of Racism in the Age of Trump (Benjamin P. Bowser and Duke W. Austin).

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Book SynopsisThe Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Vol-1' is an enlightening collection of writings by the renowned polymath Leonardo da Vinci. In this volume, readers are granted a glimpse into the mind of one of history's greatest geniuses as they explore da Vinci's personal notebooks. The book presents a compilation of da Vinci's observations, ideas, sketches, and reflections on a wide range of subjects. From anatomy and engineering to art and philosophy, da Vinci's writings cover an astounding breadth of knowledge and curiosity. Readers are treated to da Vinci's meticulous studies of the human body, his inventive engineering designs, and his musings on the nature of light, perspective, and aesthetics. The volume provides a fascinating window into da Vinci's creative process and the depth of his intellectual pursuits. It is a treasure trove of insights and inspiration for art enthusiasts, scholars, and anyone intrigued by the boundless curiosity and brilliance of Leonardo da Vinci.

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Book SynopsisThe Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Vol-2' is an enlightening collection of writings by the renowned polymath Leonardo da Vinci. The second volume of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks contains a wide range of writings on a variety of topics, including sculpture, architecture, zoology, physiology, medicine, astronomy, geography, naval warfare, swimming, flying machines, mining, music, and more. Leonardo's writings are often accompanied by detailed drawings and diagrams, which provide a fascinating glimpse into his mind and his work. The volume begins with a section on sculpture, in which Leonardo discusses the principles of design and proportion. He also provides detailed instructions on how to create sculptures, including how to model clay, cast bronze, and carve marble. The next section of the volume is devoted to architecture. Leonardo discusses the design of buildings, including churches, palaces, and fortifications. He also provides insights into the principles of engineering and construction.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“This is an original, indispensable, and beautifully poetic book that weaves together stories of migration, placemaking, and activism to show how Mexicans and Puerto Ricans made a home in Grand Rapids. With rich oral histories and archival research in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S., Delia Fernández-Jones has written an insightful and inspiring book that makes a vital contribution to fields of Latino and Midwestern history.”--Felipe Hinojosa, author of Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio"Fernández-Jones draws upon both classic texts of Latina/o history and primary sources to develop this passionate, in-depth historical analysis, which contributes significantly to the scholarly literature on Latino communities in the Midwest and is sure to inspire future research in this area. Anyone interested in Chicana/o or ethnic histories of the US will enjoy this book, which should also become a staple in library collections on Chicana/o studies and ethnic studies. Highly recommended." --ChoiceTable of ContentsINTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: “TRAINED AND TRACTABLE LABOR” CHAPTER 2: “FAMILIES HELPED EACH OTHER” CHAPTER 3: “A GATHERING PLACE” CHAPTER 4: “LATINS WANT PARITY” CHAPTER 5: “NEEDS OF THE COMMUNITY” CHAPTER 6: “TANGLED WITH THE POLICE” CHAPTER 7: "JUSTICE FOR OUR KIDS” EPILOGUE BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Being Brown reads, and feels, like the right book at the right time. The dream of the ‘Brown Democratic Commons’ that drives so much of Lázaro Lima’s thought, and his hope, in this transformative study has never felt so possible, and so impossible, at the same time." * Latino Studies *Table of ContentsOverview Introduction. On Being Brown in the Democratic Commons Part I. A latina for the nation 1. Sonia Sotomayor and “the Latino Question” 2. Sonia Sotomayor’s Elusive Embrace Part II. Losing Sonia Sotomayor 3. Sonia Sotomayor, the Mediapheme 4. Sonia Sotomayor and Other States of Debt Coda. Thinking Otherwise: Sonia Sotomayor and the Emergence of Latino Legal Thought Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards""Shortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa Society""Shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History""One of Whoopi Goldberg's Favorite Things, ABC The View""New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice""Chicago Tribune writer John Warner's Book That Will Help You Better Understand the Messed-Up Nature of the World""One of The Undefeated's 25 Can't Miss Books of 2019""One of The Progressive's Favorite Books of 2019""One of LitHub's 50 Favorite Books of the Year""One of Inside Higher Ed's Books to Give the Educator in Your Life for the Holidays"

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Book SynopsisExamines how school curriculum-based representations of Dominican identity navigate black racial identity, its relatedness to Haiti, and the culturally entrenched pejorative image of the Haitian Other in Dominican society.Trade ReviewExamining the concept of race within the Dominican national rhetoric through the analysis of textbooks, Wigginton and Middleton offer an appropriate and rational interpretation of Dominican textbooks in public schools that is easy to follow and provides clear examples of racialist inculcation."" - Dawn F. Stinchcomb, author of The Development of Literary Blackness in the Dominican Republic""Through their examination of textbooks, Wigginton and Middleton reveal a shift taking place in the Dominican Republic surrounding ideas of blackness. They provide a rich example and show how blackness continues to be reconsidered in the Dominican Republic, reconstructing a sense of being Afro-Dominican."" - Kimberly Eison Simmons, author of Reconstructing Racial Identity and the African Past in the Dominican Republic

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Book SynopsisThe concluding volume in a poetic trilogy, Alexis Pauline Gumbs''s Dub: Finding Ceremony takes inspiration from theorist Sylvia Wynter, dub poetry, and ocean life to offer a catalog of possible methods for remembering, healing, listening, and living otherwise. In these prose poems, Gumbs channels the voices of her ancestors, including whales, coral, and oceanic bacteria, to tell stories of diaspora, indigeneity, migration, blackness, genius, mothering, grief, and harm. Tracing the origins of colonialism, genocide, and slavery as they converge in Black feminist practice, Gumbs explores the potential for the poetic and narrative undoing of the knowledge that underpins the concept of Western humanity. Throughout, she reminds us that dominant modes of being human and the oppression those modes create can be challenged, and that it is possible to make ourselves and our planet anew.Trade Review“Grounded in oríkì-like references to Sylvia Wynter’s oeuvre, Dub simultaneously contracts and expands to create a new form of proprioception, which allows us as a species, phantomed by the corrosive and lacerating actions of history, to locate ourselves in relation to other species, as well as within the time-space continuum of the yet to be, the now and the ‘past.’ Part prayer, oration, exhortation, commentary and story, Dub amplifies ancestral voices to become mythopoesis in the making.” -- M. NourbeSe Philip, author of * Zong! *“Offering a sweeping, thoughtful, and exquisite meditation on Sylvia Wynter's work, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's poetic engagement represents a new and unique way of encountering and paying homage to Black feminist theory and Black feminist theorists. A beautiful and graceful text, Dub will inspire readers to return to and to rethink Wynter's work and her place within African Diaspora studies, Caribbean studies, and Black feminist studies.” -- Lisa B. Thompson, author of * Single Black Female *"Breath is an important theme in Dub. As is gratitude in the face of environmental decline. Because our ancestors navigated so intimately through change, Gumbs sets out to prove, so can we. . . . [An] exquisitely rendered love letter. . . ." -- Ashia Ajani * Sierra *"People throw around terms like Genius and Magic frequently but if you open this book, flip to any passage, and don’t feel moved from your soul then I will assume that you don’t have one. 5 Stars aren't enough for this sacred text but it's all we got so . . . ." -- Adrien Julious * Authentically Adrien blog *"I am so grateful that Alexis Pauline Gumbs listens to Black women writers and scholars the way that she does. . . . Dub is a book of our now. As tends to be the case with the books that Gumbs summons, the timing of Dub is prescient. With our breathless global attention set to registering the various way a virus connects all life forms, I cannot think of a better time for a book that tarries with and makes ceremony with Sylvia Wynter." -- Tiffany Lethabo King * Antipode *"[G]round-breaking. . . . Gumbs’s trilogy embraces the lyric beauty in the acts of naming, remembering, and finding one’s way back to the source. . . . Reading Gumbs’s books feels like reading an archive that will someday, who knows maybe even someday soon, usher in an era of radical transformation." -- Kathryn Nuernberger * West Branch *“Both a gathering and a recovery, this last pivotal volume in a trilogy commits to a new poetics. . . . Dub wakes us concussively. Both wrenching and playful, it offers instructions (two sets of them), warnings, and its central bid to listen to the undrowned.” -- Susan McCabe * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsA Note ix Request 1 Commitment 3 Instructions 5 Opening 7 Whale Chorus 15 Remembering 21 Nunánuk 34 Boda 40 Anguilla 47 Another Set of Instructions 66 Red August 74 Relation 92 Prophet 94 And 110 Skin 114 Losing it All 120 It's Your Father 126 Edict 145 Edgegrove 153 Unlearning Herself 163 Birth Chorus 177 Conditions 194 Jamaica 199 Blood Chorus 202 Shop 214 Orchard 220 Cycle 227 Saving the Planet 231 Staying 239 Letting Go 246 Acknowledgments 253 Notes 261 Crate Dig 273

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Book SynopsisIn The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices—inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role playedTrade Review“Emily J. Lordi’s The Meaning of Soul will likely be the most important book I'll read this decade. Lordi reminds us that to hear soul, one must actively listen to the winding ways of black folk. Lordi is the greatest listener this nation has created, and this book will remind us that liberation starts with black sound.” -- Kiese Laymon“An exquisite work of sound scholarship, The Meaning of Soul offers a new narrative of soul music that compels us to rethink what we have missed about the genre and the political moment it inhabited. It at last articulates a usable, inclusive definition of soul, filling a critical gap in our understanding of black music and sociopolitical experiences in the United States and across the diaspora." -- Zandria F. Robinson“Emily J. Lordi incisively and insightfully takes up the daunting task of resurrecting, dissecting, and disentangling soul’s wide-ranging legacy, spillage, and overlap in black popular culture, black academia, and radical black politics. Her generation-leaping contrasts of the soul and ‘post-soul’ era’s most spiritualized and radicalized avatars from James Brown to Beyoncé serve up poignant and often piquant musicological reveals about classic, epochal recordings of Civil Rights-era and contemporary vintage. Lordi illuminates the evolutionary artistry that ensures the poetics, production, and ethos of soul kulcha sustain staying power as a haunted (and hainted) arbiter of black resilience, resistance, and embattled maroon futurism. With wit, detail, and ruminative verve Lordi narrates and interrogates how the journey of the soul meme’s movements within musical blackness navigates a crossroads full of split desire for both incendiary grassroots action and an infinity of intimate release.” -- Greg Tate"Lordi’s distinct takes on the genre are refreshing, built on close listening to artists like Riperton and Donny Hathaway and explorations of albums that reside outside the soul canon." * Kirkus Reviews *"The Meaning of Soul is a thoughtful, lively journey through rich musical archives that expands the definition of what it means to be a soul artist." -- Rachel Jagareski * Foreword Reviews *"Lordi vividly illustrates that soul artists offer models of black resistance, joy, and community through their songs. This is a must-read for musicologists, critics, and fans of soul." (Starred Review) * Publishers Weekly *"Lordi’s book is essential reading, for she brilliantly guides us to reconsider the meaning of soul and to redefine it." -- Henry Carrigan * No Depression *"A strong choice for libraries supporting African American studies or popular American music programs." -- Jeffrey Hastings * Library Journal *"Detailing not only the evolution of the genre but of the criticism surrounding it, The Meaning Of Soul is a heartfelt appreciation as well as a welcome addition to the scholarly soul canon." -- Michael A Gonzales * The Wire *"Few cultural theorists listen to music this well or joyfully; few critics place their judgments and pleasures within as persuasive a theoretical framework." -- Keith Harris * CityPages *"With welcoming prose that belies its density, The Meaning of Soul focuses on ostensibly unconventional creative choices: soul singers’ covers of songs written by white artists; ad-libs, improvisations, and mistakes; the uses of falsetto and the 'false endings' that trickle throughout the oeuvres of many Black artists. She is attentive to the significant contributions of the female architects of the genre. . . . Lordi gives a deft, concise accounting of soul music’s political and social milieu." -- Danielle A. Jackson * Bookforum *“Meaning of Soul is a needed corrective, challenging how scholarship and much of popular culture remembers the soul music era. Lordi refuses descriptions of the era that only allow its brightest stars and biggest names full consideration.... Her work serves as an exemplar for inclusive genre analysis that makes room for musical possibility.” -- Fredara Mareva Hadley * Journal of Musicological Research *"Lordi’s love for soul music, vibrant writing, and analytical acumen coalesce in a book that is difficult to put down. Readers are unlikely to hear soul music the same way ever again. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers." -- S. Graham * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Keeping On 1 1. From Soul to Post-soul: A Literary and Musical History 19 2. We Shall Overcome, Shelter, and Veil: Soul Covers 46 3. Rescripted Relations: Soul Ad-libs 74 4. Emergent Interiors: Soul Falsettos 101 5. Never Catch Me: False Endings from Soul to Post-soul 126 Conclusion. "I'm Tired of Marvin Asking Me What's Going On": Soul Legacies and the Work of Afropresentism 150 Notes 165 Index 205

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Book SynopsisContributions by Lisa Abney, Patricia Anderson, Albert Camp, Katie Carmichael, Christina Schoux Casey, Nathalie Dajko, Jeffery U. Darensbourg, Dorian Dorado, Connie Eble, Daniel W. Hieber, David Kaufman, Geoffrey Kimball, Thomas A. Klingler, Bertney Langley, Linda Langley, Shane Lief, Tamara Lindner, Judith M. Maxwell, Rafael Orozco, Allison Truitt, Shana Walton, and Robin WhiteLouisiana is often presented as a bastion of French culture and language in an otherwise English environment. The continued presence of French in south Louisiana and the struggle against the language's demise have given the state an aura of exoticism and at the same time have strained serious focus on that language. Historically, however, the state has always boasted a multicultural, polyglot population. From the scores of indigenous languages used at the time of European contact to the importation of African and European languages during the colonial period to the modern invasion of English and th

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Book SynopsisA product of twenty-five years of archival and primary research, this volume narrates the efforts of three generations of Japanese Americans to reach home' through musicking. Emphasizing the notion of national identity and belonging, the book provokes a discussion about the challenges of nation-building in a democratic society.Trade ReviewBringing together decades of interviews and original archival work, Sounding Our Way Home is the first book to provide a true overview of the full range of the Japanese American musical experience." - W. Anthony Sheppard, author of Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination "In Sounding Our Way Home, Susan Miyo Asai weaves together historical and musical analysis, spotlighting the achievements of individual musicians within a broader narrative of Japanese American musicking across generations. This book is an admirable and important contribution to Asian American studies and music history." - Grace Wang, associate professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis

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Book SynopsisArgues that a commitment to diversity is frequently substituted for a commitment to actual change. This title traces the work that diversity does, examining how the term is used and the way it serves to make questions about racism seem impertinent.Trade Review“Ahmed’s book is not a how-to guide to ‘what works.’ But On Being Included would be an excellent choice for a faculty-staff reading group about social justice in the academy, because Ahmed provides a rich resource for serious rethinking: ‘My aim is not to suggest that we should stop doing diversity, but that we need to keep asking what we are doing.’” - Meryl Altman, Academe“For those of us interested in diversity work, Ahmed’s On Being Included provides a novel way of thinking about diversity. In her readings of institutional documents interwoven with the voices of diversity workers, Ahmed cautions us to think about diversity as a tool deployed to further crystallize institutionally sanctioned racist practices that recede to the background of everyday life.” - Andres Castro Samayoa, Somatechnics“[A] unique account of diversity as an institutional practice and also of what people do and feel when they do not quite fit the norms of an institution orare ‘out of place’. Ahmed captures the experience of diversity in liberal institutions through the image of a coming up against a brick wall and an important part of this book is the ‘physical and emotional’ labour of confronting that wall.” - Karim Murji, Ethnic and Racial Studies“Regardless of positionality and lived experiences, this text is engaging both intellectually and emotionally. Ahmed’s unflinching candor compels reflection and tough (hopefully productive) conversations far more effectively than a conventional ‘diversity document’. This is a text that moves to confront and change the status quo.” - Corin de Freitas and Alex Pysklywec, Society and Space, Environment and Planning D“Despite having read widely within the field of diversity and higher education, it is rare for a book to so powerfully call to mind my own identities as did this one. . . . This work is most appropriate for an educational anthropology course or unit focused on applied work within higher education. . . . It would also be useful for researchers looking for a new theoretical approach to how discourse and documents perform within institutions or, more provocatively, how they fail to do so.” - Lauren Miller Griffith, Anthropology and Education Quarterly"Just when you think everything that could possibly be said about diversity in higher education has been said, Sara Ahmed comes along with this startlingly original, deeply engaging ethnography of diversity work. On Being Included is an insightful, smart reflection on the embodied, profoundly political phenomenology of doing and performing diversity in predominantly white institutions. As Ahmed queers even the most mundane formulations of diversity, she creates one eureka moment after another. I could not put this book down. It is a must-read for everyone committed to antiracist, feminist work as key to institutional transformation in higher education."—Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity"Sara Ahmed's sensitive and respectful analysis of the complexities faced by diversity workers in higher education institutions arrives at a moment when we urgently need ways to rethink institutional dynamics and the animating effects of policy regimes and processes. This is a vital book: vital as a compass guiding the eye, heart, and mind to the knowledge that can emerge from the labor of institutional transformation, and vital in the sense of being life-giving to those involved in the process."—Gail Lewis, coauthor of Citizenship: Personal Lives and Social Policy"There are no other books of this caliber examining the institutional culture of diversity in higher education. Sara Ahmed not only offers a rigorous empirical study of how diversity operates in the real world; she also develops a brilliant theoretical framework exploring the affective reproduction of inequality. At the same time, as a black feminist, she draws on her own embodiment of difference and experience as a diversity practitioner."—Heidi Safia Mirza, author of Race, Gender and Educational Desire: Why Black Women Succeed and Fail“Ahmed’s book is not a how-to guide to ‘what works.’ But On Being Included would be an excellent choice for a faculty-staff reading group about social justice in the academy, because Ahmed provides a rich resource for serious rethinking: ‘My aim is not to suggest that we should stop doing diversity, but that we need to keep asking what we are doing.’” -- Meryl Altman * Academe *“Regardless of positionality and lived experiences, this text is engaging both intellectually and emotionally. Ahmed’s unflinching candor compels reflection and tough (hopefully productive) conversations far more effectively than a conventional ‘diversity document’. This is a text that moves to confront and change the status quo.” -- Corin de Freitas and Alex Pysklywec * Environment and Planning D *“[T]he book links deeply theoretical questioning to personal experience, empirical findings in interviews, informal discussions and engaged participant observation. It provides the reader with many insights, some created within different varieties of collective intellectual labor that are referred to as discussions in a seminar, meeting or informal talk, that nourish the quest for reading that is simultaneously compelling and delightful. In its combination of theory and practice, the book offers food for thought to theorists and practitioners alike.” -- Anitta Kynsilehto * International Feminist Journal of Politics *“On Being Included is one of those books that took over my life. It seemed like, for a while, I inserted this text into just about every conversation I had. ‘Oh, that’s similar to what Sara Ahmed talks about when she says … ‘ Maybe it’s because I want people to associate me with this brilliant author! It’s also partially because this book is really smart about dealing with the ways that terms–specifically, diversity–are taken up within the institution (and she does a neat job of thinking through what institution means) and used to obscure particular kinds of work.” -- Erin Frost * Theorizing Feminist Apparency blog *“On Being Included does an excellent job of bringing to life, in highly perceptive ways, the experience of doing diversity work. As ethnography, its strength indeed may lie in bracketing other times and places. However, the resonance with other documented experiences in Britain and Australia contributes to the book’s value in offering not just a picture of diversity politics but a vivid account of the persistent features of contemporary organisational life when faced with projects seeking change.” -- Davina Cooper * British Journal of Educational Studies *“Drawing from interviews and informal conversations with higher education diversity practitioners across the United Kingdom and Australia, scholar Sara Ahmed has crafted a keen meditation on the meaning of diversity in higher education and its implications for inclusion.... Focusing on what practitioners can learn about institutions as they work to transform them, her book will be of interest to anyone seeking to promote greater inclusion at their institution.” * On Campus with Women *“This book offers a grounded and open exploration of what it means to ‘do’ diversity, to ‘be’ diverse. It challenges the reader, both in style and in content, to reconsider relations of power that stick to the multiple practices, meanings, and understandings of diversity, and to reconsider how we engage, reproduce, and disrupt these relations.” -- Juliane Collard and Carolyn Prouse * Gender, Place & Culture *“A key finding in Ahmed’s rich analysis of race relations is how diversity policies can become a mechanism for preserving whiteness. . . . Above all, Ahmed’s corpus of work on race and cultural studies continues to remind us that race is a ‘sticky sign’. . . . The wonder of Ahmed’s book is that it allows us insight into some of the more ephemeral ways whiteness, privilege and institutional discrimination come to operate as normative.” -- Anoop Nayak * British Journal of Sociology of Education *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. On Arrival 1 1. Institutional Life 19 2. The Language of Diversity 51 3. Equality and Performance Culture 83 4. Commitment as a Non-performative 113 5. Speaking about Racism 141 Conclusion. A Phenomenological Practice 173 Notes 191 References 221 Index 235

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The staying power of this book is how it models a way to think outside accumulated disasters as discrete events, how to use ethnography to render life under a constant state of precarity and violence. Khayyat’s approach, ethnographic sensitivity, and relentless focus on “living with” rather than “living despite” scale up and apply broadly to accumulated crisis in both other locales and on a planetary scale." * International Journal of Middle East Studies *"A Landscape of War is a rich and daring ethnography. Ethically and politically committed to honoring the terms through which her interlocutors understand their vital and lethal environments, Khayyat conceptualizes war as a place of life and reclaims resistance as political action, highlighting its ordinary and relational nature. . . . a powerful and necessary meditation on the domesticity of war: war as something that is managed and that can be (to a certain extent) tamed, as well as a space that is inhabited, that bitterly becomes home." * Current Anthropology *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Prelude: Warlight Acknowledgments Note on Language and the Text Introduction: War, from the South 1. A Brief History of War in South Lebanon 2. Battle/field 3. The Bitter Crop 4. How to Live (and Die) in an Explosive Landscape 5. Maskun, or Nature’s Resistance 6. The Gray Zone Conclusion: Life as War Coda: A Marriage in Galilee Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisShowing how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist, Sara Ahmed highlights the ties between feminist theory and living a life that sustains it by building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship and discussing the figure of the feminist killjoy.Trade Review"Fans of bell hooks and Audre Lorde will find Ahmed's frequent homages and references familiar and assuring in a work that goes far beyond Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, capturing the intersection so critical in modern feminism." -- Abby Hargreaves * Library Journal *"Living a Feminist Life is perhaps the most accessible and important of Ahmed’s works to date. . . . [A] quite dazzlingly lively, angry and urgent call to arms. . . In short, everybody should read Ahmed’s book precisely because not everybody will." -- Emma Rees * Times Higher Education *"Living a Feminist Life is a work of embodied political theory that defies the conventions of feminist memoir and self-help alike. . . . Living a Feminist Life makes visible the continuous work of feminism, whether it takes place on the streets, in the home, or in the office. Playful yet methodical, the book tries to construct a living feminism that is neither essentialist nor universalist." -- Melissa Gira Grant * Bookforum *"Undeniably, Ahmed’s book is a highly crafted work, both scholarly and lyrically, that builds upon itself and delivers concrete, adaptable conclusions; it is a gorgeous argument, crackling with kind wit and an invitation to the community of feminist killjoys." -- Theodosia Henney * Lambda Literary Review *"Beautifully written and persuasively argued, Living a Feminist Life is not just an instant classic, but an essential read for inter­sectional feminists." -- Ann A. Hamilton * Bitch *"This book is about a wriggling out, a speaking out. And it teaches me to write, to think, like this — word twists word, and body to thought. Because for Ahmed, words make worlds and her book — the first after she left academia in feminist revolt — is full of bluesy world-play." -- Caren Beilin * Full Stop *"Living a Feminist Life is the perfect introduction to Ahmed’s academic work, if a general reader is unfamiliar with her. . . . For me, her lack of despair is the book’s strongest point. Ahmed’s work is as cutting and critical as it is joyful. There is a distinct hope and optimism for the future of diversity work – but still a demand for better." -- Evelyn Deshane * The F-Word *"Ahmed gifts us words that we may have difficulty finding for ourselves.... [R]eading her book provides a tentative vision for a feminist ethics for radical politics that is applicable far beyond what is traditionally considered the domain of feminism." -- Mahvish Ahmad * The New Inquiry *"Anyone at odds with this world—and we all ought to be—owes it to themselves, and to the goal of a better tomorrow, to read this book." -- Mariam Rahmani * Los Angeles Review of Books *"Living a Feminist Life offers something halfway between the immediacy and punch of the blog and the multi-layered considerations of a scholarly essay; the result is one of the most politically engaged, complex and personal books on gender politics we have seen in a while." -- Bidisha * TLS *"Especially compelling is Ahmed’s insistence that living as a feminist is not a sudden, euphoric escape from patriarchy and other structures of domination. Instead, it’s a lifelong project of chipping away at regimes that continue to exert considerable force. To practice feminism is therefore to encounter both frustration and widespread disapproval. It means, Ahmed warns, being seen as selfish, mean, and chronically dissatisfied—the bringer of discord to family dinners and professional meetings alike. For those of us willing to pay the price, Living a Feminist Life assures us we’re in good company." -- Susan Fraiman * Critical Inquiry *"Ahmed ... writes theory like nobody else.... Ahmed’s book is a feminist gift for its readers. You are invited to enjoy it, the rhythm and all." -- Leena-Maija Rossi * European Journal of Women's Studies *"It’s not easy being a feminist and Sara Ahmed has written a powerful, thought provoking and moving account of just what that means. But more than that, she provides us with a survival guide, some coping strategies combined with wisdom and inspiration. To read this book is to feel the warmth and strength of a sister(hood) wrapped around you." -- Heather Savigny * European Journal of Women's Studies *"Ahmed does for her readers what Audre Lorde did for her – document a way to live differently." -- Katherine Parker-Hay * Textual Practice *"[Ahmed's] prose style . . . is incantatory and quizzical, probing and playful. . . . Ahmed holds particular words up to the light and lets their unsuspected facets gleam, polishing their queer potential." -- Catherine Keyser * Public Books *"Living a Feminist Life hopes we can survive doing feminist theory, and energises us to do so." -- Clare Croft * Feminist Theory *“I live in south London, not far from where Sara used to lecture, so her work has always felt close, with an ability to touch and grasp—a quality academic feminist discourse often lacks. This book allows everyone to grasp, wrestle, and digest it, proving yet again that making theory accessible does not have to compromise quality. If anything, it’s quite the opposite.” -- Travis Alabanza * Out *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Bringing Feminist Theory Home 1 Part I. Becoming Feminist 19 1. Feminism Is Sensational 21 2. On Being Directed 43 3. Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity 65 Part II. Diversity Work 4. Trying to Transform 93 5. Being in Question 115 6. Brick Walls 135 Part III. Living the Consequences 7. Fragile Connections 163 8. Feminist Snap 187 9. Lesbian Feminism 213 Conclusion 1. A Killjoy Survival Kit 235 Conclusion 2. A Killjoy Manifesto 251 Notes 269 References 281 Index 291

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMills radically challenges us to reevaluate how we think about social contract theory, the concept of race, and the structure of our political systems. This is a very important book indeed. * teaching philosophy *Mills contends that the ground zero of Western democratic societies is not the mythical social contract that has prevailed among political philosophers but a 'racial contract.' * THE NATION *This book is a testament to Mills's expertise as a philosopher, a scholar, and a downright intelligent writer. * Small Axe *An important and timely reminder of the ways in which a philosophy which ignores race is bound up with the privileging of whiteness. * Women's Philosophy Review *Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION 1. OVERVIEW The Racial Contract is political, moral, and epistemological The Racial Contract is a historical actuality The Racial Contract is an exploitation contract 2. DETAILS The Racial Contract norms (and races) space The Racial Contract norms (and races) the individual The Racial Contract underwrites the modernsocial contract The Racial Contract has to be enforced throughviolence and ideological conditioning 3. "NATURALIZED" MERITS The Racial Contract historically tracks the actual moral/political consciousness of (most) white moral agents The Racial Contract has always been recognized by nonwhites as the real moral/political agreement to be challenged The "Racial Contract" as a theory is explanatorily superior to the raceless social contract

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Book SynopsisIn Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analytical tools for those wishing to develop intersectionality''s capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersectionality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full potential as a critical social theory. She contends that for intersectionality to fully realize its power, its practitioners must critically reflect on its assumptions, epistemologies, and methods. She places intersectionality in dialog with several theoretical traditions—from the Frankfurt school to black feminist thought—to sharpen its definition and foreground its singular critical purchase, thereby providing a capacious interrogation into intersectionality''s potential to reshape the world.Trade Review“With remarkable brilliance and breadth, Patricia Hill Collins examines the theoretical dimensions of intersectionality in new ways and in dialogue with other influential social theories and resistant knowledges. Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory explains why critical social theory matters in the real world and how intersectionality can achieve its potential as a tool for social action needed to transform the world for the better. Once again, Patricia Hill Collins shines as a masterful scholar of critical inquiry, politics, and social change.” -- Dorothy Roberts, author of * Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty *“Anyone who claims the mantle of Black feminist theorist is standing in the house Patricia Hill Collins built. She is one of our most important intellectual architects. Here she continues to be at her very best, asking the thorny questions that those of us who are scholars and practitioners of intersectionality often avoid. Collins reminds us what it looks like to use ideas in service of freedom projects, demanding at every turn that we do it with integrity, rigor, and a critical attention to the high stakes nature of social justice work. This book resets our freedom compass, reminding us both of what our work is and for whom we do it.” -- Brittney Cooper, author of * Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower *"This remarkable monograph expresses the most important facets of the critical lens. . . [and] gives hope that collective social action has the potential to affect democratic change even under conditions of multiple oppressions." -- Anna Amelina & Jana Schäfer * Ethnic and Racial Studies *"Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- I. Ken * Choice *“This book constitutes an extremely valuable resource for students, activists, and scholars who, while having already engaged with foundational texts on the topic, seek to deepen their understanding of intersectionality. Further, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory also opens a door for those who wish to continue the intellectual journey of theorizing intersectionality that Collins eloquently embarks on. -- Miriam Yosef * KULT_online *“This book is more than a mere investigation of the theoretical of methodological aspects of intersectionality.... Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory is a book that cannot be missed by scholars, activists, and students of all disciplines.” -- C. Laura Lovin * Feminist Encounters *“Intersectionality as Critical SocialTheory is required reading for academics, activists and educators working across and between disciplines including feminist studies, philosophy, critical race theory, sociology, and education. Now more than ever, Professor Hill Collins is essential.” -- Adina Giannelli * Gender and Education *“Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory is a dense and exceedingly thoughtful book. Collins is careful and focused, asking hard questions about the nature of social theory and theorizing.” -- Rose M. Brewer * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I. Framing the Issues: Intersectionality and Critical Social Theory 1. Intersectionality as Critical Inquiry 21 2. What's Critical about Critical Social Theory? 54 Part II. How Power Matters: Intersectionality and Intellectual Resistance 3. Intersectionality and Resistant Knowledge Projects 87 4. Intersectionality and Epistemic Resistance 121 Part III. Theorizing Intersectionality: Social Action as a Way of Knowing 5. Intersectionality, Experience, and Community 157 6. Intersectionality and the Question of Freedom 189 Part IV. Sharpening Intersectionality's Critical Edge 7. Relationality within Intersectionality 225 8. Intersectionality without Social Justice? 253 Epilogue. Intersectionality and Social Change 286 Appendix 291 Notes 295 References 331 Notes 353

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Book SynopsisFiery and candid, I Killed Scheherazade is a provocative exploration of what it means to be an 'Arab woman' today.Trade Review'Haddad is a revolutionary, this book is the manifesto. Read it or be left behind.' Rabih Alameddine 'Haddad is a poet who inhabits the storm.' Tahar Ben Jelloun 'In this courageous book Haddad breaks down the taboo of the silent absent Arab woman.' Elfriede Jelinek 'Courageous and illuminating - it opens our eyes, destroys our prejudices and is very entertaining.' Mario Vargas Llosa 'Haddad cannot be intimidated. This book is a lesson of courage for all those who fight to go beyond their own limits and chains.' Roberto Saviano 'A spirited call to arms' New York Times 'A vivid assertion of individuality, free speech, free choice and dignity against religious bigotry, prejudice and the herd instinct both within and outside the Arab world.' Guardian 'Lifts the veil on love and sex' Marie Claire 'Provocative and sensual' Huffington Post 'Beirut's body language pioneer' Washington PostTable of ContentsCONTENTS: TO START WITH - On camels, belly dancing, schizophrenia and other disasters 1 AN ARAB WOMAN READING THE MARQUIS DE SADE 2 AN ARAB WOMAN NOT BELONGING ANYWHERE 3 AN ARAB WOMAN WRITING EROTIC POETRY 4 AN ARAB WOMAN CREATING A MAGAZINE ABOUT THE BODY 5 AN ARAB WOMAN REDEFINING HER WOMANHOOD 6 AN ARAB WOMAN SAYING NO 7 AN ARAB WOMAN FLYING AN AIRPLANE 8 AN ARAB WOMAN SEIZING THE MOMENT 9 AN ARAB WOMAN UNAFRAID OF PROVOKING ALLAH 10 AN ARAB WOMAN TALKING TO HER SON ABOUT SEX TO START again - Am I really an 'Arab Woman'? POST PARTUM - I killed Scheherazade THE MISSING CHAPTER - Attempt at an autobiography

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Book SynopsisThis is not a manifesto against men in general. Nor is it a manifesto against Arab men in particular. It is, however, a howl in the face of a particular species of men: the macho species, Supermen, as they like to envision themselves. But Superman is a lie. In this explosive sequel to I Killed Scheherazade, Joumana Haddad examines the patriarchal system that continues to dominate in the Arab world and beyond. From monotheist religions and the concept of marriage to institutionalised machismo and widespread double standards, Joumana reflects upon the vital need for a new masculinity in these times of revolution and change in the Middle East.Trade Review'A blast of fresh, fiery air - Haddad has produced a vital, topical must-read for all sexes, races and cultures. Her book is a timely and completely unique addition to the commentary surrounding misogynist oppression, religion, politics and social freedom which have ignited commentators, activists and politicians around the world. The revolution and its backlash are not just being fought in the streets, squares and elections across the Middle East, but also on the faces and bodies of millions of Arab women and their sisters across the world. Haddad speaks for all of us. It's time to listen.' Bidisha 'Joumana Haddad, a Lebanese poet and journalist, has written a bold and often very funny polemic on patriarchy in the Arab world.' Lucy Popescu, The IndependentTable of ContentsContents: Once upon a time - 11 Why this book? 17 The poem Lost and found The rant In praise of egoism The narrative Note to the reader How it all started (in general) 23 The poem Beginning again The rant Heads or tails The narrative Genesis, not the way they'd like to think it occurred How it all started (for me) 31 The poem A love metaphor The rant In and out The narrative Close encounters with the second kind The disastrous invention of monotheism 45 The poem Saying grace The rant Why not The narrative Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife nor donkey The disastrous invention of the original sin 61 The poem All over again The rant Politically incorrect questions The narrative The bad, the evil and the ugly The disastrous invention of machismo 73 The poem Think again The rant The macho's rule book The narrative Balls come with a price The disastrous invention of the battle of the sexes 91 The poem I am a woman The rant He says she says The narrative 'Arab Spring', they claim The disastrous invention of chastity 111 The poem Recipe for the insatiable The rant Penis: directions for use The narrative Abandon all innocence ye who enter here The disastrous invention of marriage 125 The poem Still The rant Dynamics of a millenary gaffe The narrative I take thee to be my temporary love The disastrous invention of getting old 145 The poem The artichoke theory The rant So what? The narrative We can all be Peter Pan Their beautiful voices in my head 155 Letter to my sons 163 Happily ever after - 167 Further reading 169 Acknowledgements 171

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Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women''s Studies AssociationWinner, 2021 Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature AssociationWinner, 2021 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ StudiesArgues that Blackness disrupts our essential ideas of race, gender, and, ultimately, the humanRewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the EnlighteTrade ReviewThis is a demanding, complex, and highly significant contribution to the literature on the nature of the moral and philosophical distinctions between human and nonhuman creatures...The implications for theological anthropology are, undoubtedly, shattering. * Literature and Theology *Within Western philosophy, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson shows, Black people historically have been 'animalized.' In examining these limitations of Western philosophy, Becoming Human shows that the fundamental idea of 'humanity' that has gained widespread credence in the West is flawed … Jackson makes an intervention by firmly placing Black literary and visual culture into philosophy. * Public Books *Jackson’s scholarship has been critical to my recent curatorial work. This groundbreaking book considers how Blackness can coincide with notions of the nonhuman and animality through imaginative and emancipatory modes of being, invoking a future that breaches contemporary ideas of humanism through thoughtful research and cultural references that center Black women as a site of origin. * Artforum, "Best of 2021" *Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between Blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism [...] What emerges is a radically unruly sense of a being, knowing, feeling existence: one that necessarily ruptures the foundations of 'the human. * Black Perspectives *Jackson states that real change will require “revolutionizing” the human body, and her prescription for freeing oneself from the limitations of gender and species requires the same “plasticity" by which Blackness and anti-Blackness continue to be defined. * CHOICE *The book presents a compelling argument and offers worthwhile suggestions. I will certainly have my undergraduates wrestle with some of this material in upcoming semesters. * Religions Journal *The sheer beauty, force, and ingenuity of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson's aesthetic strategies and gestures are on display as she performs the very risks and rewards she conjures. Offering a brilliant intervention into questions of the human, each of Jackson’s readings profoundly unsettle our presumed relations and prevailing ontologies. She reads western philosophy and science through African diasporic literatures, theories, and visual art to open us up to what is made—what might be made—in excess of the matrix of antiblackness and its constitutive forms of the human, animal, gender, and matter. In the book’s range of knowledges, reach, and scope, no field nor discipline would not benefit from a real and sustained engagement with the work that Jackson undertakes here. -- Christina Sharpe, author of In the WakeBrilliantly reframes the relation between blackened life and the category of the human, by shifting the terms of the debate. She maintains that neither dehumanization nor exclusion are sufficient to explain antiblackness and its descending scale of life. In so doing, Jackson's ‘ontological plasticity’ reveals the controlled depletion that produces the liquidity of life and fleshly existence, and enables blackened life to be anything, which is also to say nothing at all. Jackson’s rigorous and sustained meditation is relentless in exploring the possibilities for a generative disordering of being, inhabiting other senses of the world, and imagining the field of relation in ceaseless flux and directionless becoming. -- Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

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Book SynopsisExploring how artists at midcentury addressed the social issues of their day—from Jacob Lawrence to Elizabeth Catlett, Rose Piper to Charles White

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Book SynopsisReparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade. Most theorizing about reparations treats it as a social justice project - either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present; or, they focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs. Olúfemi O. Táíwò argues that neither approach is optimal, and advances a different case for reparations - one rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core. This view, which he calls the constructive view of reparations, argues that reparations should be seen as a future-oriented project engaged in building a better social order; and that the costs of building a more equitable world should be distributed more to those who have inherited the moral liabilities of past injustices. This approach to reparations, as Táíwò shows, has deep and surprising roots in the thought of Black political thinkers sTrade ReviewOlúfẹmi Táíwò's Reconsidering Reparations offers a novel, passionate, and compelling account of reparative justice in the contemporary world. Offering a "constructive" theory of reparations, Táíwò combines two pressing moral and political concerns: reparations for historical injustices, and environmental justice for future generations. * Felix Lambrecht, University of Toronto, Ethics *This book takes on the question of reparations for the damage wrought by colonialism and slavery. Drawing on the efforts of anti-colonial activists of the 20th century, Táíwò calls for a constructive approach to reparations to establish a new world order based on justice. * J. M. Rich, CHOICE *Colonialism isn't over. Instead of men in pith helmets, the rich now send pollution, climate catastrophe, development consultants and philanthropists. In this sweeping, subtle and sophisticated analysis, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò presents an iron-clad case for why colonialism's end must coincide with a reparative transformation in relations between the colonizer and colonized, in the Global North and South. It's required reading for anyone looking for the arguments to support a just, and healing, future. * Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and co-author of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice *Weaving together the long-held redistribution demands of revolutionary movements for racial justice and decolonization with the scientific imperative for immediate climate action, Olúf?´&mi Táíwò builds the irresistible case for decarbonization through reparation. Coursing with moral urgency and propelled by brilliant prose, this is more than argument. It's how we build the power needed to win. * Naomi Klein, Author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate *An extremely welcome intervention into the contemporary debate about reparations. * Vanessa Wills, The George Washington University *In this forcefully argued book, Táíwò Olúfẹ̀mi grounds the case for reparations in a sweeping yet synthetic account of the historical origins of our starkly unequal world order. Weaving together multiple traditions of radical thought and attuned to the most pressing debates of our moment, Táíwò reveals reparations to be world-making in two potent senses of the term. As a means of dismantling and transforming Global Racial Empire--necessarily a project planetary in its spatial horizons and internationalist in the scope of its solidarities--reparations are in turn a requirement for saving the earth and human society from the climate crisis. * Thea Riofrancos, author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador *I give my highest recommendation to Táíwò's philosophically rich and important book. * Jennifer M. Page, Radical Philosophy Review *Reconsidering Reparations introduces new intuitions to the usually philosophically stagnant debates of reparations and climate justice. This book will be of interest to scholars and general readers interested in the philosophical justification of progressive politics. Specifically, it can be of great help for those who know that we need to consider the injustices of the past to build a just and livable future. * Josep Recasens, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics *Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Reconsidering World History Chapter 3: The Constructive View Chapter 4: What's Missing Chapter 5: What's Next Chapter 6: The Arc of the Moral Universe Appendix A: The Malê Revolt Appendix B: Colonialism and Climate Vulnerability References

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Book SynopsisBeginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones in North America and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells.Trade Review"Mayor’s book is a fascinating exploration of how Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island held, and still hold, knowledge of fossils. Indigenous peoples observed the remains of enormous creatures found embedded in our land—from dinosaurs to giant buffalo—and integrated these findings into our ways of knowing. Mayor’s coupling of Indigenous stories of legendary beings to specific fossils, bone beds, and species makes this a must-read for anyone who thinks that the wisdom held in Indigenous oral traditions is anything less than science."---Kent Monkman, award-winning Cree visual artist"Mayor the storyteller relishes the opportunity to provide fascinating insights, but she shines most in her ability to stitch together a rich and varied body of oral history grounded in natural history. . . . Mayor clearly thrives at the intersection of science and folklore."---Bryn Nelson, Newsday"Marshaling the array of evidence available from scholarly and popular works, and contributing her own research, Mayor shows that far from ignoring fossils, many Native American groups took great notice of them and developed elaborate myths to explain their origin. . . . Though Mayor is careful not to homogenize native myths, she does note that virtually all of them exhibit a sense of 'deep time,' as geologists call it: an awareness that the world has existed for far longer than humans have walked it."---Eric A. Powell, Archaeology"Fossil Legends of the First Americans presents an interesting, intriguing and informative text, written in a fun, accessible way that will appeal to a wide audience, without scaring off the scientific community. The manner in which fossils legends and Native American tales are dealt with, is as original. . . . Adrienne Mayor has based her book on a substantial amount of relevant, up-to-date and to-the-point research data, and as such commands the reader's indulgence."---C. van Kooten, PaleoArchaeology"Through remarkably wide-ranging research, Mayor has recovered the fascinating story of how various tribes encountered and interpreted dinosaur bones and other remains of early life. . . . [She] illuminates the surprisingly relevant views of early peoples confronting evidence of prehistoric life. . . . This pioneering work replaces cultural estrangement with belated understanding." * Booklist *"Few books have had such an influence on my thinking as Adrienne Mayor’s book on fossil legends of the New World. For one thing, it invites one to ask how anyone can make old stories about old bones both so interesting and so worthwhile. . . . What Mayor has done is astonishing. She has been so thorough that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever writing a more definitive book on her subject. . . . A hundred years from now, this book will surely continue to be read, consulted, and mined for data. I would not want to be a piece of data seeking to escape her attention. . . . Mayor not only shows how these stories cast light on cultural history but also demonstrates repeatedly that they anticipated many of the views of modern scientists."---Paul Barber, Journal of American Folklore

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Book Synopsis"It's time we bring forward Black autistic pain points and celebrate the triumphs of ourselves, family members, and organizations that care for these individuals. Through following the real stories of others from around the world, I hope fellow Black and autistic individuals will be empowered to realize that being Black and autistic is enough."In this powerful insight into the lives of Black autistic people, Kala Allen Omeiza brings together a community of voices from across the world, spanning religions, sexuality and social economic status to provide a deep and rich understanding of what it means to be autistic and Black.Exploring everything from self-love and appreciation, to the harsh realities of police brutality, anti-Black racism, and barriers to care, as well as amplifying the voices of the inspiring advocates who actively work towards change, protection, and acceptance for themselves and others, this book is an empowering force, reminding you that as a Black autistic person, you are enough.Trade ReviewThose of us who are both Black and autistic have stories to tell, and the moment to share them is now. This is an important work that weaves together a tapestry of lived experiences that have historically remained obscured. For those who seek to deepen their understanding of Black autistic experiences and foster an environment of empathy and change, this book is a must-have for the bookshelf. -- Morgan Harper Nichols, Autistic Author and ArtistIn 'Autistic and Black', Kala Allen Omeiza masterfully weaves together 20 poignant voices, creating an impressive tapestry charting diverse journeys with autism across global landscapes. A transformative exploration of identity, love, and advocacy, this book is a testament to resilience and the vibrant tapestry of the Black autistic experience. -- Montreece Payton-Hardy Accessibility and Disability Inclusion Specialist Writer and Speaker Disabled Babes Book Club MemberKala's book 'Autistic and Black' paints a diverse and enriching picture of lived experiences. I was transported across continents through the pages of the book and the lens of the neurodivergent. The message of the book was thus conveyed so artistically, making it a must-read for any and everyone! -- Dr. Bolu Ikwunne, Rhodes Scholar at University of Oxford, Department of PsychiatryIt is always wonderful when people are allowed to tell their own story. Reading Kala's book felt like sitting with friends, who are invited - finally - to share their personal experiences of being autistic. 'Autistic and Black' is a wonderful read. -- Neurodiversity Society at the University of Oxford

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Introduction 1 • Naming the Nuclear Ghosts 2 • Spirited Away 3 • Kaleidoscopic Harm 4 • The Compensation Game 5 • Radioactive Mosquitos and the Science of Half-Lives 6 • Between Fūhyō and Fūka 7 • Frecon Baggu and the Archive of (Half-)Lives 8 • In Search of the Invisible 9 • A Wild Boar Chase Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisStrange Career offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws and American race relations. This book presented evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1880s. It''s publication in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court ordered schools be desegregated, helped counter arguments that the ruling would destoy a centuries-old way of life. The commemorative edition includes a special afterword by William S. McFeely, former Woodward student and winner of both the 1982 Pulitzer Prize and 1992 Lincoln Prize. As William McFeely describes in the new afterword, ''the slim volume''s social consequence far outstripped its importance to academia. The book became part of a revolution...The Civil Rights Movement had changed Woodward''s South and his slim, quietly insistent book...had contributed to that change.''Table of ContentsIntroductionI.: Old Regimes and Reconstructions II.: Forgotten Alternatives III.: Capitulation to Racism IV.: The Man on the Cliff V.: The Declining Years of Jim Crow VI.: The Career Becomes Stranger Afterword by William s. McFeely

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