Ethnic studies / Ethnicity Books

Book SynopsisDetails the televising of the revolution in American civil rightsTrade Review "Acute insight into the complex interaction between social change and television programming during the 1960s."--American Journalism"Equal Time goes beyond news coverage and explores the portrayal of black and white characters in television dramas and comedies. . . . A readable and enjoyable book."--The Ottawa Citizen"Thoughtful, provocative, and well-researched. . . . This is an important book."--Journalism History"A thoroughly researched analysis of the intersection between race, social change, and network television in the 1960s. Bodroghkozy shows in vivid detail how television served as a powerful tool of moral persuasion that played a key role in turning the tide toward the passage of historic civil rights legislation."--S. Craig Watkins, author of The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future "Bodroghkozy's well-written, smart, and nuanced analysis makes us think about the relationship between the media and the Civil Rights Movement in fresh and interesting ways." --Susan J. Douglas, author of The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild "A valuable addition to the maturing scholarship on connections between the African American freedom struggle and the media. A compelling and thoughtful book of equal interest to students of the media and the freedom struggle."--The Journal of Southern History

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Book SynopsisDiscusses how race and blackness play out in operaTrade Review"Fascinating details from behind the scenes are uncovered. . . . . Recommended."--Choice "A treasury of historical information long unrelated or unknown. . . . This is a most valuable addition to anyone's operatic experience."--American Record Guide "An intriguing blend of different methodologies that all coalesce at the examination of how "blackness" is constructed in both canonical and lesser-known operas. This monograph will no doubt be viewed as one of the hallmarks of musicological scholarship in the years to come."--Women & Music"Absolutely riveting, full of new information and giving much food for thought."--Opera"Blackness in Opera provides an engrossing look into issues that have not been well documented by scholars."--Journal of the Society for American Music"A highly readable collection of interesting essays that come to terms with the deeply problematic treatment of black characters by opera composers and librettists and with the exceptional challenges facing black singers on the operatic stage. The volume will appeal to opera lovers and scholars alike."--Michael V. Pisani, author of Imagining Native America in Music

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Book SynopsisA bold new reconsideration of Hoodoo belief and practiceTrade Review"Mojo Workin' is a key contribution to the study of Hoodoo in America, with some energizing new ideas about its origins, early expression, and broader religious aspects."--Journal of American Folklore"Hazzard-Donald set out to demonstrate the need to include African American Hoodoo in the study of African American religion in the New World. The search she presents in her work clearly validates the belief that there is a strong connection between African American Hoodoo and African American religion. . . . The author provides a great deal of research and analysis that is sure to aid scholars, students, and enthusiasts."--Journal of Folklore Research "Hazzard-Donald's formulation of Hoodoo's evolution represents a new chronology for its study and transformation over time. It's a valuable contribution to the growing number of volumes concerned with African-based traditional spiritual beliefs in the New World."--American Studies"A powerful reinterpretation of African American Hoodoo. This comprehensive volume will be an important tool for anyone interested in African American folk belief and the supernatural."--Jerrilyn McGregory, author of Downhome Gospel: African American Spiritual Activism in Wiregrass Country"This tradition has been little studied especially within the fields of religious studies. Instead it has been left to anthropologists, sociologists, and certain popular cultural reports to present what have been incomplete and often offensive materials. This work has done an exemplary job of correcting that lacuna… A significant contribution to the literature of African-based traditions in the United States." --Religious Studies Review"The book presents possibilities for reassessing some misunderstood aspects of the African American religious experience. It is with a profound respect for Hoodoo as a living practice that Hazzard-Donald brings a kind of moral authority to her scholarship. In so doing she also distills many of the polarizing dynamics present in Hoodoo-Conjure communities today."--Nova Religio

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Book SynopsisA highly detailed, thought-provoking examination of the racial, sexual, and social complexities of Afro-Ecuadorian culture, as revealed through the annual Festival of the Kings.Trade Review "An important contribution to analyses of ritual and performance in terms of history, race, and gender. Rahier departs from the recent emphasis on transnationalism and makes a strong argument for the importance of studying the performance within specific local contexts." --Rachel Corr, author of Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes "A welcome book for teaching undergraduates about important issues among communities little known outside their own circumstances. . . .Recommended."--Choice"A captivating and informative study of the Roman Catholic Feast of the Three Kings as celebrated in two Ecuadorian towns. Rahier gathers extremely rich observations, described in minute detail and finely illustrated, and the book sheds new light on Ecuadorian race and gender relations with great flashes of analysis."--Kris Lane, author of The Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires "A very interesting and thought-provoking treatment of the relationship between social and economic changes and their symbolic manifestations."--American Anthropologist "Jean Muteba Rahier expertly uses a local expression of the Catholic celebration of Epiphany to examine the evolution of socioeconomic dynamics in rural Afro-descendant communities in Ecuador's coastal providence of Esmeraldas."--Journal of Latin American Studies

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Book SynopsisHighlights Clinton Jencks's dramatic influence on the history of labour culture in the American Southwest through a lifetime devoted to progress and change for the social good.Trade Review "This authoritative and engagingly written biography makes a substantial contribution to the scholarship on the legendary labor figure of Clinton Jencks. A useful and welcome volume for historians of labor (especially in the southwest), communism, and Cold War anti-communism."--David Brundage, author of The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878–1905 "As new scholarship on the long civil rights movement continue to incorporate studies of the American West and move beyond black-white racial binaries, Palomino rightfully speaks to both of these important historiographical developments."--Western Historical Quarterly "An excellent biography that sheds light on numerous themes of importance to historians of twentieth-century American labor, Chicano history, and Cold War America. This historically rich and well organized study secures James J. Lorence's place as a foremost scholar of American labor history."--Zaragosa Vargas, author of Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America "This biography of labor activist and scholar Clinton Jencks is an important addition to the work of James J. Lorence. In telling Jenck's life story, Lorence reveals how the often-overlooked efforts of leftist activists in the region not only survived the reactionary years after World War II but managed to bring a mix of radicalism and pragmatic organizing to the labor movement, the Mexican American civil rights struggle, and even the otherwise conservative world of academic economists in the Southwest."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly "This book is instructive for organizers as a catalog of campaign skills and as an illustration of "community unionism," whose revival is so loudly proclaimed today."--Labor Studies Journal "This is a fine book, and Lorence is to be commended for the extensive research and attention to detail that went into it. It is more than a biography of Jencks. Rather, it is in many ways the biography of a movement and of a difficult moment in American history."--American Historical Review

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Book SynopsisDescribes how Filipino exiles and immigrants in the United States played a crucial role in overthrowing the dictatorship of former president Ferdinand Marcos.Trade Review "A well-researched, engaging narrative of the Filipino exile movement in the United States to topple the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Fuentecilla is gifted with a journalistic eye for human-interest stories of resistance and activism that will keep readers enthralled."--Augusto Fauni Espiritu, author of Five Faces of Exile: The Nation and Filipino American Intellectuals"A book that triggers memories—some good and some not so bracing."--The FilAm

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Book SynopsisMasterfully connecting historical systems of racial slavery to post-Enlightenment modernity.Trade Review"Lindon Barrett was one of our most brilliant intellectuals. His loss was, and remains, incalculable, but what he has left us in the form of Racial Blackness and the Discontinuity of Western Modernity is just as incalculable a gift and legacy. A truly magisterial work."--Fred Moten, author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition"In addition to deepening our understanding of the genealogy of western racism, this volume promises to effect a revaluation of established representations of African American modernism. A vivid demonstration of the affecting form of thoughtful, indeed crucial, provocation that Barrett added to the world."--Donald E. Pease, coeditor of Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies

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Book SynopsisExplores the multivalent meanings of Caribbean space and community in a cross-cultural and transdisciplinary perspective.Trade Review"Persuasive and comprehensive, Caribbean Spaces achieves an intriguing sequence of intricate journeys through Caribbean and African diasporic cultural spaces, political landscapes, historiographies, and literary-artistic terrains, each keenly observed. The result is a powerful engagement of the politics and realities of diaspora with black women’s histories in particular."--Thomas Glave, author of Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh “I can't think of a book that better combines the experiential with the theoretical, the political with the commonsensical, in prose that is lyrical, evocative, and lucid."--Kenneth A. McClane, W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Literature, Cornell University"Eminently readable and often entertaining… Instead of going easy on the spices, Boyce Davies provides us with a savory feast of experiences, memories, and reflections on her personal and professional life."--Research in African Literatures"Carole Boyce Davies has constructed a colorful, highly readable narrative containing memoir, notes on family history, sociocultural analysis, and literary criticism."--Journal of African American History"The book is engaging in its discussion of gender identity and expressions of a feminist sensibility… Caribbean Spaces, a series of meditations inviting readers to explore and interrogate carious Caribbean world spaces, has a lot more to discover. Enjoy the journey."--New West Indian Guide"Carole Boyce Davies has deftly used the personal to illuminate the universal. Her writing about her mother's innate brilliance and sauciness, like her wonderful autobiographical pilgrimage from Trinidad to Upstate New York, proves, yet again, why she is so crucial to us as a cultural critic. I can't think of a book that better combines the experiential with the theoretical, the political with the commonsensical, in prose that is lyrical, evocative, and lucid."--Kenneth A. McClane, W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Literature, Cornell University"With a superb alloy of intellect and imagination, Carole Boyce Davies has brought exceptional excitement to paradigms of space that conceal more than they reveal. Caribbean Spaces: Escapes From Twilight Zones advances the extreme of phenomenal questions. Her endeavor here is heroic."--Leroy Clarke, Caribbean artist

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Book SynopsisOffers nuanced interpretations that open the door to a new and productive understanding of race in America.Trade Review"In the case of Undercover Asian, Nishime's critical intervention cannot be overstated. Her book compels readers to see multiracial Asian Americans, to understand their function in discourses of popular culture, to contextualize the place of multiracial Asian Americans in contemporary society, and to challenge our ideas of race and racialization."--Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas "Nishime makes a compelling argument for productive possibilities in the way that we understand multiracial bodies and narratives. This fascinating, elegant book provides a model for doing this kind of analysis and creating new narratives so that these possibilities may one day be realized."--Feminist Media Studies "Nishime's persuasive, well-grounded analysis yields genuinely brilliant insights regarding the pitfalls and possibilities of multiracial visibility in contemporary media culture. Lucidly written with appealing attention to popular texts, this is the sort of book that moves multiracial and Asian American studies in interesting and engaging new directions."--Glen Mimura, author of Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video

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Book SynopsisUsing plantation documents, missionary records, government documents, and oral histories, this book analyzes how the workers interacted with Hawaiian government structures and businesses, how US policies for colonial workers differed from those for citizens or foreigners, and how policies aided corporate and imperial interests.Trade ReviewBest Book Award in History, Filipino Section of the Association for Asian American Studies, 2018. "Poblete's skills as a deft historian weave personal everyday stories with historical structural and policy analysis in ways that are exceptionally nuanced and deeply illuminating." --Rick Bonus, author of Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space"An innovative approach that adds nuance to our knowledge of Hawai'i's immigrant workers. . . . Poblete is successful in shifting our attention to empire and away from insular island accounts of Hawaiian history, and in the process offers ideas for new questions about Hawai'i's place in a much wider American colonial project."--American Historical Review "Deeply rooted in archival sources, oral histories, and written with concise prose, Poblete does a remarkable job situation Hawai'i, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the context of U.S. empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean. She illustrates how U.S. expansion into these regions was vital for it to produce a global imperial machine that circulated not just soldiers and weapons between colonial outposts, but laborers."--The Hawaiian Journal of History"Unique in its comparative focus on labor migration among U.S. colonies, it is essential reading for those interested in the Filipinos and Puerto Ricans in Hawai'i during the first four decades of the twentieth century."--New West Indian Guide"A finely researched book. . . . Through its exploration of the nuanced realities of "intracolonial" migration and existence, the book is a highly valuable addition to the historiography of US imperialism and of labour relations in the Progressive Era, which will also be of particular interest to students of Hawaiian, Puerto Rican, and Philippine history."--Journal of American Studies"Islanders in the Empire connects the imperial experiences of three groups of subjected peoples to each other, thereby exposing the long-term and widespread consequences of U.S. expansionism across time and geographic locations."--Western Historical Quarterly"A valuable addition to the labor history of Hawaii . . . [Islanders in the Empire] sheds much light on the role of the planters, their agents, and the government."--Journal of American History"I know of no scholar who has tackled the histories of Filipino and Puerto Rican labor in Hawai'i in one cohesive and extensive volume, and with such intensity in its comparative scope. Poblete's skills as a deft historian weave personal everyday stories with historical, structural, and policy analysis in ways that are exceptionally nuanced and deeply illuminating."--Rick Bonus, author of Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Space "Poblete's pathbreaking work is unique for illuminating the logics of empire through the lens of transnational migration and labor history. It should stand out among the growing scholarship on the U.S. empire, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines."--Julian Go, author of Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688–Present

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Book SynopsisA day after 'N' first crossed the US border from Mexico, he was caught and then released onto the streets of Tijuana. Undeterred, he crawled back through a tunnel to San Diego, where he entered the United States forever. In this book, he details the constraints, deceptions, and humiliations that characterize alien life "amid the shadows."Trade Review"With near-poetic language, this undocumented immigrant from Mexico. . . . describes his years-long journey from harrowing border crossing to proud husband, father and home owner."--Library Journal"Because we speak of them in the collective--as 'illegal immigrants' or 'the undocumented'--it is shocking to be addressed by a singular voice. Nearly twenty years ago José Ángel N. entered the United States under cover of darkness from his native Mexico. Now he addresses us in elegant American English. He is the cosmopolite in a country where he remains 'the illegal.' He works as a translator; he reads German philosophy; he is married to an American wife; they have a young daughter. The view from the skyscraper window is of Lake Michigan; on his computer screen, the face of his mother appears in her green house in Guadalajara, Mexico. There are ironies aplenty in this book. Perhaps the greatest irony is that he has been studying us and he knows us better than we know him."--Richard Rodriguez, author of Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography"A memoir from a decent man living in the shadows, evading questions and telling lies, presented here anonymously since to reveal his identity would mean to risk arrest and deportation. . . . An utterly believable close-up picture of one illegal immigrant's life in the United States." -- Kirkus Reviews”José Ángel is like the Sisyphus of Greek mythological fame, stuck in an endless cycle of striving to push a boulder up a hill, anticipating the boulder will roll down again […] Against the odds, he overcomes major barrier after barrier.” --American Journal of Education"With great eloquence and pathos, N. draws on his daily life and references philosophers from Socrates to Kant to describe the netherworld of the undocumented. He takes solace in his education and his gift for reflection as he watches the slow and frustrating process of immigration reform. N. gives voice to the millions who, of necessity, live in the shadows."--Booklist"N. is able to put a truly human face on the 'shadow' that he is in our society and show us that he, along with the other eleven million undocumented people who live and toil in our nation, deserve to come out into the sun"--el Beisman"We do not have enough courageous writers who take the risk of telling their stories while undocumented. Illegal offers important testimony of the type of life an undocumented immigrant can lead when they have opportunities like N's. From the moment I began to read it I could not put it down."--Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz, author of Wild Tongues: Transnational Mexican Popular Culture“Illegal is a memoir, certainly, but also a chronicle and an unforgiving history of American politics and culture. It is blunt, trenchant, and hard to read for its determination not to sanitize. It’s writing that is intoxicating, cathartic, and, perhaps, empowering.” --Antoinette Burton, coeditor of World Histories from Below: Dissent and Disruption, 1750-present "N.’s narrative silences the contentious immigration debate that proliferates amid political aspirants, policy pundits, and think-tank wonks in Washington. N.’s sublime and philosophic reflections transcend feckless fights about the contributions of the undocumented. As long as immigration occurs, this book remains required reading." --Paul Guajardo, University of Houston

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Book SynopsisCritics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or "White Negroes," who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. The author claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover over the years.Trade ReviewLois P. Rudnick Book Prize, New England American Studies Association, 2014. "[Davis's] readings are astute and innovative. Her study of the cross-racial empathy of white rappers and her comparison/contrast of Do the Right Thing and Crash are especially effective. With a solid scholarly foundation, she takes real risks in her thinking about race." --Cecilia Konchar Farr, author of Reading Oprah: How Oprah's Book Club Changed the Way America Reads"Davis’s book is a timely analysis of the relationship between audience reception and antiracist action. . . . Davis’s argument goes beyond the claim that educating whites in African American history and culture can lead to antiracist reading practices to say that antiracist reading is one part of white engagement with African American culture more broadly."--Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Gives the reader unique and detailed information about Indian and Indian American internet culture and public discourses about technology and transnationality during the birth of the World Wide Web. . . . The sections on Indian immigration and the technology industry and culture will be fascinating to scholars in digital media studies as well as scholars in Asian and Asian American studies. I can't think of a single other book that covers this territory." --Lisa Nakamura, author of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet

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Book SynopsisDrawing on ten years of interviews and ethnographic and archival research, the author delves into the ways Filipinos in Hawai'i have balanced their pursuit of upward mobility and mainstream acceptance with a desire to keep their Filipino identity.Trade Review"Building Filipino Hawai'i is a much-needed work on contemporary Filipino lives in the islands, in the fifty years since the resumption of significant emigration from the Philippines. Consistently argued and astutely theoretically framed. . . . Building Filipino Hawai'i promises to be the principal text on not only Filipinos, but also the contemporary experiences of ethnic and immigrant minorities in Hawai'i in the political context of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement."--Pacific Historical Review"An outstanding addition to a growing field of studies focused on Filipina/o American community building and identity formation."--Western Historical Quarterly "Labrador provides many necessary interventions to studies of Filipinos in the United States and helps further the reconceptualization of what it means to be Filipino throughout the Philippine diaspora and the ongoing production of global transnationalism."--The Journal of American History "Labrador provides an engaging and thoughtful study of Filipinos in Hawai'i, demonstrating how they have struggled to define and/or redefine their identity in the diaspora, by moving from the margins of Hawaii's society to becoming an integral part of it, while also maintaining their sense of Filipinoness."--Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., author of Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego"Hawai'i is often held up as a model of liberal multiculturalism, a site in which a truly postracial order has been achieved. Labrador, however, demonstrates how the racial order in Hawai'i continues to be hierarchized, is premised on settler colonialism, and rests on a classed anti-immigrant sensibility. Building Filipino Hawai'i is an important read."--Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, author of Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World

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Book SynopsisIncludes essays that use close readings of speeches, letters, historical archives, diaries, and memoirs of policymakers and newly available FBI files to confront much-neglected questions related to race and foreign relations in the United States.Trade Review"Several of this collection's chapters and topics will certainly spur new and further research in African American and US diplomatic history. African Americans in U.S. Foreign Policy will particularly interest those concerned with the history and challenges faced by African Americans involved in the making and execution of US foreign policy."--H-Net Review"This thought-provoking work reveals the continuing complexity of African American foreign policy elites in shaping and executing American foreign policy. Highly recommended."--Choice"Sheds light on understudied but timely phenomena at the intersection of race and U.S. foreign relations and does so in new and exciting ways. Expands the chronological and thematic scopes of existing works, making it truly original. I am convinced that this book will intervene in many scholarly conversations for years to come by offering something truly unique."--George White Jr., author of Holding the Line: Race, Racism, and American Foreign Policy toward Africa, 1953–1961"The essays presented in African Americans in U.S. Foreign Policy raise important questions and provide insightful answers to them through rigorous archival and interpretive methods. The end result is a book that significantly advances our understanding of African Americans in the U.S. foreign policy-making arena. This outstanding book should be read widely by scholars of history, African American Studies, and political science."--Alvin B. Tillery Jr., author of Between Homeland and Motherland: Africa, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Black Leadership in AmericaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Preface: Reflections of a Black AmbassadorWalter C. Carrington ix Introduction 1Part I: Early African American Diplomatic Appointments: Contributions and Constraints 1 Blacks in the U.S. Diplomatic and Consular Services, 1869-1924 Allison Blakely 13 2 A New Negro Foreign Policy: The Critical Vision of Alain Locke and Ralph BuncheJeffrey C. Stewart 30 3 Carl Rowan and the Dilemma of Civil Rights, Propaganda, and the Cold War Michael L. Krenn 58Part II: African American Participation in Foreign Affairs through Civil Society: Religious, Military, and Cultural Institutions in Foreign Policy 4 Reconstructions' Revival: The Foreign Mission Board of the National Baptist Convention and the Roots of Black Populist DiplomacyBrandi Hughes 83 5 White Shame/Black Agency: Race as a Weapon in Post-World War I DiplomacyVery Ingrid Grant 109 6 Goodwill Ambassadors: African American Athletes and U.S. Cultural Diplomacy, 1947-1968Damion Thomas 129 7 The Paradox of Jazz Diplomacy: Race and Culture in the Cold War Lisa Davenport 140Part III: The Advent of the Age of Obama: African Americans and the Making of American Foreign Policy 8 African American Representatives in the United Nations: From Ralph Bunche to Susan Rice Lorenzo Morris 177 9 Obama, African Americans, and Africans: The Double Vision Ibrahim Sundiata 200 Epilogue: The Impact of African Americans on U.S. Foreign Policy Charles R. Stith 213 Contributors 225 Index 231

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Casey High weaves together memories, facts and fantasies as these occur in contemporary Ecuadorian Amazonia, offering us a fascinating picture of Waorani life today. This highly original book takes us a step further in the understanding of current sociocultural transformations among Amazonian indigenous peoples." --Carlos Fausto, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro "An exciting analysis of the most intimate aspects of memory and experience in a contemporary Amazonian indigenous group in dialogue with its own stereotypes. . . . A compelling book not only for anthropologists but for anyone interested in contemporary Amerindian groups."--European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies"What do Bruce Lee, American missionaries being speared to death, Amerindians dancing in a national pride day, urban warrior performances, and a deeply felt sense of victimhood possibly have in common? In a refined narrative, Casey High weaves together memories, facts and fantasies as these occur in contemporary Ecuadorian Amazonia, offering us a fascinating picture of Waorani life today. This highly original book takes us a step further in the understanding of current sociocultural transformations among Amazonian indigenous peoples."--Carlos Fausto, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro"Insightful and terrifically readable. Victims and Warriors is a timely, innovative look at how Waorani use images of their violent past to craft new forms of masculinity and identity that remain remarkably resistant to gender hierarchy and sexual antagonism."--Beth Conklin, author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society"Usually Waorani voices are distorted due to some other outside agenda, but here we have a nuanced account that communicates their experiences, remembrances, and perspective. Being able to hear what Waorani people think and say about violent encounters and violence in general, as well as Christianity, development, and other topics related to Waorani life and history, makes for a compelling read."--Michael A. Uzendoski, author of The Ecology of the Spoken Word: Amazonian Storytelling and Shamanism among the Napo Runa

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Provocative. . . . Baker's study reminds us of the delicate dance between voyeurism and witnessing, pity and righteous indignation."--African American Review "This groundbreaking book is a corrective to recent arguments that have misunderstood the role of representations of black suffering and death in empowering a people. With insight and keen observation, it illuminates how proponents of black freedom and dignity employed difficult images to alter public opinion and spur change."--Maurice Berger, University of Maryland Baltimore County"The scholarship presented by Baker is sound with expert use of various categories of criticism and philosophy, including literary criticism, psychoanalysis, and sociology. This book is a much needed contribution to African American Cultural Studies. Baker offers fresh insights and deft interpretations suffering and death imagery. Her discussion of the psycho-political work of Emmett Till's beaten and abused body during the Civil Rights Era, for instance, is particularly astute. I recommend this text highly."--Debra Walker King, author of African Americans and the Culture of Pain"An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, Humane Insight asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice. . . . An impressively well written and truly exceptional work of seminal scholarship."--Midwest Book Review"Asks us to set aside earlier theoretical interpretations pertaining to the camera and the violent, invasive, imperial gaze it affords . . . and instead to pay attention to the power of the photographs themselves and what looking at them achieves."--Civil War Book Review"A thoughtful narrative that seeks not only to broaden the readers' vision of their own humanity but to access a deeper understanding of how race, lack of jurisprudential process, and bigotry was used to justify these crimes against the black body."--H-Net"Humane Insight resituates our understanding of how black activists used images of black suffering and death to challenge racism and inequalities in the United States. . . . Baker's work is to be commended for emphasizing the various ways African Americans sought to use their suffering and deaths to undermine the very structures that allowed for black victimization."--Journal of African American History"With perceptive and original analysis, Baker moves us through a series of historical moments when images of black pain and death made black suffering legible to a wider public."--Amy Louise Wood, author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Jermaine Singleton's Cultural Melancholy is a provocative book that will be well-received in the field of racial melancholia studies, and there is no doubt in my mind that it makes an excellent contribution to performance studies."--Abdul R. JanMohamed, University of California, Berkeley"Interesting, fluid, and compelling. Singleton marshals the relevant research on racial mourning and historical trauma to focus specifically on how performance affects the process of working through."--Gwen Bergner, author of Taboo Subjects: Race, Sex, and Psychoanalysis

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Not only excellent but timely as well. The book will undoubtedly prove to be a valuable resource guide that will not only introduce the literature but also provide an impressive study for experts in Latina cultural studies."--Alvina E. Quintana, author of Home Girls: Chicana Literary Voices"Teresa Delgadillo and her collaborators create a living archive that highlights the rich and varied experiences, histories, and cultures of a Midwestern Latino community. This book provides the personal stories often absent from required course reading lists, while at the same time demonstrating the importance of region in shaping identity and the immigrant experience." --Natalia Molina, author of How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts"Delgadillo's Latinas in Milwaukee. . . is a text that provokes many important questions that must be considered in the advancement of Latino studies."--Latino Studies"This book is, indeed, an important contribution to the study of Latinas in the Midwest."--H-LatAm"Delgadillo effectively illustrates both how women's roles were actually far from what many believed them to be and the importance of the Midwest in the production of a (pan)-Latinx identity."--American Quarterly"Latina Lives in Milwaukee can serve as a model for scholars interested in Latinas and education, inspiring them to enhance their research with oral history interviews. . . . Delgadillo has provided future scholars an invaluable resource to expand their own projects." --Oral History Review

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Book SynopsisPosthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, Richard Durham creatively chronicled and brought to life the significant events of his times. Durham''s trademark narrative style engaged listeners with fascinating characters, compelling details, and sharp images of pivotal moments in American and African American history and culture. In Word Warrior, award-winning radio producer Sonja D. Williams draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues like Studs Terkel and Toni Morrison, to illuminate Durham''s astounding career. Durham paved the way for black journalists as a dramatist and a star investigative reporter and editor for the pioneering black newspapers the Chicago Defender and Muhammed Speaks. Talented and versatile, he also created the acclaimed radio series Destination Freedom and Here Comes Tomorrow and wrote for popular radio fare like The Lone Ranger. IncrediTrade Review"Sonja Williams has written a book about Durham's life and work, cementing the brilliant journalist and activist's legacy."--Uprising Radio "Thanks to this biography by Sonja D. Williams, a professor of communications at Howard University, Durham's contributions to our country's dramatic arts, journalism, trade unionism and African American political power will begin to earn the appreciation and admiration they deserve."--Against the Current"This admirable and engaging study of Durham's life and work fills a huge gap in American history, and it comes at a time where we are in desperate need of reminders that do more than give us hope, but also provide us with the examples of the ways in which agency can be infused into our racially contentious social landscape."--Radio Journal"In briskly energetic prose, Sonja D. Williams reveals the life of an important, but little-known, figure in twentieth century African American cultural and political history. From the Great Migration to the Black Power Movement, Richard Durham's story illuminates movements and events of momentous scope and significance."--Richard A. Courage, co-author of The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950"Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom is a remarkable contribution to the historical narrative, to our understanding of the long civil rights revolution.--People's World"With this book, Williams . . . rescues a forgotten but important voice in the Civil Rights Movement. [A] well-written analytical profile of this important, versatile writer. Recommended."--Choice"Williams' book is a major contribution to media studies and provides one model for future media-history work grappling with the current dominant paradigms of media industry and production culture studies. . . . Williams' description of multiple social phenomena, packaged as a biography of an important civil rights figure in Chicago, will pack a strong enough punch to set a precedent for similar work."--Journal of Radio & Audio Media"Williams's Word Warrior is an engrossing, at times poetic excavation of one man's dealing with life and learning as an African American man." --H-Net Reviews "The enigmatic life of writer and radio [dramatist] Richard Durham has, for years, cried out for probing and understanding. Sonja D. Williams has answered the call with this fiercely smart and important book. It is an important achievement."--Wil Haygood, author of The Butler: A Witness to History "Sonja Williams' exhaustively researched biography of Richard Durham sheds valuable light on an inexcusably neglected historical figure. Throughout his many lives, including activism, writing, and broadcasting, Durham demonstrated the importance of narrative in the struggle for justice. As Williams proves, the right to tell the story is a critical part of the quest for equality and power--and those who fought for that right should be remembered with gratitude."--Jabari Asim, author of What Obama Means "Sonja Williams artfully links broadcasting pioneer Richard Durham to the key social, cultural, and political movements of mid-Twentieth-century America. In Word Warrior, Durham's fierce spirit, strategic mind, and creative genius leap to life as he navigates the streets, boardrooms, and radio studios of Chicago. Without this book, this very important story surely would have been lost."--A'Lelia Bundles, author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker "Williams' book does smart and invaluable work not only about Durham and his particular talents and contributions, but about the black political and cultural left in Chicago during the span of his career."--Barbara D. Savage, author of Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Christine Kim's The Minor Intimacies of Race is a necessary and insightful look into the process of defining race and the experience of prejudice. . . . Kim should be applauded for her nuanced and informative approach to a very important topic."--Ethnic and Racial Studies "A valuable contribution to the study of Asian Canadian and Asian American literature. Importantly, Kim's compassion for and integrity to the subject is evident and admirable."--English Studies in Canada"Provides an exceptionally generative paradigm for thinking about those forms of collective identification that do not achieve the solidity of fully-fledged political movements but that nonetheless register in illuminating ways the everyday life of race in Asian North America. A fascinating and timely study."--Daniel Kim, author of Writing Manhood in Black and Yellow: Ralph Ellison, Frank Chin and the Literary Politics of Identity"A refreshing and original focus on the ephemeral and the minor rather than on the grand and universal. Kim offers sophisticated, critically engaged, and smart discussions of current topics in Asian Canadian and Asian American studies."--Eleanor Ty, coeditor of Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory"Capacious in its method, wide-ranging in scope, and compellingly written, Minor Intimacies of Race offers--in its multifaceted contemplation of the geopolitics of feeling and meditation on multiple publics--a remarkably original and decidedly sophisticated diasporic critique."--Cathy Schlund-Vials, author of Modeling Citizenship, Jewish and Asian American Writing"A worthwhile discussion of Asian Canadian and Asian American culture and its fraught relationship with the tenets of official multiculturalism. This beautifully captures the registers and modalities of feeling produced in more conventional novels as well as aesthetically experimental works by visual artists and writers."--Josephine Lee, coeditor of Asian American Plays for a New Generation

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"In the tradition of Michel Foucault's work, Rosa de Jorio's book represents a fascinating analysis of the politics of cultural heritage in Mali in the context of the privatization of cultural initiatives and the rise of fundamentalist Islam."--Jean-Loup Amselle, author of Branchements: Anthropologie de l'universalité des cultures"A marvelous text. De Jorio not only discusses the cultural ramifications of 'heritage' in Mali, but considers it in the wake of Islamist and Tuareg rebellions in the north. She demonstrates powerfully how cultural heritage implicates questions of religious practice as they relate to the exercise of power."--Paul Stoller, author of Yaya's Story: The Quest for Well-Being in the World"De Jorio elegantly shows how notions of 'heritage' have been deployed and contested by Malian politicians, by foreign NGOs and especially UNESCO, and of course by different segments of the Malian population who are always the targets and sometimes the victims of 'heritage' politics."--Robert Launay, author of Traders without Trade: Responses to Change in Two Dyula Communities"A much anticipated, fascinating, and timely account of the contested politics of public culture in a time of turbulent and sometimes violent change in Mali. . . . The book fascinates with its dexterous application of social thought and theory."--Journal of Modern African Studies

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Book SynopsisBehind the iconic jazz orchestras, vocalists, and stage productions of the Swing Era lay the talents of popular music''s unsung heroes: the arrangers. John Wriggle takes you behind the scenes of New York City''s vibrant entertainment industry of the 1930s and 1940s to uncover the lives and work of jazz arrangers, both black and white, who left an indelible mark on American music and culture. Blue Rhythm Fantasy traces the extraordinary career of arranger Chappie Willet--a collaborator of Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, and many others--to revisit legendary Swing Era venues and performers from Harlem to Times Square. Wriggle''s insightful music analyses of big band arranging techniques explore representations of cultural modernism, discourses on art and commercialism, conceptions of race and cultural identity, music industry marketing strategies, and stage entertainment variety genres. Drawing on archives, obscure recordings, untapped sources in tTrade ReviewCertificate of Merit for Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz, Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC), 2017. "Recommended." --Choice"A fascinating study of an overlooked aspect of the musical world that allows us to view artistic development with a greater understanding of other forces: economic, social, racial, and historical."--ARSC Journal "Wriggle's work is well-researched, well-structured, and gives a great overview of the Swing Era career of Chappie Willet, which is further complemented by a thorough examination of his stylistic 'idiolect.'"--Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music"Illuminating, and entertaining. . . . This is a book that any lover of jazz, swing or theater music would find accessible and rewarding."--The Arts Fuse"[T]he authorial tone is far from dry, and his historical analysis is genuinely valuable . . . and the greatest value in this unusual book is allowing to see inside Willet's world and the place he occupied within it and belatedly, perhaps, to pay tribute to his prowess and that of his peers."--Jazzwise"Blue Rhythm Fantasy is a wonderfully enlightening experience. . . .A splendidly-documented exploration of an artist and his musical world that will both answer and raise many questions. "--Jazz Lives"Meticulously researched and elegantly written." --Music References Services Quarterly"Writers have always been quick to heap praise on the soloists, vocalists and composers of the Swing Era but John Wriggle's Blue Rhythm Fantasy finally shines the spotlight on the craftsmen who really made the Swing Era swing: the arrangers. Having done a monumental amount of research, Wriggle invites the reader to listen to the music of the big bands with a fresh set of ears and a fresh amount of appreciation for many of the unsung heroes of that era, most notably the great Chappie Willet. An important book not just for jazz studies but for anyone interested in the entire popular music spectrum of the 1930s and 40s."--Ricky Riccardi, author of What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years and Director of Research Collections, Louis Armstrong House Museum "The unsung artists and business people who were the backbone and lifeblood of the popular music business in NYC in the 1930s and '40s are finally the heroes in this excellent and extremely well-researched book. This exciting new teaching tool brings to the fore those crucial musicians who kept all types of popular entertainment flowing by creatively and professionally combining such diverse job titles as composer, arranger, orchestrator, and copyist."--Benjamin Bierman, author of Listening to Jazz

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWright's research is breathtaking. Her subject matter is of the utmost importance. This book lays the foundation for all future scholarship on African American girls in representation and in life.--Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil RightsAn important gift from an emerging scholar with a keen critical eye and impressive sleuthing skills. With depth and insight, Wright explores African American women's most exigent issues from the cusp and vantage of girlhood: marriage, motherhood, widowhood, and employment, each state intensified by the myriad oppressions black women uniquely face. In addition, Wright's book enriches nascent black print culture studies through its compelling engagement with archival documents and its valuable illumination of previously neglected newspapers, magazines, conduct books, sentimental discourses of all types. Drawing on a striking variety of print media, Wright revels in today's incalculable possibilities for research into African American women's history, literature and culture, and illustrates significant ways understudied black literary gems--from nineteenth century newspapers and scrapbooks--can deepen readers' insights into the supremacy of education to black people across US history and African American women's fierce pursuits of justice and self-determination.--Joycelyn Moody, Sue E. Denman Distinguished Chair in American Literature, University of Texas at San Antonio

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Book SynopsisMay Irwin reigned as America's queen of comedy and song from the 1880s through the 1920s. A genuine pop culture phenomenon, Irwin conquered the legitimate stage, composed song lyrics, and parlayed her celebrity into success as a cookbook author, suffragette, and real estate mogul. Sharon Ammen's in-depth study traces Irwin's hurly-burly life. Irwin gained fame when, layering aspects of minstrelsy over ragtime, she popularized a racist Negro song genre. Ammen examines this forgotten music, the society it both reflected and entertained, and the ways white and black audiences received Irwin's performances. She also delves into Irwin's hands-on management of her image and career, revealing how Irwin carefully built a public persona as a nurturing housewife whose maternal skills and performing acumen reinforced one another. Irwin's act, soaked in racist song and humor, built a fortune she never relinquished. Yet her career's legacy led to a posthumous obscurity as the nation that once adoreTrade ReviewThis is a valuable biographical study that assesses May Irwin's contributions to comedy while also forging a path that avoided some of the grotesque and low comic traditions associated with female characters. Ammen reassesses Irwin's work in vaudeville and musical comedy, discussing her in relation to both race and gender, and this is a welcome and much needed work on a remarkable comedienne.--Gillian M. Rodger, author of Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century"Lovingly rendered and well researched without being simplistic or missing the larger cultural and political context in which May Irwin lived and produced."--Andrew L. Erdman, author of Queen of Vaudeville: The Story of Eva Tanguay

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Groundbreaking in that it details specific health policies that have been advocated for and implemented in Brazil to ameliorate racial inequality in the health sector as well as society at large. Caldwell's intersectional approach and centering of black women's experiences and activism is unique."--Erica L. Williams, author of Sex Tourism in Bahia: Ambiguous Entanglements"Caldwell's work demonstrates both analytical and methodological rigor that contributes to academia, activism, and public policy. This book is vital for anyone interested in health policy, the relationship between national and international political institutions, grassroots organizing, and mobilizing intersectionality." --Medical Anthropology Quarterly"Caldwell’s richly detailed study offers unique insights into the racial, class, and gender dimensions of health activism and public policy in Brazil, paying particular attention to the intersections evident in HIV/AIDS and maternal mortality policies. The book shines new light on rarely examined facets of Afro-Brazilian women’s struggles. The first full-length monograph available in English to deploy an intersectional and transnational analytical lens, it draws on over two decades of engagement with key activists, issues, and texts crucial to Black, feminist, and Afro-descendant women’s efforts to promote health equity. The book will be most welcome by rights advocates and scholars seeking to enhance gendered racial justice in Brazil, the U.S., and beyond."—Sonia E. Alvarez, coeditor of Beyond Civil Society: Activism, Participation, and Protest in Latin America

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA Black Press Research Collective's Top Black Press Scholarship of the 2010s Book "An immersive read, a welcome contribution to our understanding of the evolving relationship between African Americans and the media during Jim Crow and its demise. . . . Highly recommended."--People's World"Horne, celebrated author of over 30 eye-opening works on class and race history, harnesses the varied details of The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press in a style that is at once academic and fittingly narrative. The work is thus an accessible treasure trove of political and social involvements and insights spanning almost all the continents. " --Publishing Research Quarterly"It is equal parts social history, travelogue, memoir, and biography, making for a surprisingly engaging look at one of the most iconic musicians of all time." --RoguesPortal"Required reading for students of African-American journalism."--Publisher's Weekly"Horne offers media history students and scholars a compelling case that sheds new light on a lesser-known historical figure. There is no doubt that Horne's book will find its way onto media historians' bookshelves."--American Journalism"An exhilarating and enlightening ride through some of the most tumultuous times in modern African American history." --Journal of American Ethnic History"The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press is a brilliant model for writing black transnational history and for appreciating the contradictory results of desegregation for mid-twentieth century African American media, black freedom, and Pan-Africanism."--Erik S. McDuffie, author of Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism"This brilliant and masterfully written work broadens understandings of the vital work and historical agency of the black press, in particular the domestic and international coverage and political relationships forged by the Associated Negro Press and its astute and complicated founder Claude Barnett."--Taj Frazier, author of The East Is Black: Cold War China in the Black Radical Imagination

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewGeorge C. Rogers Jr. Award, South Carolina Historical Society, 2018 "This work is a valuable contribution that expresses how the minute can explain the whole and civil rights began as a grassroots movement, propagated by the influence of African American newspapers, and expanded in several places concomitantly as African Americans began to reclaim the rights that had been denied to them for so long." --Journal of African American History"Newspaper Wars is a timely book that brings traditionally marginal figures to the fore." --American Historical Review "This well-written, deeply contextualized book is as much a political history of South Carolina as it is an examination of race and journalism. . . . A commendable study that advances knowledge of the southern press in the civil rights era."--American Journalism"Sid Bedingfield offers a brilliantly fresh account of the peak decades of the civil rights movement--a time when newspapers shaped the contours of civic discourse and political debate. More than an essential history of the civil rights movement in South Carolina, Newspaper Wars recasts our understanding of the civil rights era and the enduring struggles around race and citizenship."--Patricia Sullivan, author of Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement"The narrative strength of Newspaper Wars rests on Bedingfield's thorough research. . . . The result is a commendable study that advances knowledge of the southern press in the civil rights era."--American Journalism"Newspaper Wars: Civil Rights and White Resistance in South Carolina, 1935-1965 not only remedies a lack of scholarship on the press in South Carolina but also shows how newspapers shaped the course of social and political change." --The Journal of Southern History"Newspaper Wars is a timely book that brings traditionally marginal figures to the fore." --American Historical Review"Newspaper Wars is a strong, important study of black journalism, state-level organizing, and the role that journalists play in shaping the assumptions of the public sphere, assumptions that conditioned the discussions that created civil rights success in South Carolina." --The Journal of American History "Very well written and enjoyable to read. Journalists, Sid Bedingfield persuasively demonstrates, did not just document the civil rights movement in South Carolina, but rather they actively influenced its course and outcomes."--Michael Stamm, author of Sound Business: Newspapers, Radio, and the Politics of New Media

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Book SynopsisVietnamese refugees fleeing the fall of South Vietnam faced a paradox. The same guilt-ridden America that only reluctantly accepted them expected, and rewarded, expressions of gratitude for their rescue. Meanwhile, their status as refugeesas opposed to willing immigrantsprofoundly influenced their cultural identity. Phuong Tran Nguyen examines the phenomenon of refugee nationalism among Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. Here, the residents of Little Saigon keep alive nostalgia for the old regime and, by extension, their claim to a lost statehood. Their refugee nationalism is less a refusal to assimilate than a mode of becoming, in essence, a distinct group of refugee Americans. Nguyen examines the factors that encouraged them to adopt this identity. His analysis also moves beyond the familiar rescue narrative to chart the intimate yet contentious relationship these Vietnamese Americans have with their adopted homeland. Nguyen sets their plight within the context of the Cold Trade Review"Nguyen offers a bold yet nuanced analysis of Vietnamese refugee experiences in the US. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"In Becoming Refugee American Phuong Tran Nguyen offers a timely and critical analysis of the history of Vietnamese refugees in the United States." --H-Asia "Becoming Refugee American is an ideal work to understand both the particular experiences of Vietnamese peoples in the United States and the broader implication of refugeeism." --The Journal of American History "Effectively illustrates the multifaceted challenges confronted by Vietnamese refugees who become part of the politics of rescue." --Western Historical Quarterly"Overall, Becoming Refugee American is an excellent and welcome addition to the growing scholarship on the Vietnamese American experience. The historical research and methodology devoted to writing this text give it a nuanced perspective." --American Historical Review"The book was lucidly written and meticulously documented. For this postwar-born Vietnamese American reviewer, the sensitive portrayal of rescue politics rang true and inspired sympathy for an older generation whose Refugee Americanness reflected grief and need as much as culture or ideology." --International Migration Review"Nguyen develops the concept of refugee nationalism to account for the complex affective lives of diasporic Vietnamese, whose loyalty to their lost nation, the Republic of Vietnam, is entangled in, and yet is also distinct from, their attachment to and gratitude for the US. . . . Becoming Refugee American is a book that shows the necessity of historicizing a fuller range of emotions." --Pacific Affairs"This is the history that Vietnamese Americans and those who study them have been waiting for, a terrific account of how Vietnamese refugees came to the United States and founded their own Little Saigon. Phuong Nguyen's clarifying, enjoyable account provides a persuasive framework of 'refugee nationalism' for understanding how these newcomers turned themselves into Americans."--Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War “The refugee world of Little Saigon now has its historian. Phuong Tran Nguyen’s brave and highly original book tells the intriguing story of how tens of thousands of Vietnamese became American; and anyone interested in the domestic legacy of America’s war in Indochina or its recent wars and military engagements in the Middle East should be listening.”--Lon Kurashige, author of Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934-1990

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAEJMC History Division Book Award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 2018 "For those interested in black newspapers' complex navigation of the politics of the twentieth century and how those papers ultimately made a difference, Race News is worth a careful read." --The Journal of American History"Race News is an essential and thoughtful exploration of a crucial epoch, blending meticulous research into a compelling narrative. Students will be inspired by stories about long-neglected journalists and publishers, while historians will appreciate the complex portrait of a fulminating struggle at the heart of the African-American experience."--American Journalism "[A] wonderful book about the black press in the 21st century. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice"Race News reveals a new perspective that illuminates the ways in which alternative Black journalism informed the editorial practices of the commercial Black press and mainstream news media across the last century. A meticulously researched examination that contributes new insight to scholarship on Black journalism." --Communication Booknotes Quarterly"A fascinating and ambitious book, covering a wide range of important individuals and institutions across various eras of African American history." --The Journal of African American History"Carroll offers new insight in examining the ties between 'alternative' and 'commercial' outlets. Race News will also be of value as a comprehensive, readable introduction for those more broadly interested in African American history, journalism history and civil rights activism."--LSE Review of Books"An ambitious undertaking, one that covers decades of press data and a large body of scholarship. . . .Carroll captures the arc of his study with a provocative insight: commercial newspapers' 'business model. . . . carried the seeds of its own destruction'." --African American Review"A welcome addition to our understanding of both journalistic and African-American history . . . Race News is highly recommended."--People's World "Fred Carroll has made an important addition to the literature with Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century."...Carroll's book offers a lot to journalism history classes and mass communication students overall." --Journalism History "A rich and nuanced history of African American journalism in the last century. It is arguably the most thorough and substantive treatment of the subject." --American Historical Review "Fred Carroll examines the symbiotic yet contentious relationship between commercial and alternative black press in his insightful Race News. . . . This is a well-argued, thoroughly researched and important contribution to African American social history." --Journal of Social History "An incredibly insightful and well-written book that offers both a broad history of black journalism in the United States and a deeply nuanced investigation of black power politics in the newsroom. . . .Carroll offers the first scholarly monograph of the political and professional development of black journalism in the twentieth-century United States." --American Literature "Race News connects the dots along the line of the black press's development . . . the chapters on the new negro and popular front journalism show how labor and left politics were integral to the black community and interwoven into the popularity of black newspapers and their communication of the political culture of the New Deal." --Labor “A thorough, well-researched, lively, and accessible account of the role of the Black press in the twentieth century. Race News is a sympathetic and politically astute analysis of the paths navigated by black journalists, and the role played by them, in many of the key struggles for racial justice in U.S. history.”--Bill V. Mullen, author of Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935-1946 "Unquestionably stimulating and enjoyable. The details about how the alternative black press affected the commercial black press in the 1930s and in the civil rights era is not well known or documented and is quite exciting. Carroll unquestionably adds important nuances to what other scholars have written in telling the history of the black press."--Patrick Washburn, author of The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"The essays offer insight into how the end of de jure segregation shifted the significance of 'cultural authenticity' in a way that values nonwhite racial and ethnic identities as forms of property, and they demonstrate that the black-white boundary has been destabilized (although not destroyed) through continued multi-racial and multi-ethnic identification." --MELUS“Excellently introduced by Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young, the ten essays collected in this volume offer a wealth of information, from a working bibliography of neo-passing narratives to interpretive overviews of passing, old and new. The essays suggest that despite all historical, legal, and attitudinal changes in the course of the twentieth century, race remains a central obsession in the United States.”--Werner Sollors, author of The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s"Highly recommended." --Choice

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA Choice Outstanding Title, 2018 Music in American Culture Award, American Musicological Society, 2019 "Unpacks issues of power and cultural authenticity in the white-controlled jubilee industry and within blackface minstrelsy performances, including Uncle Tom and plantation shows . . . Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry will be crucial to anyone studying American music, especially those focused on the post-Civil War period through 1900, and of course anyone who studies African American music history."--Blackgrooves.org "[A] one-of-a-kind title . . . Many volumes address spirituals themselves, but few detail the actual exponents of this important African American tradition in such a refreshingly disarming way."--Library Journal"Graham proves an industry was built on and inspired by the specific cultural context and contributions of Black people. . . . Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry is compulsory reading for all who wish to expand their knowledge on Black contributions to music, art, and entertainment." --Transposition"A detailed, cogent, and fascinating history of the popularization of Negro spirituals [that is] thoroughly documented and covers a truly vast range of information. One of the especially distinctive features of Graham's approach is its careful consideration of musical elements and how they figure in defining objects under study."--Thomas L. Riis, author of Frank Loesser "Music historians will find Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry fascinating because instead of rehashing the already well-researched lyric import of the spirituals, Graham looks at the art form as the spark that ignited an entertainment industry." --ARSC Journal "A detailed and valuable genealogy of the spiritual."—The Journal of Southern History"Graham skillfully illuminates the racial dynamics of the era, handling with particular grace the equivocal effect of the spirituals’ popularity on artistically ambitious black performers: although performers took advantage of burgeoning professional opportunities, their careers were circumscribed by the expectations of white audiences. A pleasure to read, the book weaves meticulous research into an engaging narrative that vividly enriches understanding of postbellum American music and theater.”—Choice "This book is recommended to anyone with an interest in American folk and popular music, and it should provoke many followers-up studies that explore its themes in even greater depth as well as their extensions into the twentieth century." --Journal of Folklore Research"A pleasure to read, the book weaves meticulous research into an engaging narrative that vividly enriches understanding of postbellum American music and theater. Highly recommended." --Choice"Sandra Graham breaks new ground in her nuanced examination of the white-controlled spiritual or jubilee industry, and of claims for musical and cultural authenticity by black college and independent jubilee groups, as well as white and black performers of blackface minstrelsy, American folk music, and European classical traditions."--Portia K. Maultsby, coeditor of Issues in African American Music and African American Music: An Introduction, second edition

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewSuperior Achievement Award, Illinois State Historical Society, 2019 "Rocksborough-Smith offers a concise scholarly monograph on Black Chicago public history's tangled relationship with the left and utilizes that conflicting relationship to examine politics in our present and future."--Black Perspectives"Black Public History will appeal to all students of African American history, particularly cultural history, and is a valuable contribution to the scholarship of Chicago's expanding black past." --History: Reviews of New Books "Black Public History in Chicago is a worthwhile read and greatly contributes to the understudied history of African American public activism during the pre-civil rights movement years." --The Journal of American History"Scholars are starting to discuss in more detail how African American activists for Civil Rights were stifled under this side of the 'iron curtain' during the Cold War. However, very few have discussed the innovative ways that Black visionaries turned to public history as a broad canvas for rethinking the boundaries of community belonging and national citizenship in the face of political repression. Ian Rocksborough-Smith sheds light on a powerful core of Chicago-based culture workers who expanded the battlefront for Black freedom from the picket line and street rally to the library, the museum hall, and the classroom, using public displays of the past to imagine a different future. Black Public History in Chicago is an amazing project of both recovery and redemption."--Davarian L. Baldwin, author of Chicago's New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life"In this remarkable book, Ian Rocksborough-Smith examines the network of librarians, writers, teachers, and others who built an African American usable past that could advance their visions of racial liberation in mid-twentieth-century Chicago. Amid repression of all kinds, these unsung activists and artists set out to make history matter beyond the academy and mainstream museums. They devoted their lives to building independent knowledge-producing institutions through school curriculum, public rituals and commemorations, and ultimately the DuSable Museum. Like his protagonists, Rocksborough-Smith resists sanitized narratives and makes public history accessible, revealing how these cultural workers bridged generations and fused interracial and nationalist ideologies. Readers interested in the Black Chicago Renaissance and the generations of the Black Freedom Struggle, Cold War scholars, and especially public historians of all stripes need to read this book. Then and now, African American public history matters as a key source of knowledge as activism to combat poverty, racism, and xenophobia in the American city."--Erik S. Gellman, author of Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights"Black Public History in Chicago spans decades and is complemented and supported by the detailed efforts of the unseen and often mentioned contributors of each era. . . . Rocksborough-Smith has produced an excellent work that those with interest in African American history of Chicago history will enjoy." --Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society"This book helps to celebrate those who worked to keep alive the memory of an all-too-often buried past." --The Progressive

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Trade Review"Griffith adds more white voices of opposition to the racism and nativism of the 1920s, gives more evidence of the global reach of Christian non-governmental organizations, and extends the work of David Hollinger and William Hutchison on the public presence of Protestant liberalism in the twentieth century. " --Journal of American History"The Fight for Asian American Civil Rights expands our understanding of civil rights by illuminating the contribution of liberal white leadership to Asian American equality."--Jon Thares Davidann, author of Cultural Diplomacy in U.S.-Japanese Relations, 1919–1941"This illuminating study documents how liberal Protestant activists mobilized against racial discrimination and engaged in interracial coalition-building. Recommended." --Choice"YMCA officials with experience as Protestant missionaries in Japan led the defense of Asian Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. Griffith illuminates several decades of anti-racist organizing and writing by a dynamic group of Y leaders, culminating in the group's climactic and courageous defense of Japanese Americans during World War II. This is a substantial research achievement that broadens our understanding of ecumenical Protestantism and of the history of civil rights."--David A. Hollinger, author of After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History"Scholars of religion and Asian American history should have Griffith's book on their shelves, as it provides a necessary intervention into the fields of Christian interethnic and interracial activism." --American Historical Review "Griffith does an excellent job of synthesizing the massive amounts of publications produced by these activists and shows how their approach shifted as they attempted to combat nativists and anti-immigration legislation. . . . Her deep analysis of liberal Protestant rhetoric is the book's greatest strength." --Pacific Historical Review"This is a fascinating book that will challenge everything we think we know about race, empire, missionaries, and race politics in the first half of the twentieth century. Go get this book." --Western Historical Quarterly

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewMichael Harrington Book Award, New Political Science Caucus of the American Political Science Association, 2019 "Lindsay’s book is a much-needed contribution to the examination of education for black children. . . . This book is a must-read for scholars interested in education, single-sex education, a history of intersectionality, and feminist politics." --Politics & Gender"A dispassionate and well-reasoned argument. None of the other books on the 'boy crisis in schools' or 'pushout of girls in schools' or 'myths about the black male crisis' deal in such a devoted fashion with both the case of all-black male schools and philosophy."--Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, author of Waste of a White Skin: The Carnegie Corporation and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability"Far-thinking and boldly argued, In a Classroom of Their Own explores the dilemmas faced by professionals and parents in search of equitable schooling for all students -- black boys and otherwise." --Ibram X. Kendi, Black Perspectives "In this brilliant study of the All-Black-Male-School Movement, Keisha Lindsay makes a critical contribution to contemporary policy debates, demonstrating how mistaken notions about the immediate grasp of oppressive experience lead social justice activists seriously astray, while also theorizing political means to alter institutional practices and structures of power toward more progressive ends."--Mary Hawkesworth, author of Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied Politics"For anyone who worries about the vexed relationship of race, gender, and justice in American schools, Keisha Lindsay's A Classroom of Their Own is a revelation. Lindsay offers an intersectional interpretation of the politics of all-male black schools and builds on the work of political theorists, activists, and education specialists to envision educational reforms that advance the well-being of all children."--Lawrie Balfour, author of Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W. E. B. Du Bois"Keisha Lindsay’s In a Classroom of Their Own is the book on all black male schools (ABMSs) that I’ve been waiting for. The way she draws on intersectional analysis to illustrate how many black male supporters of ABMSs can articulate a simultaneously antifeminist and antiracist politics is as groundbreaking as it is sobering. Rather than dismissing intersectional analysis because of its potential to foster antifeminist, homophobic thought and practices, Lindsay identifies a more thoughtful, counterintuitive way to combat the race-gender achievement gap: form coalitions that interrogate the liberatory as well as less-than-liberatory potential of one’s own and others’ experience. In a Classroom of Their Own is the kind of critical analysis we need to ensure that today’s and future generations of black students can experience formal education that fosters self-determination and liberation."--Lance McCready, author of Making Space for Diverse Masculinities: Difference, Intersectionality, and Engagement in an Urban High School"Lindsay's engagement with this subject is nuanced, sensitive, and sophisticated." --Teachers College Record"Does an excellent job revealing the shortcomings surrounding current conversations regarding school reform." --Men and Masculinities

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Book SynopsisFreewheeling sexuality and gender experimentation defined the social and moral landscape of 1890s San Francisco. Middle class whites crafting titillating narratives on topics such as high divorce rates, mannish women, and extramarital sex centered Chinese and Japanese immigrants in particular. Amy Sueyoshi draws on everything from newspapers to felony case files to oral histories in order to examine how whites' pursuit of gender and sexual fulfillment gave rise to racial caricatures. As she reveals, white reporters, writers, artists, and others conflated Chinese and Japanese, previously seen as two races, into one. There emerged the Orientala single pan-Asian American stereotype weighted with sexual and gender meaning. Sueyoshi bridges feminist, queer, and ethnic studies to show how the white quest to forge new frontiers in gender and sexual freedom reinforcedand spawnedracial inequality through the ever evolving Oriental. Informed and fascinating, Discriminating Sex reconsiders the Trade Review"Discriminating Sex is a fascinating read, clearly written and carefully argued." --Journal of American History"Discriminating Sex will threaten some, infuriate others. Nonetheless, Sueyoshi's scholarship as well as the ingenuity of her narrative is sure to astonish as she demonstrates that Euro-American views of gender/sexuality—both their own and of people of color—are imaginaries formed in a crucible of desire, fear, and power."--Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, author of Japanese American Resettlement through the Lens: Hikaru Carl Iwasaki and the WRA's Photographic Section, 1943–1945"Through meticulous archival research and careful argumentation, Amy Sueyoshi delivers a rich narrative and a bold argument....The book is a spelndid example of intersectional analysis that addresses the formation of gender and sexuality and the making of whiteness." --Southern California Quarterly"A much-needed study of American Orientalism using an intersectional lens of race, gender, and sexuality." --H-Net Review

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBonnie Ritter Outstanding Feminist Book Award, Feminist & Women Studies Division of the National Communication Association, 2019 "In Search of Belonging is the first ethnographic project to consider how Latina audiences decide their cultural, social, and economic value to the nation via media representations of the self." --Latino Studies"Báez's timely and pathbreaking book explores the missing link in the literature of Latinx cultural studies, which have focused on matters of production or representation but seldom on Latinx audiences as active agents of their own. Her in-depth ethnography of audiences makes this original work a must-read for scholars working in the fields of Latinx studies, but also media, American Studies, and gender studies more generally."--Arlene Dávila, author of El Mall: The Spatial and Class Politics of Shopping Malls in Latin America "Báez skillfully explores how audiences who critique stereotyped Latina characters and the whitewashing of celebrities also engage in contemporary practices of femininity that reflect normative social values. . . . This book is well suited for advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars and provides a strong methodological example for emerging ethnographic researchers." --Journal of Cinema and Media Studies"Báez makes a seminal contribution with this smartly researched study. She gives voice to U.S. Latinas as they enact cultural citizenship, offering important insights on how Latinas consume media for a sense of affirmation, belonging, and empowerment."--Mary C. Beltrán, author of Latina/o Stars in U.S. Eyes: The Making and Meanings of Film and TV Stardom

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Innovative, creative, and unapologetically spiritual, Building Womanist Coalitions reminds us why womanism is still as relevant today as it was several decades ago when Alice Walker first coined the term."--David Ikard, author of Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs"Building Womanist Coalitions is a helplful resource for an instructor interested in better understanding womanist readings and or methodologies into the classroom." --Wabash Center Journal on Teaching

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Fenderson traces the rise and fall of Black Arts Movement through Fuller's professional and personal endeavors and elucidates the larger implications of the movement through the microcosm of Fuller and his environs. Fenderson convincingly contends that Fuller should take his rightful place in the scholarship as a pivotal intellectual architect who helped build the artistic component of the Black power movement." --Journal of American History"Building the Black Arts Movement is both thoroughly researched and beautifully written with a sharp class and gender analysis. As such, it will reshape how historians approach this movement and its historical actors." --Journal of African American History"Fenderson succeeds in challenging readers to rethink Fuller's times by presenting a counternarrative to the oftentimes overly harmonious representation of Black social movements in the United States." --Journal of Folklore Research"Jonathan Fenderson’s book is a masterwork of African American intellectual and cultural history, bringing to light a man whose name should be mentioned more often in the histories of contemporary America." --Society for U.S. Intellectual History"Very powerfully and marvelously written--a page turner. Fenderson's book is bound to reach a wide audience with this mastery of narrative and exposition. Indeed, I don't think that the story of the Black Arts Movement has been told in such a sweeping narrative of that era."--Komozi Woodard, author of A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics​"Jonathan Fenderson's Building the Black Arts Movement is a brilliant study of one of the key figures of the Black Arts and Black Power movements. Fenderson's account of Fuller is also a history of Black Arts and Black Power in Chicago that in turn illuminates the ideological, aesthetic, and institutional development of black political and cultural radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s."--James Smethurst, author of The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewJohn Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, American Association of Geographers, 2020 "A compelling examination . . . Lemon's work provides a much-needed scholarly overview of the proliferation of food trucks in the 21st century." --Great Plains Research"A fantastic book. I was repeatedly surprised by the numerous ways the author credibly links the act of mobile food vending to some of North America's most poignant contemporary issues of cultural identity. The mix of interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis is a perfect fit for exploring the themes."--Joshua Long, author of Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin, Texas"Overall this was truly a fascinating book. . . .Very much recommended reading." --BookAnon.com: Confessions of a Bookaholic"Folklorists interested in culinary tourism will find aspects of this study good food for thought." --Journal of Folklore Research"The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City (2019) by Robert Lemon is sure to become a formative text in the expanding body of work on the relationship between culinary entrepreneurship and local city ordinances." --H-Environment"Overall this was truly a fascinating book. . . .Very much recommended reading." --BookAnon.com: Confessions of a Bookaholic

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewShelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies, International Committee of the American Studies Association (ASA), 2019 "The World in a City is one of the first texts to fully examine the implications of pre-World War II Los Angeles as a hub for industrial and agricultural laborers." --Journal of Urban History"The World in a City is a wonderful resource for historians of California and the borderlands of the United States and Mexico, labor historians, and radical historians." --Western Historical Quarterly"David Struthers makes a fine contribution to the growing body of scholarship examining ethnic interaction among L.A.’s working-class communities." --Southern California Quarterly"David Struthers's fresh and fascinating look at Los Angeles radicalism shows us long-forgotten facets of city history. Dedicated anarchist activists, an alphabet soup of radical organizations, an interracial rank-and-file--all had a profound impact on Los Angeles's transformation into a modern city. Struthers's mix of research and fluid storytelling takes us back to an era of soaring hopes and racial togetherness that, for a time, sustained a grand vision of a Los Angeles that might have been.--Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles"This is an important book, and I hope that we soon see more similarly compelling work on this period that does not separate local interethnic campaigns from the context of global revolution that helped animate them." --Journal of American History

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Black Sexual Economies provides a compelling collection of writing that analyzes the experiences of black gender and sexual minorities and investigates collaborations made by an interdisciplinary team of scholars examining black sexuality in a variety of historical, political, and social contexts." --Ethnic and Racial Studies"Black Sexual Economies is the first anthology of its kind to mine the deeply rooted vestiges of late capitalism as they relate to black sexuality. Through analyses of slavery, pornography, popular culture, and music, among other topics, each essay in this carefully curated volume enlivens anew our attention to the stakes of theorizing black sexuality—the fact that we can never think about black sexuality without always thinking about the political economic conditions of its making. Indeed, Black Sexual Economies is a welcomed breath of fresh air to the now well-established field of black sexuality studies."--E. Patrick Johnson, editor of No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies"To represent, to affirm, to understand, and to live black sexualities can be immeasurably difficult. The very foundations of politics, social life—and, as this volume argues, capitalist economies—in the modern world often hinge on pathologizing black people’s sexuality in order to exploit and to destroy black bodies and black lives. Black feminist innovator Adrienne Davis curates here essays that batter down and deftly navigate the thicket of lies that try to render 'black sexuality' unspeakable and unknowable, and point the way forward."--Darieck Scott, author of Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shared Selves mines the Latinx archive by placing lesser-known texts into conversation with authors such as Ortiz Cofer and Rechy. A must-read for anyone interested in the variability of the life-writing form and its continuing relevance for Latinx literary criticism."--David J. Vázquez, author of Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Idenity"I really admire this book! Suzanne Bost offers a reading of Latinx life writing that moves us all toward an elsewhere that transcends the humanistic individual and toward a sense of being that emphasizes webs of relations. This is necessary work that positions us to better encounter today’s ethical and material challenges, including the inequities of climate crisis."--Priscilla Solis Ybarra, author of Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment

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Trade ReviewCertificate of Excellence, Illinois State Historical Society, 2021 "Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance invites a new generation of scholars to keep digging into the scarcely tapped and rich history of Black Chicago and its influence on US history." --Society for US Intellectual History"Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance makes a compelling case for starting any history of Black culture and arts in Chicago well before the traditional start date of the Chicago Renaissance in the 1930s." --Society for US Intellectual History”An important work of intellectual and cultural recovery. It brings to the surface corners of Chicago's vibrant intellectual and cultural life that we have never considered or simply heard about in passing. The archival depth and artistic breadth will powerfully add to a much broader understanding of black cultural renaissance both geographically and conceptually.”—Davarian L. Baldwin, author of Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life"Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance has many pleasures for readers interested in African-American history, art history, Chicago history and, indeed, US history, and one is the opportunity to learn about important but little-known figures from a century and more ago." --Third Coast Review"Roots of the Black Chicago Renaissance ultimately presents a rich, varied tapestry for understanding some of the foundational moments of Black Chicago's cultural and literary history. No doubt future studies will continue to build on some of the insights presented by this volume." --Journal of American Ethnic History "Highly recommended." --Choice"The Black Chicago Renaissance (BCR) remains a relatively understudies moment in 20th-century African American cultural history. . . . An engrossing account of the formative period that led to the BCR of the 1930s and 1940s. . . . A highly informative, albeit imperfect, step toward a fuller reconstruction of the pre-BCR years." --Science and Society"This is the book we’ve been waiting for--revelatory at every turn--attesting to the creative ferment of black Chicago in the early years of the twentieth century. Courage, Reed, and an impressive range of contributors give us the vital 'prequel' to the Black Chicago Renaissance, through new stories of writers, artists, dancers, tastemakers, and cultural entrepreneurs who made Chicago a center of the New Negro movement."--Liesl Olson, author of Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Weems is an extremely diligent researcher and provides an excellent introduction to Overton. The book is as much a history of Black business in Chicago during Overton's life as a conventional biography and a picture of an era." --Journal of American History"In The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire, historian Robert E. Weems Jr. offers a comprehensive biography of an important Black businessman who has largely faded in public memory. . . . Weems is appropriately critical of Overton throughout. . . . An excellent book that is both rich in historical detail and eminently readable." --Journal of African American History"The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago clears the air around one of Black America's most successful businessmen and his time . . . a fascinating read." --Business History Review "An excellent business study of Anthony Overton . . . Weems skillfully evaluates Overton's neglected career, his diverse holdings, and the importance of his family in overseeing the corporate empire." --Choice"Robert E. Weems Jr. recalls the booms and busts of one of the leading African American entrepreneurs of the twentieth century and restores him to his rightful place in American business history." --Publishers Weekly"Mixes business history with a fascinating profile to tell the story of Anthony Overton." --Chicago Sun-Times​"Weems has produced a pioneering study of Chicago's preeminent financial titan of the Black Metropolis Era of the 1920s and beyond. This first full-length, thoroughly documented account of Anthony Overton meticulously details how he amassed a business fortune while building an empire that became a major source of empowerment for women ranging from executive and managerial appointments to essential clerical positions.”—Christopher R. Reed, The Rise of Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1920–1929

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Book SynopsisThis fresh and fascinating exploration of Ebony's political, social, and historical content illuminates the intellectual role of the iconic magazine and its contribution to African American scholarship. The magazine's status as a consumer publication helped to mediate its representation of African American identity in both past and present.Trade ReviewOne of the Chicago Sun-Time's Books Not to Miss A Black Perspectives Best Black History Book of 2020 Honorable Mention, Research Society for American Periodicals, 2021 "By emphasizing Bennett's role and placing the magazine within the context of each stage of the postwar Black Freedom Struggle, West thoughtfully connects Black Americans' historical perspectives with the social transformations occurring in postwar America." --Journal of African American History"West thoroughly dispels the critical tendency to dismiss or overlook a magazine like Ebony as too commercially oriented to be of cultural or historical significance." --American Literary History"West presents media scholars and educators with a new way of viewing Ebony and its founder, John Harold Johnson. Thanks to West, researchers are better able to visualize Ebony as more than 'a black counterpart to Life magazine' and Johnson as more than just an entrepreneur who targeted his magazine's content to the black bourgeois." --American Journalism”E. James West’s book is the first major examination of Ebony as a forum for black historical discourse and the magazine’s long-time executive editor Lerone Bennett Jr.’s multifaceted thought, work, and scholarship as a leading popular historian of the black past and vital contributor to the post-war black history movement. A well-researched and accessible study situated within the growing field of black intellectual history, Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr. is a major contribution to our understanding of what West aptly calls 'popular black history.'”—Pero G. Dagbovie, author of Revisiting the Black Past: The Use and Misuse of African American history in the Twenty-First Century"West expertly chronicles how Ebony magazine and its executive editor Lerone Bennett Jr. shaped cultural perception of African-American history. . . . This astute history shines a welcome light on a pioneering journalist. " --Publishers Weekly"A fantastic, deeply-contextualized new book about Ebony and Bennett." --IMixWhatILike"This concise, illuminating book serves as a useful marker for a full-fledged (and long overdue) critical history of Ebony, a major American magazine, in all its glories and travails." --PopMatters"Recommended." --Choice

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Book SynopsisWomen of color from diverse backgrounds give frank, unapologetic accounts of their battles to navigate grad school and fulfill their ambitions. Their stories of hard-won successes are sprinkled with advice on self-care, building supportive communities, finding like-minded mentors, and resisting unsupportive faculty and colleagues.Trade ReviewChoice Outstanding Academic Title, 2020 "A valuable book. . . . Degrees of Difference provides administrators and others in academia an opportunity to consider ways that altering the campuses where they work can more authentically attempt to gain and retain women of color graduate students to change the meaning of diversity work from token gestures to real social justice activity." --Hypatia"These essays, rich in nuance, will raise the collective consciousness about experiences of disenfranchisement overcome through resiliency: stories so viable and vivid that reading them becomes a spiritual experience, not just an intellectual one. In fact, anyone who has experienced disenfranchisement, bias, discrimination, or downright open hostility while pursuing higher education will find personal validation here and will also be re-confronted by past challenges to their humanity." --Resources for Gender and Women's Studies"This important addition to the literature on the academic experience will appeal to graduate students, those considering grad school, and anyone looking to expand their understanding of academia." --Library Journal"Degrees of Difference contributes to larger conversations about the systemic violence and injustice women of color face in higher education and works towards creating strategies for transformative change within and beyond the Ivory Tower." --Women's Review of Books"The book incites the disruption needed to make change happen." --Science Magazine​”Read this book! Degrees of Difference is a compelling collection of testimonies accompanied with sharp analyses and just the right amount of real talk. It offers both vulnerable and empowered reflections on the experiences of women of color and indigenous women in graduate school.”—Nitasha Tamar Sharma, author of Beyond Ethnicity: New Politics of Race in Hawai`i”The informed editors of this collection, Degrees of Difference, utilize all their tools and the most renowned feminist theorists (Ahmed and Anzaldúa) to incorporate the book within a body of literature that has precedents, however precedents that have somewhat left out a group in academia: graduate students, which this collection remedies. Graduate students, ABD, professors to be, often work under the worst conditions, in structures of power that invisibilize them. In its invaluable introduction Degrees of Difference, the editors beautifully encapsulate the importance of a varied array of titles that set a precedent for this innovative feminist, diverse and inclusive manuscript. The personal and the political are addressed in this multifaceted collection, which is a blanket of resources for graduate students and tenure track academics, as well as for seasoned and tenured committee members, serving on university rank and tenure committees. Bravas! This is a great addition to a collection of groundbreaking literature in this area, I applaud the press. This collection honors all women academics, especially in times like these.”—Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia"In a series of sharply realized, personal, lively essays, the authors work to expose “uncomfortable truths” about how indigenous women and women of color (IWWOC) academics traverse universities that are not designed to support them, nor to realize their success." --Public Books "An important addition to the body of work on underrepresented women in academia. . . . Highly recommended." --Choice "A carefully edited and expertly curated text, Degrees of Difference is a timely work that takes seriously and urgently the inequities that have become distressingly commonplace in the contemporary higher education landscape. What further contradistinguishes Degrees of Difference from other works is its keen attention to mentoring and mentorship. The essays and accounts which comprise this collection offer invaluable insights for those within the academia and those who are contemplating careers within it."--Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, author of Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Gallon succeeds in outlining the mutual liberalization of the Black press and Black urban communities in the interwar period. She conveys the dynamism of an era when newspapers thrust race leaders and new migrants into public reconsideration of how Blackness could be embodied in the twentieth century." --Journal of American History"The institution of Black Press, as Pleasure in the News outlines, contained a diversity of approaches to sexuality, in such papers as the Baltimore Afro-American, Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, New York Amsterdam News, and Philadelphia Tribune. It is remarkable that Gallon is able to weave these newspapers together so skillfully and the archival research involved in this study is impressive. . . . In centering sexuality and pleasure, Gallon thoughtfully highlights ambivalences that the Black Press and its readership grappled with and the always important question of how much a newspaper's content is shaped by its reader' perceived desires." --American Periodical”Blending unprecedented research into the African American press, and the journalists and editors who put the papers out, with a careful synthesis of the existing scholarship, Pleasure in the News shows how opinions about sex behavior impacted reading publics over several decades of profound change in the black experience. Kim Gallon's systematic analysis of an almost endless news cycle of marital infidelities, scandalous divorces, celebrity drag queens, and low-down queers of all kinds, provides a fresh angle on what are now classic questions in the field. How did respectability impact performativity, how did opinion makers command and defer to sexual consumers, and what did all of this mean for the experience of black desire within the marginal spaces of the modern metropolis?”—Kevin Mumford, author of Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis

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