Book picks similar to
Trespassers?: Asian Americans and the Battle for Suburbia by Willow Lung-Amam
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617 Squadron: The Dambusters at War (Memoirs from World War Two)
Tom Bennett - 1986
Freeze
Nicole Jackson - 2016
Jahrein Junior and Josairah are the offspring of two hood legends; Jahrein and Josh. They’ve grown up around each other, practically their entire lives, but as time goes on, their mutual attraction can’t be denied. Thinking that their situation was better left in secrecy, the two forge ahead as a couple, only no one knows. But when everything’s out in the open, will Jahrein Junior truly be ready for a commitment? Or will he need Josairah to Freeze, until he’s ready to be the man she needs?
Racehoss: Big Emma's Boy
Albert Race Sample - 1984
Born in 1930, the mixed-race son of a hard-drinking black prostitute and a white cotton broker, Sample was raised in the Jim Crow South by an abusive mother who refused to let her son—who could pass for white—call her Mama. He watched for the police while she worked, whether as a prostitute, bootlegger, or running the best dice game in town. He loved his mother deeply but could no longer take her abuse and ran away from home at the age of twelve. In his early twenties, Sample was arrested for burglary, robbery, and robbery by assault and was sentenced to nearly twenty years in the Texas prison system in the 1950s and 60s. His light complexion made him stand out in the all-black prison plantation known as the “burnin’ hell,” where he and over four hundred prisoners picked cotton and worked the land while white shotgun-carrying guards followed on horseback. Sample earned the moniker “Racehoss” for his ability to hoe cotton faster than anyone else in his squad. A profound spiritual awakening in solitary confinement was a decisive moment for him, and he became determined to turn his life around. When he was finally released in 1972, he did just that. Though Sample was incarcerated in the twentieth century, his memoir reads like it came from the nineteenth. With new stories that had been edited out of the first edition, a foreword by Texas attorney and writer David R. Dow, and an afterword by Sample’s widow, Carol, this new edition of Racehoss: Big Emma’s Boy offers a more complete picture of this extraordinary time in America’s recent past.
Why Cities Matter: To God, the Culture, and the Church
Stephen T. Um - 2013
Unfortunately, most Christian literature about the city focuses solely on its problems (crime, homelessness, etc.), rather than providing a comprehensive analysis of the city that informs, instructs, and inspires. Using sociological research and data, urban pastors Justin Buzzard and Stephen Um lay out the vision and rationale for church planting, cultural engagement, and missionary impulses in our world’s cities as they provide a solid foundation for motivation. Here is a call to make the cities our home, to take good care of them, and to participate in God’s kingdom-building work in the urban centers of our world!
House of Sticks
Ly TranLy Tran - 2021
Ly’s father, a former lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army, spent nearly a decade as a POW, and their resettlement is made possible through a humanitarian program run by the US government. Soon after they arrive, Ly joins her parents and three older brothers sewing ties and cummerbunds piece-meal on their living room floor to make ends meet. As they navigate this new landscape, Ly finds herself torn between two worlds. She knows she must honor her parents’ Buddhist faith and contribute to the family livelihood, working long hours at home and eventually as a manicurist alongside her mother at a nail salon in Brooklyn that her parents take over. But at school, Ly feels the mounting pressure to blend in. A growing inability to see the blackboard presents new challenges, especially when her father forbids her from getting glasses, calling her diagnosis of poor vision a government conspiracy. His frightening temper and paranoia leave a mark on Ly’s sense of self. Who is she outside of everything her family expects of her? An “unsentimental yet deeply moving examination of filial bond, displacement, war trauma, and poverty” (NPR), House of Sticks is a timely and powerful portrait of one girl’s coming-of-age and struggle to find her voice amid clashing cultural expectations.
This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work
Tiffany Jewell - 2020
Written by anti-bias, anti-racist, educator and activist, Tiffany Jewell, and illustrated by French illustrator Aurélia Durand in kaleidoscopic vibrancy. This book is written for the young person who doesn't know how to speak up to the racist adults in their life. For the 14 year old who sees injustice at school and isn't able to understand the role racism plays in separating them from their friends. For the kid who spends years trying to fit into the dominant culture and loses themselves for a little while. It's for all of the Black and Brown children who have been harmed (physically and emotionally) because no one stood up for them or they couldn't stand up for themselves; because the colour of their skin, the texture of their hair, their names made white folx feel scared and threatened. It is written so children and young adults will feel empowered to stand up to the adults who continue to close doors in their faces. This book will give them the language and ability to understand racism and a drive to undo it. In short, it is for everyone.
Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy
Tressie McMillan Cottom - 2015
Yet little is known about why for-profits have expanded so quickly and even less about how the power and influence of this big-money industry impact individual lives. Lower Ed, the first book to link the rapid expansion of for-profit degrees to America’s increasing inequality, reveals the story of an industry that exploits the pain, desperation, and aspirations of the most vulnerable and exposes the conditions that allow for-profit education to thrive.Tressie McMillan Cottom draws on her personal experience as a former counselor at two for-profit colleges and dozens of interviews with students, senior executives, and activists to detail how these schools have become so successful and to decipher the benefits, credentials, pitfalls, and real costs of a for-profit education. By humanizing the hard choices about school and survival that millions of Americans face, Lower Ed nimbly parses the larger forces that deliver some of us to Yale and others to For-Profit U in an office park off Interstate 10.
True Crime Stories Volume 2: 12 Terrifying True Crime Murder Cases (List of Twelve)
Ryan Becker - 2017
From Blaine Norris and Ryan Trimble, who conspired to commit bloody murder for the sake of a film, to James Edward Pough who became a mass shooter after his car was repossessed, it is a frightening yet fascinating look at the sometimes-trivial things which set people onto a path of brutal killing and terror. Each one made their darkest fantasies into a reality when they made the decision to kill and each one has earned their own terrible place in this gruesome hall of fame. Get a copy of List of Twelve: Volume 2 and be prepared for an insight into the darkest recesses of dangerous minds like no other book before it.
The Divine Office: A Study of the Roman Breviary
Edward J. Quigley - 1970
For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare s finesse to Oscar Wilde s wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim s Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library.
Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution
Janette Sadik-Khan - 2016
Her approach was dramatic and effective: Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses. Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that’s already there. Breaking the street into its component parts, Streetfight demonstrates, with step-by-step visuals, how to rewrite the underlying “source code” of a street, with pointers on how to add protected bike paths, improve crosswalk space, and provide visual cues to reduce speeding. Achieving such a radical overhaul wasn’t easy, and Streetfight pulls back the curtain on the battles Sadik-Khan won to make her approach work. She includes examples of how this new way to read the streets has already made its way around the world, from pocket parks in Mexico City and Los Angeles to more pedestrian-friendly streets in Auckland and Buenos Aires, and innovative bike-lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. Many are inspired by the changes taking place in New York City and are based on the same techniques. Streetfight deconstructs, reassembles, and reinvents the street, inviting readers to see it in ways they never imagined.
Baby Huey
James Henderson - 2010
A brilliant urban comic/tragedy that weaves satire, sarcasm and social commentary into a tightly wound anti-drug novel with an unforgettable climax.
Eat A Bowl Of Tea
Louis Chu - 1961
The pages of this novel come alive with the maneuvers of the Tong leaders, the colorful visitors to the Money Come mah-jongg clubhouse, and the complex gossip of closely knit Chinatown.Only a Chinese American could have written a novel of such vigor and authenticity. In 1989 it was made into a feature film by the highly respected director Wayne Wang.
Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas
Rebecca Solnit - 2016
Bringing together the insights of dozens of experts—from linguists to music historians, ethnographers, urbanists, and environmental journalists—amplified by cartographers, artists, and photographers, it explores all five boroughs of New York City and parts of nearby New Jersey. We are invited to travel through Manhattan’s playgrounds, from polyglot Queens to many-faceted Brooklyn, and from the resilient Bronx to the mystical kung-fu hip-hop mecca of Staten Island. The contributors to this exquisitely designed and gorgeously illustrated volume celebrate New York City’s unique vitality, its incubation of the avant-garde, and its literary history, but they also critique its racial and economic inequality, environmental impact, and erasure of its past. Nonstop Metropolis allows us to excavate New York’s buried layers, to scrutinize its political heft, and to discover the unexpected in one of the most iconic cities in the world. It is both a challenge and homage to how New Yorkers think of their city, and how the world sees this capital of capitalism, culture, immigration, and more.Contributors: Sheerly Avni, Gaiutra Bahadur, Marshall Berman, Joe Boyd, Will Butler, Garnette Cadogan, Thomas J. Campanella, Daniel Aldana Cohen, Teju Cole, Joel Dinerstein, Paul La Farge, Francisco Goldman, Margo Jefferson, Lucy R. Lippard, Barry Lopez, Valeria Luiselli, Suketu Mehta, Emily Raboteau, Molly Roy, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Luc Sante, Heather Smith, Jonathan Tarleton, Astra Taylor, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Christina Zanfagna Interviews with: Valerie Capers, Peter Coyote, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Melle Mel, RZA
Rain's Theory
K.C. Mills - 2015
She was the only thing he loved more than the streets that controlled him, so when Rain disappeared from his life he did the only thing he could and just survived. The streets became his priority and women became his past time.Now she's back, and things are as they should be, but will the choices that Theory made affect their chance to finally get it right?
Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees and Other Creatures Unique to theRepublic
Robert Lanham - 2004
From the office TGIF (the overgrown frat boy in the office who always says “party”) to the Lieberal (a Democrat with Republican sympathies), from Uncle Tomatoes (Italians who hate The Sopranos) to Cherohonkees (white Baby Boomers who dress like Native Americans), each profile offers a detailed description of everything from sex appeal and favorite pick-up lines to popular names and habitats. The result is both a brilliant parody and thorough outing of just about every neurosis, attribute, and personality type there is.