Book picks similar to
Privilege, Power, and Difference by Allan G. Johnson
non-fiction
social-justice
nonfiction
sociology
Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore - 2006
By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of “passing.” In a pass-fail situation, standards for acceptance may vary, but somebody always gets trampled on. This anthology seeks to eliminate the pressure to pass and thereby unearth the delicious and devastating opportunities for transformation that might create.Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore, has a history of editing anthologies based on brazen nonconformity and gender defiance. Mattilda sets out to ask the question, “What lies are people forced to tell in order to gain acceptance as 'real'.” The answers are as varied as the life experiences of the writers who tackle this urgent and essential topic.
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
Carol Anderson - 2018
With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans as the nation gears up for the 2018 midterm elections.
What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
Mona Hanna-Attisha - 2018
Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water--and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. At the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself--an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family's activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice.What the Eyes Don't See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their--and all of our--children.
The Way We Never Were: American Families & the Nostalgia Trap
Stephanie Coontz - 1992
Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.
They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing
Gerald Graff - 2006
In addition to explaining the basic moves, this book provides writing templates that show students explicitly how to make these moves in their own writing.
Black Like Me
John Howard Griffin - 1961
Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics
George Lipsitz - 1998
Addressing the common view that whiteness is a meaningless category of identity, this book aims to show that public policy and private prejudice insure that whites wind up on top of the social hierarchy.
Queer: A Graphic History
Meg-John Barker - 2016
Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.
The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies
Marcel Mauss - 1923
The gift is a perfect example of what Mauss calls a total social phenomenon, since it involves legal, economic, moral, religious, aesthetic, and other dimensions. He sees the gift exchange as related to individuals and groups as much as to the objects themselves, and his analysis calls into question the social conventions and economic systems that had been taken for granted for so many years. In a modern translation, introduced by distinguished anthropologist Mary Douglas, The Gift is essential reading for students of social anthropology and sociology.
Can We All Be Feminists?: New Writing from Brit Bennett, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and 15 Others on Intersectionality, Identity, and the Way Forward for Feminism
June Eric-UdorieAfua Hirsch - 2018
A groundbreaking book that elevates underrepresented voices, Can We All Be Feminists? offers the tools and perspective we need to create a 21st century feminism that is truly for all.Including essays by: Soofiya Andry, Gabrielle Bellot, Caitlin Cruz, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Brit Bennett, Evette Dionne, Aisha Gani, Afua Hirsch, Juliet Jacques, Wei Ming Kam, Mariya Karimjee, Eishar Kaur, Emer O’Toole, Frances Ryan, Zoé Samudzi, Charlotte Shane, and Selina Thompson
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. - 2020
Glaude Jr., in a moment when the struggles of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to achieve a new America have been challenged by the election of Donald Trump, a president whose victory represents yet another failure of America to face the lies it tells itself about race. From Charlottesville to the policies of child separation at the border, his administration turned its back on the promise of Obama's presidency and refused to embrace a vision of the country shorn of the insidious belief that white people matter more than others.We have been here before: For James Baldwin, these after times came in the wake of the civil rights movement, when a similar attempt to compel a national confrontation with the truth was answered with the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In these years, spanning from the publication of The Fire Next Time in 1963 to that of No Name in the Street in 1972, Baldwin transformed into a more overtly political writer, a change that came at great professional and personal cost. But from that journey, Baldwin emerged with a sense of renewed purpose about the necessity of pushing forward in the face of disillusionment and despair.In the story of Baldwin's crucible, Glaude suggests, we can find hope and guidance through our own after times, this Trumpian era of shattered promises and white retrenchment. Mixing biography--drawn partially from newly uncovered interviews--with history, memoir, and trenchant analysis of our current moment, Begin Again is Glaude's endeavor, following Baldwin, to bear witness to the difficult truth of race in America today. It is at once a searing exploration that lays bare the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we all must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America.
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin - 1963
At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as “sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle…all presented in searing, brilliant prose,” The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of our literature.
Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
Marjorie Shostak - 1981
This book is the story of the life of Nisa, a member of the !Kung tribe of hunter-gatherers from southern Africa's Kalahari desert. Told in her own words--earthy, emotional, vivid--to Marjorie Shostak, a Harvard anthropologist who succeeded, with Nisa's collaboration, in breaking through the immense barriers of language and culture, the story is a fascinating view of a remarkable woman.
The End of Bias: A Beginning
Jessica Nordell - 2021
We know that it exists, to corrosive and even lethal effect. We see it in medicine, we see it in finance, and as we know from the police killings of so many Black Americans, bias can be deadly. But are we able to step beyond recognition of our prejudice to actually change it?With fifteen years' immersion in the topic, Jessica Nordell digs deep into the cognitive science, social psychology, and developmental research that underpin current efforts to eradicate unintentional bias and discrimination. She examines diversity training, deployed across the land as a corrective but with inconsistent results. She explores what works and why: the diagnostic checklist used by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital that eliminated disparate treatment of men and women in disease prevention; the preschool in Sweden where teachers found ingenious ways to uproot gender stereotyping: the police unit in Oregon where the practice of mindfulness and specialized training has coincided with a startling drop in the use of force.The End of Bias: A Beginning brings good news: Biased behavior can change; the approaches outlined here can transform ourselves and our world.
International Human Rights
Jack Donnelly - 1993
Eminently readable, chock-full of information, Donnelly's book is a must-read. (Human Rights Quarterly) In this new edition, Jack Donnelly updates his classic text on the rise of human rights issues since World War II to reflect the new challenges posed by globalization and the war on terrorism. The third edition includes two entirely new chapters on the Universality of Human Rights and Terrorism, and focuses on the recent emergence of nonstate actors such as the UN and NGO's.