Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society


Michael K. Brown - 2003
    If the experience of most black Americans says otherwise, an explanation has been sorely lacking—or obscured by the passions the issue provokes. At long last offering a cool, clear, and informed perspective on the subject, this book brings together a team of highly respected sociologists, political scientists, economists, criminologists, and legal scholars to scrutinize the logic and evidence behind the widely held belief in a color-blind society—and to provide an alternative explanation for continued racial inequality in the United States. While not denying the economic advances of black Americans since the 1960s, Whitewashing Race draws on new and compelling research to demonstrate the persistence of racism and the effects of organized racial advantage across many institutions in American society—including the labor market, the welfare state, the criminal justice system, and schools and universities. Looking beyond the stalled debate over current antidiscrimination policies, the authors also put forth a fresh vision for achieving genuine racial equality of opportunity in a post-affirmative action world.

Poet Warrior: A Memoir


Joy Harjo - 2021
    A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.Weaving together the voices that shaped her, Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, the teachings of a changing earth, and the poets who paved her way. She explores her grief at the loss of her mother and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member. Moving fluidly among prose, song, and poetry, Poet Warrior is a luminous journey of becoming that sings with all the jazz, blues, tenderness, and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network


Ruth Gomberg-Muoz - 2010
    Ruth Gomberg-Mu�oz introduces readers to the Lions, ten friends from Mexico committed to improving their fortunes and the lives of theirfamilies. Set in and around Il Vino, a restaurant that could stand in for many places that employ undocumented workers, Labor and Legality reveals the faces behind the war being waged over illegal aliens in America. Gomberg-Mu�oz focuses on how undocumented workers develop a wide range of socialstrategies to cultivate financial security, nurture emotional well-being, and promote their dignity and self-esteem. She also reviews the political and historical circumstances of undocumented migration, with an emphasis on post-1970 socioeconomic and political conditions in the United States andMexico.Labor and Legality is one of several volumes in the Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology series, which examines the experiences of individual communities in our contemporary world. Each volume offers a brief and engaging exploration of a particular issue arising fromglobalization and its cultural, political, and economic effects on certain peoples or groups. Ideal for introductory anthropology courses-and as supplements for a variety of upper-level courses-these texts seamlessly combine portraits of an interconnected and globalized world with narratives thatemphasize the agency of their subjects.

A Silent Takeover


Sarvananda Chandrashekaraiah - 2020
    He decides to take a sabbatical and disappears off the grid to Chikkamagaluru.Suhaasini, an intern at tabloid Muthodlur Blitz is assigned a difficult task – to track down Raaj and get an exclusive interview. Her research into Raaj’s life uncovers a strange pattern; ill-fate follows every official ex-girlfriend of Raaj–each one either becomes mentally unstable or dies under mysterious circumstances. Determined to solve this mystery, Suhaasini vows to unravel this sinister web, unearthing dark secrets and evil schemes along the way. As she gets closer to the truth, the death of key players and an attack to silence her only drives Suhaasini to keep on digging. Will she succeed? Will the culprit be brought to justice? And what will be the cost of her persistence to expose the truth?

Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.


Danielle S. Allen - 2017
    In this “compassionate retelling of an abjectly tragic story” (New York Times), Danielle Allen—a prize-winning scholar—recounts her heroic efforts to rescue Michael Alexander Allen, her beloved baby cousin, who was arrested at fifteen for an attempted carjacking. Tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years, Michael served eleven. Three years later, he was dead. Why did this gifted young man, who dreamed of being a firefighter and a writer, end up murdered? Why did he languish in prison? And why at fifteen was he in an alley in South Central Los Angeles, holding a gun while trying to steal someone’s car? Hailed as a “literary miracle” (Washington Post), this fierce family memoir makes mass incarceration nothing less than a new American tragedy.

Angel - A Short Story of Ruination


Shea Serrano - 2021
    

Letters to Memory


Karen Tei Yamashita - 2017
    . . . Intriguing." —Library Journal"This powerful, deeply felt, and impeccably researched fiction is irresistibly evocative." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)Scintillations is an excursion through the Japanese internment using archival materials from the Yamashita family as well as a series of epistolary conversations with composite characters representing a range of academic specialties. Historians, anthropologists, classicists—their disciplines, and Yamashita's engagement with them, are a way for her explore various aspects of the internment and to expand its meaning beyond her family, and our borders, to ideas of debt, forgiveness, civil rights, Orientalism, and community.Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.

Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America


Erik Nielson - 2019
    Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted liberally from his album Shell Shocked. Mac was sentenced to thirty years in prison, where he remains. And his case is just one of many nationwide.Over the last three decades, as rap became increasingly popular, prosecutors saw an opportunity: they could present the sometimes violent, crime-laden lyrics of amateur rappers as confessions to crimes, threats of violence, or revelations of criminal motive—and judges and juries would go along with it. They’ve reopened cold cases, alleged gang affiliation, and secured convictions by presenting the lyrics and videos of rappers as autobiography. Now, an alarming number of aspiring rappers are imprisoned. No other form of creative expression is treated this way in the courts.Rap on Trial places this disturbing prosecutorial practice in the context of hip-hop history and exposes what’s at stake. It’s a gripping, timely exploration at the crossroads of contemporary hip-hop and mass incarceration.

City of a Hundred Fires


Richard Blanco - 1998
    This distinct group, known as the Ñ Generation (as coined by Bill Teck), are the bilingual children of Cuban exiles nourished by two cultural currents—the fragmented traditions and transferred nostalgia of their parents' Caribbean homeland and the very real and present America where they grew up and live.

The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts


Catherine E. McKinley - 2001
    Raised in a small, white New England town, she grew up with a persistent longing. After a five-year search marked by disappointment, she finds her birth mother and a half-sister named Sarah, the name originally given to her. When she locates her birth father and several of his eleven other children, she is then confronted with a revelation that threatens to destabilize all she has uncovered. In telling of her struggles, McKinley challenges us to rethink our own preconceptions about race, loyalty, and love.

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom


Deborah SantanaNayomi Munaweera - 2018
    It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world. Sixty-nine authors ― African American, Asian American, Chicana, Native American, Cameroonian, South African, Korean, LGBTQI ― lend their voices to broaden cross-cultural understanding and to build bridges to each other’s histories and daily experiences of life. America Ferrera’s essay is from her powerful speech at the Women’s March in Washington D.C.; Natalie Baszile writes about her travels to Louisiana to research Queen Sugar and finding the “painful truths” her father experienced in the “belly of segregation;” Porochista Khakpour tells us what it is like to fly across America under the Muslim travel ban; Lalita Tademy writes about her transition from top executive at Sun Microsystems to NY Times bestselling author. This anthology is monumental and timely as human rights and justice are being challenged around the world. It is a watershed title, not only written, but produced entirely by women of color, including the publishing, editing, process management, book cover design, and promotions. Our vision is to empower underrepresented voices and to impact the world of publishing in America ― particularly important in a time when 80% of people who work in publishing self-identify as white (as found recently in a study by Lee & Low Books, and reported on NPR).

Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male


Tim Wise - 2008
    The essays included in this collection span the last ten years of Wise’s writing and cover all the hottest racial topics of the past decade: affirmative action, Hurricane Katrina, racial tension in the wake of the Duke lacrosse scandal, white school shootings, racial profiling, phony racial unity in the wake of 9/11, and the political rise of Barack Obama. Wise’s commentaries make forceful yet accessible arguments that serve to counter both white denial and complacency—two of the main obstacles to creating a more racially equitable and just society. Speaking Treason Fluently is a superbly crafted collection of Wise’s best work, which reveals the ongoing salience of race in America today and demonstrates that racial privilege is not only a real and persistent problem, but one that ultimately threatens the health and well-being of the entire society.

Western Political Thought


O.P. Gauba
    

White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society


Ghassan Hage - 1998
    In this book, he asks whether that desire is indeed limited to racists. Drawing upon the Australian experience, Hage draws conclusions that might also be applicable in France, the United States and Great Britain, each being examples of multicultural environment under the control of white culture. Hage argues that governments have promised white citizens that they would lose nothing under multiculturalism. However, migrant settlement has changed neighbourhoods, challenged white control, created new demands for non-whites, and led to white backlash. This book suggests that white racists and white mulitculturalists may share more assumptions than either group suspects.

The Housemaid


Amma Darko - 1999
    Everyone is ready to comment on the likely story behind the abandoned infant. The men have one opinion, the women another. As the story rapidly unfolds it becomes clear that seven different women played their part in the drama. All of them are caught in a web of superstition, ignorance, greed and corruption.