THE BEIGING OF AMERICA, BEING MIXED RACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY, takes on “race matters” and considers them through the firsthand accounts of mixed race people in the United States. Edited by mixed race scholars Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, this collection consists of 39 poets, writers, teachers, professors, artists and activists, whose personal narratives articulate the complexities of interracial life. THE BEIGING OF AMERICA is an absorbing and thought-provoking collection of stories that explore racial identity, alienation, with people often forced to choose between races and cultures in their search for self-identity. While underscoring the complexity of the mixed race experience, these unadorned voices offer a genuine, poignant, enlightening and empowering message to all readers.

This edition of Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature in the United States addresses both quantitative and more qualitative changes in this field over the last decade. Quantitative changes include more authors, books, and publishers; book review sources, booklists, and awards; organizations, institutions, and websites; and criticism and other scholarship. Qualitative changes include: More support for new and emerging writers and illustrators; Promotion of multicultural literature both in the U.S. and around the world, as well as developments in global literature; Developments in the literatures described throughout this book, as well as in research supporting this literature; The impact of technology; Characteristics and activities of four adult audiences that use and promote multicultural children’s literature, and Changes in leaders and their organizations. This is still a single reference source for busy and involved librarians, teachers, parents, scholars, publishers, distributors, and community leaders. Most books on multicultural children’s literature are written especially for teachers, librarians, and scholars. They may be introductions to the literature, selection tools, teaching guides, or very theoretical books on choosing, evaluating, and using these materials. Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature in the United States focuses much more on the history of the development of this literature, from the nineteenth century to the present day. This book provides much more of a cultural and political context for the early development of this literature. It emphasizes the “self-determining” viewpoints and activities of diverse people as they produce materials for the young. Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature… describes organizations, events, activities, and other contributions of diverse writers, illustrators, publishers, researchers, scholars, librarians, educators, and parents. It also describes trends in the research on the literature. It elaborates more on ways in which diversity is still an issue in publishing companies and an extended list of related industries. It describes related literature from outside of the U.S. and makes connections to traditional global literature. Last, Multicultural and Ethnic Children’s Literature, shows the impact of multiculturalism on education, libraries, and the mainstream culture, in general. While the other books on multiculturalism focus on how to find, evaluate, and use multicultural materials, especially in schools and libraries, this book is concerned over whether and how books are produced in the first place and how this material impact the broader society. In many ways, it supplements other books on multicultural children’s literature.

BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED, A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, POEMS AND PERSONAL NARRATIVES, edited by Abiodun Oyewole, extends beyond the Black Lives Matter movement’s primary agenda of police brutality to acknowledge that even when affronted with slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, racial injustice and inequality, black lives have always mattered. While written primarily by African American poets, writers, activists and scholars, selections are also from people of the Latino and African diasporas and white activists. Collectively, these 79 contributors provide a call-to-action that challenges readers to confront long-held values and beliefs about black lives, as well as white privilege and fragility, as it surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and its persistence of structural inequality. More importantly, BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED provides a first-hand perspective to a problem known to the African American community long before the Black Lives Matter movement revealed it to the general public: that black lives have always mattered. Connecting the past to the present, the contributors of BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED provide an eye-opening and engaging collection that has the potential to reignite a broader push for black liberation and equality for all.

Shape Shifters presents a wide-ranging array of essays that examine peoples of mixed racial identity. Moving beyond the static “either/or” categories of racial identification found within typical insular conversations about mixed-race peoples, Shape Shifters explores these mixed-race identities as fluid, ambiguous, contingent, multiple, and malleable. This volume expands our understandings of how individuals and ethnic groups identify themselves within their own sociohistorical contexts. The essays in Shape Shifters explore different historical eras and reach across the globe, from the Roman and Chinese borderlands of classical antiquity to medieval Eurasian shape shifters, the Native peoples of the missions of Spanish California, and racial shape shifting among African Americans in the post–civil rights era. At different times in their lives or over generations in their families, racial shape shifters have moved from one social context to another. And as new social contexts were imposed on them, identities have even changed from one group to another. This is not racial, ethnic, or religious imposture. It is simply the way that people’s lives unfold in fluid sociohistorical circumstances. With contributions by Ryan Abrecht, George J. Sánchez, Laura Moore, and Margaret Hunter, among others, Shape Shifters explores the forces of migration, borderlands, trade, warfare, occupation, colonial imposition, and the creation and dissolution of states and empires to highlight the historically contingent basis of identification among mixed-race peoples across time and space.

Mixed-race Asian American plays are often overlooked for their failure to fit smoothly into static racial categories, rendering mixed-race drama inconsequential in conversations about race and performance. Since the nineteenth century, however, these plays have long advocated for the social significance of multiracial Asian people. Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Experience in American Drama traces the shifting identities of multiracial Asian figures in theater from the late-nineteenth century to the present day and explores the ways that mixed-race Asian identity transforms our understanding of race. Mixed-Asian playwrights harness theater’s generative power to enact performances of “double liminality” and expose the absurd tenacity with which society clings to a tenuous racial scaffolding.

The voices of those experiencing life in the long term are often not heard. This collection of essays and personal stories from the people most impacted by long-term incarceration in Statesville Prison bring light to the crisis of mass incarceration and the human cost of excessive sentencing. Compelling, moving narratives from those most affected by the prison industrial complex make a compelling case that death by incarceration is cruel and unusual punishment. Implemented in the 1990’s and 2000’s harsh sentencing policies, commonly labeled “tough on crime,” became a bipartisan political agenda. These policies had real impacts on families and communities, particularly as they caused the removal of many non-white and poor individuals from cities like Chicago. The Long Term brings into the light what has previously been hidden, a counter-narrative to the tough on crime agenda and an urgent plea for a more humane criminal justice system. The book is a critical contribution to the current debate around challenging the mass incarceration and ending mandatory sentencing, especially for non-violent offenders.

A landmark literary anthology of poems, stories, and essays, Choice Words collects essential voices that renew our courage in the struggle to defend reproductive rights. Twenty years in the making, the book spans continents and centuries. This collection magnifies the voices of people reclaiming the sole authorship of their abortion experiences. These essays, poems, and prose are a testament to the profound political power of defying shame. Contributors include Ai, Amy Tan, Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Camonghne Felix, Carol Muske-Dukes, Diane di Prima, Dorothy Parker, Gloria Naylor, Gloria Steinem, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jean Rhys, Joyce Carol Oates, Judith Arcana, Kathy Acker, Langston Hughes, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lindy West, Lucille Clifton, Mahogany L. Browne, Margaret Atwood, Molly Peacock, Ntozake Shange, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Sharon Doubiago, Sharon Olds, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Sholeh Wolpe, Ursula Le Guin, and Vi Khi Nao.

This book offers an in-depth sociological exploration of present-day colorism in the lives of black women, investigating the lived experiences of a phenomenon that continues to affect women of African descent. Race still matters. And for black women, the related issues of skin tone are just as important today as in decades past. Part cultural commentary, part empirical analysis, this book offers a compelling study and discussion of colorism—a widely discussed but understudied issue in "post-racial" America—that demonstrates how powerful a factor skin color remains in the everyday lives of young black women. Author JeffriAnne Wilder conducted interviews with dozens of young black women about the role of colorism in their everyday lives. Collectively, these findings offer a compelling empirical and theoretical analysis of colorism in key areas of 21st-century life, including within family and school settings, in the media, and in intimate relationships. The culmination of nearly two decades of the author's deep entrenchment in colorism studies, Color Stories: Black Women and Colorism in the 21st Century provides a new perspective on a controversial issue that has been a part of black culture and academic study for generations by exploring how the contemporary nature of colorism—from Facebook to the First Lady to Beyoncé—impacts the ideas and experiences of black women. This work serves as essential reading for anyone interested in learning more about the historical and contemporary significance of colorism in modern-day America, regardless of the reader's race, sex, or age.

A leading text for courses that go beyond the basics of family systems theory, intervention techniques, and diversity, this influential work has now been significantly revised with 65% new material. The volume explores how family relationships--and therapy itself--are profoundly shaped by race, social class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other intersecting dimensions of marginalization and privilege. Chapters from leading experts guide the practitioner to challenge assumptions about family health and pathology, understand the psychosocial impact of oppression, and tap into clients' cultural resources for healing. Practical clinical strategies are interwoven with theoretical insights, case examples, training ideas, and therapists' reflections on their own cultural and family legacies. ÿ New to This Edition *Existing chapters have been thoroughly updated and 21 chapters added, expanding the perspectives in the book. ÿ *Reflects over a decade of theoretical and clinical advances and the growing diversity of the United States. *New sections on re-visioning clinical research, trauma and psychological homelessness, and larger systems.ÿÿ