Offering an unflinching and informed defense of cultural diversity, this book boldly stakes a claim for the overwhelming success of multiculturalism in Australia. Arguing against European governments that declare multiculturalism a failure, it asserts that multicultural Australia has been a national success story. Creating a solid case for why multiculturalism works, it argues against those who believe a multicultural approach to integration and diversity is detrimental to society. This is a celebration of Australia's cultural diversity.
Honorable Mention, Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, presented by the Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section of the American Sociological Association, 2015 With Mexican Americans constituting a large and growing segment of U.S. society, their assimilation trajectory has become a constant source of debate. Some believe Mexican Americans are following the path of European immigrants toward full assimilation into whiteness, while others argue that they remain racialized as nonwhite. Drawing on extensive interviews with Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants in Texas, Dowling's research challenges common assumptions about what informs racial labeling for this population. Her interviews demonstrate that for Mexican Americans, racial ideology is key to how they assert their identities as either in or outside the bounds of whiteness. Emphasizing the link between racial ideology and racial identification, Dowling offers an insightful narrative that highlights the complex and highly contingent nature of racial identity.
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Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas
Call Number: PN4874.V37 A3 2018
ISBN: 9780062851352
Publication Date: 2018-09-18
THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER "This riveting, courageous memoir ought to be mandatory reading for every American." --Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow "l cried reading this book, realizing more fully what my parents endured." --Amy Tan, New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins "This book couldn't be more timely and more necessary." --Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of What Is the What and The Monk of Mokha Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called "the most famous undocumented immigrant in America," tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms. "This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book--at its core--is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can't. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home. After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom." --Jose Antonio Vargas, from Dear America
A mold-breaking memoir of Asian American identity, political activism, community, and purpose. Not Yo' Butterfly is the intimate and unflinching life story of Nobuko Miyamoto--artist, activist, and mother. Beginning with the harrowing early years of her life as a Japanese American child navigating a fearful west coast during World War II, Miyamoto leads readers into the landscapes that defined the experiences of twentieth-century America and also foregrounds the struggles of people of color who reclaimed their histories, identities, and power through activism and art. Miyamoto vividly describes her early life in the racialized atmosphere of Hollywood musicals and then her turn toward activism as an Asian American troubadour with the release of A Grain of Sand--considered to be the first Asian American folk album. Her narrative intersects with the stories of Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs, influential in both Asian and Black liberation movements. She tells how her experience of motherhood with an Afro-Asian son, as well as a marriage that intertwined Black and Japanese families and communities, placed her at the nexus of the 1992 Rodney King riots--and how she used art to create interracial solidarity and conciliation. Through it all, Miyamoto has embraced her identity as an Asian American woman to create an antiracist body of work and a blueprint for empathy and praxis through community art. Her sometimes barbed, often provocative, and always steadfast story is now told.
Being Brown: Sonia Sotomayor and the Latino Question tells the story of the country's first Latina Supreme Court Associate Justice's rise to the pinnacle of American public life at a moment of profound demographic and political transformation. While Sotomayor's confirmation appeared to signal the greater acceptance and inclusion of Latinos--the nation's largest "minority majority"--the uncritical embrace of her status as a "possibility model" and icon paradoxically erased the fact that her success was due to civil rights policies and safeguards that no longer existed. Being Brown analyzes Sotomayor's story of success and accomplishment, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, in order to ask: What do we lose in democratic practice when we allow symbolic inclusion to supplant the work of meaningful political enfranchisement? In a historical moment of resurgent racism, unrelenting Latino bashing, and previously unimaginable "blood and soil" Nazism, Being Brown explains what we stand to lose when we allow democratic values to be trampled for the sake of political expediency, and demonstrates how understanding "the Latino question" can fortify democratic practice. Being Brown provides the historical vocabulary for understanding why the Latino body politic is central to the country's future and why Sonia Sotomayor's biography provides an important window into understanding America, and the country's largest minority majority, at this historical juncture. In the process, Being Brown counters "alternative facts" with historical precision and ethical clarity to invigorate the best of democratic practice at a historical moment when we need it most.
Today, South Asians are a rapidly growing demographic in the United States, comprising nearly 2 percent of the population. But there was a time in the not-too-distant past when the United States was far less hospitable to South Asian immigrants. In fact, until 1952, only white immigrants could become naturalized American citizens. Yet in the first half of the twentieth century, many states still had thriving communities of South Asians. In Here to Stay, Geetika Rudra, a second-generation Indian immigrant and American history buff, takes readers on a journey across the country to unearth the little-known histories of earlier generations of South Asian Americans. She visits storied sites such as Oregon's "Hindoo Alley," home to many lumber workers at the turn of the century, and Angel Island, California's immigration hub. She also introduces readers to such inspiring figures as Bhagat Singh Thind, an immigrant who had enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve his adopted country in World War I, but who was later denied citizenship and took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In turns both serious and joyful, this book vividly reveals how South Asians have always been a vital part of the American tapestry.
The first wave of Black immigrants arrived in North America during the 1960s and 1970s, coming originally from the Caribbean. An opportunity was missed,however, in documenting their everyday experience from a social science perspective: what did it mean for a Barbadian or a Jamaican to live in Toronto or New York? Were they Jamaicans or did they go with the descriptor 'Black'? What relationship did they have with African Canadians or African Americans? Black Immigrants in North Americaanswersthese and other questions while documenting the second wave of Black immigration to North America, which started in the early 1990s. Theoretically and empirically grounded, the book is a documentation of the process of becoming Black - a radical identity transformation where a continental African is marked by Blackness. This, in turn, leads to a deeper understanding of what it means to encounter that social imaginary of, 'Oh, they all look like Blacks to me!' This encounter impacts what one learns and how one learns it, where learning English as a Second Language (ESL) is sidestepped in favor of Black English as a Second Language (BESL). Learning becomes a political and a pedagogical project of cultural, linguistic and identity investment and desire. Perfect for courses such as:Black Immigrants, Race Complexity, Critical Applied Linguistics, Ethnography, Graduate Course on Educational Foundations and Curriculum
Tell Me Who You Are by Winona Guo; Priya Vulchi
Call Number: E184.A1 G945 2019
ISBN: 9780525541127
Publication Date: 2019-06-04
An eye-opening exploration of race in America In this deeply inspiring book, Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi recount their experiences talking to people from all walks of life about race and identity on a cross-country tour of America. Spurred by the realization that they had nearly completed high school without hearing any substantive discussion about racism in school, the two young women deferred college admission for a year to collect first-person accounts of how racism plays out in this country every day--and often in unexpected ways. In Tell Me Who You Are, Guo and Vulchi reveal the lines that separate us based on race or other perceived differences and how telling our stories--and listening deeply to the stories of others--are the first and most crucial steps we can take towards negating racial inequity in our culture. Featuring interviews with over 150 Americans accompanied by their photographs, this intimate toolkit also offers a deep examination of the seeds of racism and strategies for effecting change. This groundbreaking book will inspire readers to join Guo and Vulchi in imagining an America in which we can fully understand and appreciate who we are.