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A fascinating study of freedom and slavery, told through the life of an escaped slave who built a life in the Hudson Valley In 1793 James F. Brown was born a slave, and in 1868 he died a free man. At age 34 he ran away from his native Maryland to pass the remainder of his life as a gardener to a wealthy family in the Hudson Valley. Two years after his escape and manumission, he began a diary which he kept until his death. In Freedom’s Gardener , Myra B. Young Armstead uses the apparently small and domestic details of Brown’s diaries to construct a bigger story about the transition from slavery to freedom.In this first detailed historical study of Brown’s diaries, Armstead utilizes Brown’s life to illuminate the concept of freedom as it developed in the United States in the early national and antebellum years. That Brown, an African American and former slave, serves as such a case study underscores the potential of American citizenship during his lifetime.
Flying Out With the Wounded
This collection of poems is striking in its powerful representation of humanity and its dramatic use of language. Anne Caston explores the inner recesses of the human mind and body, delving into the murky shadows where individuals fear to tread. The poems consider the nature of death, love, brutality, friendship, and much more. Caston plays with different points of view and keeps readers on their toes. The physicality of these moving and disturbing poems is sure to captivate lovers of poetry.
First Person Political
In First Person Political , Grant Reeher combats the public's alienation from and distrust of politicians by putting a personal face on everyday political life. Through moving personal interviews, Reeher allows legislators to tell their own stories about how and why they came to politics, the experience of serving in their state legislature, their decisions to stay or leave, and the many trials they face in the name of public service. Reeher contends that these politicians do have the public good in mind and often suffer great personal losses for their chance to represent the people and fight for what they think is right. His research also shows that those who choose to run for office often come from a background of deep community involvement.Reeher argues against public cynicism about our elected officials, and his profiles stir not only our praise and respect for these legislators, but also a greater belief in the democratic process itself. The excerpts from his interviews provide a rarely afforded intimate look at these politicians. What emerges from these stories is a humane and believable portrait of public servants acting on behalf of the public good, a portrait that should provide some comfort, perhaps even inspiration, for citizens concerned about the state of American democracy.
Fever of War
The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in one year than the Great War killed in four, sickening at least one quarter of the world's population. In Fever of War , Carol R. Byerly uncovers the startling impact of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the American army, its medical officers, and their profession, a story which has long been silenced. Through medical officers' memoirs and diaries, official reports, scientific articles, and other original sources, Byerly tells a grave tale about the limits of modern medicine and warfare.The tragedy begins with overly confident medical officers who, armed with new knowledge and technologies of modern medicine, had an inflated sense of their ability to control disease. The conditions of trench warfare on the Western Front soon outflanked medical knowledge by creating an environment where the influenza virus could mutate to a lethal strain. This new flu virus soon left medical officers’ confidence in tatters as thousands of soldiers and trainees died under their care. They also were unable to convince the War Department to reduce the crowding of troops aboard ships and in barracks which were providing ideal environments for the epidemic to thrive. After the war, and given their helplessness to control influenza, many medical officers and military leaders began to downplay the epidemic as a significant event for the U. S. army, in effect erasing this dramatic story from the American historical memory.
Feminist Nightmares: Women At Odds
Though all women are women, no woman is only a woman, wrote Elizabeth Spelman in The Inessential Woman . Gone are the days when feminism translated simply into the advocacy of equality for women. Women's interests are not always aligned; race, class, and sexuality complicate the equation. In recent years, feminist ideologies have become increasingly diverse. Today, one feminist's most ardent political opponent may well be another feminist. As feminism grows increasingly diverse, the time has come to ask a painful and frequently avoided question: what does it mean for women to oppress women? This pathbreaking, provocative anthology addresses this troublesome dilemma from various feminist perspectives, offering an interdisciplinary collection of writings that widens our understanding of oppression to take into account women who are at odds. The book examines the social, political, and psychological ramifications of this phenomenon, as evidenced in a range of texts, from women's antislavery writing to women's anti-abortion writing, from mother-daughter incest stories to maternal surrogacy narratives, from the Bible to the popular romance nove, from Jane Austen to Alice Walker. The value of the volume is perhaps best summed up by an early response to the idea—This is a book that should never be written; feminists should concentrate on how men oppress women. Ironically, it is precisely because the subject triggers such responses, the authors argue, that a volume such as Feminist Nightmares has become a necessity.
Feminism and Antiracism
A collection of international scholars and activists answer the questionshow does gender and region/nation play a defining role in how feminists engage in anti-racist practices? How has the restructuring in the world economy affected anti-racist organizing? How do Third World Feminists counter the perception that feminism is a «Western» ideology and how effective are their methods? What opportunities does globalization bring for cross-cultural organizing? From essays on the race and gender issues in organizing exotic dancers to resistance art in Africa and the U.S., this timely and necessary anthology will be sure to spark debate and controversy. Contributors: Angela Davis, Kathleen Blee, France Winddance Twine, Heater Merrill, Veronica Magar, Siobhan Brooks, Delores Walters, Michelle Rosenthal, Ellen Kaye Scott, andrea breen, Yoshiko Nozaki, Sohera Syeda, Becky Thompson, Paola Bacchetta, Carolyn Martin Shaw, Eileen O'Brien and Michael Armato, Jane Freedman, Cathleen Armstead, Ashwini Deshpande, and Minelle Mahtani.
Feeling Mediated
New technologies, whether text message or telegraph,inevitably raise questions about emotion. New forms of communication bring withthem both fear and hope, on one hand allowing us deeper emotional connectionsand the ability to forge global communities, while on the other promptinganxieties about isolation and over-stimulation. FeelingMediated investigates the larger context of such concerns, considering bothhow media technologies intersect with our emotional lives and how our ideasabout these intersections influence how we think about and experience emotionand technology themselves. Drawing on extensive archival research, Brenton J. Malin exploresthe historical roots of much of our recent understanding of mediated feelings,showing how earlier ideas about the telegraph, phonograph, radio, motionpictures, and other once-new technologies continue to inform our contemporarythinking. With insightful analysis, FeelingMediated explores a series of fascinating arguments about technology andemotion that became especially heated during the early 20th century. These debates, which carried forward andtransformed earlier discussions of technology and emotion, culminated in a setof ideas that became institutionalized in the structures of American mediaproduction, advertising, social research, and policy, leaving a lasting impact onour everyday lives.
Feeling Italian
2006 American Book Award, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation Southern Italian emigration to the United States peaked a full century ago—;descendents are now fourth and fifth generation, dispersed from their old industrial neighborhoods, professionalized, and fully integrated into the “melting pot.” Surely the social historians are right: Italian Americans are fading into the twilight of their ethnicity. So, why is the American imagination enthralled by The Sopranos , and other portraits of Italian-ness? Italian American identity, now a mix of history and fantasy, flesh-and-bone people and all-too-familiar caricature, still has something to teach us, including why each of us, as citizens of the U.S. twentieth century and its persisting cultures, are to some extent already Italian. Contending that the media has become the primary vehicle of Italian sensibilities, Ferraro explores a series of books, movies, paintings, and records in ten dramatic vignettes. Featured cultural artifacts run the gamut, from the paintings of Joseph Stella and the music of Frank Sinatra to The Godfather ’s enduring popularity and Madonna’s Italian background. In a prose style as vivid as his subjects, Ferraro fashions a sardonic love song to the art and iconography of Italian America.
Fat Gay Men
To be fat in a thin-obsessed gay culturecan be difficult. Despite affectionate in-group monikers for big gay men–chubs,bears, cubs–the anti-fat stigma that persists in American culture at largestill haunts these individuals who often exist at the margins of gaycommunities. In Fat Gay Men, JasonWhitesel delves into the world of Girth & Mirth, a nationally known socialclub dedicated to big gay men, illuminating the ways in which these men formidentities and community in the face of adversity. In existence for over fortyyears, the club has long been a refuge and ‘safe space’ for such men. Both a partial insider as a gay man and anoutsider to Girth & Mirth, Whitesel offers an insider’s critique of the gaymovement, questioning whether the social consequences of the failure to beheight-weight proportionate should be so extreme in the gay community. This book documents performances at club events and examines howparticipants use allusion and campy-queer behavior to reconfigure and reclaimtheir sullied body images, focusing on the numerous tensions of marginalizationand dignity that big gay men experience and how they negotiate these tensionsvia their membership to a size-positive group. Based on ethnographic interviewsand in-depth field notes from more than 100 events at bar nights, caféklatches, restaurants, potlucks, holiday bashes, pool parties, movie nights,and weekend retreats, the book explores the woundedness that comes from beingrelegated to an inferior position in gay hierarchies, and yet celebrates howsome gay men can reposition the shame of fat stigma through carnival, camp, andplay. A compelling and rich narrative, FatGay Men provides a rare glimpse into an unexplored dimension of weight andbody image in American culture.
Faces of America
As a nation of immigrants, the American experience is vibrantly defined by the diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious heritage of its people. Perhaps because so many of their ancestors migrated to this country relatively recently, Americans are especially concerned with their family trees, carving out personal histories by combing through documents such as wills and estate records, federal and state censuses, and private family papers, and mining the stories and tales handed down to them by their forebears.Since 2007, the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has been helping African Americans find long-buried details about their ancestors by researching their family trees and then, when the paper trail ends, by analyzing their DNA and marrying that information to a wealth of historical data. Now, in Faces of America Gates explores the family trees of twelve of America’s most recognizable and extraordinary citizens, individuals who learn that they are of Asian, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Jewish, Latino, Native American, Swiss, and Syrian ancestry: Inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian and television personality Stephen Colbert, writer Louise Erdrich, writer Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, cellist Yo Yo Ma, writer and director Mike Nichols, former monarch of Jordan Queen Noor, surgeon and author Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and Olympic gold medalist and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.In addition, each of the subjects in Faces of America underwent dense genotyping to trace their genetic ancestry on their father’s line, their mother’s line, and their percentages of European, Asian, Native American, and African ancestry. Faces of America unfolds as a riveting journey into our country’s complex ancestral past. Readers will share in the surprise and delight, the shock and sadness of these twelve individuals themselves as Gates unveils their rich family stories, traced back to their arrival on America’s shores, and beyond, deep into the history of their ancestors’ countries of origin. America, as Gates shows us, is a nation of many historical threads, interwoven and united in the present moment. In this compelling book, Gates demonstrates that where we come from profoundly and fundamentally informs who we are today.