Books
Between the World and Me by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD * Hailed by Toni Morrison as "required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by "the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States" (The New York Observer) "This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it." In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men--bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son--and readers--the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. Praise for Between the World and Me "Powerful and passionate . . . profoundly moving . . . a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Brilliant . . . [Coates] is firing on all cylinders, and it is something to behold: a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers at the very moment national events most conform to his vision."--The Washington Post "I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates's journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory."--Toni Morrison "A brilliant thinker at the top of his powers, Coates has distilled four hundred years of history and his own anguish and wisdom into a prayer for his beloved son and an invocation to the conscience of his country. An instant classic and a gift to us all."--Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns "I know that this book is addressed to the author's son, and by obvious analogy to all boys and young men of color as they pass, inexorably, into harm's way. I hope that I will be forgiven, then, for feeling that Coates was speaking to me, too, one father to another, teaching me that real courage is the courage to be vulnerable."--Michael Chabon "A work of rare beauty . . . a love letter written in a moral emergency, one that Coates exposes with the precision of an autopsy and the force of an exorcism."--Slate
Call Number: E 185.615 .C6335 2015ISBN: 0812993543Publication Date: 2015-07-14
The Borders of Race: patrolling "multiracial" identities by
Who is multiracial? And who decides? Addressing these two fundamental questions, Melinda Mills builds on the work of Heather Dalmage to explore the phenomenon and consequences of racial border patrolling by strangers, family members, friends, and even multiracial people themselves.
Call Number: HT1523.M564 2017ISBN: 9781626375826Publication Date: 2016-11-01
The House That Race Built by
This cutting edge work confronts, honestly and passionately, the most critical issues facing American culture today along the fissure of race. In these essays, respected intellectuals share their ideas on race, power, gender and society.
Call Number: E185.615 .H68 1997ISBN: 0679760687Publication Date: 1998-02-24
Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States by
While pundits point to multiracial Americans as new evidence of a harmonious ethnic melting pot, in reality mixed race peoples have long existed in the United States. Rather than characterize multiracial Americans as a "new" population, this book argues that instead we should view them asindividuals who reflect a new culture of racial identification. Today, identities such as "biracial" or "swirlies" are evoked alongside those more established racial categories of white, black Asian and Latino. What is significant about multiracial identities is that they communicate an alternativeviewpoint about race: that a person's preferred self-identification should be used to define a person's race. Yet this definition of race is a distinct contrast to historic norms which has defined race as a category assigned to a person based on certain social rules which emphasized things likephenotype, being "one-drop" of African blood or heritage. In Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States, Natalie Masuoka catalogues how this cultural shift from assigning race to perceiving race as a product of personal identification came about by tracing events over the course of the twentieth century. Masuoka uses a variety of sourcesincluding in-depth interviews, public opinion surveys and census data to understand how certain individuals embrace the agency of self-identification and choose to assert multiracial identities. At the same time, the book shows that the meaning and consequences of multiracial identification can onlybe understood when contrasted against those who identify as white, black Asian or Latino. An included case study on President Barack Obama also shows how multiracial identity narratives can be strategically used to reduce anti-black bias among voters. Therefore, rather than looking at multiracialAmericans as a harbinger of dramatic change for American race relations, this Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States shows that narratives promoting multiracial identities are in direct dialogue with, rather than in replacement of, the longstanding racial order.
Call Number: E184.A1 M37 2017ISBN: 9780190657475Publication Date: 2017-09-27
One Drop of Blood by
Why has a nation founded upon precepts of freedom and universal humanity continually produced, through its preoccupation with race, a divided and constrained populace? Scott Malcomson's search for an answer took him across the country--to the Cherokee Nation, an all-black town, and a white supremacist enclave in Oklahoma--back though the tangled red-white-and-black history of America from colonial times onward, and to his own childhood in racially fractured Oakland, California. By not only recounting our shared tragicomedy of race but helping us to own it--even to embrace it--this important book offers us a way at last to move beyond it.
Call Number: E184.A1 M265 2000ISBN: 0374240795Publication Date: 2000-10-01
Prejudice Across America by
Waller continues his exploration of race relations, warning that racism is not only alive and well but is in fact a tinderbox ready to explode. Unable to drive that point home to his Whitworth College students, he planned a coast-to-coast study tour, "Prejudice Across America," that would take young adults from their sheltered academic environment and introduce them to the experiences of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. This book chronicles their journey from the Japanese-American Museum in Los Angeles, focusing on the interment camp experience, to a conversation with housing authorities and residents on Chicago's South Side, to the powerful messages of Martin Luther King Jr. posted at the King Center in Atlanta. Waller provides a comprehensive history and background for each site, detailed responses of his group to these powerful images and dialogs, and a sociological analysis of the components of prejudice, including unearned white privilege, affirmative action, and the subtleties of racism today.
Call Number: E184.A1 W216 2000ISBN: 1578063132Publication Date: 2000-10-02
Race in the Age of Obama by
This volume provides the first in-depth examination of the impact of the key sociological issues faced by the new Obama Administration and explores conventional topics on race and ethnic relations as well as delving into new areas of intellectual inquiry regarding the changing scope of race relations in a global context.
ISBN: 9780857241672Publication Date: 2010-12-20
Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism
Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism not only provides fresh theoretical insights into the new forms of race and racism, it also provides evidence of and policy solutions to address these seemingly intractable forms of discrimination and racial disparities. These issues are tackled by some of the nation’s most prominent race and public policy scholars.
ISBN: 9789004227507
Repositioning Race by
In Repositioning Race, leading African American sociologists assess the current state of race theory, racial discrimination, and research on race in order to chart a path toward a more engaged public scholarship. They contemplate not only the paradoxes of Black freedom but also the paradoxes of equality and progress for the progeny of the civil rights generation in the wake of the election of the first African American US president. Despite the proliferation of ideas about a postracial society, the volume highlights the ways that racial discrimination persists in both the United States and the African Diaspora in the Global South, allowing for unprecedented African American progress in the midst of continuing African American marginalization.
ISBN: 9781438450858Publication Date: 2014-05-01
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by
The classic, bestselling book on the psychology of racism-now fully revised and updated Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America. "An unusually sensitive work about the racial barriers that still divide us in so many areas of life."-Jonathan Kozol
Call Number: E185.625.T38 2017ISBN: 9780465083619Publication Date: 2003-01-17
Find Books & Videos
Library Catalog
Not sure which search terms to use? We took care of that for you! Follow the links below to be brought directly into Library Catalog search results page for each search term listed.