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A heads up to our blog readers that we have two great sales happening now to celebrate Black History Month!
We’re offering 25% off two Black History Month collections on leeandlow.com through the end of the month. Kick-start your Black History book collection or mix things up with great books that can be used all year long.
Both collections offer biographies of great leaders who excelled in many different fields including writing, politics, music, and the culinary arts and will appeal to a wide range of readers.
The month of February is a time when many communities pause and celebrate the great contributions made by African Americans in history. At Lee & Low we like to not only highlight African Americans who have made a difference, but also explore the diverse experiences of black culture throughout history, from the struggle for freedom in the South and the fight for civil rights to the lively rhythms of New Orleans jazz and the cultural explosion of the Harlem Renaissance.
We put together a list of titles – along with additional resources – that align with 7 core values and
themes to help you celebrate both Black History Month and African American culture all 365 days of the year.
It’s important to remember that heritage months, like Black History Month, can encourage a practice of pulling diverse books that feature a particular observed culture for only one month out of the year. To encourage a more everyday approach, we developed an 8-step checklist for building an inclusive book collection that reflects the diversity of the human experience. Teaching Tolerance also offers some helpful solutions to connect multicultural education with effective instructional practices and lists insightful “dos and don’ts” for teaching black history that are applicable to any culturally responsive curriculum or discussion.
How do you celebrate during Black History Month? Or, better yet, how do you help children discover the cultural contributions and achievements of black history all year long? Let us know in the comments!
Veronicahas a degree from Mount Saint Mary College and joined LEE & LOW in the fall of 2014. She has a background in education and holds a New York State childhood education (1-6) and students with disabilities (1-6) certification. When she’s not wandering around New York City, you can find her hiking with her dog Milo in her hometown in the Hudson Valley, NY.
0 Comments on 7 Core Values to Celebrate During Black History Month as of 2/9/2015 9:11:00 AM
Yesterday was the ALA Youth Media Awards, or the “Oscars of Children’s Literature” as they’re sometimes called. It was a big day for diversity. Diverse books and authors were honored across the board and we couldn’t be happier.
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone, written by Katheryn Russell-Brown and illustrated by Frank Morrison, received the Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustration. Little Melba follows the life of famed trombonist, composer, and arranger Melba Liston who broke through racial and gender barriers to become one of the great unsung heroes of jazz.
Pat Mora, author of Water Rolls, Water Rises/El agua rueda, el agua sube and many other award-winning titles, won the 2016 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award! This award recognizes an author, librarian, or children’s lecturer who will then present a lecture at a winning host site. In addition to her writing, Pat Mora is also a literacy
advocate. She created Día, a day that celebrates children and the importance of reading.
Congratulations to all the titles honored at the ALA Youth Media Awards!
0 Comments on ALA Youth Media Awards Wins for Lee & Low Books! as of 2/3/2015 2:00:00 PM
In celebration of MLK Day today, we wanted to share two perspectives from Lee & Low staff members on why you should see Selma, the new movie based on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Much has been said about the lack of Academy Award nominations for the movie, but nevertheless moviegoers are uniformly in agreement that Selma is one of the best movies of the year. It offers a meaningful historical context for current events and a springboard for deep discussion, making it a valuable learning experience as well as a straight-up great movie.
Here’s why we think seeing Selma is one of the best ways you could spend MLK Day:
Jason Low, Publisher: The director of Selma, Ava DuVernay brings the audience a lean, gritty fight for voter rights during the civil rights movement. The depiction of Martin Luther King, Jr. is especially poignant. The name Martin Luther King, Jr. is a household name and a holiday. His name is the stuff of legend. But what many fail to realize is that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man with faults and insecurities just like everyone else. The film does not shy away from King’s marital problems caused by his infidelities or self-doubt and indecision resulting from the battle fatigue and weight of leadership when so much is on the line. DuVernay’s King is so human that we fear for his life even during the quieter scenes because humans are vulnerable and these were dangerous times.
still from Selma
Conversations between President Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. are riveting. The political needle was just as difficult to move in 1965 as it is today. The Voter Rights Bill was as messy an issue as any US president would have to face. The bill was steeped in violence and racism and Johnson’s instinct to postpone action was derailed when John Lewis and Reverend Hosea Williams tried to lead a march of six hundred protestors over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The nonviolent protestors were savagely beaten by state police and news cameras captured a brutal, bloody war for all Americans to see.
I brought my family to see this film. Bearing witness to the bravery it takes to protest nonviolently for equal rights was (to me) the chance to see history at its most heroic. Although fifty years has passed since Selma took place, the film feels eerily current. Protests over police killings of unarmed black males are happening all over the country and continue to be front-page news. Watching a film like Selma is difficult, but all the more reason to see it. Great movies will move you, make you feel something and Selma does all of these things very deeply.
Rebecca Garcia, Marketing and Publicity Assistant: During Common’s acceptance speech for the Golden Globe for Best Original Song, he said, “Selma is now.” Even though the Selma to Montgomery Marches were fifty years ago, this film reminded me that the Civil Rights Movement was a hard battle and took a long time to take effect.
David Oyelowo does an excellent job as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King in this movie struggles with self-doubt, isn’t the perfect husband, and even makes decisions that have other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement question his leadership skills. But this is the Dr. King we all need to see. He’s human and flawed, but is still inspiring and courageous.
While watching the movie, I was reminded of the many protests happening around the country in the wake of the Ferguson and Staten Island grand jury decisions. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Change is an arduous and bitterly long process. Selma serves as a reminder of what has been accomplished and what we still need to accomplish. Selma doesn’t hold back when it comes to the violence faced by protesters.
Ava DuVernay presents us with a flawed, realistic and ultimately human Dr. King. While David Oyelowo does amazing justice to Dr. King, I felt that the talented actresses in the movie (Carmen Ejobo, Oprah Winfrey, and Lorraine Toussaint to name a few) weren’t utilized to their full potential. Even so, Selma is a relevant and timely film that everyone should see. Take tissues with you.
The NY Times columnist, Maureen Dowd had problems with the LBJ depiction and wrote an op-ed piece about it here: http://nyti.ms/1sSGEOX
I disagreed with Dowd’s take on Selma and was about to comment, but noticed that the comments section was closed. I then stumbled on a comment by Sophy that said:
Dowd says “It was clear that a generation of young moviegoers would now see L.B.J.’s role in civil rights through DuVernay’s lens. And that’s a shame.” No, it isn’t a shame. Those same black teens may have seen Lincoln through Spielbergs’ lens–a lens which didn’t even include Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman. A film with no acknowledgement of black efforts to end slavery. In her analysis of some of these films, has Dowd ever suggested that it was a “shame” to see the film through those directors’ lenses? I think not.
Read Sophy’s full thoughts in the comments section under NYT Picks. Sophy really hits the nail on the head when it comes to the preposterous double standard leveraged at a female director of color.
David Carr of the NYT also chimed with his two bits of why Ava DuVernay’s snub for an Oscar best director nomination was a missed opportunity: http://nyti.ms/15iaIcy
hannahehrlich said, on 1/22/2015 8:57:00 AM
I haven’t yet seen Selma (I really need to go!) but I did see All the Way, the Broadway play about LBJ and the passing of the Civil Rights Act which came out last spring. In that play, LBJ is depicted as a truly complicated person whose personal loyalties are often hard to read, hidden under the weight of so many political forces. Whether he personally wanted to see the voting rights issue pass seems, at times, beside the point; for him what often mattered most was whether there were enough votes to get something through and, if not, what getting those votes would cost him. He and MLK often were at odds with each other, though some of their goals overlapped–I’m also not a historian, but to me it seemed that they were more like “frenemies” than true partners for much of the time. I don’t want to downplay what LBJ contributed to Civil Rights, but it’s refreshing to see a movie like Selma that attributes the bulk of the blood, sweat, and tears of the Civil Rights movement to the activists themselves instead of to a white politician who came in only after the tide seemed to be turning in their favor.
This is an incredible exploration of grief, family and identity and the pressures of expectations that come from each. The book opens with a death, one that nobody else knows about yet, the death of Lydia Lee; middle child of Marilyn and James and sister to older brother Nathan and younger sister Hannah. Lydia’s death […]
One of the most uncompromising, unflinching, page-turning books I have read in a long time. It is a harrowing story that forces you to confront and challenge many important issues; gender, poverty, race and class to list but a few. Mireille is visiting her Haitian parents in Port-au-Prince with her American husband and baby son […]
In August we wrote to you about the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Our publisher said then that the matter of representation was urgent; now, four months later, we see that urgency for what it is: a matter of life or death. Michael Brown’s name now sits alongside new names like Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Akai Gurley. How many more names will need to be added before things change?
Protests around the country remind us that we are not in a post-racial society, that inequality is still here. This can be a harrowing reminder, but it is also an important teachable moment for young people. How do we put current events in context and help young people engage in today’s big questions?
In difficult moments, books are often a good starting place for conversation. Books that touch on history can be read with fresh eyes in light of current events. For example, in Love to Langston, author Tony Medina describes when a seventh-grade Langston Hughes in 1914 peacefully protests his teacher’s segregation of black students to one row in the classroom. Even when he is expelled, Hughes fights for what he knows is right and his community joins beside him. The teacher is forced to integrate the classroom:
In the seventh grade
in Lawrence, Kansas
the teacher puts all
us black kids in the same row
away from all the white kids
I don’t roll my eyes
or suck my teeth
with a heavy heavy sigh
and a why why why
I make signs
that read
that read
Jim Crow Row
Jim Crow Row
we in the Jim Crow Row
Jim Crow is a law
that separates white and black
making white feel better
and black feel left back
So we protest
with our parents
and let everybody
know about
Jim Crow Jim Crow
not allowing us
to grow
Jim Crow Jim Crow
don’t put us in a
Jim Crow Row
Whether it was this event or the lifetime of experiences of racism, Langston Hughes was profoundly transformed and wrote about and advocated for equality and justice throughout his life.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
How will today’s children be impacted and awakened as activists by images of and participation in the protesting in Ferguson, New York City, and around the nation? In what ways will this moment and experience affect our children’s lens by which they view the world and influence their life’s purpose or calling? What art will they create to express this moment and themselves?
A photo from one of the recent protests in New York City.
Emily Chiariello is a Teaching and Learning Specialist with Teaching Tolerance. She has 15 years’ experience as a classroom teacher, professional development and curriculum designer in public, charter and alternative school settings, as well as with non-profit organizations. She holds a master’s degree in philosophy and social policy and is certified in secondary social studies.
Here she discusses Teaching Tolerance’s new curriculum tool, “Project Appendix D,” that empowers educators to identify texts that both meet the demands of the Common Core Standards and reflect the world in which our students live. This blog post was originally posted at the Teaching Tolerance blog.
by Emily Chiariello
Does the Common Core limit what texts teachers can use? While many people think so, we don’t. Teaching Tolerance believes it is possible—and important—to choose texts that are both rigorous and relevant. Read on to learn about a new approach to text selection: Appendix D: A Tool for Selecting Diverse Texts. This exciting project goes beyond the resources offered in Appendices A and B and offers a new world of possibilities within literacy instruction.
Appendices A and B
Teachers are expected—per the CCSS’s Appendix A—to select more complex texts, teach more nonfiction and ask more text-dependent questions. But do they feel less empowered to choose readings about social justice or to locate texts that reflect the identities and histories of their students and communities? We’re concerned the answer is yes. We know that teachers want texts that mirror their students’ lives. And to achieve equitable outcomes, the Common Core must be implemented in culturally responsive ways that address social emotional learning as well as academic goals. Yet, this kind of implementation is not happening in most districts.
At first glance, one might think that the “Reader and Task” portion of the text selection model in Appendix A makes room for culturally responsive instructional decisions. Instead, there’s only a brief and bland mention of “reader variables”—motivation, knowledge and experiences—ultimately eclipsed by the other two measures: hard Lexile scores (quantitative) and subjective interpretations of meaning and purpose (qualitative).
And then there’s the stark imprint of privilege found in the gaps and silences of Appendix B, a list of “text exemplars” that meet the aforementioned approach to text complexity, quality and range. Too many publishers—and districts, too—have interpreted the text exemplars listed in Appendix B as a required reading list.
Woefully few examples of cultural relevance can be found in “Common Core-aligned” materials and trainings, including Appendix B. Jane M. Gangi, professor of education at Mount Saint Mary College, has analyzed Appendix B and found that, of the 171 texts recommended for children in K-5, only 18 are by authors of color, and few reflect the lives of children of color and children in poverty.
Appendix D
We believe that educators—teachers, librarians and literacy specialists—who work in classrooms every day are in the best positions to identify texts that engage diverse students.
That’s why we’re excited to share our new project: Appendix D: A Tool for Selecting Diverse Texts.Traditionally, tools that support text selection have focused on quantitative and qualitative measures only. But Appendix D promotes a multi-dimensional approach to text selection that prioritizes complexity as well as critical literacy and cultural responsiveness.
Appendix D empowers educators to rely on their knowledge of their students, rather than a prepopulated lists of titles, when selecting texts. The tool walks users through four distinct—but interconnected—text-selection considerations: complexity, diversity and representation, critical literacy, and reader and task. And it’s an editable PDF, allowing folks to document, save and share their text-selection process. (Be sure to download to unlock the editing capabilities.)
So, why a tool and not a list? There are commendable lists out there. Gangi and the Collaborative for Equity Literacy Learning (CELL) assembled an alternative list of multicultural titles, but they are not leveled for teachers to assess text complexity. Others, like publishers LEE & LOW, work to bring more diversity and representation into classroom libraries, and to the task of text selection. However, none of the lists we’ve investigated encompass texts that are both culturally relevant and meet the Common Core’s requirements for complexity. And, unless it is dynamic, any list of diverse books is only as diverse as the person—or people—who made it.
We hope the TT community will use Appendix D to help us grow a dynamic and diverse list of texts based on the four considerations and on the diverse needs of our students. We’ve started with the titles currently found in Perspectives for a Diverse America, our new anti-bias curriculum. In the months to come, as you use the Appendix D tool in your own practice, think of which complex, culturally relevant titles you think your fellow social justice educators would want to know about—and be on the lookout for an invitation to submit your texts to the ever-growing, ever-changing TT community list!
Paulo Freire wrote that, when we read words, we read the world. Don’t we owe it to our students to consider them when choosing those words?
Okay, we all know by now that we need more Diversity Books in American public schools, a category that Tu Books focuses upon it. It’s somehow complex to follow all the appendixes mentioned here, but I took a brief look at Appendix D for grades 9-12. I saw books about African American, Chinese, Native American and LGBT. But didn’t see nay book (maybe I missed it) for American Latinos who are about 25% of the students at American Public Schools.
Also as an outsider to the education system I wonder if the US Education Department gives the list of books that teacher can teach, or it’s up for teacher to make their own list.
jilleisenberg14 said, on 12/8/2014 11:26:00 AM
Hi Giora-
Yes, there are a lot of appendices to study for selecting texts for students. In a few words, Appendix A is useful for learning about what makes a text complex for readers. Appendix B offers examples that teachers have used with success in their classrooms within grade bands. While Teaching Tolerance does plan to build out its text exemplars (so books with Latino characters and authors will surely be included), the real goal of this Appendix D tool is to support teachers in becoming their own list-makers. Teachers ultimately know their students’ reading levels, interests, demographics, and experiences better than any group or institution drafting and recommending a book list can. There are many groups and institutions that provide teachers lists of book recommendations, but this new Apppendix D tool will enable teachers to learn how to look at a text and determine that it is both high-quality AND provides the perspective that will reflect and celebrate their students. We are very impressed with Teaching Tolerance’s commitment to keeping our educators in the driver’s seat!
The theme of the American Society of Criminology meeting this November is “Criminology at the Intersections of Oppression.” The burden of violence and victimization remains markedly unequal. The prevalence rates, risk factors, and consequences of violence are not equally distributed across society. Rather, there are many groups that carry an unequal burden, including groups disadvantaged due to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual identity, place of residence, and other factors. Even more problematically, there is an abundance of evidence that there are marked disparities in service access and service quality across sociocultural and socioeconomic groups. Unfortunately, even today this still extends to instances of outright bias and maltreatment, as evidenced by ongoing problems with disproportionate minority contact, harsher sentencing, and barriers to services.
However, there is promising news, because advances in both research and practice are readily attainable. Regarding research, there are a number of steps that can be taken to improve our existing state of knowledge. To give just a few examples, we need much more research on hate crimes and bias motivations for violence. Hate crimes remain one of the most understudied forms of violence. We also need many more efforts to adapt violence prevention and intervention programs for diverse groups. The field has still made surprisingly few efforts to assess whether prevention and intervention programs are equally efficacious for different socioeconomic and sociocultural groups. Even after more than 3 decades of program evaluation, only a handful of such efforts exist. Program developers should pay more systematic attention to ensuring that materials that use diverse images and settings. However, it is also important to note that cultural adaptation means more than just superficial changes in name use or images.
Clasped Hands. Photo by Rhoda Baer. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Regarding practice, what is needed is more culturally appropriate approaches. In many cases, this means more flexible approaches and avoiding a “one size fits all” approach to services. Most providers, I believe, have good intentions and are trying to avoid biased interactions, but many of them lack the tools for more culturally appropriate services. One specific tool that can help is called the ‘VIGOR’, for Victim Inventory of Goals, Options, and Risks. It is a safety planning and risk management tool for victims of domestic violence. It is ideally suited for people from disadvantaged groups, because, unlike virtually all other existing safety plans, it has places for social and community issues, financial strain, institutional challenges, and other issues that affect people who experience multiple forms of disadvantage. The safety plan does not just focus on physical violence. The VIGOR has been tested with two highly diverse groups of low-income women, who rated it as better than all safety planning they had received.
The VIGOR also offers a model for how other interventions can be expanded and adapted to consider the intersections of oppression with victimization in an effort to be more responsive to all of the needs of those who have sustained violence. With greater attention to these issues, there is the potential to make a real impact and help reduce the burden of violence and victimization for all members of society.
Dr. Hamby attended an Author Meets Critics session at the ASC annual meeting yesterday morning. The session was chaired by Dr. Claire Renzetti, co-editor of the ‘Oxford Series of Interpersonal Violence’.
November is Native American Heritage Month! Native American Heritage Month evolved from the efforts of various individuals at the turn of the 20th century who tried to get a day of recognition for Native Americans. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush approved a resolution that appointed November as Native American Heritage Month. You can learn more about Native American Heritage Month here.
For many years, Native people were silenced and their stories were set aside, hidden, or drowned out. That’s why it’s especially important to read stories about Native characters, told in Native voices. Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with these great books by Native writers:
Biographies
Quiet Hero by S.D. Nelson – Ira Hayes grew up on the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona. When he was in his late teens, World War II raged, and Ira Hayes joined the Marine corps. Eventually they were sent to the tiny Japanese island of Iwo Jima, where a chance event and an extraordinary photograph catapulted Ira to national awareness and transformed his life forever.
Crazy Horse’s Vision by Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by S.D. Nelson – Crazy Horse, whose childhood nickname was “Curly,” defies traditional custom and risks his own life by running away, up to the hills, to seek a vision.
Jim Thorpe’s Bright Path by Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by S.D. Nelson – While Jim Thorpe struggled at school, he excelled at sports. He later went on to win several Olympic medals.
Fiction
Home to Medicine Mountain by Chiori Santiago, illustrated by Judith Lowry – Two Native American brothers are sent to a strict, government-run boarding school. There, they are forced to speak English and to unlearn their Native American ways. Inspired by their dreams of home and the memories of their grandmother’s stories, the boys embark on an adventurous journey from the harsh residential school to their home in Susanville, California.
Sky Dancers by Connie Ann Kirk, illustrated by Christy Hale – John Cloud’s father is in New York City, far away from their Mohawk Reservation, building sky scrapers. One day, Mama takes John to New York City and he sees his Papa high on a beam, building the Empire State Building.
Kiki’s Journey by Kristy Orona-Ramirez, illustrated by Jonathan Warm Day – Kiki is a city girl that calls Los Angeles her home. Her family left the Taos Pueblo reservation when she was a baby, so it doesn’t feel like home. How will it feel to revisit the reservation?
Stories for Teens
Rattlesnake Mesa by EdNah New Rider Weber, photographs by Richela Renkun – When EdNah’s beloved grandmother dies, she is sent to live on a Navajo reservation with a father she barely knows. Once EdNah finds herself getting used to her new life, she is sent to a strict government-run Indian boarding school.
Wolf Mark by Joseph Bruchac – When Luke King’s father, a black ops infiltrator, goes missing, Luke realizes his life will never be the same again. Luke sets out to search for his father, all the while trying to avoid the attention of the school’s mysterious elite clique of Russian hipsters, who seem much too interested in his own personal secret
Killer of Enemies by Joseph Bruchac – In a future where technology has failed, Lozen has been gifted with a unique set of abilities magic and survival skills that she uses to hunt monsters for the people who kidnapped her family. As the legendary Killer of Enemies was in the ancient days of the Apache people, Lozen is meant to be a more than a hunter. Lozen is meant to be a hero.
Rose Eagle by Joseph Bruchac – Several years before Killer of Enemies, the Lakota are forced to mine ore for the Ones, their overlords. Rose Eagle’s aunt has a vision of Rose as a healer. She sends Rose on a quest to find healing for their people.
What other books by Native American authors and illustrators do you recommend?
Tim Tingle, Eric Gansworth and Cynthia Leitich Smith are AWESOME Native authors! Tim Tingle’s Saltypie, A Choctaw Journey from Darkness to Light is a beautifully written story from his own family. Cynthia Leitich Smith has a number of great books out there (as does Tingle) but Jingle Dancer is one of my favorites. It shows a young girl getting ready to dance in a powwow, and makes that a perfectly normal and beautiful thing (as opposed to something exotic). There are even parts in it that mainstream (caucasian) kids may have a hard time comprehending at first, but many Native kids will pick up on immediately. Kind of switches the usual dynamic in the classroom of the mainstream kids always understanding what is presented in instruction! Also Eric Gansworth’s If I Ever Get Out of Here is a great read. True to life, written from the heart. And Tim Tingle’s How I Became A Ghost is a superb read taken from Choctaw history and turned into a book you can’t put down.
courtneyanima said, on 11/11/2014 7:14:00 PM
Reblogged this on thewriterspanel and commented:
Very important part of our history! I personally recommend The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature
Marianne Snow said, on 11/12/2014 2:43:00 PM
I love The Butterfly Dance by Gerald Dawavendewa, who’s an enrolled member of the Hopi Tribe. And I definitely agree with Kara about Tim Tingle — his work is fantastic!
Katrina said, on 11/13/2014 7:15:00 AM
Reblogged this on Vamos a Leer and commented:
As a follow up to yesterday’s post, I wanted to share the open book’s post from yesterday. It has great suggestions for literature written by Native writers that you could use in the classroom. We hope you’ll check it out!
One hundred years ago today, far from the erupting battlefields of Europe, a small German force in the city of Tsingtau (Qingdao), Germany’s most important possession in China, was preparing for an impending siege. The small fishing village of Qingdao and the surrounding area had been reluctantly leased to the German Empire by the Chinese government for 99 years in 1898, and German colonists soon set about transforming this minor outpost into a vibrant city boasting many of the comforts of home, including the forerunner of the now-famous Tsingtao Brewery. By 1914, Qingdao had over 50,000 residents and was the primary trading port in the region. Given its further role as the base for the Far East Fleet of the Imperial German Navy, however, Qingdao was unable to avoid becoming caught up in the faraway European war.
The forces that besieged Qingdao in the autumn of 1914 were composed of troops from Britain and Japan, the latter entering the war against Germany in accord with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The Alliance had been agreed in 1902 amid growing anxiety in Britain regarding its interests in East Asia, and rapidly modernizing Japan was seen as a useful ally in the region. For Japanese leaders, the signing of such an agreement with the most powerful empire of the day was seen as a major diplomatic accomplishment and an acknowledgement of Japan’s arrival as one of the world’s great powers. More immediately, the Alliance effectively guaranteed the neutrality of third parties in Japan’s looming war with Russia, and Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 sent shockwaves across the globe as the first defeat of a great European empire by a non-Western country in a conventional modern war.
Samurai!: Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. By Lorianne DiSabato. CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0 via Flickr.
In Britain, Japan’s victory was celebrated as a confirmation of the strength of its Asian ally, and represented the peak of a fascination with Japan in Britain that marked the first decade of the twentieth century. This culminated in the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition in London, which saw over eight million visitors pass through during its six-month tenure. In contrast, before the 1890s, Japan had been portrayed in Britain primarily as a relatively backward yet culturally interesting nation, with artists and intellectuals displaying considerable interest in Japanese art and literature. Japan’s importance as a military force was first recognized during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, and especially from the time of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan’s military prowess was popularly attributed to a supposedly ancient warrior spirit that was embodied in ‘bushido’, or the ‘way of the samurai’.
The ‘bushido’ ideal was popularized around the world especially through the prominent Japanese educator Nitobe Inazo’s (1862-1933) book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, which was originally published in English in 1900 and achieved global bestseller status around the time of the Russo-Japanese War (a Japanese translation first appeared in 1908). The British public took a positive view towards the ‘national spirit’ of its ally, and many saw Japan as a model for curing perceived social ills. Fabian Socialists such as Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) and Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) lauded the supposed collectivism of ‘bushido’, while Alfred Stead (1877-1933) and other promoters of the Efficiency Movement celebrated Japan’s rapid modernization. For his part, H.G. Wells 1905 novel A Modern Utopia included a ‘voluntary nobility’ called ‘samurai,’ who guided society from atop a governing structure that he compared to Plato’s ideal republic. At the same time, British writers lamented the supposed decline of European chivalry from an earlier ideal, contrasting it with the Japanese who had seemingly managed to turn their ‘knightly code’ into a national ethic followed by citizens of all social classes.
The ‘bushido boom’ in Britain was not mere Orientalization of a distant society, however, but was strongly influenced by contemporary Japanese discourse on the subject. The term ‘bushido’ only came into widespread use around 1900, and even a decade earlier most Japanese would have been bemused by the notion of a national ethic based on the former samurai class. Rather than being an ancient tradition, the modern ‘way of the samurai’ developed from a search for identity among Japanese intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century. This process saw an increasing shift away from both Chinese and European thought towards supposedly native ideals, and the former samurai class provided a useful foundation. The construction of an ethic based on the ‘feudal’ samurai was given apparent legitimacy by the popularity of idealized chivalry and knighthood in nineteenth-century Europe, with the notion that English ‘gentlemanship’ was rooted in that nation’s ‘feudal knighthood’ proving especially influential. This early ‘bushido’ discourse profited from the nationalistic fervor following Japan’s victory over China in 1895, and the concept increasingly came to be portrayed as a unique and ancient martial ethic. At the same time, those theories that had drawn inspiration from European models came to be ignored, with one prominent Japanese promoter of ‘bushido’ deriding European chivalry as ‘mere woman-worship’.
In the first years of the twentieth century, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance contributed greatly to the positive reception in Britain of theories positing a Japanese ‘martial race’, and the fate of ‘bushido’ in the UK demonstrated the effect of geopolitics on theories of ‘national characteristics’. By 1914, British attitudes had begun to change amid increasing concern regarding Japan’s growing assertiveness. Even the Anglo-Japanese operation that finally captured Qingdao in November was marked by British distrust of Japanese aims in China, a sentiment that was strengthened by Japan’s excessive demands on China the following year. Following the war, Japan’s reluctance to return the captured territory to China caused British opposition to Japan’s China policy to increase, leading to the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1923. The two countries subsequently drifted even further apart, and by the 1930s, ‘bushido’ was popularly described in Britain as an ethic of treachery and cruelty, only regaining its positive status after 1945 through samurai films and other popular culture as Japan and Britain again became firm allies in the Cold War.
Headline image credit: Former German Governor’s Residence in Qingdao, by Brücke-Osteuropa. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Who would have thought a 5k race could nearly lead to an arrest? I guess if you’ve been reading my blog long enough, you’ve figured out I can blunder my way into anything.
So it was Sunday when I ran a 5k for a benefit. The issue was not the run, I breezed through that with a typical mediocre time. The problem was that my daughter was one of the benefactors of the event and we needed to stay a long time after. A run on humid day for one who sweats profusely can lead to smells that disgust even my dog. I needed a change of clothing before I could reenter society.
Unlike most of my life, I planned ahead and brought a few towels along with a change of clothes. The race was held in an upscale shopping center that didn’t seem to accommodate porta-potties or any other proper facilities for a sweaty runner to disrobe. I couldn’t traipse through a fine dining establishment, dripping along the way and my planning stopped just short of a reconnaissance walk to find a bathroom.
Here’s where things went awry – the only thing I could think of was the back seat of the mini-van. No problem, I had towels that could allow me to be properly covered the entire time. When I got in the backseat, I looked around and noted I was in full view of the patio of three crowded restaurants. Again, no problem, the windows are tinted.
My problem? The key fob. Some people butt-dial and make innocuous phone calls. Not me. No, that’s not nearly stupid enough. No, I butt-press both sliding doors to the van open while I’m well into the disrobed portion of the clothes change. Fortunately, my posterior wasn’t into multi-tasking and didn’t hit the panic button.
There I sat, wide-eyed under a towel wondering why my display coincided with the dismissal of church leaving a sea of blue-haired ladies waiting for tables at the nearby restaurants. Members of the local fire department, who were standing by in case of a race emergency, took note of me also and began speaking into their radios. The police couldn’t be far behind.
I fumbled for the elusive key fob, cursed myself for laying it on the seat, and closed the doors. In a matter of seconds, I threw on my new set of clothes and wound my way through the gaggle of old women with my head held high. During the rest of the afternoon, I kept a paranoid eye out for the long arm of the law that was sure to be clamped on my shoulder at any minute. But it never came. The firemen must have been phoning friends to laugh about my situation and not alerting the police.
In today’s day and age, these things aren’t ever over. Someone could have been fast on the draw with video and my hiney might be splattered on Youtube. Until then, let me give you some advice – if you are doing something dicey in your car, know where your key fob is at all times. Those things are evil!
Hadrian’s Wall has been in the news again recently for all the wrong reasons. Occasional wits have pondered on its significance in the Scottish Referendum, neglecting the fact that it has never marked the Anglo-Scottish border, and was certainly not constructed to keep the Scots out. Others have mistakenly insinuated that it is closed for business, following the widely reported demise of the Hadrian’s Wall Trust. And then of course there is the Game of Thrones angle, best-selling writer George R R Martin has spoken of the Wall as an inspiration for the great wall of ice that features in his books.
Media coverage of both Hadrian’s Wall Trust’s demise and Game of Thrones’ rise has sometimes played upon and propagated the notion that the Hadrian’s Wall was manned by shivering Italian legionaries guarding the fringes civilisation – irrespective of the fact that the empire actually trusted the security of the frontier to its non-citizen soldiers, the auxilia rather than to its legionaries. The tendency to overemphasise the Italian aspect reflects confusion about what the Roman Empire and its British frontier was about. But Martin, who made no claims to be speaking as a historian when he spoke of how he took the idea of legionaries from Italy, North Africa, and Greece guarding the Wall as a source of inspiration, did at least get one thing right about the Romano-British frontier.
There were indeed Africans on the Wall during the Roman period. In fact, at times there were probably more North Africans than Italians and Greeks. While all these groups were outnumbered by north-west Europeans, who tend to get discussed more often, the North African community was substantial, and its stories warrant telling.
Hadrian’s Wall, by Carole Raddato. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Perhaps the most remarkable tale to survive is an episode in the Historia Augusta (Life of Severus 22) concerning the inspection of the Wall by the emperor Septimius Severus. The emperor, who was himself born in Libya, was confronted by a black soldier, part of the Wall garrison and a noted practical joker. According to the account the notoriously superstitious emperor saw in the soldier’s black skin and his brandishing of a wreath of Cyprus branches, an omen of death. And his mood was not further improved when the soldier shouted the macabre double entendre iam deus esto victor (now victor/conqueror, become a god). For of course properly speaking a Roman emperor should first die before being divinized. The late Nigerian classicist, Lloyd Thompson, made a powerful point about this intriguing passage in his seminal work Romans and Blacks, ‘the whole anecdote attributes to this man a disposition to make fun of the superstitious beliefs about black strangers’. In fact we might go further, and note just how much cultural knowledge and confidence this frontier soldier needed to play the joke – he needed to be aware of Roman funerary practices, superstitions, and the indeed the practice of emperor worship itself.
Why is this illuminating episode not better known? Perhaps it is because there is something deeply uncomfortable about what could be termed Britain’s first ‘racist joke’, or perhaps the problem lies with the source itself, the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta. And yet as a properly forensic reading of this part of the text by Professor Tony Birley has shown, the detail included around the encounter is utterly credible, and we can identify places alluded to in it at the western end of the Wall. So it is quite reasonable to believe that this encounter took place.
Not only this, but according to the restoration of the text preferred by Birley and myself, there is a reference to a third African in this passage. The restoration post Maurum apud vallum missum in Britannia indicates that this episode took place after Severus has granted discharge to a soldier of the Mauri (the term from which ‘Moors’ derives). And has Birley has noted, we know that there was a unit of Moors stationed at Burgh-by-Sands on the Solway at this time.
Hadrian’s Wall, by Midnightblueowl. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Sadly, Burgh is one of the least explored forts on Hadrian’s Wall, but some sense of what may one day await an extensive campaign of excavation there comes from Transylvania in Romania, where investigations at the home of another Moorish regiment of the Roman army have revealed a temple dedicated to the gods of their homelands. Perhaps too, evidence of different North African legacies would emerge. The late Vivian Swann, a leading expert in the pottery of the Wall has presented an attractive case that the appearance of new forms of ceramics indicates the introduction of North African cuisine in northern Britain in the second and third centuries AD.
What is clear is that the Mauri of Burgh-by-Sands were not the only North Africans on the Wall. We have an African legionary’s tombstone from Birdoswald, and from the East Coast the glorious funerary stela set up to commemorate Victor, a freedman (former slave) by his former master, a trooper in a Spanish cavalry regiment. Victor’s monument now stands on display in Arbeia Museum at South Shields next to the fine, and rather better known, memorial to the Catuvellunian Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barates from Palmyra in Syria. Together these individuals, and the many other ethnic groups commemorated on the Wall, remind us of just how cosmopolitan the people of Roman frontier society were, and of how a society that stretched from the Solway and the Tyne to the Euphrates was held together.
This year’s Emmys had an unfortunate lack of diversity. But, never fear! Fall 2014’s TV season is about to start and there are some amazing diverse offerings on the horizon.
Returning:
Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes’s medical drama returns for its eleventh season.
Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as a modern day Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson, returns.
Sleepy Hollow normalizes POC characters as leads in a fantasy-world setting, in which their POC-ness isn’t an “issue” but definitely a part of who they are as characters. It tackles historical issues like slavery head-on (for example, Ichabod’s reaction to Abbie being a cop), and it centers Abbie’s experience as the hero of this tale.
Ultimately, it’s epic and funny and fascinating—it tells a good story.
Scandal, Shonda Rhimes’s political thriller, returns with Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope.
Premiering:
Fresh off the Boat is the first sitcom starring Asian Americans since Margaret Cho’s All American Girl in 1994. There are 18.9 million Asian Americans in the US. It’s time to see some positive representation!
Black-ish, starring Tracee Ellis Ross and Anthony Anderson, follows a middle-class African American family in a mostly-white neighborhood.
Selfie looks fun and funny, a fresh take on My Fair Lady, with a nicely diverse cast across the board.
Cristela, “in her sixth year at law school, is finally on the brink of landing her first big (unpaid) internship at a prestigious law firm. However, she’s a lot more ambitious than her traditional Mexican-American family thinks is appropriate.”
How to Get Away with Murder stars two-time Oscar nominee, Viola Davis, as “the brilliant, charismatic and seductive Professor Annalise Keating, who gets entangled with four law students from her class “How to Get Away with Murder.””
Jane the Virgin is a retelling of Venezuelan soap-opera Juana la Virgen staring Gina Rodriguez.
Survivor’s Remorse, produced by LeBron James, follows Cam Calloway, a young basketball prodigy who is thrust into the limelight after getting a multi-million dollar contract with a professional team in Atlanta.
Honorable Mentions:
Galavant is about a dashing hero, determined to reclaim his reputation and his “happily ever after” from the evil King Richard. Karen David stars as Isabella. It’s unclear from the previews what role Isabella will ultimately play overall, but Karen David is the top-billed woman in the cast, so we have hopes her character will be important!
Gotham, WB’s new origin story on Batman and several villains, will have Jada Pinkett Smith in the role of Fish Mooney. Zabryna Guevara will star in the role of Sarah Essen.
Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments what diverse shows you’re looking forward to this fall!
I’d include The Flash as an Honorable Mention. Love interest Iris West and her detective father are played by Candice Patton and Jesse L. Martin. I love that they’ve cast the main superhero love interest as a woman of color! Also one of Barry Allen’s scientist sidekicks is played by Carlos Valdes, a seemingly up-and-coming Latino American actor!
ConStar24 said, on 9/4/2014 8:27:00 AM
Oh, another honorable mention! And in November, State of Affairs will feature Alfre Woodard as the female black president. (The character also happens to share my name, Constance!)
Alison said, on 9/4/2014 8:31:00 AM
I love Sleepy Hollow (though PoC-ness is a really strange term… couldn’t you have just said race?) and hope they don’t hit a sophomore slump next year.
I’m really looking forward to How to Get Away with Murder. I’m also hesitantly looking forward to Fresh Off the Boat (parts look funny, but I worry about the antiblackness among other things).
ConStar24 said, on 9/4/2014 8:35:00 AM
Reblogged this on ConStar Studies TV and commented:
Check out Lee and Low’s list of Diverse TV Shows coming this fall, both new and returning. Many of these shows are on my list (http://constarstudiestv.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/fall-2014-tv-schedule/) and I think The Flash should be considered an honorable mention due to it’s racebending Iris and Joe West (Barry Allen’s main love interest and her detective father). The show also feature Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon, a comic character himself.
I absolutely love that there is enough shows on TV this season to make such a list. I hope next year’s lists are even longer.
rgarcia406 said, on 9/4/2014 1:49:00 PM
@Alison
I’m curious as to how you interpreted Fresh off the Boat as potentially anti-black? Was it anti-black because Eddie is called a racial slur by a black student or because Eddie’s mom asks him why he wears a shirt with Notorious B.I.G. on it?
These two moments do not necessarily mark a show as anti-black. It is a little hard to tell simply from a 2 minute clip. I personally will reserve that judgement for the moment when I see the full pilot.
Andrea Shettle, MSW said, on 9/4/2014 5:56:00 PM
1. Not in the fall, I admit (I believe this returns in January), but Switched at Birth has MULTIPLE Deaf characters!! This is the first show where I’ve actually seen MORE THAN ONE CHARACTER AT A TIME who is “like me”. And also has a few characters of color, including the birth mother of one of the girls who was switched at birth and some minor characters. Also a few minor characters who are L or G. (no B or T so far)
2. Also not in the fall, but eventually returning will be The Fosters in which one of the Moms is black and two of the adopted children are Latino. And both Moms are lesbian. And there are also some minor characters of color as well.
Emily said, on 9/4/2014 8:22:00 PM
There is also “Stalker” premiering this fall on CBS, with lead Maggie Q. She is Vietnamese-Irish American and was also the first Asia-Am female to lead a drama in US television history with her anti-hero role as Nikita on the CW. A great, criminally underrated action show that passed the Bechdel test and then some for 4 seasons.
The following is a note from our Publisher, Jason Low, published in this month’s e-newsletter:
It’s been a hard few weeks for those of us following the news out of Ferguson, Missouri. While the exact details of Michael Brown’s death remain unknown, we can already see how this latest incident fits into a larger narrative in this country in which people of color are routinely discriminated against and subject to violence based on the color of their skin. Healing and change cannot begin until we as a country acknowledge the role racism plays not just in events like Michael Brown’s death, but in the everyday lived experiences of the 37% of America that is not white.
From a distance, it can seem like our book-filled corner of the world doesn’t have much to do with Michael Brown’s death, but we know better. The need for more diverse books and better representation is urgent. Poor representation doesn’t just damage self-esteem and confidence of children of color, it also perpetuates a skewed version of society as a whole. How can true equality ever exist if we are literallynot even on the same page? Promoting diverse books is about creating a safer space for all children.
There are no easy ways to teach children about what’s happening in Ferguson, but here are couple links we’ve come across that help illuminate the issues and, perhaps, let us find teachable moments:
Reblogged this on Vamos a Leer and commented:
Lee & Low shared this post today with thoughts on what’s going on in Ferguson and how we can teach about it in our classroom, and I wanted to share it with our Vamos a Leer readers. I especially appreciated the following quote from publisher Jason Low: “From a distance, it can seem like our book-filled corner of the world doesn’t have much to do with Michael Brown’s death, but we know better. The need for more diverse books and better representation is urgent. Poor representation doesn’t just damage self-esteem and confidence of children of color, it also perpetuates a skewed version of society as a whole. How can true equality ever exist if we are literally not even on the same page? Promoting diverse books is about creating a safer space for all children.”
I hope you’ll read the entire post and check out the resources for teaching about such a difficult subject.
amadairmaperez said, on 8/22/2014 12:57:00 PM
Thanks, Mona. I’ve also experienced terrible, hateful remarks from ignorant INS officials who were angry because I forgot the date I was naturalized when they entered the Greyhound bus I was riding back to California after visiting family in Mexicali. They shone a flashlight in my face and I got nervous. I said, “I can tell you the day I graduated from college with honors and the date I became a teacher.” “I don’t care about that!” He yelled, “your date of naturalization is more important than your BIRTHDAY!” I gave him an approximate date and continued providing him with more info as I remembered and wept for the woman and children who were thrown off the bus in the night…This scene is the basis for the bus scene in my book, My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá (Children’s Book Press, imprint of Lee & Low 2002) which is still available from leeandlow.com. This is the reason why I write books for multicultural understanding!
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years.
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay— Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
(The words above are from "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri. The pictures are ones I saw last night on Twitter that particularly stuck with me; a few I discovered this morning. Most were uncredited on Twitter. The ones I do know come from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and are by J.B. Forbes, David Carson, and Robert Cohen.)
0 Comments on Ferguson, Missouri, USA as of 8/14/2014 11:34:00 AM
The audacity I see in the ending of Snowpiercer comes not just from its framing of revolution as something that must smash the logic of the system, but also from the way it shows that system to be not just hierarchical in terms of class, but of also being fundamentally racialized.
First, there is the inescapable fact that most of the people who have been saved from the apocalypse are white and English speaking. Even the people at the back of the train, though more diverse than the people in the front, are predominantly white and English speakers. All of the positions of highest power in the train are positions held by white English speakers, and the ultimate positions of power are held by white men and passed on to white men (Wilford to Curtis).
As Curtis moves closer and closer to the front, the white supremacy becomes obvious. There's the classroom, where the vast majority of students are very white (and often blonde), with a few Asians in there (the pre-apocalypse notion of Asians as educational high achievers is thus replicated in the train), and one black girl (at least that I saw). The overall effect is of lily-whiteness, with a few special people added.
The people at the dance party are almost entirely white.
The people who apparently stepped out of The Great Gatsby are white.
The women getting their hair styled are white.
It's worth noting, too, how so much of what we see in the front cars evokes the old white world, a world of the 1920s-1950s — an America before the successes of the civil rights movement, of women's liberation struggles, of gay liberation, etc. (The car where everyone is taking drugs evokes even earlier ideas. It's like an opium den, a powerful force in the orientalist imagination of the yellow peril in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and a setting with plenty of cinematic history.)
Early in the film, Curtis tells Edgar that once they get to the front of the train, things will be different. "But how different, really?" the film asks at the end. "Know your place!" Mason (Tilda Swinton) tells the rabble. Curtis learns what his place is from Wilford: the place of the white patriarch.
That system cannot be reformed. It will do no good to have somebody else in charge of the engine. The logic of the system must not be reformed, it must be defied and destroyed.
And thus the ending, which stops the train's circular journey and potentially annihilates the last remnants of humanity.
The system is so corrupt, so incapable of reform, that what is known to be left of humans is worth destroying rather than continuing along the same tracks.
If there is to be a future for humanity, it looks like this, the new Adam and Eve:
They might be destroyed by the cold, white world. They might be a meal for the white polar bear. But maybe, somehow, they will survive and discover or create a new world, a world where humans are on a different journey, subject to a different system, not oppressed by the cold, unbearable whiteness.
Bong leaves it to us to imagine their fate.
0 Comments on Snowpiercer: Total Cinema as of 7/19/2014 4:23:00 AM
School Library Journal came out with their Diversity Issue a few months ago and it’s been on my “to read” pile since then. Their lead article Children’s Books: Still an All-White World? tells a depressing tale of under-representation of black children in US children’s books (they are the only ethnic group mentioned, I am presuming this goes doubly so for groups with smaller representation in the US) and ends with a call to action for librarians to make sure they are creating a market for these titles to encourage more books by and about all kinds of people.
I grew up in a Free to Be You and Me sort of world where my mother actively selected books for me to read with a wide range of ethnicities represented. I had dolls representing many backgrounds. My mother wrote textbooks where there were strict rules about being inclusive and representative and, living in a small town, I assumed this was the way the rest of the world worked. Not so. Reading this article drove home the point that while I may have been a young person during a rare time of expansion of titles and characters of color, that expansion slowed and the situation is still stagnant even as the US is becoming more diverse than ever. Another article in the Diversity Issue highlights research which indicates that “the inclusion of these cross-group images encourages cross-group play“. Sounds like a good thing. We should be doing more.
2 Comments on if we want to see more diversity in literature, we have to buy the books, last added: 7/20/2014
Like many? others I have been cncerned with the apparent lack of inteest in material related to characters of color – of even real people ho have made considerable contributions to our society. I find it disappointing that many libraries do not purchase the Coretta Scott King Award Books volumes although they are highly rated as to content, quality illustrations reproduced from award winning titles and biographical information often not found elsewhere. Is that too many feel that this information in not really important, not really needed? or can be found elsewhere?
I wonder about the interest level of those who are even members of minority cultures? Maybe the information in the article will spark some renewed interest in the topic.
Freeman said, on 7/20/2014 3:13:00 AM
Thanks for sharing such excellent info with us, i cherish it.
I just wanted to leave a comment in your guestbook and say:
Keep up the great!
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
I thought of my favorite Langston Hughes poem, "Let American Be America Again" while reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's extraordinary new essay at The Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations" (for which we should just give Coates the Pulitzer right now):
If we conclude that the conditions in North Lawndale and black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you’d expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America’s crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world’s oldest democracy?
One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one’s ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jefferson’s genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings’s body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.
Read the whole essay. If you're a U.S. citizen, or even not, it's unlikely you'll read anything more important today.
0 Comments on "America never was America to me" as of 5/22/2014 11:30:00 AM
For my birthday my husband picked me up a copy of the bestselling book NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. To be frank, I hadn’t heard of it. Though its been called “The Freakonomics of child rearing” and lauded by reviewer after reviewer it’s from the world of adult books. I traipse there but rarely. Still, I’m great with child (ten days away from the due date, in fact) and this promised to be a fascinating read. Covering everything from the detrimental effects that come with telling a kid that they’re smart to aggression in the home I settled down and devoured it with pleasure. In doing so, one chapter in particular caught my eye. Chapter Three: “Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race: Does teaching children about race and skin color make them better of or worse?”
Culling several studies together, the book makes the point that while, “Nonwhite parents are about three times more likely to discuss race than white parents; 75% of the latter never, or almost never, talk about race.” Studies that required that parents do so with their young children saw white parent after white parent balk at the idea. There’s this notion out there that children are little innocents and that pointing out race will somehow taint their race blind worldview. Turns out, nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who has ever had a kid will know that they like to categorize themselves and their friends into groups. Race is the easiest way to do so, so from a very early age the children will be prone to “in-group favoritism”.
I thought this through. My kiddo attends a daycare here in Harlem. In her Preschool A class she is only one of two children who are not African-American or of mixed race. It’s a great place and certainly it assuages my white guilt, having my kid in such a diverse environment. But according to NurtureShock it isn’t enough to just plop your child in what you assume will be a color-blind environment. As the book says, “We might imagine we’re creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender – they’re plainly visible.”
And as I read this I realized that I myself have done the exact same balking at race references as mentioned in the book. I’ve an amazing personal of library of diverse children’s books accumulated through my job and the donations of friends and family members alike from over the years. My job in giving my child a sense of diversity and multiculturalism is therefore done, right? Not so much. Take the case of Busing Brewster by Rich Michelson. This is a book that years ago appeared on the New York Times Best Illustrated list (whose committee, full disclosure, I served on). It’s an older picture book, and one that I’d probably recommend for the 4-7-year-old crowd. Still, it’s a picture book so one day the small Bird picked it up and asked to be read it. She is, I should point out, two-years-old. And as I read it to her, I found myself softening the harsh elements. If you’re unfamiliar with it, in this book two boys are integrated into a new school in the 1960s. In doing so they face outright racism varying from yelling protestors to bricks thrown through their school bus windows. Was my two-year-old ready for this? I figured probably not, but watching myself edit the book for her level turned out to be a strange pastime. I wasn’t just editing out the hatred but was also failing to explain why the kids were moving to a new school at all. It was as if I was afraid that mentioning race to her would cause her to say embarrassing things at daycare the next day, something I wanted desperately to avoid. An understandable reaction, but the right one? I’m not sure about that at all.
Going back to the book, the more I read the more I realized that if we want parents to have serious discussions about race with their four and five and six-year-olds then we need to have books that help to do this. So as I read I kept a particular eye out for moments when the authors would mention using literature with kids to drill home various points. Though they never come out and say that children’s books can be useful in this regard, there are several incidents recounted that name check various books. One such title is Twas the Night B’Fore Christmas: An African-American Version by Melodye Benson Rosales. Originally published in 1996 the title was criticized for its use of colloquial language. As the Horn Book Guide said at the time, “Painful dialect (‘The stockin’s was laid / by the chimney wit’ care, / For the chil’ren hoped Santy Claus / soon would be there’) and garish illustrations make this ‘African-American version’ seem more like an unintentional parody of Clement Moore’s 1822 poem. So why isn’t anybody laughing?” In NurtureShock the book was used to combat children’s stereotypes of whether or not Santa was black or white. For the same thing, one would probably turn these days to the Rachel Isadora version instead. Disappointingly the only other time literature is mentioned is when a study is recounted where kids read historical biographies of Jackie Robinson. Still, one gathers that these were not from books but rather textbooks or printed bios made specifically for the study.
What we can take away from this are the ages at which kids need to learn about race. At one moment a study was conducted between first graders and third graders. At the end we read, “The researchers found this worked wonders on the first-grade children. Having been in the cross-race study groups led to significantly more cross-race play. But it made no difference on the third-grade children. It’s possible that by third grade, when parents usually recognize it’s safe to start talking a little about race, the developmental window has already closed.”
With that in mind, I decided I needed to find a booklist that would best help parents frame a discussion of race or other cultural factors with their younger children. Which was about the time I realized that finding such a list was incredibly difficult. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I’m sure there must be some out there. I just couldn’t figure out where they were hiding. Even lists like SLJ’s recent Culturally Diverse Books list and subsequent Expanded Cultural Diversity booklist place the bulk of importance on books for older children. Books for younger kids almost never mention race specifically in any context.
So I decided to do what librarians do when they can’t find the resources they need. I made a book list that people could use to discuss difficult subjects with younger kids. And to my amazement, it was incredibly hard to create. Not too long ago I had written a post about Casual Diversity in children’s literature. Well, apparently Casual Diversity is a very easy concept to put in a book for kids. In fact, as I’ve gone through list after list of diverse works of children’s literature, what I keep finding is that the tendency is towards just making a character one race or another without discussing what that means (a criticism of “casual diversity” that cropped up at the time of the post itself).
In constructing this list I also tried like the devil to include books that could be used to discuss their individual issues without lapsing into painful didacticism. No mean feat. For the most part, books about race or religion or alternative lifestyles will either make the situation seem completely normal (which is good, and which we also need) or they’ll slap some sappy “message” all over the puppy making it essentially useless as a piece of literature.
The final result is below. If I were to say the ages this was for I’d go with 4-8 or so. I figured it didn’t make sense to necessarily limit it to race, since discussions of race and alternative lifestyles would also apply. NurtureShock includes the fascinating fact that a lot of white parents feel perfectly comfortable drilling home the fact that boys and girls are equal, while ignoring the issues of race entirely. So I’ve eschewed gender equality books (which are fairly prevalent anyway) and limited this to other “differences” a kiddo might pick up on. If you have titles you’d add to this, do let me know what they are.
A Picture Book Reading List for Discussing Race, Religion, and Alternative Lifestyles with the Young
She Sang Promise: The Story of Betty Mae Jumper, Seminole Tribal Leader by Jan Godown Annino, illustrated by Lisa Desimini – Finding picture books about Native Americans is hard to begin with. Now try finding some that actually discuss the prejudices and lives they’ve lead. I looked through Debbie Reese’s recent list of Resources and Kid Lit About American Indians but was unable to find much of anything for young ages that could discuss the prejudice faced by Native American children (or their trials historically) for the picture book set. Insofar as I can tell, you have to turn to real world history to get anywhere near that subject. With that in mind, I decided to go with Annino’s amazing bio of the too little known Betty Mae Jumper, the first female Seminole Tribal Leader. In the course of this story kids learn about the prejudices not just facing the Seminoles historically but also within their own tribe and towards women nationally. There are just loads of jumping off discussion points to be plumbed here.
The Soccer Fence: A Story of Friendship, Hope, and Apartheid in South Africa by Phil Bildner, ill. Jesse Joshua Watson – Picture books that deal with historical racism tend to be preferred by teachers, and there are reasons for that. In NurtureShock the study where kids were given different texts on Jackie Robinson ends with this rather fascinating selection: “She notes the bios were explicit, but about historical discrimination. ‘If we’d had them read stories of contemporary discrimination from today’s newspapers, it’s quite possible it would have made the whites defensive, and only made the blacks angry at the whites’.” Hm. Well, certainly finding contemporary picture books about racism towards African-Americans is remarkably difficult. Sometimes authors find that even setting the books in America can be hard. Sure you have books like A Taste of Colored Water from time to time (which I have included on this list), but anything recent is eschewed. So for authors that want to include more recent kids, South Africa has proven ripe for books like Bildner’s here. Initially this book reminded me of the well meaning but ultimately flawed Desmond and the Very Mean Word: A Story of Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu. Tutu’s book, however, simplified the issue of race to a watered down non-point. As NurtureShock says, lots of parents use vague terms like “Everybody’s equal” or “God made all of us” or “Under the skin, we’re all the same” to talk about race. That’s what Tutu’s book did, even when telling the story of white and black characters. Bildner’s book isn’t perfect and it verges on the idealistic in terms of different races coming together, but after a couple rereads I came to the decision that ultimately it’s a mighty useful tool.
A Taste of Colored Water by Matt Faulkner – I remember when this book first came out. It got starred reviews from places like Kirkus but I wasn’t particularly interested in it. The premise, as you might be able to tell from the cover, involved two kids who heard the term “colored water” and misinterpreted it literally. Faulkner (who currently has the graphic novel Gaijin: American Prisoner of War about a mixed-race kid in an internment camp out on shelves) isn’t the kind of author afraid of shying away from a difficult subject. In many ways this remains his best known work.
Be Good to Eddie Lee by Virginia M. Fleming – I dare you to find me a book more recent than this 1997 title that discusses Down Syndrome in such a straightforward context. Books that discuss kids and disabilities are few and far between. It got great reviews when it first came out (and Floyd Cooper did the art!). It also has the guts to have a character who says things like, “God didn’t make mistakes, and Eddie Lee was a mistake if there ever was one.” Recently publishers have been doing better when it comes to books about autism, but it’s almost as if they think we can only handle one disability at a time. Publish books on more than one issue? Insanity! Only Albert Whitman Books really tries to do quality issues but even they haven’t touched on Down Syndrome. It’s almost as if it was a big issue in the 80s and 90s and then disappeared from the public conversation. Now it’s all peanut allergies and ADD.
Layla’s Head Scarf by Miriam Cohen, illustrated by Ronald Himler – We get close to didactic here without ever quite tipping over. Finding good books about contemporary Muslim kids isn’t impossible, but it certainly isn’t easy to do. And books that actually talk about what people wear in school? Rarities. This one was very young and did a good job (though, alas, it referred to the head scarf as simply a head scarf and not by the proper term “hijab”).
10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert, illustrated by Rex Ray – As it turns out, finding a book about gay parents that actually discusses the issue does not exist. Or maybe it does and I just missed it entirely. Instead, what I was able to find were a couple books about boys that wear girls’ clothing. Long before that atrocious My Princess Boy hit the shelves, Ewert wrote a book where a boy honest-to-goodness identified as a girl. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only book I’ve encountered to go the distance in that respect AND it had a story above and beyond its message.
Jacob’s New Dress by Sarah and Ian Hoffman, illustrated by Chris Case – And this is the most recent boys-in-dresses book (though the art of Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress is quite lovely as well, so check out the Seven Impossible Things posting on Gender-Nonconforming Picture Books if you get a chance). What I really like about this book, though, is how instructional it is to parents. When Jacob specifies his preferences for dresses his mother and father definitely have to pause and think about how to handle the information but their responses are really quite grand. Jacob doesn’t identify as a girl, but his desire to wear dresses makes him stand out. No doubt.
Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan, illustrated by Sophie Blackall – As I mentioned before, Muslim kids in picture books are few and far between. And for the most part this book is just an example of Casual Diversity rather than any overt lessons. But skillful parents and teachers could certainly place the book’s story in context. Talking about immigrants to America and how there are different rules and mores in one country vs. another. Plus it’s one of my very favorite books of all time and any excuse to post it is good enough for me.
Goin’ Someplace Special by Patricia McKissack, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney – To be honest, there are a fair number of historical picture books like this one that discuss historical racism. I figured I’d put a couple on this list, but one the best may well be McKissack’s here. Here we have a kid who actually faces racism firsthand. There’s a reason schools assign this one every single summer for summer reading. As the Kirkus review put it, “Every plot element contributes to the theme, leaving McKissack’s autobiographical work open to charges of didacticism. But no one can argue with its main themes: segregation is bad, learning and libraries are good.”
Busing Brewster by Rich Michelson, illustrated by R.G. Roth – Part of what I like so much about this book is that it’s not just a case of discussing racial differences. The book’s concentration on busing and integration is an essential part of American history that simply cannot be ignored. Add in the fact that the white bully in the book is seen getting essentially indoctrinated into his particular brand of racism by his father, and you’ve a darn good book on a difficult subject. As I mentioned before, reading it to my two-year-old proved difficult, but at the very least I should have given it some historical context. Next time.
First Day in Grapes by L. King Perez, illustrated by Robert Casilla – I ran into the same problem with Latino characters that I found with Native Americans. Unless we’re talking about specific historical people who faced challenges, books with Latinos often eschew controversial aspects. This was one of the very few I could find that talks about contemporary migrant kids. There are a couple others (Armando and the Blue Tarp School by Edith Hope Fine and Judith Pinkerton Josephson comes to mind) but I think I liked this one best. The didacticism is low-key and the storyline doesn’t exist solely to support the message. That Pura Belpre Honor on the cover ain’t there for nothing.
The Favorite Daughter by Allen Say – I’m listing these books alphabetically by author but if I were to list them in terms of importance then I might have considered making this one of the first on the list. I did think about adding My Name Is Yoon by Helen Recorvits and/or The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi to this list but Say’s book is just so much gutsier in so many ways. Yuriko gets teased in school about her name and hair (she’s blond with Asian features) and faces other examples of prejudice. Her response is to change her name to “Michelle”, a move that gives her father reason to guide her back to her roots, so to speak. It’s a book done almost entirely in dialogue (rare in and of itself) and so smart. You could also add Cleversticks by Bernard Ashley or Yoko by Rosemary Wells to this list of titles too, by the way.
The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss – Well, why not? Seuss was the lesson man back before it was cool. And when I mentioned this post to my husband he pointed out that when we were in school, The Sneetches was the gold standard for talking about prejudice and race. Sure it’s a great big green starred metaphor, but if we feel like it no longer has a place in our schools then we’re just not paying attention.
I Will Come Back for You by Marisabina Russo – Well, if we’re talking about race then are we also talking about the Holocaust? It’s a legitimate question. Marjorie Ingall recently wrote a very smart piece for Tablet Magazine about whether or not young children need to learn about the Holocaust where she name checked this book. Her post ties in beautifully with the NurtureShock chapter, in that she points out that if you do not provide the lesson for your kids they’re just going to pick it up somewhere else in a form you probably don’t approve of. This book puts you in the kids’ shoes (and NOT in a concentration camp). Just good for opening discussions.
Definitely there are books that could fit on this list. So list ‘em!
11 Comments on We Need Diverse Books . . . But Are We Willing to Discuss Them With Our Kids?, last added: 5/12/2014
Just did a long comment that is “awaiting moderation” probably because it is long. At the end of it I pointed to my post in response to yours: Very glad you brought this up although I’m not sure I agree with you. I just did the following post giving some of my own musings on this: http://medinger.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/talking-diversity-with-young-children/
Let’s see if this one goes through!
Natalie Dias Lorenzi said, on 5/12/2014 3:28:00 AM
One from our school library shelves that I’d add to this list is WHEN I WAS EIGHT by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton, illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard. The story is based on Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s experience of leaving her native Inuit village to attend a Catholic boarding school so she could learn to read. This one made me cringe when I first read it–it’s weighty subject matter for a picture book billed for kids in grades K-4. But if you want to talk about the pain of discrimination, this one should be included in every library’s collection. The sequel is called NOT MY GIRL, which deals with Margaret returning home two years after attending the “outsiders’” school and the culture shock she experiences in her native home.
I like that these books have versions of the same story for older kids (FATTY LEGS and A STRANGER AT HOME). For older readers who find these books, I’d also hand them MY NAME IS NOT EASY by Debby Dahl Edwardson.
Debbie Reese said, on 5/12/2014 3:33:00 AM
Good morning! My doctorate is in early childhood education. Then and now, I read a lot of the research literature about race and how children process it. I read a lot about racism, and, when my daughter was little, had awkward conversations with the ‘color blind’ parent many times. In a nutshell, we (as a society) tend not to talk about bad things.
But let me back up to say this: A key piece to remember is who the ‘we’ is in what we read and say and do. The default is white. We generally means white. Generally, it is white parents who want to teach their children to be ‘color blind’ and who want to avoid discussing anything difficult about race. For a great many not-white families, it cannot be avoided. Racism is a fact of our daily lives. Being Native was/is part of our daily lives. Implicitly and explicitly, Liz learned about what it meant to be Native and she was proud of it. Seeing her heritage as someone else’s costume or plaything was not something I could ignore. I had to give her words to understand what she was seeing. I wrote about that in an article for HORN BOOK in 1998 called “Look Mom, It’s George! He’s a TV Indian.”
I haven’t seen NURTURE SHOCK but will look for it. For older–yet powerful books on the subject–see THE ANTI-BIAS CURRICULUM by Derman-Sparks, published in 1989. Here’s an ERIC digest based on her book: http://ecap.crc.illinois.edu/eecearchive/digests/1992/hohens92.html
There is a lot of excellent material. Ausdale and Feagin’s THE FIRST R: HOW CHILDREN LEARN RACE AND RACISM, first published in 2001 is another one I recommend.
As for children’s books, among the five I recommended for the SLJ article is Lacapa’s LESS THAN HALF MORE THAN WHOLE. Elsewhere I’ve written about Savageau’s MUSKRAT WILL BE SWIMMING. It is about a Native girl who is taunted for who she is, and how her grandfather helps her understand it. My article in Horn Book has additional picture books. There are newer ones that take on boarding schools. Nicola Campbell has two; look at Judith Lowery’s HOME TO MEDICINE MOUNTAIN. Tim Tingle’s SALTYPIE is excellent.
Part of why we (as a society) love books is because we believe they can empower us for the ways in which they reflect life. A pet dies? Read TENTH GOOD THING ABOUT BARNEY. We don’t necessarily shy away from hard subjects like that one (death) but we certainly do shy away from race. We do so, at our own peril, I believe, and because we do, we still find it necessary to have events like We Need Diverse Books. Not enough people read the Anti-Bias Curriculum when it came out. Groundbreaking as it was, it wasn’t the first time someone had looked at that subject. Native people started objecting to misrepresentations of who we were/are in the 1800s. In the early 1900s, Native parents in Chicago wrote to the school board about it. None of this is new.
I believe in the power of children’s books to help, but I’m also aware of their power to harm. You and I are deeply committed to children and their books. I believe that ending racism starts with young children, with teaching them about it from their childhood, so that it is something they carry with them into adulthood. Knowing it is there, knowing it is wrong… Doesn’t it seem logical that if we had more kids raised that way, it would make a difference in society?
Debbie Reese said, on 5/12/2014 3:36:00 AM
My first paragraph above is incomplete. Here’s the rest of it:
If we don’t talk about race, studies suggest that our kids perceive ‘other’ to be bad. By adopting a color blind stance, we inadvertently communicate that other is bad.
Debbie Reese said, on 5/12/2014 3:38:00 AM
Natalie–thanks for pointing people to those books. They’re in the SLJ article I did in November of 2013.
Brenda said, on 5/12/2014 3:41:00 AM
How about Julius Lester’s 2005, Let’s Talk about Race?
marjorie said, on 5/12/2014 5:39:00 AM
Great post, Betsy!
The first LGBT-parents book that comes to mind for me is In Our Mothers’ House, by Patricia Polacco. The two moms (one of whom is also quite fat, another kind of diversity!) have a multiracial, multiethnic family of adopted kids. There’s a horribly homophobic neighbor who doesn’t have the come-to-Jesus moment — she remains a hater. On the whole the community is accepting, but still, I wish it were a happier book! Does that make me naive? Maybe.
The best casual-diversity (love that term) book for LGBT parents I can think of is Everywhere Babies, with Marla Frazee’s killer illustrations. It’s up to the parent or caregiver-reader to point out the different constellations of family — oh, here’s two daddies, here’s two mommies, here’s a grandma or other older person who is the primary caregiver, here’s a solo parent, here are two parents of different races. I like that this is a book for very, very little kids that gives the adult an opportunity to editorialize without having to deal with a text itself that’s drearily didactic.
An aside: casual diversity is great in books and a real problem for me in tween live-action television (I’ve written about that, too)! Kids of color on Disney and Nick’s teen shows have no markers of identity beside their skin color — there’s always ONE kid of color in a sea of white, and that kid is essentially deracinated; he or she dresses the same as the white kids, has straightened hair (if she’s a Black girl), has the exact same interests, talks the same, is subject to the same body tyranny as the white characters. It feels tokenistic and yucky, and it feels like the visual equivalent of what Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman talk about in NurtureShock (I agree, great book) — the producers can congratulate themselves that they’re not being racist because hey, their show depicts a different skin tone, but then it’s never a topic of discussion or a marker of identity, and wheee there’s no discrimination and everyone’s exactly the same. I think it’s a distressing message to send: there’s no difference AT ALL. And because it’s tween TV, adults often aren’t watching and can’t discuss the mixed messages of the shows and their casting.
Oh! I also like Yoko by Rosemary Wells for little kids. Yoko brings sushi to school and all the other kids are shriekingly grossed out and horrified. We’ve seen these kids in Wells’s other school books, so they’re not demonized as bullies. (Another problem in picture books and some middle-grade novels, too — bullies are Other, not our friends or us.) They’re just kids, being clueless and insensitive about something they haven’t been exposed to. I think it’s a fun story that educates gently.
laurel said, on 5/12/2014 5:51:00 AM
I’m so glad to see this conversation happening in an honest way.
So often, parents use a language of “What the kids can handle.” Almost always, I think the real issue is “what the parents are comfortable discussing.” But books like these are such a good way of getting everyone thinking/talking/pushing their own boundaries.
I’ll absolutely be circulating this list. Thanks!
Elizabeth Bird said, on 5/12/2014 6:30:00 AM
Brilliant! Forgot that one.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 5/12/2014 6:32:00 AM
Excellent, Debbie! I knew I could count on you to add to this. Indeed books can definitely do as much harm as good. With that in mind, I’m shocked that I don’t know the books you’ve listed here. Must find, stat.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 5/12/2014 6:34:00 AM
Excellent. I was actually hoping for some alternative opinions on this and the point about the book being focused on parents vs. teachers is an excellent one. I haven’t said why this list I made exists, nor have I suggested how to use it. In this light, one would argue that it’s a list for parents rather than teachers, but as any public children’s librarian will tell you we get asked for this kind of list all the time.
by Michele Norris. Pantheon, 2010. (nook ebook) I am posting about a book for grown ups today.
Known as one of the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered, Michele Norris is a journalist who has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post. She set out to write about her family after learning, almost by accident, that her father had been shot in the leg by police
1 Comments on Review: The Grace of Silence, last added: 2/6/2013
My friend, and author, Kate Tenbeth has an exciting new release! Here is the official story from her publisher:
Hello everyone! GMTA Publishing has a new YA novel set to come out on October 1st by Kate Tenbeth! Here's your first look at the amazing cover by UK artist Elizabeth Eisen!
About the book: There are always high stakes to play for in the world of gambling, but it’s a world 15 year-old Holly Maddon knows nothing about until her step-mother tries to kill her. The race is on as she tries to discover what her step-mother is up to and whether her father was murdered. She comes up against gangsters, multi-million pound land deals, treachery and deceit, she’s kidnapped, shot at and loses just about everything she loves – it’s a rollercoaster of a ride and Holly's intent on turning the tables.
About the author: I live in Essex with my son, who is studying at University, and my two cats, Puzzle and Bud. I’ve always loved writing and in January 2011 I got together with some friends and set up a writers’ group at our local library. One of our first guest speakers was a young lady called Penelope Fletcher who talked to us about self-publishing – I was so inspired I went back home, found some stories I’d written for my son when he was young and started the process of learning how to self-publish. I published 3 books in the Burly & Grum series and then in July 2012 was lucky enough to be signed up by GMTA. I’ve enjoyed every single second of my journey so far, learnt an incredible amount and I’m looking forward to the future!
About the artist: Elizabeth Eisen is a 23 year old freelance illustrator from North London. She graduated from the University of Westminster with a BA Hons in Illustration in 2011 and has since worked on commissions ranging from album artwork to editorial. Further examples of her work can be found at www.elizabetheisenillustration.co.uk
Get Unlucky Dip by Kate Tenbeth today!
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0 Comments on Kate Tenbeth is "Unlucky" as of 10/1/2012 1:50:00 PM
The Fourth of July is a big event in a former hometown of mine, Seward Alaska. Every year, the little town of approx 3000 expands to approx. 30,000 to celebrate this holiday. The main reason for this is the annual running of one of America’s oldest footraces, The Mount Marathon Race®.
Runners from all over the world participate in the running up and down of the 3022 foot mountain. As a former racer, I can tell you that it is one of the most exhilarating things I have experienced in my life.
Good luck to my sister, brother-in-law, twin nieces, and friends as the race this year! Be safe and have a happy 4th!
*Note* for those that would like to view the race via livestream check out Ktuu.com’s site for full coverage of the race which starts at 930 am Alaska time, July 4th. To learn more about the Mount Marathon race, visit the Seward.com website.
– that align with 7 core values and
And then there’s the stark imprint of privilege found in the gaps and silences of 
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The NY Times columnist, Maureen Dowd had problems with the LBJ depiction and wrote an op-ed piece about it here: http://nyti.ms/1sSGEOX
I disagreed with Dowd’s take on Selma and was about to comment, but noticed that the comments section was closed. I then stumbled on a comment by Sophy that said:
Dowd says “It was clear that a generation of young moviegoers would now see L.B.J.’s role in civil rights through DuVernay’s lens. And that’s a shame.” No, it isn’t a shame. Those same black teens may have seen Lincoln through Spielbergs’ lens–a lens which didn’t even include Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tubman. A film with no acknowledgement of black efforts to end slavery. In her analysis of some of these films, has Dowd ever suggested that it was a “shame” to see the film through those directors’ lenses? I think not.
Read Sophy’s full thoughts in the comments section under NYT Picks. Sophy really hits the nail on the head when it comes to the preposterous double standard leveraged at a female director of color.
David Carr of the NYT also chimed with his two bits of why Ava DuVernay’s snub for an Oscar best director nomination was a missed opportunity: http://nyti.ms/15iaIcy
I haven’t yet seen Selma (I really need to go!) but I did see All the Way, the Broadway play about LBJ and the passing of the Civil Rights Act which came out last spring. In that play, LBJ is depicted as a truly complicated person whose personal loyalties are often hard to read, hidden under the weight of so many political forces. Whether he personally wanted to see the voting rights issue pass seems, at times, beside the point; for him what often mattered most was whether there were enough votes to get something through and, if not, what getting those votes would cost him. He and MLK often were at odds with each other, though some of their goals overlapped–I’m also not a historian, but to me it seemed that they were more like “frenemies” than true partners for much of the time. I don’t want to downplay what LBJ contributed to Civil Rights, but it’s refreshing to see a movie like Selma that attributes the bulk of the blood, sweat, and tears of the Civil Rights movement to the activists themselves instead of to a white politician who came in only after the tide seemed to be turning in their favor.