Filipinx American Heritage Month
In celebration of Filipinx American Heritage Month, we have put together a feature commemorating Filipinx artists and creators. For more on the history of Filipinx American Heritage Month, please take a look at this piece on the celebration from the Asian Art Museum. We recognize that not everyone being celebrated this month aligns with using the label Filipinx that we will be using for the title of this feature. Several terms are more accepted due to different movements in gender equity and nonbinary visibility as well as a collective push back on terms rooted in colonialism. We invite any and all people to celebrate this month and use this feature to explore more about the wide and diverse range of art, film, literature, and general culture of Filipinx people.
For more on the topic of terms and labels, please read Kate Cabigao’s article on Vice, “Are You Filipino or Filipinx?”, as well as Lauren Golangco’s article on Tatler Asia, “Filipinx: Why is the Gender-Neutral Term So Controversial?”
Resources for Further Exploration
- Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS)
- Celebrating Filipino American Heritage Month (University of Washington)
- Filipino American Heritage Month (California Teachers Association)
- 2023 Filipino American Heritage Month (San Diego Public Library)
About the Playlist
In addition to the resources we've gathered in this feature, we've also curated a collection of music by artists from or with familial connections to the Philippines. While certainly not comprehensive, we have sought to include a representative sampling of genres and sounds from across time but with an emphasis on contemporary musicians and styles. To learn more about the contributions of Filipinx artists to musical history and culture, take a look at some of the resources we used to make this playlist below:
- 10 Filipino Musicians You Should Know (Culture Trip)
- The Young Filipino-American Musicians Making Waves Right Now (Esquire)
- These 7 Filipino American artists are on their way to becoming superstars (NextShark)
- From Olivia to Bruno to H.E.R., Filipino American artists enjoy a breakout year at Grammys (Los Angeles Times)
- The Pinoy music scene in the 2010s: loud and proud and messy, and every bit its own thing (ANCX)
- Filipino American Punks Bring the Noise (Bandcamp Daily)
- A Short History of The Hardcore Punk Underground in the Philippines (Bandcamp Daily)
- Music of the Philippines (Wikipedia)
Next Steps
For more on this topic, and this month-long celebration, consult some of the following resources from Indiana University:
Patron Saints of Nothing by ISBN: 9780525554912Publication Date: 2019-06-18A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder. Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story. Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth -- and the part he played in it. As gripping as it is lyrical, Patron Saints of Nothing is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.
Arsenic and Adobo by ISBN: 9780593201671Publication Date: 2021-05-04When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case. With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block...
America Is Not the Heart by ISBN: 9780735222410Publication Date: 2018-04-03When Hero De Vera arrives in America--haunted by the political upheaval in the Philippines and disowned by her parents--she's already on her third. Her uncle gives her a fresh start in the Bay Area, and he doesn't ask about her past. His younger wife knows enough about the might and secrecy of the De Vera family to keep her head down. But their daughter--the first American-born daughter in the family--can't resist asking Hero about her damaged hands. An increasingly relevant story told with startling lucidity, humor, and an uncanny ear for the intimacies and shorthand of family ritual, America Is Not the Heart is a sprawling, soulful debut about three generations of women in one family struggling to balance the promise of the American dream and the unshakeable grip of history. With exuberance, grit, and sly tenderness, here is a family saga; an origin story; a romance; a narrative of two nations and the people who leave one home to grasp at another.
In the Country by ISBN: 9780385352819Publication Date: 2015-06-16These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere--and, sometimes, turning back again. A pharmacist living in New York smuggles drugs to his ailing father in Manila, only to discover alarming truths about his family and his past. In Bahrain, a Filipina teacher drawn to a special pupil finds, to her surprise, that she is questioning her own marriage. A college student leans on her brother, a laborer in Saudi Arabia, to support her writing ambitions, without realizing that his is the life truly made for fiction. And in the title story, a journalist and a nurse face an unspeakable trauma amidst the political turmoil of the Philippines in the 1970s and '80s. In the Country speaks to the heart of everyone who has ever searched for a place to call home. From teachers to housemaids, from mothers to sons, Alvar's powerful debut collection explores the universal experiences of loss, displacement, and the longing to connect across borders both real and imagined. Deeply compassionate and richly felt, In the Country marks the emergence of a formidable new writer.
Dogeaters by ISBN: 1559362154Publication Date: 2002-12-01A hard-hitting play about the Philippines in the Marcos era, adapted by Jessica Hagedorn from her own novel of the same name. Dogeaters was first performed at La Jolla Playhouse, California, in 1998.
The Farm by ISBN: 9781984853752Publication Date: 2019-05-07Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, personal fitness trainers, daily massages--and all of it for free. In fact, you're paid big money to stay here--more than you've ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds, your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. For someone else. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a "Host" at Golden Oaks--or the Farm, as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on the delivery of her child.
Insurrecto by ISBN: 9781616959449Publication Date: 2018-11-13Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte's Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator--one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher. Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrecto are stories of women--artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters--finding their way to their own truths and histories. Using interlocking voices and a kaleidoscopic structure, the novel is startlingly innovative, meditative, and playful. Insurrecto masterfully questions and twists narrative in the manner of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, and Nabokov's Pale Fire. Apostol pushes up against the limits of fiction in order to recover the atrocity in Balangiga, and in so doing, she shows us the dark heart of an untold and forgotten war that would shape the next century of Philippine and American history.
When the Elephants Dance by ISBN: 9780142002889Publication Date: 2003-06-24The Karangalan family and their neighbors huddle for survival in the cellar of a house a few miles from Manila. Outside the safety of their little refuge the war rages on -- fiery bombs torch the beautiful Filipino countryside, Japanese soldiers round up and interrogate innocent people, and from the hills guerillas wage a desperate campaign against the enemy. Inside the cellar, these men, women, and children put their hopes and dreams on hold as they wait out the war, only emerging to look for food, water, and medicine. Crowded together in the cellar, the Karangalans and their friends and neighbors tell magical stories to one another based on Filipino myth and legend to fuel their courage, pass the time, and teach important lessons. The group is held spellbound by these stories, which feature a dazzling array of ghosts, witches, supernatural creatures, and courageous Filipinos who changed the course of history with their actions. These profoundly moving stories transport the listeners from the chaos of the war around them and give them new resolve to fight on.
The Foley Artist by ISBN: 9780982814260Publication Date: 2019-10-01At once deliciously bizarre and painfully familiar, The Foley Artist introduces a vital new voice to Asian American literature. Ricco Villanueva Siasoco's powerful debut collection opens new regions of American feeling and thought as it interrogates intimacy, foreignness, and silence in an absurd world. These nine stories give voice to the intersectional identities of women and men in the Filipino diaspora in America: a straight woman attends her ex-boyfriend's same-sex marriage in coastal Maine; a college-bound teenager encounters his deaf uncle in Manila; Asian American drag queens duke it out in the annual Iowa State Fair; a seventy-nine-year-old foley artist recreates the sounds of life, but is finally unable to save himself.
The Vanished Birds by ISBN: 9780593128985Publication Date: 2020-01-14I expected many things from this trip. I did not expect a family. A ship captain, unfettered from time. A mute child, burdened with unimaginable power. A millennia-old woman, haunted by lifetimes of mistakes. In this captivating debut of connection across space and time, these outsiders will find in each other the things they lack: a place of love and belonging. A safe haven. A new beginning. But the past hungers for them, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.
The Son of Good Fortune by ISBN: 9780062059598Publication Date: 2021-04-27Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American teenager. When he's not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town's seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight. But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima's lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel's tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. "We are 'TNT'--tago ng tago," she told him, "hiding and hiding." Excel is undocumented -- and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life. Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies -- and existing outside the normal constructs of American society -- Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?
All Heathens by ISBN: 9781946448521Publication Date: 2020-03-24All Heathens is a declaration of ownership--of bodies, of histories, of time. Revisiting Magellan's voyage around the world, these poems explore the speaker's Filipino American identity by grappling with her relationship to her family and notions of diaspora, circumnavigation, and discovery. Whether rewriting the origin story of Eve ("I always imagined that the serpent had the legs of a seductive woman in black nylons"), or ruminating on what-should-have-been-said "when the man at the party said he wanted to own a Filipino," Chan paints wry, witty renderings of anecdotal and folkloric histories, while both preserving and unveiling a self-identity that dares any other to try and claim it.
Documents by ISBN: 9781942683742Publication Date: 2019-04-16Rooted in the experience of living in America as a queer undocumented Filipino, Documents maps the byzantine journey toward citizenship through legal records and fragmented recollections. In poems that repurpose the forms and procedures central to an immigrant's experiences--birth certificates, identification cards, letters, and interviews--Jan-Henry Gray reveals the narrative limits of legal documentation while simultaneously embracing the intersections of identity, desire, heritage, love, and a new imagining of freedom.
The Galleons by ISBN: 9781571315236Publication Date: 2020-02-11For almost twenty years, Rick Barot has been writing some of the most stunningly crafted lyric poems in America, paying careful, Rilkean attention to the layered world that surrounds us. In The Galleons, he widens his scope, contextualizing the immigrant journey of his Filipino-American family in the larger history and aftermath of colonialism. These poems are engaged in the work of recovery, making visible what is often intentionally erased: the movement of domestic workers on a weekday morning in Brooklyn; a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, fondly sharing photos of his dog; the departure and destination points of dozens of galleons between 1564 and 1815, these ships evoking both the vast movements of history and the individual journeys of those borne along by their tides. "Her story is a part of something larger, it is a part / of history," Barot writes of his grandmother. "No, her story is an illumination // of history, a matchstick lit in the black seam of time."
Letters to a Young Brown Girl by ISBN: 9781950774173Publication Date: 2020-09-22Barbara Jane Reyes answers the questions of Filipino American girls and young women of color with bold affirmations of hard-won empathy, fierce intelligence, and a fine-tuned B.S. detector. The Brown Girl of these poems is fed up with being shushed, with being constantly told how foreign and unattractive and unwanted she is. She's flipping tables and throwing chairs. She's raising her voice. She's keeping a sharp focus on the violences committed against her every day, and she's writing through the depths of her "otherness" to find beauty and even grace amidst her rage. Simultaneously looking into the mirror and out into the world, Reyes exposes the sensitive nerve-endings of life under patriarchy as a visible immigrant woman of color as she reaches towards her unflinching center.
The Last Thing by ISBN: 9780892555321Publication Date: 2021-09-21For nearly two decades, Patrick Rosal has been one of the most beloved and admired poets in the United States, bringing together the most dynamic aspects of literary and performance poetry. The son of Filipino immigrants (his father was a lapsed Catholic priest), he has made a life of bridging worlds--literary, ethnic, national, spiritual--through his poetry, and has been recognized with some of the highest honors and countless devoted readers. The Last Thing: New & Selected Poems, gives us a substantial playlist of new work--hard-hitting and big-hearted--along with ample selections from his first four books. Bursting with music, infused with love and awe, this is essential reading from a poet of vigor and conscience.
The in(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1996-2019 by ISBN: 9780996991162Publication Date: 2019-11-15The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1996-2019 presents tercets that Eileen R. Tabios created during her writing career, a process that led to her invention of the hay(na)ku poetic form. The hay(na)ku has been practiced by poets and visual artists around the world. The collection also presents her tercets in other forms, from the lyric to the experimental, and ends with her take on the Death Poems from East Asian cultures.
Juan Luna's Revolver by ISBN: 9780268031787Publication Date: 2009-01-15The poems in Juan Luna' s Revolver both address history and attempt to transcend it through their exploration of the complexity of diaspora. Attending to the legacy of colonial and postcolonial encounters, Luisa A. Igloria has crafted poems that create links of sympathetic human understanding, even as they revisit difficult histories and pose necessary questions about place, power, displacement, nostalgia, beauty, and human resilience in conditions of alienation and duress. Igloria traces journeys made by Filipinos in the global diaspora that began since the encounter with European and American colonial power. Her poems allude to historical figures such as the Filipino painter Juan Luna and the novelist and national hero Jose Rizal, as well as the eleven hundred indigenous Filipinos brought to serve as live exhibits in the 1904 Missouri World's Fair. The image of the revolver fired by Juan Luna reverberates throughout the collection, raising to high relief how separation and exile have shaped concepts of identity, nationality, and possibility. Suffused with gorgeous imagery and nuanced emotion, Igloria's poetry achieves an intimacy fostered by gem-like phrases set within a politically-charged context speaking both to the personal and the collective.
The Evolution of a Sigh by ISBN: 9781931236881Publication Date: 2008-05-01"Linmark's new collection of poetry is a celebration of what can be done to and with the English language in the service of tumult, teasing, post-Postmodern Filipino showmanship, Shinjuku shenanigans, trans-Pacific pyrotechnics, turning-Japanese (and you know what I'm talking about...), and, yes, Beauty. Especially Beauty" --Kimiko Hahn
Two Brown Dots by ISBN: 9781950774517Publication Date: 2022-04-12Two Brown Dots explores what it means to be a racially ambiguous, multiethnic, Asian American woman growing up in Kentucky. In stark, honest poems, Quintos recounts the messiness and confusion of being a typical '90s kid -- watching Dirty Dancing at sleepovers, borrowing eye shadow out of a friend's caboodle, crushing on a boy wearing khaki shorts to Sunday mass -- while navigating the microagressions of the neighbor kids, the awkwardness of puberty, and the casual cruelties of fellow teenagers. The mixed-race daughter of a dark skinned Filipino immigrant, Quintos retells family stories and Phillipine folklore to try and make sense of an identity with roots on opposite sides of the globe.
ESL or You Weren't Here by ISBN: 9781643620657ESL or You Weren’t Here tells the story of a queer Pinoy who immigrates to New York in the 1990s in order to be reunited with their parents. What follows is the poet’s awakening to the legacy of American imperialism & colonialism in the Philippines, and to the experience of living between languages, cultures, temporalities, and genders—untranslatable. ESL asks the reader to bear witness to embodied histories of forced immigration, separation and abandonment rooted in patriarchal racism.
The Last Time I'll Write about You by ISBN: 9781449493189Publication Date: 2018-01-30The Last Time I'll Write About You is popular Filipino YA and romance writer Dawn Lanuza's debut collection of poetry. Featuring beautiful, relatable poems about first love, this book is the perfect companion for anyone who has loved, lost, and emerged anew.
Feast by ISBN: 9781948579315Publication Date: 2023-03-07At times located in the Philippines, at others in the United States, the speaker of these poems is curious about how home can be an alchemy from one to the other. Feast explores the intricacies of intergenerational nourishment beyond trauma, as well as the bonds and community formed when those in diaspora feed each other, both literally and metaphorically. The language in these poems is full of musicality—another way in which abundance manifests in the book. Feast feeds its readers by employing lush sonics and imagery unafraid of being Filipino and of being Asian American. Feast offers abundance and nourishment through language, and reaches toward a place an immigrant might call home. The poems in this collection‚many of which revolve around food and its cultural significance—examine the brown body's relationship with nourishment. Poems delve into what it means to be brown in a white world, and how that encourages (or restricts) growth.
Sana by ISBN: 9798985771213Publication Date: 2022-04-10SANA sings of the ways in which myth becomes life: how we invent our own selves, our memories of home, our relationship with family, our understanding of love. These poems are at once stories of migration and diaspora, and prayers seeking refuge in community. We journey with Maria Bolaños to worlds of expansive imagination; we sit with her in small and intimate tenderness. The heroes and monsters in these pages call across oceans of longing and loss, asking us to listen.
Handspun Rosaries by ISBN: 9798985771237Publication Date: 2022-09-01Moving through memories of growing up as a Filipina American immigrant and her reflections on woman's place in a society still dripping Christian-centric values and reeking of colonial heritage, Dina Klarisse's Handspun Rosaries follows the poet's lifelong interrogation of God. This debut collection is a birds' eye-view of a lapsed Catholic's tectonic beliefs, its poetry mingling with prayer and narrative. In these communions, the poet scavenges for the remnants of faith left on her identity, reflecting on definitive moments with the pious grandmother in its title piece, "Handspun rosaries," and reminiscing on the comfort of family rituals in "Asian Supermarkets" and "7pm Sunday Mass." In poems like "Charbydis" and "Pouring Salt," the poet dissects the monsterization of women in mythology and legend, weaving together feminist and post-religious readings to create new narratives of the self. A collection of questions and answers and all that comes in between, Handspun Rosaries invites its reader to challenge the tenuous barriers of dogma and look beyond them for a new, expanded horizon of belief and faith.
My Heart of Rice by ISBN: 9781641373715Publication Date: 2019-12-02Through vivid and rhythmic poetry, My Heart of Rice moves to empower anyone who may have a difficult or unconventional relationship with their cultural identity. While Lanuza encourages acceptance of our unique details, she emphasizes the unity found in shared experiences and speaks of the inherent need for belonging, the youthful attempts at assimilation, and the deep melting pot of ethnicity and culture that makes up our humanity.
Loves You Poems by ISBN: 9780892554959Publication Date: 2019-01-22In Loves You, Sarah Gambito explores the recipe as poetic form and a mode of resistance. Through the inclusion of real recipes that she and her family cook from, she brings readers to the table not only to enjoy the bounty of her poems but, slyly, to consider the ways in which Filipino Americans, and people of color in general, are assailed and fetishized. In addition, the book explores the manifold ways that poetry can nourish and provide for us. Gambito's poems have always been full zest and bite. Now she literally invites us to dig in with this long-awaited new book: Kain Na Tayo! (Let's eat!).Peminology by
ISBN: 9781387601653Publication Date: 2022-09-17"Melinda Luisa de Jesús's debut collection of poems comes from a space of longing, rebellion, grief, love, poetics and politics. Bold, unafraid and uncompromising, peminology carves out a space for de Jesús' vision and her generation of Filipinas in immigrant America. She speaks in multiple voices and registers, as a daughter, to a daughter, as a mother, to a mother, as a storyteller, drudging up a past and confronting fiercely the present. peminology is poetic auto ethnography. It must be read. It must be heard. It must be listened to. This is Asian-America. This is post-Trump's America. This is the America we live in." -Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, author of The Postcolonial Citizen: The Intellectual Migrant
The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems by ISBN: 9781732302532Publication Date: 2018-10-08"The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems is a collection of poetry and prose written over a period of 20 years. From Asia to Europe to America, it is a sketch of scenes already vanishing. More importantly, it is about engaging cultures and landscapes, as well as fortified domestic spaces and the lives lived within them. Steeped in histories and cartographies, Aileen I. Cassinetto's The Pink House of Purple Yam Reserves and Other Poems transports you into another realm. Lyrical and thoughtful juxtaposition, Cassinetto's poems delve into pasts threading them together into a majestic tapestry. The pink house representing childhood memories and worldly travels. The purple jam or ube as they call it in the Philippines is a delicacy unto its own. Cassinetto's collection comprises of finely crafted poems, prose and essays, which weaves a story of migration into earthly and divine dominions." --Cristina Querrer, author of By Astrolabes & Constellations and The Art of Exporting
The Latinos of Asia by ISBN: 9780804793940Publication Date: 2016-03-02Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Anthony Christian Ocampo shows that what "color" you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the U.S. Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language. Thus, Filipinos' "color" -- their sense of connection with other racial groups -- changes depending on their social context. The Filipino story demonstrates how immigration is changing the way people negotiate race, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where Latinos and Asians now constitute a collective majority. Amplifying their voices, Ocampo illustrates how second-generation Filipino Americans' racial identities change depending on the communities they grow up in, the schools they attend, and the people they befriend. Ultimately, The Latinos of Asia offers a window into both the racial consciousness of everyday people and the changing racial landscape of American society.
How to Stand up to a Dictator by ISBN: 9780063257511Publication Date: 2022-11-29Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections. But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy of her country's most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the state and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines. There is another adversary Ressa is battling. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is also the story of how the creep towards authoritarianism, in the Philippines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies. Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world.
Lolas' House by ISBN: 9780810135864Publication Date: 2017-09-15During World War II more than one thousand Filipinas were kidnapped by the Imperial Japanese Army. Lolas' House tells the stories of sixteen surviving Filipino "comfort women." M. Evelina Galang enters into the lives of the women at Lolas' House, a community center in metro Manila. She accompanies them to the sites of their abduction and protests with them at the gates of the Japanese embassy. Each woman gives her testimony, and even though the women relive their horror at each telling, they offer their stories so that no woman anywhere should suffer wartime rape and torture. Lolas' House is a book of testimony, but it is also a book of witness, of survival, and of the female body. Intensely personal and globally political, it is the legacy of Lolas' House to the world.
Legions of Boom by ISBN: 9780822359043Publication Date: 2015-05-05Armed with speakers, turntables, light systems, and records, Filipino American mobile DJ crews, such as Ultimate Creations, Spintronix, and Images, Inc., rocked dance floors throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. In Legions of Boom noted music and pop culture writer and scholar Oliver Wang chronicles this remarkable scene that eventually became the cradle for turntablism. These crews, which were instrumental in helping to create and unify the Bay Area's Filipino American community, gave young men opportunities to assert their masculinity and gain social status. While crews regularly spun records for school dances, weddings, birthdays, or garage parties, the scene's centerpieces were showcases--or multi-crew performances--which drew crowds of hundreds, or even thousands. By the mid-1990s the scene was in decline, as single DJs became popular, recruitment to crews fell off, and aspiring scratch DJs branched off into their own scene. As the training ground for a generation of DJs, including DJ Q-Bert, Shortkut, and Mix Master Mike, the mobile scene left an indelible mark on its community that eventually grew to have a global impact.
Little Manila Is in the Heart by ISBN: 9780822353256Publication Date: 2013-06-17In the early twentieth century--not long after 1898, when the United States claimed the Philippines as an American colony -- Filipinas/os became a vital part of the agricultural economy of California's fertile San Joaquin Delta. In downtown Stockton, they created Little Manila, a vibrant community of hotels, pool halls, dance halls, restaurants, grocery stores, churches, union halls, and barbershops. Little Manila was home to the largest community of Filipinas/os outside of the Philippines until the neighborhood was decimated by urban redevelopment in the 1960s. Narrating a history spanning much of the twentieth century, Dawn Bohulano Mabalon traces the growth of Stockton's Filipina/o American community, the birth and eventual destruction of Little Manila, and recent efforts to remember and preserve it. Mabalon draws on oral histories, newspapers, photographs, personal archives, and her own family's history in Stockton. She reveals how Filipina/o immigrants created a community and ethnic culture shaped by their identities as colonial subjects of the United States, their racialization in Stockton as brown people, and their collective experiences in the fields and in the Little Manila neighborhood. In the process, Mabalon places Filipinas/os at the center of the development of California agriculture and the urban West.
Empire of Care by ISBN: 0822330520Publication Date: 2003-01-31In western countries, including the United States, foreign-trained nurses constitute a crucial labor supply. Far and away the largest number of these nurses come from the Philippines. Why is it that a developing nation with a comparatively greater need for trained medical professionals sends so many of its nurses to work in wealthier countries? Catherine Ceniza Choy engages this question through an examination of the unique relationship between the professionalization of nursing and the twentieth-century migration of Filipinos to the United States. The first book-length study of the history of Filipino nurses in the United States, Empire of Care brings to the fore the complicated connections among nursing, American colonialism, and the racialization of Filipinos.
Transpacific Femininities by ISBN: 9780822353164Publication Date: 2012-11-19In this groundbreaking study, Denise Cruz investigates the importance of the figure she terms the "transpacific Filipina" to Philippine nationalism, women's suffrage, and constructions of modernity. Her analysis illuminates connections between the rise in the number of Philippine works produced in English and the emergence of new social classes of transpacific women during the early to mid-twentieth century. Through a careful study of multiple texts produced by Filipina and Filipino writers in the Philippines and the United States--including novels and short stories, newspaper and magazine articles, conduct manuals, and editorial cartoons--Cruz provides a new archive and fresh perspectives for understanding Philippine literature and culture. She demonstrates that the modern Filipina did not emerge as a simple byproduct of American and Spanish colonial regimes, but rather was the result of political, economic, and cultural interactions among the Philippines, Spain, the United States, and Japan. Cruz shows how the complex interplay of feminism, nationalism, empire, and modernity helped to shape, and were shaped by, conceptions of the transpacific Filipina.
Relocations by ISBN: 9780814783092Publication Date: 2011-08-01What queer lives, loves and possibilities teem within suburbia's little boxes? Moving beyond the imbedded urban/rural binary, Relocations offers the first major queer cultural study of sexuality, race and representation in the suburbs. Focusing on the region humorists have referred to as "Lesser Los Angeles" -- a global prototype for sprawl -- Karen Tongson weaves through suburbia's "nowhere"spaces to survey our spatial imaginaries: the aesthetic, creative and popular materials of the new suburbia. Across southern California's freeways, beneath its overpasses and just beyond its winding cloverleaf interchanges, Tongson explores the improvisational archives of queer suburban sociability, from multimedia artist Lynne Chan's JJ Chinois projects and the amusement park night-clubs of 1980s Orange County to the imperial legacies of the region known as the Inland Empire. By taking a hard look at the cosmopolitanism historically considered de rigeur for queer subjects, while engaging with the so-called "New Suburbanism" that has captivated the national imaginary in everything from lifestyle trends to electoral politics, Relocations radically revises our sense of where to see and feel queer of color sociability, politics and desire.
Filipino American Transnational Activism by ISBN: 9789004370937Publication Date: 2019-12-19Filipino American Transnational Activism: Diasporic Politics among the Second Generation offers an account of how Filipinos born or raised in the United States often defy the multiple assimilationist agendas that attempt to shape their understandings of themselves. Despite conditions that might lead them to reject any kind of relationship to the Philippines in favor of a deep rootedness in the United States, many forge linkages to the "homeland" and are actively engaged in activism and social movements transnationally. Though it may well be true that most Filipino Americans have an ambivalent relationship to the Philippines, many of the chapters of this book show that other possibilities for belonging and imaginaries of "home" are being crafted and pursued.
I Was Their American Dream by ISBN: 9780525575115Publication Date: 2019-04-30I Was Their American Dream is at once a coming-of-age story and a reminder of the thousands of immigrants who come to America in search for a better life for themselves and their children. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid. Malaka Gharib's triumphant graphic memoir brings to life her teenage antics and illuminates earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised. Malaka's story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream.
Dear America by ISBN: 9780062851352Publication Date: 2018-09-18Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called "the most famous undocumented immigrant in America," tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms. "This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book -- at its core -- is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can't. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home. After 25 years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom." --Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America
Fairest by ISBN: 9780525561309Publication Date: 2020-05-26Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a "sun child" from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni's Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.
The Body Papers by ISBN: 9781632061836Publication Date: 2019-04-09Grace Talusan's critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors' Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse. Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family's legal status in the country has always hung by a thread--for a time, they were "illegal." Family, she's told, must be put first. The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family's ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself. Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.
Growing up Brown by ISBN: 0295986425Publication Date: 2006-08-01Peter Jamero's story of hardship and success illuminates the experience of what he calls the "bridge generation" -- the American-born children of the Filipinos recruited as farm workers in the 1920s and 30s. Their experiences span the gap between these early immigrants and those Filipinos who owe their U.S. residency to the liberalization of immigration laws in 1965. His book is a sequel of sorts to Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart, with themes of heartbreaking struggle against racism and poverty and eventual triumph. Jamero describes his early life in a farm-labor camp in Livingston, California, and the path that took him, through naval service and graduate school, far beyond Livingston. A longtime community activist and civic leader, Jamero describes decades of toil and progress before the Filipino community entered the sociopolitical mainstream. He shares a wealth of anecdotes and reflections from his career as an executive of health and human service programs in Sacramento, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and San Francisco.
America Is in the Heart by ISBN: 9780295993539Publication Date: 2014-02-24First published in 1943, this classic memoir by well-known Filipino poet Carlos Bulosan describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West.
Philip Vera Cruz by ISBN: 0295979844Publication Date: 2000-01-01Filipino farmworkers sat down in the grape fields of Delano, California, in 1965 and began the strike that brought about a dramatic turn in the long history of farm labor struggles in California. Their efforts led to the creation of the United Farm Workers union under Cesar Chavez, with Philip Vera Cruz as its vice-president and highest-ranking Filipino officer. Philip Vera Cruz (1904?1994) embodied the experiences of the manong generation, an enormous wave of Filipino immigrants who came to the United States between 1910 and 1930. Instead of better opportunities, they found racial discrimination, deplorable living conditions, and oppressive labor practices. In his deeply reflective and thought-provoking oral memoir, Vera Cruz explores the toll these conditions took on both families and individuals. Craig Scharlin and Lilia V. Villanueva met Philip Vera Cruz in 1974 as volunteers in the construction of Agbayani Village, the United Farm Workers retirement complex in Delano, California. This oral history, first published in 1992, is the product of hundreds of hours of interviews. Elaine H. Kim teaches Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context.
Horse Barbie by ISBN: 9780593445884Publication Date: 2023-05-30As a young femme in 1990s Manila, Geena Rocero heard, "Bakla, bakla!," a taunt aimed at her feminine sway, whenever she left the tiny universe of her eskinita. Eventually, she found her place in trans pageants, the Philippines' informal national sport. When her competitors mocked her as a "horse Barbie" due to her statuesque physique, tumbling hair, long neck, and dark skin, she leaned into the epithet. By seventeen, she was the Philippines' highest-earning trans pageant queen. A year later, Geena moved to the United States where she could change her name and gender marker on her documents. But legal recognition didn't mean safety. In order to survive, Geena went stealth and hid her trans identity, gaining one type of freedom at the expense of another. For a while, it worked. She became an in-demand model. But as her star rose, her sense of self eroded. She craved acceptance as her authentic self yet had to remain vigilant in order to protect her dream career. The high-stakes double life finally forced Geena to decide herself if she wanted to reclaim the power of Horse Barbie once and for all: radiant, head held high, and unabashedly herself. A dazzling testimony from an icon who sits at the center of transgender history and activism, Horse Barbie is a celebratory and universal story of survival, love, and pure joy.
Concepcion by ISBN: 9780593086087Publication Date: 2021-10-12Nearing the age at which his mother had migrated to the US, part of the wave of non-Europeans who arrived after immigration quotas were relaxed in 1965, Albert Samaha began to question the ironclad belief in a better future that had inspired her family to uproot themselves from their birthplace. As she, her brother Spanky -- a rising pop star back in Manila, now working as a luggage handler at San Francisco airport -- and others of their generation struggled with setbacks amid mounting instability that seemed to keep prosperity ever out of reach, he wondered whether their decision to abandon a middle-class existence in the Philippines had been worth the cost. Tracing his family's history through the region's unique geopolitical roots in Spanish colonialism, American intervention, and Japanese occupation, Samaha fits their arc into the wider story of global migration as determined by chess moves among superpowers. Ambitious, intimate, and incisive, Concepcion explores what it might mean to reckon with the unjust legacy of imperialism, to live with contradiction and hope, to fight for the unrealized ideals of an inherited homeland.
A sampling of scholarly articles from our electronic databases relevant to Filipinx identity and culture:
- Regullano, E. (2014). Filipinos Depicted in American Culture. e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work, 3(1).
- De Lara, M.J. (2017). Reclaiming Filipino America through Performance and Film. Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies Journal, 11.
- Manalang, A. (2023). Citizenship and Postcolonialism: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Filipino Americans and their Pursuit of the American Dream. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 23(1), 124–142.
- Tolentino, R. B. (1997). Identity and difference in `Filipino/a American’ media arts. Amerasia Journal, 23(2), 137.
- Sales, J. N. (2019). #NeverAgainToMartialLaw: Transnational Filipino American Activism in the Shadow of Marcos and Age of Duterte. Amerasia Journal, 45(3), 299–315.
- Nishime, L. (2017). Mixed Race Matters: What Emma Stone and Bruno Mars Can Tell Us about the Future of Asian American Media. Cinema Journal, 56(3), 148–152.
- Johnson, M. D., & Rio, S. (2019). A Visual Kind of Excavation: Finding Carlos Villa’s Filipino Roots. Art Monthly Australasia, 320, 36–39.
- Darvin, R. (2023). Sociotechnical Structures, Materialist Semiotics, and Online Language Learning. Language Learning & Technology, 27(2), 28–45.
Filipinx American Studies: Reckoning, Reclamation, Transformation by ISBN: 9780823299607Publication Date: 2022-06-07This volume spotlights the unique suitability and situatedness of Filipinx American studies both as a site for reckoning with the work of historicizing U.S. empire in all of its entanglements, as well as a location for reclaiming and theorizing the interlocking histories and contemporary trajectories of global capitalism, racism, sexism, and heteronormativity. It encompasses an interrogation of the foundational status of empire in the interdiscipline; modes of labor analysis and other forms of knowledge production; meaning-making in relation to language, identities, time, and space; the critical contours of Filipinx American schooling and political activism; the indispensability of relational thinking in Filipinx American studies; and the disruptive possibilities of Filipinx American formations.
Filipino Studies by ISBN: 9781479884353Publication Date: 2016-05-10After years of occupying a vexed position in the American academy, Philippine studies has come into its own, emerging as a trenchant and dynamic space of inquiry. Filipino Studies is a field-defining collection of vibrant voices, critical perspectives, and provocative ideas about the cultural, political, and economic state of the Philippines and its diaspora. Traversing issues of colonialism, neoliberalism, globalization, and nationalism, this volume examines not only the past and present position of the Philippines and its people, but also advances new frameworks for re-conceptualizing this growing field. Hailing from multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the contributors revisit and contest traditional renditions of Philippine colonial histories, from racial formations and the Japanese occupation to the Cold War and "independence" from the United States. Whether addressing the contested memories of World War II, the "voyage" of Filipino men and women into the U.S. metropole, or migrant labor and the notion of home, the assembled essays tease out the links between the past and present, with a hopeful longing for various futures.
The Day the Dancers Stayed by ISBN: 9781592137282Publication Date: 2009-10-15Pilipino Cultural Nights at American campuses have been a rite of passage for youth culture and a source of local community pride since the 1980s. Through performances and parodies of them, these celebrations of national identity through music, dance, and theatrical narratives reemphasize what it means to be Filipino American. In a "The Day the Dancers Stayed," scholar and performer Theodore Gonzalves uses interviews and participant observer techniques to consider the relationship between the invention of performance repertoire and the development of diasporic identification. Gonzalves traces a genealogy of performance repertoire from the 1930s to the present. Culture nights serve several functions: as exercises in nostalgia, celebrations of rigid community entertainment, and occasionally forums for political intervention. Taking up more recent parodies of Pilipino Cultural Nights, Gonzalves discusses how the rebellious spirit that enlivened the original seditious performances has been stifled.
Manifest Technique by ISBN: 9780252085772Publication Date: 2021-07-13Filipino Americans have been innovators and collaborators in hip hop since the culture's early days. But despite the success of artists like Apl.de.Ap of the Black Eyed Peas and superstar producer Chad Hugo, the genre's significance in Filipino American communities is often overlooked. Mark R. Villegas considers sprawling coast-to-coast hip hop networks to reveal how Filipino Americans have used music, dance, and visual art to create their worlds. Filipino Americans have been exploring their racial position in the world in embracing hip hop's connections to memories of colonial and racial violence. Villegas scrutinizes practitioners' language of defiance, placing the cultural grammar of hip hop within a larger legacy of decolonization. An important investigation of hip hop as a movement of racial consciousness, Manifest Technique shows how the genre has inspired Filipino Americans to envision and enact new ideas of their bodies, their history, and their dignity.
Choreographing in Color by ISBN: 9780190054281Publication Date: 2020-09-08In Choreographing in Color, J. Lorenzo Perillo investigates the development of Filipino popular dance and performance since the late 20th century. Drawing from nearly two decades of ethnography, choreographic analysis, and community engagement with artists, choreographers, and organizers, Perillo shifts attention away from the predominant Philippine neoliberal and U.S. imperialist emphasis on Filipinos as superb mimics, heroic migrants, model minorities, and natural dancers and instead asks: what does it mean for Filipinos to navigate the violent forces of empire and neoliberalism with street dance and Hip-Hop? Employing critical race, feminist, and performance studies, Perillo analyzes the conditions of possibility that gave rise to Filipino dance phenomena across viral, migrant, theatrical, competitive, and diplomatic performance in the Philippines and diaspora. Advocating for serious engagements with the dancing body, Perillo rethinks a staple of Hip-Hop's regulation, the "euphemism," as a mode of social critique for understanding how folks have engaged with both racial histories of colonialism and gendered labor migration. Figures of euphemism - the zombie, hero, robot, and judge - constitute away of seeing Filipino Hip-Hop as contiguous with a multi-racial repertoire of imperial crossing, thus uncovering the ways Black dance intersects Filipino racialization and reframing the ongoing, contested underdog relationship between Filipinos and U.S. global power. Choreographing in Color therefore reveals how the Filipino dancing body has come to be, paradoxically, both globally recognized and indiscernible.
Tropical Renditions by ISBN: 9780822359586Publication Date: 2016-04-22In Tropical Renditions Christine Bacareza Balance examines how the performance and reception of post-World War II Filipino and Filipino American popular music provide crucial tools for composing Filipino identities, publics, and politics. To understand this dynamic, Balance advocates for a "disobedient listening" that reveals how Filipino musicians challenge dominant racialized U.S. imperialist tropes of Filipinos as primitive, childlike, derivative, and mimetic. Balance disobediently listens to how the Bay Area turntablist DJ group the Invisibl Skratch Piklz bear the burden of racialized performers in the United States and defy conventions on musical ownership; to karaoke as affective labor, aesthetic expression, and pedagogical instrument; to how writer and performer Jessica Hagedorn's collaborative and improvisational authorial voice signals the importance of migration and place; and how Pinoy indie rock scenes challenge the relationship between race and musical genre by tracing the alternative routes that popular music takes. In each instance Filipino musicians, writers, visual artists, and filmmakers work within and against the legacies of the U.S./Philippine imperial encounter, and in so doing, move beyond preoccupations with authenticity and offer new ways to reimagine tropical places.
Puro Arte by ISBN: 9780814744437Publication Date: 2012-12-03Puro Arte explores the emergence of Filipino American theater and performance from the early 20th century to the present. It stresses the Filipino performing body's location as it conjoins colonial histories of the Philippines with U.S. race relations and discourses of globalization. Puro arte, translated from Spanish into English, simply means "pure art." In Filipino, puro arte however performs a much more ironic function, gesturing rather to the labor of over-acting, histrionics, playfulness, and purely over-the-top dramatics. In this book, puro arte functions as an episteme, a way of approaching the Filipino/a performing body at key moments in U.S.-Philippine imperial relations, from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, early American plays about the Philippines, Filipino patrons in U.S. taxi dance halls to the phenomenon of Filipino/a actors in Miss Saigon. Using this varied archive, Puro Arte turns to performance as an object of study and as a way of understanding complex historical processes of racialization in relation to empire and colonialism.
Building Diaspora by ISBN: 0813535131Publication Date: 2004-12-22The dramatic growth of the Internet in recent years has provided opportunities for a host of relationships and communities -- forged across great distances and even time -- that would have seemed unimaginable only a short while ago. In Building Diaspora, Emily Noelle Ignacio explores how Filipinos have used these subtle, cyber, but very real social connections to construct and reinforce a sense of national, ethnic, and racial identity with distant others. Through an extensive analysis of newsgroup debates, listserves, and website postings, she illustrates the significant ways that computer-mediated communication has contributed to solidifying what can credibly be called a Filipino diaspora. Lively cyber-discussions on topics including Eurocentrism, Orientalism, patriarchy, gender issues, language, and "mail-order-brides" have helped Filipinos better understand and articulate their postcolonial situation as well as their relationship with other national and ethnic communities around the world. Significant attention is given to the complicated history of Philippine-American relations, including the ways Filipinos are racialized as a result of their political and economic subjugation to U.S. interests. As Filipinos and many other ethnic groups continue to migrate globally, Building Diaspora makes an important contribution to our changing understanding of "homeland." The author makes the powerful argument that while home is being further removed from geographic place, it is being increasingly territorialized in space.
Filipinos Represent by ISBN: 9780816679386Publication Date: 2013-07-01The "Hip-hop Nation" has been scouted, staked out, and settled by journalists and scholars alike. Antonio T. Tiongson Jr. steps into this well-mapped territory with questions aimed at interrogating how nation is conceptualized within the context of hip-hop. What happens, Tiongson asks, to notions of authenticity based on hip-hop's apparent blackness when Filipino youth make hip-hop their own? Tiongson draws on interviews with Bay Area-based Filipino American DJs to explore the authenticating strategies they rely on to carve out a niche within DJ culture. He shows how Filipino American youth involvement in DJing reconfigures the normal boundaries of Filipinoness predicated on nostalgia and cultural links with an idealized homeland. Filipinos Represent makes the case that while the engagement of Filipino youth with DJ culture speaks to the broadening racial scope of hip-hop -- and of what it means to be Filipino -- such involvement is also problematic in that it upholds deracialized accounts of hip-hop and renders difference benign. Looking at the ways in which Filipino DJs legitimize their place in an expressive form historically associated with African Americans, Tiongson examines what these complex forms of identification reveal about the contours and trajectory of contemporary U.S. racial formations and discourses in the post-civil rights era.
Filipino Americans by ISBN: 9780761905790Publication Date: 1997-05-20Typically, when Asian Americans are discussed in the media, the reference is to people of Chinese or Japanese descent. However, the largest Asian American ethnic group is Filipino-a group about which little is known or written, even though Filipinos have a long-standing history with the United States through colonization that effects how this group is viewed and views themselves. Aimed at rectifying this information dearth, this volume presents the first interdisciplinary analysis of who Filipinos are and what it means to be a Filipino American. With contributions from historians, social workers, community leaders, ethnic studies scholars, sociologists, educators, health care workers, political scientists, and psychologists, this book addresses such issues as ethnic identity, the impact of different colonizations on ethnic identity, personal and family relationships, mental health, race, and racism. In addition, the sociopolitical context is examined in each social-issues chapter to make the volume more useful as a foundational tool for hypothesis generation, empirical research, policy analysis and planning, and literature review. This book offers readers a rich and varied portrait of our largest Asian American ethnic group.
The Work of Mothering by ISBN: 9780252041440Publication Date: 2017-10-16Women make up a majority of the Filipino workforce laboring overseas. Their frequent employment in nurturing, maternal jobs -- nanny, maid, caretaker, nurse -- has found expression in a significant but understudied body of Filipino and Filipino American literature and cinema. Harrod J. Suarez's innovative readings of this cultural production explores issues of diaspora, gender, and labor. He details the ways literature and cinema play critical roles in encountering, addressing, and problematizing what we think we know about overseas Filipina workers. Though often seen as compliant subjects, the Filipina mother can also destabilize knowledge production that serves the interests of global empire, capitalism, and Philippine nationalism. Suarez examines canonical writers like Nick Joaquín, Carlos Bulosan, and Jessica Hagedorn to explore this disruption and understand the maternal specificity of the construction of overseas Filipina workers. The result is a series of readings that develop new ways of thinking through diasporic maternal labor that engages with the sociological imaginary.
Positively No Filipinos Allowed by ISBN: 1592131220Publication Date: 2006-01-15The contributors to this volume examine the ways in which the colonial history of the Philippines has shaped Filipino American identity, culture, and community formation.
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The Fabulous Filipino Brothers by Publication Date: 2021-03-16The bond between four brothers transcends their questionable life choices as they come together for a family wedding.
Watch with Hulu subscription.
Float by Publication Date: 2019A father discovers that his son is different from other kids in the most unusual way. To keep them both safe from judgement, Dad covers him and keeps him out of sight.
Watch with Disney+ subscription.
The Debut by Publication Date: 2000-05-18A Filipino-American teenager (Dante Basco) reluctantly attends the coming-out party his father (Tirso Cruz III) is giving for his sister.
Watch on Pluto TV.
K'na, the Dreamweaver by Publication Date: 2015-06-26An indigenous woman has an opportunity to bring together her village’s hostile clans as a Dreamweaver, but it could cause her to lose her true love.
Bitter Melon by Publication Date: 2018-05-12A Filipino-American family in San Francisco abused by an older brother get caught up in the youngest brother’s plan to murder him at Christmas.
Eerie by Publication Date: 2019-03-27A guidance counsellor's special talents help her unravel the mystery behind the unexpected and gruesome death of a student at a Catholic school for girls.
Call Her Ganda by Publication Date: 2018When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina transwoman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case, an activist attorney (Virgie Suarez), a transgender journalist (Meredith Talusan) and Jennifer's mother (Julita "Nanay" Laude), galvanize a political uprising, pursuing justice and taking on hardened histories of U.S. imperialism.
The Delano Manongs: forgotten heros of the United Farm Workers Movement by Publication Date: 2014Tells the story of farm labor organizer Larry Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers who instigated The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 that brought about the creation of the United Farm Worker's Union (UFW).
Out of the Boondocks: a docuseries about Filipino creativity by The term “boondocks” refers to distant places, but its root is a Filipino word for mountain: bundok. The duality of the word represents the hidden strength in the Filipino-American experience. Out of the Boondocks is a docuseries that sheds light on Filipino culture and creativity through the lens of San Diego’s Filipino artists and innovators.
A Thousand Cuts by Publication Date: 2021Nowhere is the worldwide erosion of democracy more starkly evident than in the authoritarian regime of Rodrigo Duterte. With press freedom under threat in the Philippines, A Thousand Cuts goes inside the escalating war between the government and the press. The documentary follows Maria Ressa, a renowned journalist who has become a top target of President Rodrigo Duterte’s crackdown on the news media. Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press on the line in defense of truth and democracy.
Curiosity, Adventure & Love by Publication Date: 2017An American woman leaves her country behind to begin a new life in the Philippines. There, she witnesses war, occupation and reconstruction.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (Pasifika) Heritage Month
In May, we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. This feature highlights writers, scholars, filmmakers, artists, and creatives who identify as Native Hawaiian and/or Pacific Islander (NHPI). NHPI refers to those whose origins are the indigenous peoples of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. Polynesia includes Hawai'i (Native Hawaiian, or Kānaka Maoli), Samoa, American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Tahiti, and Tonga, as well as the Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Micronesia includes Guam (Guamanian or Chamorro), Mariana Islands, Saipan, Palau, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Marshall Islands, and Kiribati (I-Kiribat). Melanesia includes Fiji, Papau New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu (Ni-Vanuatu).
By grouping NHPI with Asian Americans, whether in government statistics or AAPI celebrations, we often end up overlooking those of NHPI descent. For example, the impact of COVID-19 on NHPI communities went underreported and overlooked by government health agencies. Additionally, the very voices of Pacific Islander (or Pasifika) people are ignored by the United States government which does not allow the more than 3.5 million people living in the U.S. territories, including Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa, to vote or hold meaningful political power. In this guide, we have assembled a collection of academic texts and journals, fiction, poetry, films, podcasts, organizations and more created by Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Explore the organization tab to learn more about ways to get involved with or donate to NHPI organizations.
Video: Are You “AAPI” or “Asian American”? It's Complicated. A People's History of Asian America, PBS Voices (2021).
The Playlist
In addition to the resources we have compiled for this feature from our collections, we've also curated a collection of music that celebrates the many cultures and voices from Hawai’i and the Pacific Islands. This playlist features traditional and contemporary artists from these regions who blend their ancestral languages, instruments, and stories with modern influences and styles. This includes the soothing sounds of the ukulele and steel guitar, the powerful chants and rhythms of the hula, and many other sonic expressions, as well as artists who are bringing their experiences to genres like hip hop, electronic, and heavy metal that are often associated with Western cultures. To learn more about the contributions of artists from this region to musical history and culture, take a look at some of the resources we used to make this playlist below:
- "These Native Hawaiian Musicians Are Bringing Their Island’s History To The World" (The Fader)
- Na Leo Hawai'i: Musics of Hawai'i (Smithsonian Folkways)
- From outrage to No 1 hits: how Māori musicians conquered the charts in their own language (The Guardian)
- Can a Thrash Metal Band Help Save the Maori Language? (The Atlantic)
- Noa Records Makes an Alternative Space for Māori and Pasifika Musicians (Bandcamp Daily)
- The Sound of Hip-Hop in Aotearoa (Bandcamp Daily)
- New Music, New Zealand: Exploring Electronic and Experimental Music in New Zealand (Goethe Institut)
Note: To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" (♡) button in the application to save.
Next Steps
If you would like to engage more with this month-long celebration, the Libraries have curated a number of interrelated resources and features to continue and deepen the conversation. You'll find these, below:
- Asian American, Native Hawaiian, & Pacific Islander Heritage Month (Media Studies)
- Asian American Representation in the Media (Media Studies)
- Korea Remixed (Media Studies)
- Spotlight on Queer & Trans* Asian Literature and Poetics (Gender Studies)
- Asian American and Pacific Islander Philosophies (Philosophy)
- Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Media Resources (Media Services)
- Asian American Artists, Architects, and Designers (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- AAPI Identity - Recommended Reads from the Children's Collection (Education Library)
There are also a number of resources on the Bloomington campus, including:
- Asian Culture Center at Indiana University
- IU Cinema, Movement: Asian/Pacific America
In addition to the those featured below, check out the journals published by the University of Hawai'i Press and this Introduction to Pacific Island Studies LibGuide compiled by the University of Hawai'i Leeward Community College Library. You can also search "Pacific Area--Periodicals" or "Hawaii--Periodicals" in IUCAT to find journals and publications available to you as an IU student.
ʻŌiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal by ʻŌiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal is the first contemporary community journal dedication to Kanaka Maoli voices; all our writers, artist and production team are Kanaka Maoli. The journal is produced by Kuleana ʻŌiwi Press and ʻĀina Momona, a 501c3 non-profit organization. Originally founded by Mahealani Dudoit and ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui to increase opportunities for ‘ōiwi voices to be published, ‘Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal has served as a highly regarded community journal for over 15 years. Inspired by the Maunakea movement, ku‘ualoha, who is a member of ‘Āina Momona's Board of Directors and an Associate Professor at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa is bringing the journal to ‘Āina Momona to give a new generation of kānaka and their allies a forum to share stories from the mauna.
The Contemporary Pacific: An Interdisciplinary Journal by The Contemporary Pacific covers a wide range of disciplines with the aim of providing comprehensive coverage of contemporary developments in the entire Pacific Islands region and the global Pacific diaspora. It features refereed, readable articles that examine social, economic, political, ecological, literary, and cultural topics, along with political reviews, book and media reviews, resource reviews, and a dialogue section with interviews and short essays. Each issue highlights the work of one or more Pacific Islander artists.
Perfect Beat: The Asia-Pacific journal of research into contemporary music and popular culture by Perfect Beat first appeared in July 1992 and has been published by Equinox since 2009. The journal's association with the popular cultural quest and mixed, eclectic references of the song are reflected in the articles that have appeared so far which have often concerned themselves with 'world beat' and/or 'world music' and the marketing of non-western musics in the western market and the analysis of local music production. As befits a journal originating in Australia, the journal remains focused on the popular music of the 'Pacific rim' and includes historical and contemporary studies with contributions invited from popular music studies, musicology, cultural studies and ethnomusicological perspectives.
Pacific Asia Inquiry: Multidisciplinary Perspectives by Pacific Asia Inquiry is a peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to showcasing works on the Pacific Asia Region and to advancing knowledge and understanding of this region. Pacific Asia has long been the focus of intense cultural, political and economic interaction with other world regions, and it is the central theme of this journal. Pacific Asia Inquiry analyzes and publishes contributions from a wide scope of works—national and international, regional and global, historical and current. Contributions are drawn from multiple disciplines in the liberal arts and social sciences—including sociology, psychology, communication, language and literature, visual arts, music, drama, history, geography, anthropology, philosophy, political science, and economics.
Anthologies and Collections
Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures by ISBN: 9780824893514Publication Date: 2022-08-31In this anthology of contemporary eco-literature, the editors have gathered an ensemble of a hundred emerging, mid-career, and established Indigenous writers from Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the global Pacific diaspora. Within these pages, the reader will encounter a wild garden of genres, including poetry, chant, short fiction, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, visual texts, and even a dramatic play—all written in multilingual offerings of English, Pacific languages, pidgin, and translation. Seven main themes emerge: "Creation Stories and Genealogies," "Ocean and Waterscapes," "Land and Islands," "Flowers, Plants, and Trees," "Animals and More-than-Human Species," "Climate Change," and "Environmental Justice." The urgent voices in this book call us to attention—to action!—at a time of great need. While Pacific writers celebrate the beauty and cultural symbolism of the ocean, islands, trees, and flowers, they also bravely address the frightening realities of rising sea levels, animal extinction, nuclear radiation, military contamination, and pandemics. With this book as a trusted companion, we are inspired and empowered to reconnect with the world as we navigate towards a precarious yet hopeful future.
Militarized Currents: Toward a decolonized future in Asia and the Pacific by ISBN: 9780816665051Publication Date: 2010-03-22Foregrounding indigenous and feminist scholarship, this collection analyzes militarization as an extension of colonialism from the late twentieth to the twenty-first century in Asia and the Pacific. The contributors theorize the effects of militarization across former and current territories of Japan and the United States, such as Guam, Okinawa, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, and Korea, demonstrating that the relationship between militarization and colonial subordination—and their gendered and racialized processes—shapes and produces bodies of memory, knowledge, and resistance.
The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature by ISBN: 9780415642484Publication Date: 2014-05-20The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature offers a general introduction as well as a range of critical approaches to this important and expanding field. Divided into three sections, the volume: Introduces "keywords" connecting the theories, themes and methodologies distinctive to Asian American Literature Addresses historical periods, geographies and literary identities Looks at different genre, form and interdisciplinarity With 41 essays from scholars in the field this collection is a comprehensive guide to a significant area of literary study for students and teachers of Ethnic American, Asian diasporic and Pacific Islander Literature.
Gender on the Edge by ISBN: 9780824838829Publication Date: 2014-12-31Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the local. Particularly intriguing is the fact that gender and sexual diversity appear to be more prevalent in some regions of the world than in others. This edited volume is an exploration of the ways in which non-normative gendering and sexuality in one such region, the Pacific Islands, are implicated in a wide range of socio-cultural dynamics that are at once local and global, historical, and contemporary. Rather than focus on the definition of identities, they engage with the fact that identities do things, that they are performed in everyday life, that they are transformed through events and movements, and that they are constantly negotiated. By addressing the complexities of these questions over time and space, this work provides a model for future endeavors that seek to embed dynamics of gender and sexuality in a broad field of theoretical import.
Sweat and Salt Water: Selected Works by ISBN: 9780824890285Publication Date: 2021-08-31On 21 March 2017, Associate Professor Teresia Kieuea Teaiwa passed away at the age of forty-eight. News of Teaiwa's death precipitated an extraordinary outpouring of grief unmatched in the Pacific studies community since Epeli Hau'ofa's passing in 2009. Mourners referenced Teaiwa's nurturing interactions with numerous students and colleagues, her innovative program-building at Victoria University of Wellington, her inspiring presence at numerous conferences around the globe, her feminist and political activism, her poetry, her Banaban/I-Kiribati/Fiji Islander and African American heritage, and her extraordinary ability to connect and communicate with people of all backgrounds. This volume features a selection of Teaiwa's scholarly and creative contributions captured in print over a professional career cut short at the height of her productivity. The collection honors her legacy in various scholarly fields, including Pacific studies, Indigenous studies, literary studies, security studies, and gender studies, and on topics ranging from militarism and tourism to politics and pedagogy.
Pacific Spaces: Translations and Transmutations by ISBN: 9781800736252Publication Date: 2022-10-14Delving into Pacific spaces from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and interpretations, this book looks at how the anthropological and architectural can be connected. The contributors to this book—architectural practitioners, architectural and spatial design theorists, anthropologists and historians—show not only how new theoretical perspectives can arise out of comparing aspects specific to one discipline with their equivalents of another, but also demonstrate how a space of emergence is created for something that goes beyond both, enhancing both fields of potentialities.
Making Waves: Traveling Musics in Hawaiʻi, Asia, and the Pacific by ISBN: 9780824873769Publication Date: 2018-02-28Musical sounds are some of the most mobile human elements, crossing national, cultural, and regional boundaries at an ever-increasing pace in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Whole musical products travel easily, though not necessarily intact, via musicians, CDs (and earlier, cassettes), satellite broadcasting, digital downloads, and streaming. The introductory chapter by the volume editors develops two framing metaphors: "traveling musics" and "making waves." The wave-making metaphor illuminates the ways that traveling musics traverse flows of globalization and migration, initiating change, and generating energy of their own. Each of the nine contributors further examines music—its songs, makers, instruments, aurality, aesthetics, and images—as it crosses oceans, continents, and islands. In the process of landing in new homes, music interacts with older established cultural environments, sometimes in unexpected ways and with surprising results. They see these traveling musics in Hawai'i, Asia, and the Pacific as "making waves"—that is, not only riding flows of globalism, but instigating ripples of change. What is the nature of those ripples? What constitutes some of the infrastructure for the wave itself? What are some of the effects of music landing on, transported to, or appropriated from distant shores?
Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology by ISBN: 9781501360053Publication Date: 2021-02-11The popularization of radio, television, and the Internet radically transformed musical practice in the Asia Pacific. These technologies bequeathed media broadcasters with a profound authority over the ways we engage with musical culture. Broadcasters use this power to promote distinct cultural traditions, popularize new music, and engage diverse audiences. They also deploy mediated musics as a vehicle for disseminating ideologies, educating the masses, shaping national borders, and promoting political alliances. With original contributions by leading scholars in anthropology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and media and cultural studies, the 12 essays this book investigate the processes of broadcasting musical culture in the Asia Pacific. We shift our gaze to the mechanisms of cultural industries in eastern Asia and the Pacific islands to understand how oft-invisible producers, musicians, and technologies facilitate, frame, reproduce, and magnify the reach of local culture.
Listen but Don't Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar across the TransPacific by ISBN: 9781478005995Publication Date: 2019-12-06Performed on an acoustic steel-string guitar with open tunings and a finger-picking technique, Hawaiian slack key guitar music emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Though performed on a non-Hawaiian instrument, it is widely considered to be an authentic Hawaiian tradition grounded in Hawaiian aesthetics and cultural values. In Listen But Don't Ask Question Kevin Fellezs listens to Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and non-Hawaiian slack key guitarists in Hawai'i, California, and Japan, attentive to the ways in which notions of Kanaka Maoli belonging and authenticity are negotiated and articulated in all three locations. In Hawai'i, slack key guitar functions as a sign of Kanaka Maoli cultural renewal, resilience, and resistance in the face of appropriation and occupation, while in Japan it nurtures a merged Japanese-Hawaiian artistic and cultural sensibility. For diasporic Hawaiians in California, it provides a way to claim Hawaiian identity. By demonstrating how slack key guitar is a site for the articulation of Hawaiian values, Fellezs illuminates how slack key guitarists are reconfiguring notions of Hawaiian belonging, aesthetics, and politics throughout the transPacific.
Islands of Empire: Pop Culture & U.S. Power by ISBN: 9780292756304Publication Date: 2014-03-01Camilla Fojas explores a broad range of popular culture media—film, television, journalism, advertisements, travel writing, and literature—with an eye toward how the United States as an empire imagined its own military and economic projects. Impressive in its scope, Islands of Empire looks to Cuba, Guam, Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, asking how popular narratives about these island outposts expressed the attitudes of the continent throughout the twentieth century. Through deep textual readings of Bataan, Victory at Sea, They Were Expendable, and Back to Bataan (Philippines); No Man Is an Island and Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon (Guam); Cuba, Havana, and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (Cuba); Blue Hawaii, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (Hawai'i); and West Side Story, Fame, and El Cantante (Puerto Rico), Fojas demonstrates how popular texts are inseparable from U.S. imperialist ideology. Drawing on an impressive array of archival evidence to provide historical context, Islands of Empire reveals the role of popular culture in creating and maintaining U.S. imperialism.
Hearing the Future: The music and magic of the Sanguma band by ISBN: 9780824851569Publication Date: 2016-01-31During the turbulent decades of the 1970s and 1980s, Papua New Guinea gained political independence from a colonial hold that had lasted almost a century. It was an exciting time for a diverse group of pioneering musicians who formed a band they named "Sanguma." These Melanesian artists heard an imagined future and performed it during a socially and politically critical time for the region. They were united under one goal: to create a sound that represented the birth of a new, sovereign, and distinctly Melanesian nation; and to express their values, identities, and cosmology through their music and performance. Sanguma's experimental music sounded the complex expectations and pressures of their modern nation and helped to steer its postcolonial journey through music. In Hearing the Future, Australian ethnomusicologist Denis Crowdy documents and analyzes the music and activities of the Sanguma band, arguing that their music was a vital form of cultural expression in sync with sociopolitical change then taking place in PNG. The analysis reveals inherent tensions between distinctly Melanesian ideals and the complexities in navigating the realities of local neoliberal capitalism.
De-Westernizing Film Studies by ISBN: 9780415687836Publication Date: 2012-09-12De-Westernizing Film Studies aims to consider what form a challenge to the enduring vision of film as a medium—and film studies as a discipline—modelled on 'Western' ideologies, theoretical and historical frameworks, critical perspectives as well as institutional and artistic practices, might take today. The book combines a range of scholarly writing with critical reflection from filmmakers, artists & industry professionals, comprising experience and knowledge from a wide range of geographical areas, film cultures and (trans-)national perspectives. In their own ways, the contributors to this volume problematize a binary mode of thinking that continues to promote an idea of 'the West and the rest' in relation to questions of production, distribution, reception and representation within an artistic medium (cinema) that, as part of contemporary moving image culture, is more globalized and diversified than at any time in its history. In so doing, De-Westernizing Film Studies complicates and/or re-thinks how local, national and regional film cultures 'connect' globally, seeking polycentric, multi-directional, non-essentialized alternatives to Eurocentric theoretical and historical perspectives found in film as both an artistic medium and an academic field of study.
Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics by ISBN: 9780822343080Publication Date: 2008-08-27In this exciting interdisciplinary collection, scholars, activists, and media producers explore the emergence of Indigenous media: forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and created by Indigenous peoples around the globe. Whether discussing Maori cinema in New Zealand or activist community radio in Colombia, the contributors describe how native peoples use both traditional and new media to combat discrimination, advocate for resources and rights, and preserve their cultures, languages, and aesthetic traditions. By representing themselves in a variety of media, Indigenous peoples are also challenging misleading mainstream and official state narratives, forging international solidarity movements, and bringing human rights violations to international attention. The volume's sixteen essays reflect the dynamism of Indigenous media-making around the world. Together the essays reveal the crucial role of Indigenous media in contemporary media at every level: local, regional, national, and international.
Radio Happy Isles: Media and Politics at Play in the Pacific by ISBN: 0824821068Publication Date: 1999-01-01Traveling throughout the Pacific over a period of six years, Robert Seward listened to radio wherever he went. From the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu to Fiji to Tonga to Hawai'i, he tuned in and listened. He recorded broadcasts, he sat in radio stations and newsrooms, he met the people who ran them, and he talked to folks who listened. The result is Radio Happy Isles, a highly readable, insightful, and unexpected look at the mediascape of the Pacific. What Seward discovered is surprising: in an era of satellite downloads and globe-circling communication empires, radio—the forgotten medium—is alive and well in the Pacific. Subject to political pressures and calls for privatization, its role is in constant evolution. But one thing is clear: the media rules of metropolitan dominance have not played out according to script here. Media in the Pacific has been active, not passive, in shaping its own local narratives. Full of anecdotes and engagingly written, Radio Happy Isles introduces us to an unmistakable voice, one that is varied and distinct and far from being drowned out by the noises coming from the metropolitan world.
For additional academic texts, try browsing the following series:
- Indigenous Pacifics Series Edited by Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua and April K. Henderson
- Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific Series Edited by Frederick Lau
- TALANOA: Contemporary Pacific Literature
- Duke University Press Native and Indigenous Studies
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Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies Series Edited by Russell Leong, David K. Yoo, and Mary Kunmi Yu Danico
Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i by ISBN: 9781478006497Publication Date: 2019-11-08Many people first encounter Hawai'i through the imagination—a postcard picture of hula girls, lu'aus, and plenty of sun, surf, and sea. While Hawai'i is indeed beautiful, Native Hawaiians struggle with the problems brought about by colonialism, military occupation, tourism, food insecurity, high costs of living, and climate change. In this brilliant reinvention of the travel guide, artists, activists, and scholars redirect readers from the fantasy of Hawai'i as a tropical paradise and tourist destination toward a multilayered and holistic engagement with Hawai'i's culture and complex history. The essays, stories, artworks, maps, and tour itineraries in Detours create decolonial narratives in ways that will forever change how readers think about and move throughout Hawai'i.
Waves of Knowing: A Seascape Epistemology by ISBN: 9780822362128Publication Date: 2016-11-02In Waves of Knowing Karin Amimoto Ingersoll marks a critical turn away from land-based geographies to center the ocean as place. Developing the concept of seascape epistemology, she articulates an indigenous Hawaiian way of knowing founded on a sensorial, intellectual, and embodied literacy of the ocean. As the source from which Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) draw their essence and identity, the sea is foundational to Kanaka epistemology and ontology. Analyzing oral histories, chants, artwork, poetry, and her experience as a surfer, Ingersoll shows how this connection to the sea has been crucial to resisting two centuries of colonialism, militarism, and tourism. In today's neocolonial context—where continued occupation and surf tourism marginalize indigenous Hawaiians—seascape epistemology as expressed by traditional cultural practices such as surfing, fishing, and navigating provides the tools for generating an alternative indigenous politics and ethics. In relocating Hawaiian identity back to the waves, currents, winds, and clouds, Ingersoll presents a theoretical alternative to land-centric viewpoints that still dominate studies of place-making and indigenous epistemology.
The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration by ISBN: 9780816699421Publication Date: 2016-06-01What if we saw indigenous people as the active agents of global exploration rather than as the passive objects of that exploration? What if, instead of conceiving of global exploration as an enterprise just of European men such as Columbus or Cook or Magellan, we thought of it as an enterprise of the people they "discovered"? What could such a new perspective reveal about geographical understanding and its place in struggles over power in the context of colonialism? The World and All the Things upon It addresses these questions by tracing how Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian people) explored the outside world and generated their own understandings of it in the century after James Cook's arrival in 1778. Writing with verve, David A. Chang draws on the compelling words of long-ignored Hawaiian-language sources—stories, songs, chants, and political prose—to demonstrate how Native Hawaiian people worked to influence their metaphorical "place in the world." Chang's book is unique in examining travel, sexuality, spirituality, print culture, gender, labor, education, and race to shed light on how constructions of global geography became a site through which Hawaiians, as well as their would-be colonizers, perceived and contested imperialism, colonialism, and nationalism.
The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History by ISBN: 9780822363521Publication Date: 2017-05-12In The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen Noenoe K. Silva reconstructs the indigenous intellectual history of a culture where—using Western standards—none is presumed to exist. Silva examines the work of two lesser-known Hawaiian writersJoseph Ho‘ona‘auao Kānepu‘u (1824–ca. 1885) and Joseph Moku‘ōhai Poepoe (1852–1913)—to show how the rich intellectual history preserved in Hawaiian-language newspapers is key to understanding Native Hawaiian epistemology and ontology. In their newspaper articles, geographical surveys, biographies, historical narratives, translations, literatures, political and economic analyses, and poetic works, Kānepu‘u and Poepoe created a record of Hawaiian cultural history and thought in order to transmit ancestral knowledge to future generations. Celebrating indigenous intellectual agency in the midst of US imperialism, The Power of the Steel-tipped Pen is a call for the further restoration of native Hawaiian intellectual history to help ground contemporary Hawaiian thought, culture, and governance.
Navigating CHamoru Poetry by ISBN: 9780816544301Publication Date: 2022-01-25Navigating CHamoru Poetry focuses on Indigenous CHamoru (Chamorro) poetry from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). Poet and scholar Craig Santos Perez brings critical attention to a diverse and intergenerational collection of CHamoru poetry and scholarship. Throughout this book, Perez develops an Indigenous literary methodology called "wayreading" to navigate the complex relationship between CHamoru poetry, cultural identity, decolonial politics, diasporic migrations, and Native aesthetics. Perez argues that contemporary CHamoru poetry articulates new and innovative forms of indigeneity rooted in CHamoru customary arts and values, while also routed through the profound and traumatic histories of missionization, colonialism, militarism, and ecological imperialism. This book shows that CHamoru poetry has been an inspiring and empowering act of protest, resistance, and testimony in the decolonization, demilitarization, and environmental justice movements of Guåhan. Perez roots his intersectional cultural and literary analyses within the fields of CHamoru studies, Pacific Islands studies, Native American studies, and decolonial studies, using his research to assert that new CHamoru literature has been--and continues to be—a crucial vessel for expressing the continuities and resilience of CHamoru identities. This book is a vital contribution that introduces local, national, and international readers and scholars to contemporary CHamoru poetry and poetics.
Paradise Camp by ISBN: 9781760762551Publication Date: 2022-07-19Interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara is the first Pasifika and first Fáfafineartist to be presented by New Zealand at the prestigious 59th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. With a groundbreaking exhibition ofnew work that addresses some of the most pressing issues of our time, Kihara's work interrogates and dismantles gender roles, consumerism,(mis)representation, and colonial legacies in the Pacific. Edited by Natalie King, who has commissioned provocative essays by contributors from around the world, this publication contextualizes Kihara's works from her entire career, which puncture and expose, queer and question dominant narratives, turning history on its head.
Migrating Genders: Westernisation, Migration, and Samoan Fa'afafine by ISBN: 9781409402732Publication Date: 2010-06-16Migrating Genders presents a sustained description of male-to-female transgender identities, explaining how the fa'afafine fit within the wider gender system of Samoa, and examining both the impact of Westernization on fa'afafine identities and lives, and the experiences of fa'afafine who have migrated to New Zealand. Informed by theories of sex, gender and embodiment, this book explores the manner in which the expression and understanding of non-normative gendered identities in Samoa problematizes dominant western understandings of the relationship between sex and gender. Drawing on rich empirical material, this book tells of both the diversity and the uniqueness of fa'afafine identities, aspects which fa'afafine have maintained in the face of Westernization, migration, and cultural marginalization in both Samoa and New Zealand. As such, in addition to anthropologists, it will be of interest to geographers, sociologists, and other readers with interests in gender and sexuality.
Native Men Remade by ISBN: 9780822343219Publication Date: 2008-10-20Many indigenous Hawaiian men have felt profoundly disempowered by the legacies of colonization and by the tourist industry, which, in addition to occupying a great deal of land, promotes a feminized image of Native Hawaiians (evident in the ubiquitous figure of the dancing hula girl). In the 1990s a group of Native men on the island of Maui responded by refashioning and reasserting their masculine identities in a group called the Hale Mua (the "Men's House"). As a member and an ethnographer, Ty P. Kāwika Tengan analyzes how the group's mostly middle-aged, middle-class, and mixed-race members assert a warrior masculinity through practices including martial arts, woodcarving, and cultural ceremonies. Some of their practices are heavily influenced by or borrowed from other indigenous Polynesian traditions, including those of the Maori. The men of the Hale Mua enact their refashioned identities as they participate in temple rites, protest marches, public lectures, and cultural fairs. At the same time, Tengan explains how Hale Mua rituals and practices connect to broader projects of cultural revitalization and Hawaiian nationalism. He brings to light the tensions that mark the group's efforts to reclaim indigenous masculinity as they arise in debates over nineteenth-century historical source materials and during political and cultural gatherings held in spaces designated as tourist sites.
Tatau: A Cultural History of Sāmoan Tattooing by ISBN: 9780824878498Publication Date: 2018-08-31Tatau is a beautifully designed and richly illustrated retelling of the unique and powerful history of Sāmoan tattooing, from 3,000 years ago to modern practices. The Sāmoan Islands are virtually unique in that tattooing has been continuously practiced with indigenous techniques: the full male tattoo, the pe'a, has evolved in subtle ways in its design since the nineteenth century, but remains as elaborate, meaningful, and powerful as it ever was. This cultural history is the first publication to examine Sāmoan tatau from its earliest beginnings. Through a chronology rich with people, encounters, and events it describes how Sāmoan tattooing has been shaped by local and external forces of change over many centuries. It argues that Sāmoan tatau has a long history of relevance both within and beyond Sāmoa, and a more complicated history than is currently presented in the literature. It is richly illustrated with historical images of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Sāmoan tattooing, contemporary tattooing, diagrams of tattoo designs and motifs, and with supplementary photographs such as posters, ephemera, film stills, and artefacts.
Reimagining the American Pacific: From South Pacific to Bamboo Ridge and Beyond by ISBN: 0822325004Publication Date: 2000-07-24In this compelling critique Rob Wilson explores the creation of the "Pacific Rim" in the American imagination and how the concept has been variously adapted and resisted in Hawai'i, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. Reimagining the American Pacific ranges from the nineteenth century to the present and draws on theories of postmodernism, transnationality, and post-Marxist geography to contribute to the ongoing discussion of what constitutes "global" and "local." Wilson begins by tracing the arrival of American commerce and culture in the Pacific through missionary and imperial forces in the nineteenth century and the parallel development of Asia/Pacific as an idea. Claiming that such places become more open to transnational flows of information, labor, finance, media, and global commodities, he explains how they then become isolated, their borders simultaneously crossed and fixed. In the case of Hawai'i, Wilson argues that culturally innovative, risky forms of symbol making and a broader—more global—vision of local plight are needed to counterbalance the racism and increasing imbalance of cultural capital and goods in the emerging post-plantation and tourist-centered economy.
Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West by ISBN: 9780062836014Publication Date: 2020-04-28In August 1908, three unknown riders arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, their hats adorned with wildflowers, to compete in the world's greatest rodeo. Steer-roping virtuoso Ikua Purdy and his cousins Jack Low and Archie Ka'au'a had travelled 4,200 miles from Hawaii, of all places, to test themselves against the toughest riders in the West. Dismissed by whites, who considered themselves the only true cowboys, the native Hawaiians would astonish the country, returning home champions—and American legends. An unforgettable human drama set against the rough-knuckled frontier, David Wolman and Julian Smith's Aloha Rodeo unspools the fascinating and little-known true story of the Hawaiian cowboys, or paniolo, whose 1908 adventure upended the conventional history of the American West. What few understood when the three paniolo rode into Cheyenne is that the Hawaiians were no underdogs. They were the product of a deeply engrained cattle culture that was twice as old as that of the Great Plains, for Hawaiians had been chasing cattle over the islands' rugged volcanic slopes and through thick tropical forests since the late 1700s. Tracing the life story of Purdy and his cousins, Wolman and Smith delve into the dual histories of ranching and cowboys in the islands, and the meteoric rise and sudden fall of Cheyenne, "Holy City of the Cow." Blending sport and history, while exploring questions of identity, imperialism, and race, Aloha Rodeo spotlights an overlooked and riveting chapter in the saga of the American West.
Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment by ISBN: 9781478016557Publication Date: 2022-12-16Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawai'i—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as "essential" for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawai'i to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics. From chilled drinks and sweets to machinery, she shows how ice and refrigeration underpinned settler colonial ideas about race, environment, and the senses. By outlining how ice shaped Hawai'i's food system in accordance with racial and environmental imaginaries, Hobart demonstrates that thermal technologies can—and must—be attended to in struggles for food sovereignty and political self-determination in Hawai'i and beyond.
Auē by ISBN: 9781950354955Publication Date: 2022-05-24auē: (verb) to cry, howl, groan, wail, bawl, (interjection) expression of astonishment or distress. Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father's. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home. But Taukiri's brother. This bestselling multi-award-winning novel is both raw and sublime, introducing a compelling new voice in New Zealand fiction.
Where We Once Belonged by ISBN: 1885030274Publication Date: 1999-11-02Thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga struggles to come to terms with womanhood, her search for identity, and the restrictions of life in her Samoan village.Using the traditional Samoan storytelling form of su’ifefiloi to rebut the Western lens on Samoa perpetuated by Western anthropologist Margaret Mead and Western artist Paul Gauguin, Figiel masterfully depicts a young Samoan woman’s story.
A Map to the Sun by ISBN: 9781250146687Publication Date: 2020-08-04A Map to the Sun is a gripping YA graphic novel about five principle players in a struggling girls' basketball team. One summer day, Ren meets Luna at a beachside basketball court and a friendship is born. But when Luna moves to back to Oahu, Ren's messages to her friend go unanswered. Years go by. Then Luna returns, hoping to rekindle their friendship. Ren is hesitant. She's dealing with a lot, including family troubles, dropping grades, and the newly formed women's basketball team at their high school. With Ren's new friends and Luna all on the basketball team, the lines between their lives on and off the court begin to blur. During their first season, this diverse and endearing group of teens are challenged in ways that make them reevaluate just who and how they trust. Sloane Leong's evocative storytelling about the lives of these young women is an ode to the dynamic nature of friendship.
Turtle Under Ice by ISBN: 9781534442962Publication Date: 2021-04-13Rowena feels like her family is a frayed string of lights that someone needs to fix with electrical tape. After her mother died a few years ago, she and her sister, Ariana, drifted into their own corners of the world, each figuring out in their own separate ways how to exist in a world in which their mother is no longer alive. But then Ariana disappears under the cover of night in the middle of a snowstorm, leaving no trace or tracks. When Row wakes up to a world of snow and her sister's empty bedroom, she is left to piece together the mystery behind where Ariana went and why, realizing along the way that she might be part of the reason Ariana is gone. Haunting and evocative—and told in dual perspectives—Turtle under Ice examines two sisters frozen by grief as they search for a way to unthaw.
Dawn Raid by ISBN: 9781646140411Publication Date: 2021-03-02Imagine this: You're having an amazing family holiday, one where everyone is there and all 18 of you are squeezed into one house. All of sudden it's 4 o'clock in the morning and there's banging and yelling and screaming. The police are in the house pulling people out of bed ..." Sofia is like most 12-year-old girls in New Zealand. How is she going to earn enough money for those boots? Why does she have to give that speech at school? Who is she going to be friends with this year? It comes as a surprise to Sofia and her family when her big brother, Lenny, starts talking about protests, "overstayers", and injustices against Pacific Islanders by the government. Inspired by the Black Panthers in America, a group has formed called the Polynesian Panthers, who encourage immigrant and Indigenous families across New Zealand to stand up for their rights. Soon the whole family becomes involved in the movement. Told through Sofia's diary entries, with illustrations throughout, Dawn Raid is the story of one ordinary girl living in extraordinary times, learning how to stand up and fight.
House of Many Gods by ISBN: 9780345481511Publication Date: 2007-06-26Told in spellbinding and mythic prose, House of Many Gods is a deeply complex and provocative love story set against the background of Hawaii and Russia. Interwoven throughout with the indelible portrait of a native Hawaiian family struggling against poverty, drug wars, and the increasing military occupation of their sacred lands. Progressing from the 1960s to the turbulent present, the novel begins on the island of O'ahu and centers on Ana, abandoned by her mother as a child. While tending victims of Hurricane 'Iniki on the neighboring island of Kaua'i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past, who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland and across the Pacific. As their lives slowly and inextricably intertwine, Ana and Nikolai's story becomes an odyssey that spans decades and sweeps the reader from rural Hawaii to the forbidding Arctic wastes of Russia; from the poverty-stricken Wai'anae coast to the glittering harshness of "new Moscow" and the haunting, faded beauty of St. Petersburg. With stunning narrative inventiveness, Davenport has created a timeless epic of loss and remembrance, of the search for family and identity, and, ultimately, of the redemptive power of love.
Frangipani by ISBN: 0316114669Publication Date: 2006-02-07In Tahiti, it's a well-known fact that women are wisest, mothers know best, and Materena Mahi knows best of all—or so everyone except for her own daughter thinks. Soon enough, mother and daughter are engaged in a tug-of-war that tests the bonds of their love.
Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers by ISBN: 9780312424640Publication Date: 2006-01-24Her name is Lovey Nariyoshi, and her Hawai'i is not the one of leis, pineapple, and Magnum P.I. In the blue collar town of Hilo, on the Big Island, Lovey and her eccentric Japanese-American family are at the margins of poverty, in the midst of a tropical paradise. With her endearing, best friend Jerry, Lovey suffers schoolyard bullies, class warfare, Singer sewing classes, and the surprisingly painful work of picking on a macadamia nut plantation, all while trying to find an identity of her own. At once a bitingly funny satire of haole happiness and a moving meditation on what is real, if ugly at times, but true, Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers crackles with the language of pidgin—Hawai'i Creole English—distinguishing one of the most vibrant voices in contemporary culture.
Language of the Geckos and Other Stories by ISBN: 0295985275Publication Date: 2005-01-01Gary Pak has emerged as one of the most important Asian Hawaiian writers of our time. In this new collection, Pak expertly crafts a memorable cast of Hawai'i's Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Native Hawaiians, amplifying our cross-cultural understanding of Hawaiian life today. The nine short stories in Language of the Geckos and Other Stories paint an array of locals caught up in failed dreams of financial success and romantic fulfillment. Many of these stories deal with issues particular to Native Hawaiian perspectives, while others take slice-of-life glimpses at characters alienated in the land of their birth. Pak's sure narrative voice shifts deftly between his actors, shading the nuanced voices and interior lives of housewives, mechanics, cabdrivers, aging hippies, and desperate bargirls. Most of these characters speak in the lingua franca of the islands, a highly developed Creole that is commonly called Pidgin English. Also strongly present is the spiritual ambiance of the land. The worlds of Pak's Hawaiians, Asian locals, and the haoles sometimes intersect and collide and other times remain parallel, but each world is haunted by the past.
Isle of Blood and Stone by ISBN: 9780544968578Publication Date: 2018-04-10Eighteen years ago, two princes vanished. Now a riddle hidden on a mysterious map could chart a course towards the truth and the missing royals in this historical fantasy that's perfect for fans of Rachel Hartman and Tamora Pierce. Eighteen years ago two princes of the island kingdom of St. John del Mar were kidnapped and murdered, a deadly plot by the rival kingdom of Mondrago. Everyone knows the story, but for Elias, Mercedes, and Ulises, the aftermath of that tragic day is deeply personal. Elias grew up without his father, who was killed trying to protect the princes. Mercedes is half-Mondragan, leaving her to grow up in the shadow of del Mar's hate. And Ulises, as the youngest and only remaining prince, inherited the throne meant for his older brothers. Now, the three friends just want to move on with their lives. But when two maps surface—each with the same hidden riddle—troubling questions arise. What really happened to the young princes? To discover what really happened that fateful day, Elias, Mercedes, and Ulises must follow the clues hidden in the maps, uncovering long-held secrets and unimaginable betrayals along the way. Isle of Blood and Stone is a sweeping fantasy full of intrigue and schemes, romance and friendship, and fearless explorers searching for the truth.
A collection of biographies and memoirs can be found on the Bess Press and Native Books websites.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by ISBN: 9781635571868Publication Date: 2019-03-05Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight.As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls. With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.
Local by ISBN: 9781542027328Publication Date: 2023-01-01A powerful, lush memoir about a Hawaiian woman who ran away from paradise to discover who she is and where she belongs. Born and raised in Hawai'i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with what it means to be "local." Feeling separate from the history and tenets of Hawaiian culture that have been buried under the continental imports of malls and MTV, Jessica often sees her homeland reflected back to her from the tourist perspective—as an uncomplicated paradise. Her existence, however, feels far from that ideal. Balancing her parents' divorce, an ailing mother, and growing anxiety, Jessica rebels. She moves to Los Angeles, convinced she'll leave her complicated family behind and define herself. Instead, her isolation only becomes more severe, and her dying mother follows her to California. For Jessica, the only way to escape is a reckless downward spiral. Interwoven with a rich and nuanced exploration of Hawaiian history and traditions, Local is a personal and moving narrative about family, grief, and reconnecting to the land she tried to leave behind.
Rainforest Pu‘uhonua: A Memoir by ISBN: 9780989584708Publication Date: 2015As a child, Kahikāhealani Wight loved Hawaiian stories and songs and wanted to learn everything she could about her culture, but in those years, it was discouraged. Then in midlife, she purchased a cottage near the erupting summit of Kīlauea in a native rainforest in Volcano village on Hawai‘i Island, and lived there for 5 years. Rainforest Pu‘uhonua is her eloquent and moving memoir of those years of awakening amid the plants and ferns, birds and insects, mist and fires of old Hawai‘i. Wight’s rhythmic prose and gift for mo‘olelo, along with 62 exquisite paintings and photos by local artists, convey the depth and magic of the Hawai‘i bioregion, bringing the ancestral stories to life.
The Properties of Perpetual Light by ISBN: 9781935198369Publication Date: 2021-03-29The Properties of Perpetual Light is an homage to the work of the activist-writer, which author Julian Aguon describes as "the work of bearing witness, wrestling with the questions of one's day, telling children the truth." With prose and poetry both bracing and quiet, Aguon weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary. Throughout the book, Aguon grapples with one heart-breaking loss after another by immersing himself in the beauty of his island, the magic of Micronesia, and the wisdom of his favorite books and elders.
Mophead by ISBN: 9781869408985Publication Date: 2020-11-12An inspirational graphic memoir of growing up Pasifika in New Zealand, written and illustrated by our fast-talking PI Poet Laureate, Selina Tusitala Marsh. At school, Selina is teased for her big, frizzy hair. Kids call her 'mophead'. She ties her hair up this way and that way and tries to fit in. Until one day - Sam Hunt plays a role - Selina gives up the game. She decides to let her hair out, to embrace her difference, to be WILD! Selina takes us through special moments in her extraordinary life. She becomes one of the first Pasifika women to hold a PhD. She reads for the Queen of England and Samoan royalty. She meets Barack Obama. And then she is named the New Zealand Poet Laureate. She picks up her special tokotoko, and notices something. It has wild hair coming out the end. It looks like a mop. A kid on the Waiheke ferry teases her about it. So she tells him a story...This is an inspirational graphic memoir, full of wry humour, that will appeal to young readers and adults alike. Illustrated with wit and verve by the author—NZ's bestselling Poet Laureate—Mophead tells the true story of a New Zealand woman realising how her difference can make a difference.
The Poetry Foundation has created a collection of Pacific Islander poetry featuring contemporary poets, poems, and articles exploring the history and poetics of the Pacific.
- Collection: Pacific Islander Poetry and Culture (Poetry Foundation)
- New Pacific Islander Poetry (Craig Santos Perez, Poetry Foundation)
- Watch over 200 videos of Pacific Islander poets on YouTube
Ask the Brindled by ISBN: 9781639550005Publication Date: 2022-08-01Ask the Brindled, selected by Rick Barot as a winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series, bares everything that breaks between "seed" and "summit" of a life—the body, a people, their language. It is an intergenerational reclamation of the narratives foisted upon Indigenous and queer Hawaiians—and it does not let readers look away. In this debut collection, No'u Revilla crafts a lyric landscape brimming with shed skin, water, mo'o, ma'i. She grips language like a fistful of wet guts and inks the page red—for desire, for love, for generations of blood spilled by colonizers. Wedding the history of the Kingdom of Hawai'i with contemporary experiences of queer love and queer grief, Revilla writes toward sovereignty: linguistic, erotic, civic. Through the medium of formal dynamism and the material of Hawai'i culture and mythos, this living decolonial text both condemns and creates. Ask the Brindled is a song from the shattered throat that refuses to be silenced. It is a testament to queer Indigenous women who carry baskets of names and stories, "still sacred."
Fale Aitu / Spirit House by ISBN: 9781776560646Publication Date: 2017-07-30Tusiata Avia is an essential voice in New Zealand and Pasifika literature. In her fearless new collection, she weaves together the voices of the living and dead, the past and the present in poems that are confessional and confrontational, gentle and funny. Speaking from Samoa, Christchurch, Gaza and New York, she combines stories from myth and the everyday, never shying away from pain or wonder.The Healer's Wound: A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia by
ISBN: 9781737687214Publication Date: 2022-02-18The Healer’s Wound: A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia is an artist’s book, a poet’s collage, based on more than several years of archival research by Sāmoan fa'afafine artist and poet Dan Taulapapa McMullin. The wound in the title refers to the conflict between colonialism and indigenous queer cultures of Polynesia, through texts and images from and of the peoples of the archipelagoes of the South Pacific Islands, extending from the northwest in Hawai'i to the southeast in Aotearoa, including Sāmoa, Manu'a, Tonga, Viti, Tahiti, Rarotonga, Rapanui and others.
The Salt Wind Ka Makani Pa'akai by ISBN: 9780966822052Publication Date: 2008-11-01This postcolonial collection of poetry is the first by Native Hawaiian poet, Brandy Nalani McDougall. Of the collection, Samoan novelist Albert Wendt writes: "Once in a while a collection of poetry comes along and grabs your eyes, heart, and naau and makes you see and feel more deeply than youve done in a long, long time. For me, Brandy Nalani McDougalls collection is one of those. And I keep rereading it. Her poems have a unique and hugely inviting surface simplicity and elegance that immediately hook you into them, into their profound and complex depths of imagery, lyricism, political and historical savvy, feeling, thought and vision. These are woven together with unusual wisdom, perception, control of language, and intense aloha for her people and islands. You have to read this collection. It will lift you and make you feel you are more."
Habitat Threshold by ISBN: 9781632430809Publication Date: 2020-04-15With Habitat Threshold, Craig Santos Perez has crafted a timely collection of eco-poetry that explores his ancestry as a native Pacific Islander, the ecological plight of his homeland, and his fears for the future. The book begins with the birth of the author's daughter, capturing her growth and childlike awe at the wonders of nature. As it progresses, Perez confronts the impacts of environmental injustice, the ravages of global capitalism, toxic waste, animal extinction, water rights, human violence, mass migration, and climate change. Throughout, he mourns lost habitats and species, and confronts his fears for the future world his daughter will inherit. Amid meditations on calamity, this work does not stop at the threshold of elegy. Instead, the poet envisions a sustainable future in which our ethics are shaped by the indigenous belief that the earth is sacred and all beings are interconnected--a future in which we cultivate love and "carry each other towards the horizon of care." Through experimental forms, free verse, prose, haiku, sonnets, satire, and a method he calls "recycling," Perez has created a diverse collection filled with passion. Habitat Threshold invites us to reflect on the damage done to our world and to look forward, with urgency and imagination, to the possibility of a better future.
Afakasi Speaks by ISBN: 9781492876069Publication Date: 2013-10-03This first collection of poetry by award-winning Spoken Word artist, Grace Teuila Evelyn Taylor, marks her debut as a poet who can also move audiences with the written word. Afakasi Speaks explores the complexities of Afakasi identity, of those that, as Taylor puts it, "taste the bitter sweetness of the space between brown and white," identifying as Samoan and English. These brave poems give voice to the power of family and language even as they reveal painful colonial legacies.
Iep jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese daughter by ISBN: 9780816534029Publication Date: 2017-02-14As the seas rise, the fight intensifies to save the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands from being devoured by the waters around them. At the same time, activists are raising their poetic voices against decades of colonialism, environmental destruction, and social injustice. Marshallese poet and activist Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner's writing highlights the traumas of colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of American nuclear testing, and the impending threats of climate change. Bearing witness at the front lines of various activist movements inspires her work and has propelled her poetry onto international stages, where she has performed in front of audiences ranging from elementary school students to more than a hundred world leaders at the United Nations Climate Summit. The poet connects us to Marshallese daily life and tradition, likening her poetry to a basket and its essential materials. Her cultural roots and her family provides the thick fiber, the structure of the basket. Her diasporic upbringing is the material which wraps around the fiber, an essential layer to the structure of her experiences. And her passion for justice and change, the passion which brings her to the front lines of activist movements—is the stitching that binds these two experiences together.
Tightrope by ISBN: 9781869408725Publication Date: 2018-01-01We are what we remember, the self is a trick of memory ...history is the remembered tightrope that stretches across the abyss of all that we have forgotten' - Maualaivao Albert Wendt Built around the abyss, the tightrope, and the trick that we all have to perform to walk across it, Pasifika poetry warrior Selina Tusitala Marsh brings to life in Tightrope her ongoing dialogue with memory, life and death to find out whether 'stories' really can 'cure the incurable'. In Marsh's poetry, sharp intelligence combines a focused warrior fierceness with perceptive humour and energy, upheld by the mana of the Pacific. She mines rich veins - the tradition and culture of her whanau and Pacific nations; the works of feminist poets and leaders; words of distinguished poets Derek Walcott and Albert Wendt - to probe the particularities of words and cultures. Selina Tusitala Marsh's Tightrope takes us from the bustle of the world's largest Polynesian city, Auckland, through Avondale and Apia, and on to London and New York on an extraordinary poetic voyage.
Significant Moments in Da Life of Oriental Faddah and Son by ISBN: 9781573063340Publication Date: 2011-01-01"Oriental Faddah and Son delivers Da Pidgin Guerrilla's most entertaining yet poignant work to date through a combination of lamenting and humorous poems. As you read, you will journey with author Lee A. Tonouchi through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. You will laugh out loud, sometimes cry, and maybe even discover things about yourself along the way. Award-winning author Tonouchi delivers a captivating, semi-autobiographical tale through his mastery of the Pidgin language. Tonouchi intricately weaves life's most basic human elements love and loss, birth and death with uncovering the identity of one's true self. In the Guerrilla's case, it's the essence of being an Okinawan in Hawai'i."
Podcasts
- Nā Hualono: A collection of Hawaiian Language & Culture Podcasts (Kaulana Dameg, wakelet)
- CNHA’s Podcast Network "Carves out a space for Native Hawaiians to tell our stories, to share our manaʻo, to hear about what matters to us."
- Native Stories A "non-profit audio content platform and production house focused on providing access to authentic stories and experiences—of its people, place, perspective, history and culture—in service to those that came before us and the understanding of life that should be passed down through generations and around the world."
Fanachu! Podcast: Independent Guahan Task Force Fanachu! is a decolonial current events and academic critique show based in Guåhan. We provide a platform for progressive thinkers and ideologies in the Pacific, and strive for indigenous narratives in the media space. Support their Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/fanachu.
Legends from the Pacific by Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Kamuela or “Kamu”, is an Asian Pacific Islander geek, and storyteller. He began podcasting in 2004 with the weekly three-hour radio show/podcast, “Off the Air’s: Geek Nation.” Legends from the Pacific utilizes Kamu’s cultural knowledge, and television/film background to craft stories of people, beliefs, and traditions to help promote Pacific cultures.
Offshore Offshore is a podcast storytelling initiative from Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit community-supported news outlet serving Hawaii. Our small team of multimedia reporters are dedicated to shining a spotlight on important issues by elevating traditionally unheard voices.
Film & Television
Featured below is a collection of films, shorts, documentaries, and television made by and centering Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. For additional resources see the following websites:
- The Māori-Made Collection (Cinema Politica)
- 7 Essential Pacific Films to Add to Your Queue, from “Once Were Warriors” to “Vai” (Kristian Fanene Schmidt, Sundance Institute)
- Pacific Heartbeat Series (PBS)
- Pasifika Film Fest Follow them on Instagram for updates!
Articles about Pasifika film and television:
- Pacific Islanders Deserve To Be Represented On Screen, But Here's What Needs To Happen Now (Kristian Fanene Schmidt, Huffpost). Movies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "Aloha" put white characters at the forefront while Pasifika people served as mere plot devices.
- Coverage of Native Hawaiians (Kai Milici, Media Portrayals of Minorities Project Varied). Coverage still exotifies NHPI peoples through tourist-centric stereotypes.
Films
Hunt for the Wilderpeople by Publication Date: 2016A boy (Julian Dennison) and his foster father (Sam Neill) become the subjects of a manhunt after they get stranded in the New Zealand wilderness.Leitis in Waiting by
Publication Date: 2021Leitis In Waiting is the story of Joey Mataele and the Tonga Leitis, an intrepid group of transgender women fighting a rising tide of religious fundamentalism in their highly religious and conservative South Pacific Kingdom. With unexpected humor and extraordinary access to the Kingdom's royals and religious leaders, this emotional journey reveals what it means to be different in a society ruled by tradition, and the challenge of being yourself without forsaking culture and tradition.Every Day in Kaimuki by
Publication Date: 2022A young man is determined to give his life meaning outside of Kaimuki, the small Hawaiian town where he grew up, even if it means leaving everything he's ever known and loved behind. This film is available on Tubi.
Standing Above the Clouds by Publication Date: 2019This documentary follows Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists as they stands to protect their sacred mountain Mauna Kea from the building of the world's largest telescope.Cousins by
Publication Date: 2021Three Maori cousins live three very different and tumultuous lives, after one of them is taken from her family and raised in an orphanage. This film is available with a Netflix subscription.
The Pā Boys by Publication Date: 2014Himiona Grace’s exploration of masculinity and Māori identity in THE PĀ BOYS is full of passion, creativity and anguish. The film follows a fictional Reggae band as it tours Aotearoa from Wellington to Cape Reinga, struggling to keep cohesion and community among its members. At the heart of this dramatic feature (which has its share of laughs as well) is a story about identity, and the ways in which some internalize colonization while others find ways to expunge settler culture by forging their own Māori identity that is connected with history and tradition.
Lady Eva by Publication Date: 2017On the eve of the biggest day in her life, a young transgender beauty contestant in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga is threatened with eviction from home. Fiercely determined, "Lady Eva" takes off on a journey to become her true self—with a little inspiration from Tina Turner. Documentary.Kumu Hina by
Publication Date: 2013An exploration of gender diversity, tradition and acceptance in Hawaii as a transgender teacher supports an outwardly female student in leading an all-male hula performance despite the confusion of some in their Honolulu community.
Awa's Story: Born This Way Publication Date: 02/26/2020Awa's Story—In New Zealand, Te Awarangi 'Awa' Puna is an openly transgender Maori teen attending her final year at Kapiti College in Wellington, New Zealand. At the time of this guide's publication, Awa's Story is available to stream on Facebook (linked above).
The Healer Stones of Kapaemahu Publication Date: 03/30/2022On Honolulu's famous Waikiki Beach stand four large stones that represent a Hawaiian tradition of healing and gender diversity that is all but unknown to the millions of locals and tourists passing by. According to legend, the stones are a tribute to four mahu, people of dual male and female spirit, who brought the healing arts from Tahiti to Hawaii and used their spiritual power to cure disease. This film is available with a PBS Passport account.
The Casketeers by Publication Date: 2018-The Casketeers is a New Zealand reality television series that follows a New Zealand couple, Francis and Kaiora Tipene, who own and run Tipene Funerals, a funeral parlor with branches in the Auckland suburbs of Onehunga and Henderson, as well as the other funeral directors and assistants employed there. This show is available with a Netflix subscription.Waikiki by
Publication Date: 2020When a Native Hawaiian hula dancer escaping her abusive boyfriend crashes her beat-up van into a mysterious homeless man, she finds herself flung into a surrealistic journey of self-exploration and enlightenment. Director Christopher Kahunahana’s acclaimed feature debut breaks down the enduring, stereotypical image of paradise we have of Waikiki to reveal a vulnerable and authentic portrait of indigeneity. Leaving behind the touristic image of paradise and island culture, WAIKIKI tackles the often-unspeakable generational trauma of postcolonial cultures through a mixing of genre conventions, experimental storytelling, and perspectives. This film is currently working on distribution agreements. When it becomes available we will add a link here.Merata: How Mom Decolonized the Screen by
Publication Date: 2018An examination of the life and work of filmmaker and activist Merata Mita through the eyes of her son, seeking answers about her career and experiences which intertwined family life, filmmaking and activism. This film is currently unavailable to stream outside of New Zealand.
Additional Resource Guides
- Pacific Island Studies Guide (UCLA Library)
- Pacific Island Studies Guide (University of Hawai'i Leeward Community College)
- Hawaiian Studies LibGuide (University of Hawai'i James & Abigail Campbell Library)
- Hawaiian Studies LibGuide (SeattleU Lemieux Library)
- Hawaiian Language LibGuide (Maui College Library)
Publishers
Tropic Editions (TE) is a Honolulu-based publishing imprint that supports artist-driven projects imbued with a sense of place. Launched in 2018 by Marika Emi, an arts organizer, chef, and designer, TE seeks to bolster and establish connections between seemingly disparate locales and identities. With a curatorial emphasis on experimentation, social criticism, and collaboration, the press is dedicated to drawing Hawaiʻi into an existing global art discourse on tropicality, post-colonialism, and creative production.
Kamehameha Publishing is an ‘Ōiwi Hawai‘i publisher of high-quality, community-based materials that amplify ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, ʻike Hawaiʻi, and kuanaʻike Hawaiʻi. Utilizing a range of print and digital media, Kamehameha Publishing delivers rich and engaging Hawaiian culture-based educational content for haumāna of all ages in both formal and informal settings. Established in 1888 as Kamehameha School Press, today’s twenty-first-century Kamehameha Publishing carries on a rich and robust tradition that enabled the near fully literate nineteenth-century Hawaiian Kingdom to produce one of the largest archives of Native writings in the world.
Bess Pre
ss Inc. is a family owned publishing company located in Kaimukī. For over 43 years the Press has been creating and developing content for Hawai‘i and the greater Pacific. Today, the Press has grown to become a leading educational content producer of Hawaiian and Pacific Island studies curriculum for use in preschool through high school. Their work is entirely dedicated toward enhancing the multiple voices, cultures, and shared stories that make up Hawaiʻi and Oceania. Bess Press has published over 700 titles within the genres of children’s literature, language, history, coloring and activity, biography & memoir, as well as informational and nature guides, along with custom publishing projects.
Native Books is an independent bookstore and publisher focused on books and literature from Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. Kanaka ʻōiwi epistemology is shared through information and knowledge presented in a variety of forms and methods including the written word, ʻike kūpuna, discussions, podcasts, live streams, out of print and reprinted publications, game playing, songs and music, and most of all gatherings. Native Books also holds rare and out of print book auctions, and supported the “Aupuni Artwall,” a community gallery featuring Kanaka ʻōiwi contemporary artists.
Kaya Press is a group of dedicated writers, artists, readers, and lovers of books working together to publish the most challenging, thoughtful, and provocative literature being produced throughout the Asian and Pacific Island diasporas. "We believe that people’s lives can be changed by literature that pushes us past expectations and out of our comfort zone. We believe in the contagious potential of creativity combined with the means of production. Founded in 1994, Kaya Press has established itself as the premier publisher of cutting-edge Asian and Pacific Islander diasporic writers in the United States. Our diverse list of titles includes experimental poetry, noir fiction, film memoir, avant-garde art, performance pieces, “lost” novels, and everything in between." Check out Milkteeth Books, the intern-run chapbook imprint of Kaya Press.
Organizations
‘Āina Momona is a Native Hawaiian 501(c)(3) organization founded by Walter Ritte for the purpose of achieving environmental health and sustainability through restoring social justice and Hawaiian sovereignty. ‘Āina Momona is based out of Keawanui Fishpond and Cultural Learning Center on the east end of Moloka‘i in the Ka‘amola ahupua‘a. In partnership with Kamehameha Schools, they manage a 55-acre ancestral Hawaiian fishpond and 8 acres of agricultural land. Due to the ongoing effects of colonization, land development, and climate change there are few fishponds in Hawaiʻi today that are still operable, though many in the community are working to revitalize these crucial, mariculture practices. Their community-led efforts are focused on erosion mitigation and traditional food system revitalization. Their primary goal is to conduct full-scale ahupua‘a restoration led by community members, to transform degraded environments into places of momona, of bounty, once again. Donate here.
Nihi! Indigenous Media. "As indigenous people of Guåhan, the Marianas and the broader Micronesia, we believe that it is our responsibility to help to build for future generations—a world where our traditions, knowledge and connections to the land and ocean are valued and protected. Our model teaches stewardship of our islands and ocean through cultural ownership—that islander children protect and respect their home when they know, love, and feel a personal connection to it. This is our responsibility to our elders and to all of the generations that are to come."
KAHEA is about Hawai`i. About a healthy environment and thriving cultural traditions for Ka Pae'Āina. "In the face of increasing assaults to Hawaii's l'and, ocean, water, native species, culture, and way of life, we are charting a different course. KAHEA is about people. Because empowered people engaged in collective action is what leads to lasting and meaningful change. KAHEA is a thousands-strong alliance of cultural practitioners, environmental advocates, teachers, scientists, resource experts, community leaders, clergy, union members, doctors, health professionals, social workers, students, and concerned individuals around the world, reaching across class, age, income, race and gender."
AMEMSA+ History & Heritage Month
April is National Arab American Heritage Month, which was first founded by the Arab American Foundation in 2017. We created this feature not only to celebrate Arab American Heritage, but anyone belonging to the AMEMSA+ (Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian) community. Specifically in Media Studies, individuals from or with ties to countries of the AMEMSA region, as well as their traditions, perspectives, and cultural work, are often deeply misrepresented, simplified, and/or erased in popular culture. This feature aims to showcase and celebrate AMEMSA+ authors and creators and recognize the beautiful impact their art and media has on Bloomington and Indiana University as a whole. This feature is also a celebration of Ramadan and those who observe this holy month. Ramadan Mubarak!
Further Reading:
- The History of Arab American Heritage Month (Amar Dabaja, All Together)
- Opinion: April is Arab American Heritage Month. Here's What That Means to Us (Doris Bittar, The San Diego Union Tribune)
- She Dreams of Afghanistan (Lauren Ulrich, Indiana Daily Student)
- IU to Host First Bollywood Dance Collegiate Competition (Kathleen Tran, Indiana Daily Student)
About the Playlist
In addition to the resources we've gathered in this feature, we've also curated a collection of music by artists from or with familial connections to AMEMSA countries. While certainly not comprehensive, we have sought to include a representative sampling of countries, communities, and genres, from across time but with an emphasis on contemporary musicians and styles. To learn more about the contributions of artists from this region to musical history and culture, take a look at some of the resources we used to make this playlist below:
- Arabic Music (Wikipedia)
- Middle Eastern Music (Wikipedia)
- "A Brief History of Arab Music" (NYUAD Institute)
- "Arabesque: What Makes Arabic Music Unique?" (Kennedy Center Education)
- "How Artists Explore Queerness in the Arab World" (Smithsonian Magazine)
- "Queering the Music Scene in the Middle East" (Varsity)
- "Transgender Pop Star Haiifa Magic is Breaking Down Biases in the Arab World" (i-D)
Note: To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" (♡) button in the application to save.
Next Steps
If you'd like to engage more deeply with resources and library materials relevant to AMEMSA+ communities, browse some of the following guides from IU Libraries:
- Arab American Heritage Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Recommended Reads from the Children's Collection - Middle East (Education Library)
Poetry
Dreads and Open Mouths: Living/Teaching/Writing Queerly by ISBN: 9781634000611Publication Date: 2019-07-01This timely, provocative, unruly, formally experimental/scholarly hybrid book charts an activist life of teaching/writing queerly over the past twenty years from the author's subject position as a queer immigrant scholar/teacher of color situated in the field of rhetoric and composition. Quirky and polemical, Dreads and Open Mouths blurs genres and challenges the boundaries between "scholarly" and "creative," "literary" and "pedagogical," "personal" and "political" as it explores and makes (dis)connections among literacy, writing, teaching, rhetoric, imagination, desire, sexuality, race, gender, politics, pleasure, resistance, education practices, assessment, global geopolitics, national boundaries, and students who have traditionally been marginalized in institutions of higher learning.
the magic my body becomes by ISBN: 9781682260401Publication Date: 2017-10-30In the magic my body becomes, Jess Rizkallah seeks a vernacular for the inescapable middle ground of being Arab American- a space that she finds, at times, to be too Arab for America and too American for her Lebanese elders. The voice here freely asserts gender, sexuality, and religious beliefs, while at the same time it respects a generational divide: the younger's privilege gained by the sacrifice of the older, the impossibility of separating what is wholly hers from what is hers second-hand. In exploring family history, civil war, trauma, and Lebanon itself, Rizkallah draws from the spirits of canonical Arab and Middle Eastern poets, and the reader feels these spirits exorcising the grief of those who are still alive. Throughout, there is the body, a reclamation and pushback against cultures that simultaneously sexualise and shame women. And there is a softness as inherent as rage, a resisting of stereotypes that too often speak louder than the complexities of a colonised, yet resilient, cultural identity. Rizkallah's the magic my body becomes is an exciting new book from an exciting young poet, a love letter to a people as well as a fist in the air.
Home Is Not a Country by ISBN: 9780593177051Publication Date: 2021-03-02Woven through with moments of lyrical beauty, this is a tender meditation on family, belonging, and home. my mother meant to name me / for her favorite flower its sweetness / garlands made / for pretty girls i imagine her / yasmeen / bright & alive & i ache to have been born her / instead. Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn't feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn't feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn't different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can't, and suddenly her only refuge is gone. As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen—the name her parents meant to give her at birth—Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might be more real than Nima knows. And the life Nima wishes were someone else's is one she will need to fight for with a fierceness she never knew she possessed.
The World That Belongs to Us: an Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia by ISBN: 9789353574574Publication Date: 2020-09-22This first-of-its-kind anthology brings together the best of contemporary queer poetry from South Asia, both from the subcontinent and its many diasporas. The anthology features well-known voices like Hoshang Merchant, Ruth Vanita, Suniti Namjoshi, Kazim Ali, Rajiv Mohabir as well as a host of new poets. The themes range from desire and loneliness, sexual intimacy and struggles, caste and language, activism both on the streets and in the homes, the role of family both given and chosen, and heartbreaks and heartjoins. Writing from Bangalore, Baroda, Benares, Boston, Chennai, Colombo, Dhaka, Delhi, Dublin, Karachi, Kathmandu, Lahore, London, New York City, and writing in languages including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Urdu, Manipuri, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and, of course, English, the result is an urgent, imaginative and beautiful testament to the diversity, politics, aesthetics and ethics of queer life in South Asia today.
The Twenty-Ninth Year by ISBN: 9781328511942Publication Date: 2019-01-29For Hala Alyan, twenty-nine is a year of transformation and upheaval, a year in which the past—memories of family members, old friends and past lovers, the heat of another land, another language, a different faith—winds itself around the present. Hala's ever-shifting, subversive verse sifts together and through different forms of forced displacement and the tolls they take on mind and body. Poems leap from war-torn cities in the Middle East, to an Oklahoma Olive Garden, a Brooklyn brownstone; from alcoholism to recovery; from a single woman to a wife. This collection summons breathtaking chaos, one that seeps into the bones of these odes, the shape of these elegies. A vivid catalog of heartache, loneliness, love and joy, The Twenty-Ninth Year is an education in looking for home and self in the space between disparate identities.
If They Come for Us by ISBN: 9780525509783Publication Date: 2018-08-07an aunt teaches me how to tell an edible flower from a poisonous one. just in case, I hear her say, just in case. From a co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series Brown Girls comes an imaginative, soulful debut poetry that collection captures the experiences of being a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America. Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people's histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging.
Halal if You Hear Me: The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3 by ISBN: 9781608466047Publication Date: 2019-04-16The collected poems dispel the notion that there is one correct way to be a Muslim by holding space for multiple, intersecting identities while celebrating and protecting those identities. Halal If You Hear Me features poems by Safia Elhillo, Fatimah Asghar, Warsan Shire, Tarfia Faizullah, Angel Nafis, Beyza Ozer, and many others. Fatimah Asgharis the creator of the Emmy-Nominated web series Brown Girls, now in development for HBO. She is the author of If They Come For Us and a recipient of a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship.
I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On: A Narrative by ISBN: 9781936919468Publication Date: 2017-03-15I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On turns a sharply humorous magnifying glass onto gendered interactions in daily life, framed primarily by random celebrity encounters in Los Angeles. Far from a narrative of fame-chasing or conceit, however, "I'm So Fine" breathlessly addresses what it means for a woman to fight for dignity and survival in an often hostile environment, to come into her own power as she decides what she wants for herself "& mostly gets its every fineness."
Seam by ISBN: 9780809333257Publication Date: 2014-03-06The poems in this captivating collection weave beauty with violence, the personal with the historic as they recount the harrowing experiences of the two hundred thousand female victims of rape and torture at the hands of the Pakistani army during the 1971 Liberation War. As the child of Bangladeshi immigrants, the poet in turn explores her own losses, as well as the complexities of bearing witness to the atrocities these war heroines endured. Throughout the volume, the narrator endeavors to bridge generational and cultural gaps even as the victims recount the horror of grief and personal loss. As we read, we discover the profound yet fragile seam that unites the fields, rivers, and prisons of the 1971 war with the poet's modern-day hotel, or the tragic death of a loved one with the holocaust of a nation. Moving from West Texas to Dubai, from Virginia to remote villages in Bangladesh and back again, the narrator calls on the legacies of Willa Cather, César Vallejo, Tomas Tranströmer, and Paul Celan to give voice to the voiceless. Fierce yet loving, devastating and magical at once, Seam is a testament to the lingering potency of memory and the bravery of a nation's victims.
The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony by ISBN: 9780803266865Publication Date: 2015-04-01Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony asks: Whose testimony is valid? Whose testimony is worth recording? Osman's speakers, who are almost always women, assert and reassert in an attempt to establish authority, often through persistent questioning. Specters of race, displacement, and colonialism are often present in her work, providing momentum for speakers to reach beyond their primary, apparent dimensions and better communicate. The Kitchen-Dweller's Testimony is about love and longing, divorce, distilled desire, and all the ways we injure ourselves and one another.
Fiction
All My Rage by ISBN: 9780593202340Publication Date: 2022-03-01From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir comes a brilliant, unforgettable, and heart-wrenching contemporary novel about family and forgiveness, love and loss, in a sweeping story that crosses generations and continents. Lahore, Pakistan. Then. Misbah is a dreamer and storyteller, newly married to Toufiq in an arranged match. After their young life is shaken by tragedy, they come to the United States and open the Clouds' Rest Inn Motel, hoping for a new start. Juniper, California. Now. Salahudin and Noor are more than best friends; they are family. Growing up as outcasts in the small desert town of Juniper, California, they understand each other the way no one else does. Until The Fight, which destroys their bond with the swift fury of a star exploding. Now, Sal scrambles to run the family motel as his mother Misbah's health fails and his grieving father loses himself to alcoholism. Noor, meanwhile, walks a harrowing tightrope: working at her wrathful uncle's liquor store while hiding the fact that she's applying to college so she can escape him—and Juniper—forever. When Sal's attempts to save the motel spiral out of control, he and Noor must ask themselves what friendship is worth—and what it takes to defeat the monsters in their pasts and the ones in their midst.
When Stars Are Scattered by ISBN: 9780525553915Publication Date: 2020-04-14Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. Life is hard there: never enough food, achingly dull, and without access to the medical care Omar knows his nonverbal brother needs. So when Omar has the opportunity to go to school, he knows it might be a chance to change their future . . . but it would also mean leaving his brother, the only family member he has left, every day. Heartbreak, hope, and gentle humor exist together in this graphic novel about a childhood spent waiting, and a young man who is able to create a sense of family and home in the most difficult of settings. It's an intimate, important, unforgettable look at the day-to-day life of a refugee, as told to New York Times Bestselling author/artist Victoria Jamieson by Omar Mohamed, the Somali man who lived the story.
You Exist Too Much by ISBN: 9781948226509Publication Date: 2020-06-09On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East—from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine—Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her. Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings—for love, and a place to call home.
When Memory Dies by ISBN: 9781900850018Publication Date: 1997-01-01A powerful three-generational saga of a Sri Lankan family's search for coherence and continuity in a country broken by colonial occupation and riven by ethnic wars. Winner of the Sagittarius Prize. Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize
All-American Muslim Girl by ISBN: 9780374309527Publication Date: 2019-11-12Nadine Jolie Courtney's All-American Muslim Girl is a relevant, relatable story of being caught between two worlds, and the struggles and hard-won joys of finding your place. Allie Abraham has it all going for her--she's a straight-A student, with good friends and a close-knit family, and she's dating popular, sweet Wells Henderson. One problem: Wells's father is Jack Henderson, America's most famous conservative shock jock, and Allie hasn't told Wells that her family is Muslim. It's not like Allie's religion is a secret. It's just that her parents don't practice, and raised her to keep it to herself. But as Allie witnesses Islamophobia in her small town and across the nation, she decides to embrace her faith--study, practice it, and even face misunderstanding for it. Who is Allie, if she sheds the façade of the "perfect" all-American girl?
She Wore Red Trainers by ISBN: 9781847740656Publication Date: 2014-09-09When Ali first meets Amirah, he notices everything about her--her hijab, her long eyelashes and her red trainers--in the time it takes to have one look, before lowering his gaze. And, although Ali is still coming to terms with the loss of his mother and exploring his identity as a Muslim, and although Amirah has sworn never to get married, they can't stop thinking about each other. Can Ali and Amirah ever have a halal "happily ever after"? Na'ima B. Robert is descended from Scottish Highlanders on her father's side and the Zulu people on her mother's side. She was born in Leeds, England, grew up in Zimbabwe, and went to university in London, England. At high school, her loves included performing arts, public speaking, and writing stories that shocked her teachers! She has written several multicultural books for children which have won, and been shortlisted, for numerous awards. Na'ima divides her time between London and Cairo, Egypt, and dreams of living on a farm with her own horses. Until then, she is happy to be a mum to her four children and keep reading and writing books that take her to a different world each time.
You Truly Assumed by ISBN: 9781335428646Publication Date: 2023-02-07In this compelling and thought-provoking debut novel, after a terrorist attack rocks the country and anti-Islamic sentiment stirs, three Black Muslim girls create a space where they can shatter assumptions and share truths. Sabriya has her whole summer planned out in color-coded glory, but those plans go out the window after a terrorist attack near her home. When the terrorist is assumed to be Muslim and Islamophobia grows, Sabriya turns to her online journal for comfort. You Truly Assumed was never meant to be anything more than an outlet, but the blog goes viral as fellow Muslim teens around the country flock to it and find solace and a sense of community. Soon two more teens, Zakat and Farah, join Bri to run You Truly Assumed and the three quickly form a strong friendship. But as the blog's popularity grows, so do the pushback and hateful comments. When one of them is threatened, the search to find out who is behind it all begins, and their friendship is put to the test when all three must decide whether to shut down the blog and lose what they've worked for...or take a stand and risk everything to make their voices heard.
Queen of the Tiles by ISBN: 9781534494558Publication Date: 2022-04-19CATALYST 13 points noun: a substance that speeds up a reaction without itself changing When Najwa Bakri walks into her first Scrabble competition since her best friend's death, it's with the intention to heal and move on with her life. Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to choose the very same competition where said best friend, Trina Low, died. It seems that even though Najwa is trying to change, she's not ready to give up Trina just yet. But the same can't be said for all the other competitors. With Trina, the Scrabble Queen herself, gone, the throne is empty, and her friends are eager to be the next reigning champion. All's fair in love and Scrabble, but all bets are off when Trina's formerly inactive Instagram starts posting again, with cryptic messages suggesting that maybe Trina's death wasn't as straightforward as everyone thought. And maybe someone at the competition had something to do with it. As secrets are revealed and the true colors of her friends are shown, it's up to Najwa to find out who's behind these mysterious posts--not just to save Trina's memory, but to save herself.
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by ISBN: 9780062645128Publication Date: 2017-06-13A lively, sexy, and thought-provoking East-meets-West story about community, friendship, and women's lives at all ages--a spicy and alluring mix of Together Tea and Calendar Girls. Every woman has a secret life...Nikki lives in cosmopolitan West London, where she tends bar at the local pub. The daughter of Indian immigrants, she's spent most of her twenty-odd years distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community of her childhood, preferring a more independent (that is, Western) life. When her father's death leaves the family financially strapped, Nikki, a law school dropout, impulsively takes a job teaching a "creative writing" course at the community center in the beating heart of London's close-knit Punjabi community. Because of a miscommunication, the proper Sikh widows who show up are expecting to learn basic English literacy, not the art of short-story writing. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with the class, Nikki realizes that beneath their white dupattas, her students have a wealth of fantasies and memories. Eager to liberate these modest women, she teaches them how to express their untold stories, unleashing creativity of the most unexpected--and exciting--kind. As more women are drawn to the class, Nikki warns her students to keep their work secret from the Brotherhood, a group of highly conservative young men who have appointed themselves the community's "moral police." But when the widows' gossip offers shocking insights into the death of a young wife--a modern woman like Nikki--and some of the class erotica is shared among friends, it sparks a scandal that threatens them all.
Shopping for Sabzi: Stories by ISBN: 9781894770460Publication Date: 2008-10-15SHOPPING FOR SABZI interweaves themes of ambition and identity in the lives of its brash, young, and successful Indo-Canadian and Indo-American characters. Poignant and humorous, this collection of stories describes the jockeying for social status, successful love, career fulfillment and personal meaning and the anxieties of its characters as they balance the old ways with the new and reflect on the passage of time. In "Piece of Cake," Raj, transplanted from Houston to New York, and dating a European photographer, is forced to confront Neha, his ex-girlfriend, an anorexic suffering a major relapse. There are many other compelling stories in the collection. Nitin Deckha's fiction has appeared in fusion lifestyle magazine, Anokhi, at www.sulekha.com and in chapbooks and anthologies.
A Woman Is No Man: A Novel by ISBN: 9780062699763Publication Date: 2019-03-05Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children--four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear. Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra's oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda's insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can't help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family--knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.
Essays
It's Not about the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality, and Race by ISBN: 9781509886401Publication Date: 2020-04-01In 2016, Mariam Khan read that David Cameron had linked the radicalization of Muslim men to the 'traditional submissiveness' of Muslim women. Mariam felt pretty sure she didn't know a single Muslim woman who would describe herself that way. Why was she hearing about Muslim women from people who were neither Muslim, nor female? Years later the state of the national discourse has deteriorated even further, and Muslim women's voices are still pushed to the fringes - the figures leading the discussion are white and male. Taking one of the most politicized and misused words associated with Muslim women and Islamophobia, It's Not About the Burqa is poised to change all that. Here are voices you won't see represented in the national news headlines: seventeen Muslim women speaking frankly about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about feminism, queer identity, sex, and the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country. With a mix of British and international women writers, from activist Mona Eltahawy's definition of a revolution to journalist and broadcaster Saima Mir telling the story of her experience of arranged marriage, from author Sufiya Ahmed on her Islamic feminist icon to playwright Afshan D'souza-Lodhi's moving piece about her relationship with her hijab, these essays are funny, warm, sometimes sad, and often angry, and each of them is a passionate declaration calling time on the oppression, the lazy stereotyping, the misogyny and the Islamophobia.
This Is One Way to Dance: Essays by ISBN: 9780820357232Publication Date: 2020-06-01In the linked essays that make up her debut collection, This Is One Way to Dance, Sejal Shah explores culture, language, family, and place. Throughout the collection, Shah reflects on what it means to make oneself visible and legible through writing in a country that struggles with race and maps her identity as an American, South Asian American, writer of color, and feminist. This Is One Way to Dance draws on Shah's ongoing interests in ethnicity and place: the geographic and cultural distances between people, both real and imagined. Her memoir in essays emerges as Shah wrestles with her experiences growing up and living in western New York, an area of stark racial and economic segregation, as the daughter of Gujarati immigrants from India and Kenya. These essays also trace her movement over twenty years from student to teacher and meditate on her travels and life in New England, New York City, and the Midwest, as she considers what it means to be of a place or from a place, to be foreign or familiar. Shah invites us to consider writing as a somatic practice, a composition of digressions, repetitions-movement as transformation, incantation. Her essays-some narrative, others lyrical and poetic-explore how we are all marked by culture, gender, and race; by the limits of our bodies, by our losses and regrets, by who and what we love, by our ambivalences, and by trauma and silence. Language fractures in its attempt to be spoken. Shah asks and attempts to answer the question: How do you move in such a way that loss does not limit you? This Is One Way to Dance introduces a vital new voice to the conversation about race and belonging in America.
This Muslim American Life by ISBN: 9781479836840Publication Date: 2015-09-18A collection of insightful and heartbreaking essays on Muslim-American life after 9/11 Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake "Mustafa Bayoumi" was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media as pushing an "anti-American, pro-Islam" agenda, and was asked by a U.S. citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. Others have endured far worse fates. Sweeping arrests following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the incarceration and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, based almost solely on their national origin and immigration status. The NYPD, with help from the CIA, has aggressively spied on Muslims in the New York area as they go about their ordinary lives, from noting where they get their hair cut to eavesdropping on conversations in cafés.
Fire Girl: Essays on India, America, and the In-Between by ISBN: 9780692721254Publication Date: 2016-06-16In Fire Girl, her debut collection of essays, Sayantani Dasgupta examines her personal story against the history, religion, popular culture and mythology of South Asia and her current home in the American West.
Memoirs
Laughing All the Way to the Mosque by ISBN: 9780349005935Publication Date: 2016-05-17Being a practicing Muslim in the West is sometimes challenging, sometimes rewarding and sometimes downright absurd. How do you explain why Eid never falls on the same date each year; why it is that Halal butchers also sell teapots and alarm clocks; how do you make clear to the plumber that it's essential the toilet is installed within sitting-arm's reach of the tap? Zarqa Nawaz has seen and done it all. And it's not always easy to get things right with the community either: Zarqa tells of being asked to leave the DBW (Dead Body Washing) committee after making unsuitable remarks; of undertaking the momentous trip to Mecca with her husband, without the children, thinking (most incorrectly) that it will also be a nice time to have uninterrupted sex; of doing the unthinkable, and creating Little Mosque on the Prairie, a successful TV sitcom about that very (horrified, then proud) community. You have to laugh.
We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by ISBN: 9780735235007Publication Date: 2019-06-04Samra Habib has spent most of her life searching for the safety to be herself. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women had only shown her the example of pious obedience, and her body was a problem to be solved. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one's truest self.
Infidel by ISBN: 9780743289689Publication Date: 2007-02-06In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia to her intellectual awakening in the Netherlands to her life under armed guard in the West.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by ISBN: 9780375714573Publication Date: 2004-06-01Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane's child's-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by ISBN: 9781627798976Publication Date: 2017-06-13For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter forThe Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other. In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the ArabSpring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization. Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination. Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.
Brown Skin Girl: An Indian-American Woman's Magical Journey From Broken To Beautiful by ISBN: 9780991460625Publication Date: 2020-02-01When sixteen-year-old Mytrae Meliana and her family emigrate from India to the U.S., she is determined to avoid the arranged marriage her family expects her to have, and to create her own destiny. But when she falls in love with an American man, her family drags the talented graduate student back to India and keeps her hostage.Mytrae suddenly finds herself heartbroken and trapped in her homeland, where women's fates are decided for them. But that isn't her only challenge. She must decide: live a lie and keep the secret she'd rather forget, or dare to break with centuries-old tradition and forge a path of her own.This searing, sensual memoir by an award-winning writer is about how family loves and wounds each other, about how immigrants are torn between cultures, and about leaving everything to find yourself. At times heartbreaking, at times triumphant, Brown Skin Girl is a testament to freedom, love, and the magic that finds you when you follow your heart.
Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by ISBN: 9780399589041Publication Date: 2019-03-26Like many six-year-olds, Mira Jacob's half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z, has questions about everything. At first they are innocuous enough, but as tensions from the 2016 election spread from the media into his own family, they become much, much more complicated. Trying to answer him honestly, Mira has to think back to where she's gotten her own answers: her most formative conversations about race, color, sexuality, and, of course, love.
Feature Films & Shorts
American Eid by Publication Date: 2021American Eid focuses on a holiday that is near and dear to Muslims: Eid. Essentially, Eid is a holiday that celebrates the end of Ramadan, where families get together, exchange gifts, and sometimes go on small vacations. Eid is not celebrated in America, much to the chagrin of Pakistani immigrant Ameena, who decides to start a petition at her school to make Eid a public school holiday. Available to stream on Disney+.Theeb by
Publication Date: 2014In 1916, while war rages in the Ottoman Empire, Hussein raises his younger brother Theeb ("Wolf") in a traditional Bedouin community that is isolated by the vast, unforgiving desert. The brothers' quiet existence is suddenly interrupted when a British Army officer and his guide ask Hussein to escort them to a water well located along the old pilgrimage route to Mecca. So as not to dishonor his recently deceased father, Hussein agrees to lead them on the long and treacherous journey. The young, mischievous Theeb secretly chases after his brother, but the group soon find themselves trapped amidst threatening terrain riddled with Ottoman mercenaries, Arab revolutionaries, and outcast Bedouin raiders.The Big Sick by
Publication Date: 2017Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student Emily Gardner fall in love but struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail finds himself forced to face her feisty parents, his family's expectations, and his true feelings.
Blinded By The Light by Publication Date: 2019Javed is a Pakistani teenager who experiences racial and economic turmoil while living in Luton, England, in 1987. He writes poetry as a way to escape the intolerance of his hometown and the stubborn views of his traditional father. When a classmate introduces him to the music of Bruce Springsteeen, Javed sees parallels between the singer's powerful lyrics and his own working-class environment. Springsteen's melodies soon inspire Javed to find his own voice and follow his dreams.Cemetery of Splendor by
Publication Date: 2015Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. The memory filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Magic, healing, romance and dreams are all part of Jen's tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her.The Kite Runner by
Publication Date: 2007Afghani immigrant Amir is summoned from his California home to Pakistan by Rahim Khan, an old, dying friend of his father. As a boy in Afghanistan, wealthy Amir was best friends with servant's son Hassan, but when Hassan was brutally assaulted by a local bully, Amir was too scared to save him, and has been tormented by guilt ever since.Amreeka by
Publication Date: 2009This 2009 film follows the story of a Palestinian family who moves to the suburbs of Chicago. Muna Farah, a single mother of three who works in a bank in Ramallah suddenly finds herself with a Green Card she was awarded in a lottery. She doesn’t want to move her family, but once she and her son are harassed at an Israeli checkpoint she decides to join her sister’s family in Illinois. Once they arrive, their plans quickly go awry and the family finds themselves having to adapt to a very new way of life. Their troubles are a mix of hilarious and saddening and immigrants of all kinds will find their story very relatable and heart-warming. This film is a great way to better understand the experience of Arab immigrants and the struggles they may face in America, especially since 9/11.
Documentaries & Documentary Shorts
Jaddoland by Publication Date: 2018Nadia Shihab's Jaddoland is an intimate portrait of the work and process of the director’s visual artist mother Lahib Jaddo. The film offers viewers a fresh look at the immigrant story in America. Through an exploration of her mother’s art and connections to her life in Texas, Shihab also drafts a unique picture of how art can help both the creator and the audience make sense of familial and cultural connections, loss, perseverance and life. Not currently available to stream.
Period. End of Sentence. by Publication Date: 2018The 2019 Academy Award-winning Netflix Documentary Short, Period. End of Sentence., aims to inspire people everywhere to think globally and recognize the impact young people can have. The film screened across the U.S. at film festivals in 2018 and premiered on Netflix in February 2019. It follows the women of Kathikhera, a village outside of New Delhi, India, as they install a machine and sell their pads throughout their district. Available on YouTube.
Write Down, I am an Arab by Publication Date: 2014“Write Down, I am an Arab” tells the story of Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet and one of the most influential writers of the Arab world. His writing shaped Palestinian identity and helped galvanize generations of Palestinians to their cause. Available on Kanopy.
Saudi Women's Driving School by Publication Date: 2019For many Americans, getting a driver's license is a mundane rite of passage. But for women in Saudi Arabia, who were only allowed to drive legally starting in June 2018, it's a critical step along the road to independence. Available with a Max subscription.He Named Me Malala by
Publication Date: 2015After the Taliban tries to kill her for speaking out on behalf of girls' education, Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai emerges as a leading advocate for children's rights and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.For Sama by
Publication Date: 2019or Sama was nominated for an Oscar and won the 2020 BAFTA award for Best Documentary alongside numerous other nominations and awards. Following the life and journey of Waad Al-Kateab and her daughter Sama alongside her husband, this documentary follows their lives for five years during some of the most horrifying atrocities of the Syrian civil war. Gut-wrenching, this documentary will be impossible to forget amidst the tragedies that continue to this day in Syria’s war.
YouTube & Short Form Content:
Video: Muslim Women React To Bad Representation. Muslim (2021).
Video: This Aint It...Let's Talk About Muslim Representation. SincerelyTahiry (2019).
Queer Muslim Diasporas in Contemporary Literature and Film by ISBN: 9781526128102Publication Date: 2019-07-10This book explores the representation of queer migrant Muslims in international literature and film from the 1980s to the present day. Bringing together a variety of contemporary writers and filmmakers of Muslim heritage engaged in vindicating same-sex desire, the book approaches queer Muslims in the diaspora as figures forced to negotiate their identities according to the expectations of the West and of their migrant Muslim communities. The book examines 3 main themes: the depiction of queer desire across racial and national borders, the negotiation of Islamic femininities and masculinities, and the positioning of the queer Muslim self in time and place. This study will be of interest to scholars, as well as to advanced general readers and postgraduate students, interested in Muslims, queerness, diaspora and postcolonialism. It brings nuance and complexity to an often simplified and controversial topic.
Film in Contemporary Southeast Asia by ISBN: 9780415617635Publication Date: 2011-12-12This book discusses contemporary film in all the main countries of Southeast Asia, and the social practices and ideologies which films either represent or oppose. It shows how film acquires signification through cultural interpretation, and how film also serves as a site of contestations between social and political agents seeking to promote, challenge, or erase certain meanings, messages or ideas from public circulation. A unique feature of the book is that it focuses as much on films as it does on the societies from which these films emerge: it considers the reasons for film-makers taking the positions they take; the positions and counter-positions taken; the response of different communities; and the extent to which these interventions are connected to global flows of culture and capital. The wide range of subjects covered include documentaries as political interventions in Singapore; political film-makers' collectives in the Philippines, and films about prostitution in Cambodia and patriotism in Malaysia, and the Chinese in Indonesia. The book analyses films from Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, across a broad range of productions - such as mainstream and independent features across genres (for example comedy, patriotic, political, historical genres) alongside documentary, classic and diasporic films.
Contemporary Arab Broadcast Media by ISBN: 9780748639083Publication Date: 2011-06-06A balanced introduction to the 3 major Arab media channels: Al-Jazeera, Al-Hurra and Al-ArabiaEl Mustapha Lahlali presents a detailed study of the three dominant Arab media channels and their role post-9/11. The Arab world is currently undergoing a radical media revolution, with the launch of numerous satellite and cable channels. The era of state-controlled media is coming to an end as privately-owned channels emerge.
Indian Documentary Film and Filmmakers by ISBN: 9781474433068Publication Date: 2018-11-01Independent documentary is enjoying a resurgence in post-reform India. But in contemporary cinema and media cultures, where 'independent' operates as an industry genre or critical category, how do we understand the significance of this mode of cultural production? Based on detailed onsite observation of documentary production, circulation practices and the analysis of film texts, this book identifies independence as a 'tactical practice', contesting the normative definitions and functions assigned to culture, cultural production and producers in a neoliberal economic system. Focusing on selected filmmakers, the book establishes how they have reorganised the dominance of industrial media, technology and social relations to develop practices that build upon principles of de-economisation, artisanship and interdependence.
Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes by ISBN: 9783319627939Publication Date: 2017-10-27This volume explores the dialogue between Arab media and global developments in the information age, looking at the influence of new technologies in Arab societies and the evolving role of Arab women in 'old' and 'new' media. By gathering together contributions from both Arab and non-Arab scholars alike, a timely and important collection is presented that sheds new light on the growing involvement, role and image of Arab women in the media.
Discourses of the Arab Revolutions in Media and Politics by ISBN: 9780367432379Publication Date: 2021-08-01Drawing on approaches from critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and cognitive linguistics, this book critically examines metaphorical language used in global media coverage and political statements on the events of the Arab Spring. The volume begins by summarising key events of the Arab Spring, tracing the development of protests from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya and Syria as well as the wider impact on the region. Ullmann builds on this foundation to lay out the theoretical frameworks to be applied to an extensive corpus of natural language and actual discourse highlighting Western, Middle Eastern, and North African perspectives which integrate theoretical work on metaphor, blending theory, and semantic prosodies. Methodological considerations on corpus selection and different conceptualisations of politics and mass media, generally and across countries, are discussed, with the final chapters outlining the overarching themes across metaphors in the corpus and how these metaphors were ultimately framed in the mass media and political landscape. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in critical discourse analysis, language and politics, and corpus linguistics.
Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises, and Contexts by ISBN: 9781137334824Publication Date: 2014-06-05Media Framing of the Muslim World examines and explains how news about Islam and the Muslim world is produced and consumed, and how it impacts on relations between Islam and the West. The authors cover key issues in this relationship including the reporting on war and conflict, terrorism, asylum seekers and the Arab Spring.
Media, Diaspora and the Somali Conflict by ISBN: 9783319577913Publication Date: 2017-09-06This book illustrates how diasporic media can re-create conflict by transporting conflict dynamics and manifesting them back in to diaspora communities. Media, Diaspora and Conflict demonstrates a previously overlooked complexity in diasporic media by using the Somali conflict as a case study to indicate how the media explores conflict in respective homelands, in addition to revealing its participatory role in transnationalising conflicts. By illustrating the familiar narratives associated with diasporic media and utilising a combination of Somali websites and television, focus groups with diaspora community members and interviews with journalists and producers, the potentials and restrictions of diasporic media and how it relates to homelands in conflict are explored.
Transnational Memory and Popular Culture in East and Southeast Asia by ISBN: 9781783484362Publication Date: 2016-09-27Transnational Memory and Popular Culture in East and Southeast Asia explores the significance of transnational popular culture in the formation and mediation of collective memories across the region. It looks at case studies including: the politics of cinematic remembering of Hong Kong films on Southeast Asia, the digital and holographic enshrinement of departed celebrities like Wong Kar Kui, Bruce Lee and Teresa Teng and the dredging of personal memories of the encounters with the Korean Wave in Singapore. In addition, it explores how cultural memories are used as focal points of staging cultural revival and movements in Singapore and Taiwan. Contrary to the assumptions of the importance of newness in modern popular culture productions, the continued relevance of this otherwise dated material reflects the significance of these texts in the development and strengthening of collective cultural memories. The discussion of such issues has often been grounded geo-spatially on the "national" and contemporary contexts, this volume will develop a more temporalized and transnational perspective in the shaping of otherwise local cultural identifications.
Media Consumption in Malaysia: A Hermeneutics of Human Behavior by ISBN: 9780415658805Publication Date: 2015-01-02How do visitors immersing themselves in material places such as shopping malls or video sites online make sense of the experience, enabling criticizing—or consenting to content? How is this evident in behaviour? Reflecting on accounts by Chinese, Indian, Malay and Indigenous members of Malaysian society, this book addresses these questions from a practices perspective increasingly adopted by scholars in marketing and media studies. The volume provides an account of practices theory from its origins in critical hermeneutics (such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur), as reflecting on the processes of embodied understanding, developing alongside interpretive and reception theory. Recognizing the current (re)turn in Consumer and Media Studies to employing hermeneutics as an account of our embodied human understanding, this book presents its major philosophical proponents, showing how close attention to their writing can now inform and shape research on ubiquitous screen users.
Articles
- Ahmed, Saifuddin. 2017. “News Media, Movies, and Anti-Muslim Prejudice: Investigating the Role of Social Contact.” Asian Journal of Communication 27 (5): 536–53.
- Du Bois, Christine M. 2004. Images of West Indian Immigrants in Mass Media : The Struggle for a Positive Ethnic Reputation. The New Americans. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.
- Minhas, Shahid. 2019. “Coverage of War on Terror: A Comparative Analysis of Pakistani, Indian and American Print Media.” Dialogue: A Quarterly Research Journal 14 ii (January): 106–17.
- Parray, I. ( 1 ), and S. ( 2 ) Saeed. 2022. “Rethinking South Asian Media Historiography: Excavating Princely India’s Media Cultures with Reference to Jammu and Kashmir State.” Society and Culture in South Asia 8 (1): 72-95–95. doi:10.1177/23938617211040295.
Journals
- Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research
- Journal of Middle East Media
- Society and Culture in South Asia
- Arab Media & Society
- Digital Library of the Middle East
Databases
- Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule
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Collection of Foreign Office files, including correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, newspaper excerpts and other materials. Covers the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s.
- Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969
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Covers a broad sweep of history from c. 1839 to 1969, taking in the countries of the Arabian peninsula, the Levant, Iraq, Turkey and former Ottoman lands in Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt and Sudan. Materials include reports, dispatches, correspondence, descriptions of leading personalities, political summaries, and economic analyses.
- Middle East and North Africa: Global Perspectives, 1958-1994
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Documents sourced from international journals, newspapers, scientific reports, and radio and television broadcasts from 19 countries in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as from other nations with security interests in the region.
- Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies
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A systematic, non-evaluative bibliographic index of research, policy, and scholarly discourse on the countries and peoples of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa.
- Middle East Online: Iraq, 1914-1974
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Searchable database of original sources from the Anglo-Indian landing in Basra in 1914 through the British Mandate of 1920-32 to the rise of Saddam Hussein in 1974.
- Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies
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Extensive bibliography and annotated lists of key literature compiled by experts in the field of Islamic Studies. Covers the range of lived experiences and textual traditions of Muslims as they are articulated in various countries and regions throughout the world.
The Halal Gap by The Halal Gap invites a wide and diverse range of talented Muslim creatives to discuss their background, work, challenges and much more. A great and inspirational space for Muslims who too wish to leave their mark on the world!
Brown Game Strong by Run by multi-hyphenated talent Mitali Dargani, Brown Game Strong features interviews of trailblazers in the South Asian community across the world. The aim, says Dargani, is to “…motivate our incredible community to continue working on what they love.” Interviewees include dancers, authors, actresses, entrepreneurs and more.
Kerning Cultures by Kerning Cultures seeks to dissect the traditional media narratives of the Middle East, telling stories that reflect the depth and richness of the region.
Bollywood Talks by Bollywood is the Indian Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). Bollywood is one of the largest centres of film production in the world. Bollywood Talks is a fast paced entertainment show that covers latest and weekly news relating to Bollywood. We share latest news, stories of films, bios on actors, singers and anyone related to this industry. Tune in to hear popular music, interviews, teasers & trailers of soon to be released movies and special features on people related to Bollywood.
Desi American Life by Join Priya, Deepti and Uma as they explore life as Desi (“they-see”) Americans. As children of Indian immigrants living in Silicon Valley, California, they are exposed to two contrasting cultures — South Asian and American. In Desi American Life, they invite open discussions about everything from pop culture and dating, to “taboo” topics like mental health awareness, LGBTQ acceptance, and much more. Desi American Life is a place to share stories and to foster a community on the cultural dualities of the South Asian American experience.
IU has a number of resources and groups related to AMEMSA+ communities, particularly for students from this region. We've compiled a list of them here:
- Asian Culture Center
- Arabic Club
- Filipino American Association at Indiana University
- PERMIAS Bloomington (Indonesian Student Association)
- Muslim Student Association
- Students for Peace in the Middle East
- Myanmar Student Association
- Pakistani Student Association
- Singapore Student Association at Indiana University
- Vietnamese Student Association at Indiana University
- Middle Eastern Law Students Association
Disability Awareness & Pride Months
In celebration of National Disability Awareness Month in March, Disability Pride Month in July, and National Disability Employment Month in October, we curated this feature to focus on disabled, neurodivergent, crip, and sick creators in a wide range of mediums. Disability is a topic in film, literature, music, and other media that often gets pushed to the side due to fear, stigma, and pity. This feature is a testament to the vibrant community of disability media and its creators that refuse to let diagnoses or illness stand in the way of artistic expression.
To read more about disability language and the use of "crip," enjoy this article by Dean Strauss: "Queer Crips: Reclaiming Language," and Brittany Wong's Huffington Post article "It's Perfectly OK to call a Disabled Person 'Disabled,' And Here's Why."
The Playlist
To get started with this feature, we have compiled a selection of music from disabled, sick, and neurodivergent artists from across time and genres. To learn more about these artists and communities, and the particularities of their musical contributions, enjoy some of the resources we used to help make this playlist:
- "A New Coalition Amplifies Disability Culture in the Music Industry" (New York Times)
- "Disability as Diversity: A Conversation with Musician Gaelynn Lea" (National Endowment for the Arts Blog)
- "'I had to learn how to feel anger': Dandy on the demands disabled musicians face" (The Guardian)
- "Are Music Companies Hiring Enough People Who Think Differently?" (Rolling Stone)
- "Music as a Tool for Disability Activism" (Music & Politics in the Moment)
- The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (Oxford University Press)
Next Steps
If you would like to engage more with this month-long celebration, the Libraries have curated a number of interrelated resources and features to continue and deepen the conversation. You'll find these, below:
- Spotlight on Disability Studies (Gender Studies)
- Disability and Art (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- National Disability Awareness Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Mental Health & Well-Being Online Streaming Videos (Media Services)
- Recommended Disabled Reads from the Children's Collection (Education Library)
- Disability Awareness Resources (Indiana Institute on Disability and Community Library)
Indiana University Disability Resources
There are a number of resources and services available to students, staff, and faculty on the Bloomington campus. A selection of these is provided here:
Fiction
True Biz by ISBN: 9780593241509Publication Date: 2022-04-05The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they'll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who's never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school's golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the hearing headmistress, a CODA (child of deaf adult(s)) who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another—and changed forever. This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, disability and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.
Inside the O'Briens by ISBN: 9781476717791Publication Date: 2016-01-05Joe O'Brien is a forty-three-year-old police officer from the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. A devoted husband, proud father of four children in their twenties, and respected officer, Joe begins experiencing bouts of disorganized thinking, uncharacteristic temper outbursts, and strange, involuntary movements. He initially attributes these episodes to the stress of his job, but as these symptoms worsen, he agrees to see a neurologist and is handed a diagnosis that will change his and his family's lives forever: Huntington's disease. Huntington's is a lethal neurodegenerative disease with no treatment and no cure, and each of Joe's four children has a 50 percent chance of inheriting their father's disease. While watching her potential future in her father's escalating symptoms, twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie struggles with the questions this test imposes on her young adult life. As Joe's symptoms worsen and he's eventually stripped of his badge and more, Joe struggles to maintain hope and a sense of purpose, while Katie and her siblings must find the courage to either live a life "at risk" or learn their fate.
The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked by ISBN: 9781941026359Publication Date: 2017-02-07"I remember I believed all my problems would be solved, if only I were beautiful. Then I was beautiful." —Jonathan Mack, from his story "The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked." Welcome to the worlds of the disabled. The physically disabled. The mentally disabled. The emotionally disabled. What does that word "disabled" mean anyway? Is there a right way to be crippled? Editors Sheila Black and Michael Northen (co-editors of the highly praised anthology Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability) join newcomer Annabelle Hayse to present short stories by Dagoberto Gilb, Anne Finger, Stephen Kuusisto, Thom Jones, Lisa Gill, Floyd Skloot, and others. These authors—all who experience the "disability" they write about—crack open the cage of our culture's stereotypes. We look inside, and, through these people we thought broken, we uncover new ways of seeing and knowing.
A Room Called Earth by ISBN: 9780143135456Publication Date: 2020-08-18An unforgettable story of a fiercely original young woman, whose radical perspective illuminates a new way of being in the world As a full moon rises over Melbourne, Australia, a young woman gets ready for a party. And what appears to be an ordinary night out is--through the prism of her singular perspective--extraordinary. As the evening unfolds, each encounter she has reveals the vast discrepancies between what she is thinking and feeling, and what she is able to say. And there's so much she'd like to say. So when she meets a man and a genuine connection occurs, it's nothing short of a miracle. However, it isn't until she invites him home that we come to appreciate the humanity beneath the labels we cling to, and we can grasp the pleasure of what it means to be alive. The debut novel from the inimitable Madeleine Ryan, A Room Called Earth is a humorous and heartwarming adventure inside the mind of a bright and dynamic woman. This hyper-saturated celebration of love and acceptance, from a neurodiverse writer, is a testament to moving through life without fear, and to opening ourselves up to a new way of relating to one another.
Quiet: A Graphic Novel of Introversion by ISBN: 9781525510618Publication Date: 2017-10-02Claire Glade is not good with people. She's shy, awkward and introverted. The only person she ever really talks to is her sister, Madison, but that's fine by her. She enjoys staying home all day, drawing and playing games. Living in the city has never been sweeter! That is, until Madison forces her to go back to school. With zero friends, zero social skills, and zero idea what she wants to do with her life, Claire now has to try and make it through college life, one day at a time. Quiet: A Graphic Novel of Introversion collects issues 1-6 of the webcomic, Quiet.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by ISBN: 9780063215375Publication Date: 2022-02-22A witty, hilarious romance about a woman who's tired of being "boring" and recruits her mysterious, sexy neighbor to help her experience new things. Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she's come up with seven directives to help her "Get a Life", and she's already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family's mansion. The next items? Enjoy a drunken night out. Ride a motorcycle. Go camping. Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex. Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage. And...do something bad. But it's not easy being bad, even when you've written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job. Redford 'Red' Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He's also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit. But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe's wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior...
Pages I Never Wrote by ISBN: 9798638817787Publication Date: 2020-06-19A candid, relatable Queer Coming-of-Age YA Novel featuring an LGBT University Romance and themes of disability, diversity, creativity, self-discovery and academic achievement. "Why would he want to date me? I can't even hold a pen." Luke has good friends, a passion for books, and dyspraxia, a disorder that, ironically, makes him unable to write. He also has a hatred for anyone who tries to help him. Yet when he fails his first term at university due to his learning difficulties, he's forced to get support. That's how Nate, an excitable last-year student, becomes his self-proclaimed personal tutor and starts writing down essays for him, as a distraction from his own quarter-life crisis. But Luke's writing ambitions are not just academic. He dreams of penning a novel, although that's never been a real possibility. Until now. Will the two boys manage to write a successful love story together? Find out in this coming-of-age novel dedicated to all late bloomers.
The Rosie Project by ISBN: 9781476729084Publication Date: 2013-10-01An international sensation, this hilarious, feel-good novel is narrated by an oddly charming and socially challenged genetics professor on an unusual quest: to find out if he is capable of true love. Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who's decided it's time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don't find love, it finds you.
Call Me Ahab by ISBN: 9780803225336Publication Date: 2009-09-01Imagine a Hollywood encounter between Helen Keller and Frida Kahlo, “two female icons of disability.” Or the story of “Moby Dick, or, The Leg,” told from Ahab’s perspective. What if Vincent Van Gogh resided in a twentieth-century New York hotel, surviving on food stamps and direct communications with God? Or if the dwarf pictured in a seventeenth-century painting by Velazquez should tell her story? And, finally, imagine the encounter between David and Goliath from the Philistine’s point of view. nbsp; These are the characters who people history and myth as counterpoints to the “normal.” And they are also the characters who populate Anne Finger’s remarkable short stories. Affecting but never sentimental, ironic but never cynical, these wonderfully rich and comic tales reimagine life beyond the margins of “normality.”
The Book of X by ISBN: 1937512819Publication Date: 2019-07-16A surreal exploration of one woman's life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad men. The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday—school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents—with the surreal—rivers of thighs, men for sale, and fields of throats—Cassie's realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.
Poetry
The Girl Aquarium by ISBN: 9781780374499Publication Date: 2019-04-25Jen Campbell's first collection The Girl Aquarium explores the realm of rotten fairy tales, the possession of body and the definition of beauty. Weaving between whispered science and circus, she turns a cracked mirror on society and asks who gets to control the twisted tales hiding in the wings.
Beauty Is a Verb by ISBN: 9781935955054Publication Date: 2011-10-11Beauty is a Verb is the first of its kind: a high-quality anthology of poetry by American poets with physical disabilities. Poems and essays alike consider how poetry, coupled with the experience of disability, speaks to the poetics of each poet included. The collection explores first the precursors whose poems had a complex (and sometimes absent) relationship with disability, such as Vassar Miller, Larry Eigner, and Josephine Miles. It continues with poets who have generated the Crip Poetics Movement, such as Petra Kuppers, Kenny Fries, and Jim Ferris. Finally, the collection explores the work of poets who don't necessarily subscribe to the identity of "crip-poetics" and have never before been published in this exact context. These poets include Bernadette Mayer, Rusty Morrison, Cynthia Hogue, and C.S. Giscombe. The book crosses poetry movements--from narrative to language poetry--and speaks to and about a number of disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, multiple sclerosis, and aphasia due to stroke, among others.
Deaf American Poetry by ISBN: 9781563684135Publication Date: 2009-03-15"The Deaf poet is no oxymoron," declares editor John Lee Clark in his introduction to Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology. The 95 poems by 35 Deaf American poets in this volume more than confirm his point. From James Nack's early metered narrative poem "The Minstrel Boy" to the free association of Kristi Merriweather's contemporary "It Was His Movin' Hands Be Tellin' Me," these Deaf poets display mastery of all forms prevalent during the past two centuries. Beyond that, E. Lynn Jacobowitz's "In Memoriam: Stephen Michael Ryan" exemplifies a form unique to Deaf American poets, the transliteration of verse originally created in American Sign Language.
The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven by ISBN: 9781643621593Publication Date: 2022-11-01The typographical experiments of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven make visible the hidden experience of chronic pain and illness. During uninsured and ineffectual medicalization, Teare turns to the work of writer and abstract artist Agnes Martin, which offers both counsel and consolation when diagnosis fails. Harnessing the power of the grid intrinsic in the typeset page, the resulting poems balance language and silence in visual fields that give shape to somatic knowledge. Rejecting bad care and the false promise of cure, this book reimagines what healing looks like.
Places I've Taken My Body by ISBN: 9780892555130Publication Date: 2020-06-02In seventeen intimate essays, poet Molly McCully Brown explores living within and beyond the limits of a body--in her case, one shaped since birth by cerebral palsy, a permanent and often painful movement disorder. In spite of--indeed, in response to--physical constraints, Brown leads a peripatetic life: the essays comprise a vivid travelogue set throughout the United States and Europe, ranging from the rural American South of her childhood to the cobblestoned streets of Bologna, Italy. Moving between these locales and others, Brown constellates the subjects that define her inside and out: a disabled and conspicuous body, a religious conversion, a missing twin, a life in poetry. As she does, she depicts vividly for us not only her own life but a striking array of sites and topics, among them Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the world's oldest anatomical theater, the American Eugenics movement, and Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Throughout, Brown offers us the gift of her exquisite sentences, woven together in consideration, always, of what it means to be human--flawed, potent, feeling.
Gut Botany by ISBN: 9780814347645Publication Date: 2020-03-03"Gut Botany charts my body / language living on indigenous land as a white settler and traveler," Petra Kuppers writes in the notes of her new poetry collection. Using a perfect cocktail of surrealist and situationist techniques, Kuppers submits to the work and to the land, moving through ancient fish, wounded bodies, and the space around her. The book invites the reader to navigate their own body through the peaks and pitfalls of pain, survival, sensual joy, and healing. Gut Botany is divided into eight sections. In "Court Theatre," Kuppers revisits courtroom performances following her sexual assault while drawing from the works of Perel and Bhanu Kapil. "Asylum" grew out of the Asylum Project performance experiments that Kuppers co-directed with dancer/poet Stephanie Heit. "Moon Botany" began as a collaboration with visual artist Sharon Siskin and offers a wheelchair user's view of insects, mushrooms, and horsetail ferns. Amber DiPetra notes that "this book is beautiful when it needs to be beautiful and it is edgy when it needs to be edgy and that is the sign of writing that matters." Readers looking for experimental poetry that takes up space in their brains and bodies will dive deep and fast into this queer ecosomatic investigation.
The Kissing of Kissing by ISBN: 9781571315496Publication Date: 2022-03-08In this remarkable debut, which marks the beginning of Multiverse--a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent--Hannah Emerson's poems keep, dream, bring, please, grownd, sing, kiss, and listen. They move with and within the beautiful nothing ("of buzzing light") from which, as she elaborates, everything jumps. In language that is both bracingly new and embracingly intimate, Emerson invites us to "dive down to the beautiful muck that helps you get that the world was made from the garbage at the bottom of the universe that was boiling over with joy that wanted to become you you you yes yes yes." These poems are encounters--animal, vegetal, elemental--that form the markings of an irresistible future. And The Kissing of Kissing makes joyously clear how this future, which can sometimes seem light-years away, is actually as close, as near, as each immersive now. It finds breath in the woods and the words and the worlds we share, together "becoming burst becoming / the waking dream." With this book, Emerson, a nonspeaking autistic poet, generously invites you, the reader, to meet yourself anew, again, "to bring your beautiful nothing" into the light.
Anodyne by ISBN: 9781947793804Publication Date: 2020-08-18The poems that make up Anodyne consider the small moments that enrapture us alongside the daily threats of cataclysm. Formally dynamic and searingly personal, Anodyne asks us to recognize the echoes of history that litter the landscape of our bodies as we navigate a complex terrain of survival and longing. With an intimate and multivocal dexterity, these poems acknowledge the simultaneous existence of joy and devastation, knowledge and ignorance, grief and love, endurance and failure--all of the contrast and serendipity that comes with the experience of being human. If the body is a world, or a metaphor for the world, for what disappears and what remains, for what we feel and what we cover up, then how do we balance fate and choice, pleasure and pain? Through a combination of formal lyrics, delicate experiments, sharp rants, musical litany, and moments of wit that uplift and unsettle, Queen's poems show us the terrible consequences and stunning miracles of how we choose to live.
Not Invisible by ISBN: 9781093172867Publication Date: 2019-04-08Tiffany Mohar set out to create a book of poetry and stories that brings awareness surrounding life with chronic illness. Hoping that those who suffer from chronic illness will realize they are not alone and feel a sense of validation. It also acts as a tool to educate those around us what life with chronic illness is like. While Tiffany's particular experiences stem from Lupus, this acts as an umbrella cascading over many chronic illnesses. The book is divided into categories such as: Flares, Isolation, Diagnosis, Fatigue, The Mind, and Domino effects.
Hinge by ISBN: 9780809337972Publication Date: 2020-10-30Readers enter "a stunted world," where landmarks-a river, a house, a woman's own body-have become unrecognizable in a place as distorted and dangerous as any of the old tales poet Molly Spencer remasters in this elegant, mournful collection. In myth and memory, through familiar stories reimagined, she constructs poetry for anyone who has ever stumbled, unwillingly, into a wilderness. In these alluring poems, myth becomes part of the arsenal used to confront the flaws and failures of our fallible bodies. Shadowing the trajectory of an elegy, this poetry collection of lament, remembrance, and solace wrestles with how we come to terms with suffering while still finding joy, meaning, and beauty. Spencer alternates between the clinical and the domestic, disorientation and reorientation, awe and awareness. With the onset of a painful chronic illness, the body and mental geography turn hostile and alien. In loss and grief, in physical and psychological landscapes, Spencer searches the relationship between a woman's body and her house-places where she is both master and captive-and hunts for the meaning of suffering. Finally, with begrudging acceptance, we have a hypothesis for all seasons: there is suffering, there is mercy; they are not separate but are for and of one another.
Essays
Why I Burned My Book by ISBN: 1592130232Publication Date: 2003-04-01This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Americans with disabilities.Whether writing about the social critic Randolph Bourne, contemporary political activists, or media representations of people with disabilities, Longmore demonstrates that the search for heroes is a key part of the continuing struggle of disabled people to gain a voice and to shape their destinies. His essays on bioethics and public policy examine the conflict of agendas between disability rights activists and non-disabled policy makers, healthcare professionals, euthanasia advocates, and corporate medical bureaucracies. The title essay, which concludes the book, demonstrates the necessity of activism for any disabled person who wants access to the American dream.
QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology by ISBN: 9781941960028Publication Date: 2015-11-12Featuring fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics by 48 writers from around the world, QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology proves that intersectionality isn't just a buzzword. It's a penetrating and unforgettable look into the hearts and souls of those defiant enough to explore their own vulnerabilities and demonstrate their own strengths. Here is a gathering of people with the transformative-and political-power of love that transcends gender and ability. Ignorance is the biggest barrier.
The Autistic Trans Guide to Life by ISBN: 9781787753914Publication Date: 2021-03-18This essential survival guide gives autistic trans and/or non-binary adults all the tools and strategies they need to live as their very best self. Blending personal accounts with evidence-based insights and up-to-date information, and written from a perspective of empowerment and self-acceptance, the book promotes pride, strength and authenticity, covering topics including self-advocacy, mental health and camouflaging and masking as well as key moments in life such as coming out or transitioning socially and/or physically. Written by two leading autistic trans activists, this book honestly charts what life is like as an autistic trans person and is vital, life-affirming reading.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by ISBN: 9780374533403Publication Date: 2012-04-24The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy.
Memoirs
The Secret Life of a Black Aspie by ISBN: 9781602233225Publication Date: 2017-02-15Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, is his story. For the first four years of his life, Prahlad didn't speak. But his silence didn't stop him from communicating--or communing--with the strange, numinous world he found around him. Ordinary household objects came to life; the spirits of long-dead slave children were his best friends. In his magical interior world, sensory experiences blurred, time disappeared, and memory was fluid. Ever so slowly, he emerged, learning to talk and evolving into an artist and educator. His journey takes readers across the United States during one of its most turbulent moments, and Prahlad experiences it all, from the heights of the Civil Rights Movement to West Coast hippie enclaves to a college town that continues to struggle with racism and its border state legacy. Rooted in black folklore and cultural ambience, and offering new perspectives on autism and more, The Secret Life of a Black Aspie will inspire and delight readers and deepen our understanding of the marginal spaces of human existence.
The Center Cannot Hold by ISBN: 9781401301385Publication Date: 2007-08-14Elyn R. Saks is an esteemed professor, lawyer, and psychiatrist and is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, Psychiatry, and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California Law School, yet she has suffered from schizophrenia for most of her life, and still has ongoing major episodes of the illness. The Center Cannot Hold is the eloquent, moving story of Elyn's life, from the first time that she heard voices speaking to her as a young teenager, to attempted suicides in college, through learning to live on her own as an adult in an often terrifying world. Saks discusses frankly the paranoia, the inability to tell imaginary fears from real ones, the voices in her head telling her to kill herself (and to harm others), as well as the incredibly difficult obstacles she overcame to become a highly respected professional. This beautifully written memoir is destined to become a classic in its genre.
A Face for Picasso: Coming of Age With Crouzon Syndrome by ISBN: 9780374314071Publication Date: 2021-11-02There's a mathematical equation to prove it. At only eight months old, identical twin sisters Ariel and Zan were diagnosed with Crouzon syndrome—a rare condition where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. They were the first twins known to survive it. Growing up, Ariel and her sister endured numerous appearance-altering procedures. Surgeons would break the bones in their heads and faces to make room for their growing organs. While the physical aspect of their condition was painful, it was nothing compared to the emotional toll of navigating life with a facial disfigurement. Ariel explores beauty and identity in her young-adult memoir about resilience, sisterhood, and the strength it takes to put your life, and yourself, back together time and time again.
Year of the Tiger by ISBN: 9780593315392Publication Date: 2022-09-06In Chinese culture, the tiger is deeply revered for its confidence, passion, ambition, and ferocity. That same fighting spirit resides in Alice Wong. Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer. From her love of food and pop culture to her unwavering commitment to dismantling systemic ableism, Alice shares her thoughts on creativity, access, power, care, the pandemic, mortality, and the future. As a self-described disabled oracle, Alice traces her origins, tells her story, and creates a space for disabled people to be in conversation with one another and the world. Filled with incisive wit, joy, and rage, Wong's Year of the Tiger will galvanize readers with big cat energy.
Sitting Pretty by ISBN: 9780062936813Publication Date: 2020-08-25A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most. Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.
Caput Nili: How I Won the War and Lost My Taste for Oranges by ISBN: 9780982696859Publication Date: 2011-05-16Caput Nili: How I Won the War and Lost My Taste for Oranges recounts the true story of what happened when award-winning poet Lisa Gill threatened to hold up the MRI clinic in 2003. Using poetry, prose, and art, this memoir takes a powerful look at both personal and institutionalized violence and explores how a hard-won medical diagnosis left the author searching to understand the history of violence in her life and the consequences for her health. Anyone who has ever been ignored, discounted, invalidated, categorized into silence will love this book, and that's just part of the audience. Gill's quest through the Wonderland of our healthcare system is by turns harrowing and hilarious, a must-read for anyone interested in resilience and the capacity of the human spirit to survive.
Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence by ISBN: 0786860782Publication Date: 1995-07-01As a correspondent for ABC's Day One, Hockenberry has traveled SCUD-menaced streets in Jerusalem, the mountains of war-torn Iraq, and New York's Great White Way--in a wheelchair. Addressing his subjects as a thought-provoking journalist first, an insightful iconoclast second, and a man who happens to be physically challenged last, he provides readers with an intriguing account of his many exploits.
Don't Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back by ISBN: 9781439909379Publication Date: 2013-01-18For psychotherapist, painter, feminist, filmmaker, writer, and disability activist Harilyn Rousso, hearing well-intentioned people tell her, "You're so inspirational!" is patronizing, not complimentary. In her empowering and at times confrontational memoir, Don't Call Me Inspirational, Rousso, who has cerebral palsy, describes overcoming the prejudice against disability--not overcoming disability. She addresses the often absurd and ignorant attitudes of strangers, friends, and family. Rousso also examines her own prejudice toward her disabled body, and portrays the healing effects of intimacy and creativity, as well as her involvement with the disability rights community. She intimately reveals herself with honesty and humor and measures her personal growth as she goes from "passing" to embracing and claiming her disability as a source of pride, positive identity, and rebellion. A collage of images about her life, rather than a formal portrait, Don't Call Me Inspirational celebrates Rousso's wise, witty, productive, outrageous life, disability and all.
In the Blink of an Eye by ISBN: 1616636815Publication Date: 2010-08-03In the Blink of an Eye, Mary Jane Gonzales went from being functional to homebound, independent to dependent. The scariest part was neither she nor the doctors knew why. Join Mary Jane as she recounts the sequence of injuries, the bizarre symptoms, the physical and emotional pain that took over her life, and the eventual diagnosis of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome (RSDS). Discover how Mary Jane coped with the sudden changes in her life and how her friends and family stepped in to help her.
Feature Films
Changer: A Hand Telling by Publication Date: 2021"Changer: A Handtelling" is an innovative Deaf-centric and Native-centric filmed performance with Deaf Native storytellers performing the Coast Salish myth of Changer in Native and artistic sign language, following mythic characters into a future transformed by tribes exercising sovereign treaty rights. Changer: A Hand Telling was filmed on Lower Elwha S’Klallam Tribe land.Temple Grandin by
Publication Date: 2010A biopic of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who has become one of the top scientists in the humane livestock handling industry.Margarita With A Straw by
Publication Date: 2016An honest, sensitive portrait of disability and the sexual awakening of an adventurous young woman, MARGARITA WITH A STRAW has garnered praise around the world, and caused social waves in India upon release for its compassionate portrayal of taboo subjects rarely seen on screen. Featuring a remarkable and critically acclaimed lead performance from international actress / Bollywood star Kalki Koechlin. Indian writer/director Shonali Bose (director of the internationally renowned film AMU) beautifully portrays the story of a luminous Indian teenager with cerebral palsy who leaves her homeland to study in New York, falls in love with a young blind woman, and begins a remarkable journey to self-discovery and independence. Bose was inspired to write this humane story by her cousin's experience with cerebral palsy.A Quiet Place by
Publication Date: 2018If they hear you, they hunt you. A family must live in silence to avoid mysterious creatures that hunt by sound. Knowing that even the slightest whisper or footstep can bring death, Evelyn and Lee are determined to find a way to protect their children while desperately searching for a way to fight back.
The Peanut Butter Falcon by Publication Date: 2019An adventure story set in the world of a modern Mark Twain that begins when Zak (22), a young man with Down syndrome runs away from a nursing home where he lives to chase his dream of becoming a professional wrestler and attending the wrestling school of The Salt Water Redneck. Through circumstances beyond their control, Tyler (32), a small-time outlaw on the run becomes Zak's unlikely coach and ally.
The Theory of Everything by Publication Date: 2015The story of renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who falls deeply in love with fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde. Once a healthy, active young man, Hawking received an earth-shattering diagnosis at 21 years of age. With Jane fighting tirelessly by his side, Stephen embarks on his most ambitious scientific work, studying the very thing he now has precious little of: time. Together, they defy impossible odds, breaking new ground in medicine and science.Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot by
Publication Date: 2018On the rocky path to sobriety after a life-changing accident, John Callahan discovers the healing power of art, willing his injured hands into drawing hilarious, often controversial cartoons, which bring him a new lease on life.Mogul Mowgli by
Publication Date: 2020On the brink of his first international tour, Zed, a British Pakistani rapper, decides to fly home to the UK to visit the family he has not seen in two years. In the midst of trying to reconnect with his parents, he is suddenly struck down by an autoimmune disease. As his condition worsens and his big breakthrough moment is in danger of vanishing into thin air, Zed descends into a physical and emotional crisis, amplified by vivid hallucinations.
Ray by Publication Date: 2005The story of one of America's true musical geniuses, Ray Charles, from his humble beginnings in the South through his meteoric rise to the top of American musical charts.CODA by
Publication Date: 2021As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) Ruby is the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family's fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her passion at Berklee College of Music and her fear of abandoning her parents.
Documentaries
Deaf Jam by Publication Date: 2011In Deaf Jam, Aneta Brodski seizes the day. She is a Deaf teen introduced to American Sign Language (ASL) poetry, who then boldly enters the spoken word slam scene. In a wondrous twist, Aneta, an Israeli immigrant living in the Queens section of New York City, eventually meets Tahani, a hearing Palestinian slam poet. The two young women embark on a hearing/deaf collaboration, a performance duet that is a metaphor for the complex realities they share - generating a new form of slam poetry that speaks to both the hearing and the Deaf.Vision Portraits by
Publication Date: 2019This documentary follows the creative process of blind and visually impaired artists, including a photographer, dancer, writer, and the film’s director, Rodney Evans. Exploring varying degrees of vision loss, Vision Portraits utilizes archival footage and interviews to create an inspiring meditation on creativity.
My Name is Gennet by Publication Date: 2018The young Gennet Corcuera begins a new stage of her life in which for the first time she lives alone and independent, working as a teacher. Preparing an upcoming conference, he tries to gather and give written form to his special memories: the fleeting visions of his native Ethiopia during the terrible famine of 1984 (where he caught the attention and care of Carmen Corcuera, mother-in-law of the Spanish ambassador in Addis Ababa , who, to get his adoption, spent two years working in the reception center where Gennet was abandoned); her difficult process of integration and learning in a world where there was no place for people like her; memories fading away in Carmen's memory; and the great achievement of becoming the first European Deafblind person to get a university degree.
Deej by Publication Date: 2017Abandoned by his birth parents and presumed incompetent, DJ Savarese (“Deej”) found not only a loving family but also a life in words, which he types on a text-to-voice synthesizer. As he makes his way through high school and dreams of college, he confronts the terrors of his past, society's obstacles to inclusion, and the sometimes paralyzing beauty of his own senses. In his advocacy on behalf of other nonspeaking autistics, he embraces filmmaking and poetry, and discovers what having a voice can truly mean.Crip Camp by
Publication Date: 2020On the heels of Woodstock, a group of teen campers are inspired to join the fight for disability civil rights. This spirited look at grassroots activism is executive produced by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama.
Autism In Love by Publication Date: 2016Finding love can be hard enough for anyone, but for those with an autism spectrum disorder, the challenges may seem overwhelming. The disorder can jeopardize the core characteristics of a successful relationship — communication and social interaction. Filmed in a highly personal style, Matt Fuller’s Autism in Love offers a warm and stereotype-shattering look at four people as they pursue and manage romantic relationships.
People Say I'm Crazy by Publication Date: 2004John Cadigan was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1993. He talks about what it's like living with mental illness. He shows us how his art, his friends and family help him have a meaningful life.Imber's Left Hand by
Publication Date: 2018This beautiful documentary tells the inspiring story of how love and art can transform tragedy into the brightest affirmation of life.. Director Richard Kane follows Jon Imber as he remains determined to continue his work as an artist despite the debilitating effects of ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). Thanks to the support of his partner, Jill Hoy, Imber learns to paint with his left hand, and then with both of his hands as his condition worsens. During a prolific four-month span, his heroic resolve leads to the creation of more than 100 portraits, providing a celebration of life and community amidst adversity.The Greatest Bond by
Publication Date: 2020An inspirational and heartwarming one-hour documentary, highlighting the journey of disabled veterans whose lives are transformed through the unconditional love of service dogs that have been expertly trained by female prison inmates.Life, Animated by
Publication Date: 2016At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind suddenly stopped speaking and disappeared into autism. Almost four years passed and the only thing that seemed to engage Owen were Disney films. Then one day his father donned one of his son's puppets--Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin--and asked 'What's it like to be you?' Suddenly, Owen responded to his father using dialogue from the movie ... Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world through Disney animated films. By evocatively interweaving classic Disney sequences with vérité scene's from Owen's life, the film explores how identification and empathy with characters like Simba, Jafar and Ariel create a context for him to understand his feelings and interpret reality.
Short Films
Kū Kanaka/Stand Tall by Publication Date: 2017Kū Kanaka/Stand Tall examines recovery from trauma for a Native Hawaiian man and his people. When 15 year old Kanalu Young takes a dive into shallow water he becomes quadriplegic. Angry and defiant through months of rehabilitation, he begins to change when he learns Hawaiian language and discovers an untold story of Hawaiian history.
Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty by Publication Date: 2013Sins Invalid witnesses a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists. Since 2006, its performances have explored themes of sexuality, beauty, and the disabled body, impacting thousands through live performance. Sins Invalid is an entryway into the absurdly taboo topic of sexuality and disability, manifesting a new paradigm of disability justice.
Books
The Problem Body by ISBN: 9780814211243Publication Date: 2010-04-27In The Problem Body, editors Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic bring together the work of eleven of the best disability scholars from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and South Korea to explore a new approach to the study of film by concentrating on cinematic representations of what they term "the problem body." The book is a much-needed exploration of the projection of disability on film combined with a much-needed rethinking of hierarchies of difference. The editors turned to the existing corpus of disability theory with its impressive insights about the social and cultural mediation of disabled bodies. They then sought, from scholars at every stage of their careers, new ideas about how disabled bodies coexist with a range of other bodies (gendered, queered, racialized, classed, etc.). To call into question why certain bodies invite the label "problem" more frequently than other bodies, the contributors draw on scholarship from feminist, race, queer, cultural studies, disability, and film studies arenas. In Chivers and Markotic's introduction, they draw on disability theory and a range of cinematic examples to explain the term "problem body" in relation to its projection. In explorations of film noir, illness narratives, classical Hollywood film, and French film, the essays reveal the "problem body" as a multiplication of lived circumstances constructed both physically and socially.
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space by ISBN: 1552453952Publication Date: 2020-03-03Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty? If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behavior and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.
The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, Second Edition by ISBN: 9780226004976Publication Date: 2013-08-28Since it was first published in 1995, The Wounded Storyteller has occupied a unique place in the body of work on illness. Both the collective portrait of a so-called "remission society" of those who suffer from some type of illness or disability and a cogent analysis of their stories within a larger framework of narrative theory, Arthur W. Frank's book has reached a large and diverse readership including the ill, medical professionals, and scholars of literary theory. Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known--Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer--to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilities. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic. In this new edition Frank adds a preface describing the personal and cultural times when the first edition was written. His new afterword extends the book's argument significantly, writing about storytelling and experience, other modes of illness narration, and a version of hope that is both realistic and aspirational. Reflecting on both his own life during the creation of the first edition and the conclusions of the book itself, Frank reminds us of the power of storytelling as way to understanding our own suffering.
Reading Sounds: Closed-Captioned Media and Popular Culture by ISBN: 9780226312644Publication Date: 2015-12-23Imagine a common movie scene: a hero confronts a villain. Captioning such a moment would at first glance seem as basic as transcribing the dialogue. But consider the choices involved: How do you convey the sarcasm in a comeback? Do you include a henchman's muttering in the background? Does the villain emit a scream, a grunt, or a howl as he goes down? And how do you note a gunshot without spoiling the scene? These are the choices closed captioners face every day. Captioners must decide whether and how to describe background noises, accents, laughter, musical cues, and even silences. When captioners describe a sound--or choose to ignore it--they are applying their own subjective interpretations to otherwise objective noises, creating meaning that does not necessarily exist in the soundtrack or the script. Reading Sounds looks at closed-captioning as a potent source of meaning in rhetorical analysis. Through nine engrossing chapters, Sean Zdenek demonstrates how the choices captioners make affect the way deaf and hard of hearing viewers experience media. He draws on hundreds of real-life examples, as well as interviews with both professional captioners and regular viewers of closed captioning. Zdenek's analysis is an engrossing look at how we make the audible visible, one that proves that better standards for closed captioning create a better entertainment experience for all viewers.
Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability by ISBN: 9780271084749Publication Date: 2019-11-27Superhero comics reckon with issues of corporeal control. And while they commonly deal in characters of exceptional or superhuman ability, they have also shown an increasing attention and sensitivity to diverse forms of disability, both physical and cognitive. The essays in this collection reveal how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and helps to imagine different ways of being in the world. Working from the premise that the theoretical mode of the uncanny, with its interest in what is simultaneously known and unknown, ordinary and extraordinary, opens new ways to think about categories and markers of identity, Uncanny Bodies explores how continuums of ability in superhero comics can reflect, resist, or reevaluate broader cultural conceptions about disability.
Film, Comedy, and Disability by ISBN: 9781472455451Publication Date: 2018-08-30Comedy and humour have frequently played a key role in disabled people¿s lives, for better or for worse. Comedy has also played a crucial part in constructing cultural representations of disability and impairments, contributing to the formation and maintenance of cultural attitudes towards disabled people, and potentially shaping disabled people¿s images of themselves. As a complex and often polysemic form of communication, there is a need for greater understanding of the way we make meanings from comedy. This is the first book which explores the specific role of comedic film genres in representations of disability and impairment. Wilde argues that there is a need to explore different ways to synthesise Critical/Disability Studies with Film Studies approaches, and that a better understanding of genre conventions is necessary if we are to understand the conditions of possibility for new representational forms and challenges to ableism. After a discussion of the possibilities of a ¿fusion¿ between Disability Studies and Film Studies, and a consideration of the relationships of comedy to disability, Wilde undertakes analysis of contemporary films from the romantic comedy, satire, and gross-out genres. Analysis is focused upon the place of disabled and non-disabled people in particular films, considering visual, audio, and narrative dimensions of representation and the ways they might shape the expectations of film audiences. This book is of particular value to those in Film and Media Studies, and Critical/Disability Studies, especially for those who are investigating more inclusive practices in cultural representation.
The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media by ISBN: 9781315716008Publication Date: 2019-10-31An authoritative and indispensable guide to disability and media, this thoughtfully curated collection features varied and provocative contributions from distinguished scholars globally, alongside next-generation research leaders. Disability and media has emerged as a dynamic and exciting area of contemporary culture and social life. Media—specially digital technology—plays a vital role in disability transformations, with widespread implications for global societies and how we understand communications. This book addresses this development, from representation and audience through technologies, innovations and challenges of the field. Through the varied and global perspectives of leading researchers, writers, and practitioners, including many authors with lived experience of disability, it covers a wide range of traditional, emergent and future media forms and formats. International in scope and orientation, The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media offers students and scholars alike a comprehensive survey of the intersections between disability studies and media studies. This book is available as an accessible eBook.
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies by ISBN: 9780199331444Publication Date: 2015-11-12The Oxford Handbook of Disability Studies represents a comprehensive state of current research for the field of Disability Studies and Music. The forty-two chapters in the book span a wide chronological and geographical range, from the biblical, the medieval, and the Elizabethan, through thecanonical classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to modernist styles and contemporary musical theater and popular genres, with stops along the way in post-Civil War America, Ghana and the South Pacific, and many other interesting times and places.Disability is a broad, heterogeneous, and porous identity, and that diversity is reflected in the variety of bodily conditions under discussion here, including autism and intellectual disability, deafness, blindness, mobility impairment often coupled with bodily difference, and cognitive andintellectual impairments. Amid this diversity of time, place, style, medium, and topic, the chapters share two core commitments. First, they are united in their theoretical and methodological connection to Disability Studies, especially its central idea that disability is a social and culturalconstruction. Disability both shapes and is shaped by culture, including musical culture. Second, these essays individually and collectively make the case that disability is not something at the periphery of culture and music, but something central to our art and to our humanity.
Journal Articles
- Burns, S. (2016). Diversity and journalism pedagogy: Exploring news media representation of disability. Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, 71(2), 220-230–230. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1177/1077695815598436
- Chelsea Jones, Nadine Changfoot, & Kirsty Johnston. (2021). Representing Disability, D/deaf, and Mad Artists and Art in Journalism: Identifying Ableist Fault Lines and Promising Crip Practices of Representation. Studies in Social Justice, 15(2). https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.26522/ssj.v15i2.2433
- da Silva, R. L. (2020). Designing a Digital Roleplaying Game to Foster Awareness of Hidden Disabilities. International Journal of Designs for Learning, 11(2), 55–63.
- Ellcessor, E., & Kirkpatrick, B. (2019). Studying Disability for a Better Cinema and Media Studies. JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 58(4), 139.
- Hayes, M. T., & Black, R. S. (2003). Troubling Signs: Disability, Hollywood Movies and the Construction of a Discourse of Pity. Disability Studies Quarterly, 23(2). https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.18061/dsq.v23i2.419
- Tsiokou, K. (2017). Body politics and disability: negotiating subjectivity and embodiment in disability poetry. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 11(2), 205. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.3828/jlcds.2017.15
Power Not Pity by A podcast for disabled people of color everywhere. Welcome to POWER NOT PITY, a podcast that centers and celebrates the lived experiences of disabled people of color. For season 2, the show will spend time exploring the worlds of people in our community who dare to interrogate the dominant narrative of what survival feels like for a disabled person of color during these trying times. They all demonstrate what it means to thrive fully and authentically. Let's dismantle ableism by listening to each other's stories.
Disability After Dark by This is a podcast that looks at disability stories. it's like sitting down with a really close friend to have real conversations about disability, sexuality and everything else about the disability experience that we don't talk about; the things about being disabled we keep in the dark. The show is hosted by Disability Awareness Consultant Andrew Gurza.
Sickboy by Sickboy is determined to break down the stigma associated with illness and disease. Join Jeremie, Brian, and Taylor as they tackle health taboos with people who have experienced them firsthand. Taking the lead from Jeremie's lifelong battle with Cystic Fibrosis, the three best friends help us understand that sometimes the best way to deal with illness, disease, and life is simply to laugh.
The Accessible Stall by The Accessible Stall is a disability podcast hosted by Kyle Khachadurian and Emily Ladau that keeps it real about issues within the disability community. Because we each have different disabilities and mobility levels, we approach everything we talk about with two unique viewpoints, offering our listeners a fresh insight into how differences in disability can color your experiences and perspectives. And we never shy away from offering our honest opinion. Even if they go against the grain of the disability community at large, we always speak our minds.
Sensory Matters by Sensory Matters is a weekly podcast featuring expert interviews from the world of Sensory Seeking, Stimming & Autism. Supporting the World‘s Number 1 community of Sensory Seekers at sensooli.com this show is all about helping sensory seekers, avoiders carers and professionals with useful, interesting and inspiring stories.
Multimedia
Flight Paths by Publication Date: 2020Part film, part video game, part history lesson, this whimsical animated choose-your-own adventure takes us into the world of ‘the Goze’, blind female travelling performers of medieval Japan. Produced by Extant, the UK’s leading company of visually impaired artists, Flight Path shares how access can be both innovative and fully integrated. Join this meditative reflection on travel, blindness and migration.
Visual Art
Victoria Walton b. 1994 (she/her) is an emerging visual artist based in Baltimore. She is a 2023 Ceramics MFA Candidate at NYSCC at Alfred University and has a BFA with a focus in ceramics from Towson University. Victoria explores the wonder and complexity of Black identity, creating life-size figurative works that center the narratives of women and gender-expansive people. Walton draws from her own life: reflecting on the intersection of her identities, ongoing battle with her health, and background of medical and emotional trauma. She further investigates the impact that historic societal factors and personal experiences have on the individual and the Black community. Her work illustrates the conditions that reveal how our environment builds and breaks us down simultaneously, making multi-layered connections between clay and the body. In her practice, she creates safety for emotional untethering, community, and contemplation.
Yayoi Kusama dazzles audiences worldwide with her immersive “Infinity Mirror Rooms” and an aesthetic that embraces light, polka dots, and pumpkins. The avant-garde artist first rose to prominence in 1960s New York, where she staged provocative Happenings and exhibited hallucinatory paintings of loops and dots that she called “Infinity Nets.” Kusama also influenced Andy Warhol and augured the rise of feminist and Pop art. She has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. In 1993, Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale. Today, her work regularly sells for seven figures on the secondary market. Throughout her disparate practice, Kusama has continued to explore her own obsessive-compulsive disorder, sexuality, freedom, and perception. In 1977, Kusama voluntarily checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, where she continues to live today.
Stephen Wiltshire is an artist who draws detailed cityscapes. He has a particular talent for drawing lifelike, accurate impressions of cities, skylines and street scenes after having only observed them briefly. He was awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the art world in 2006. His drawings are popular all over the world, and are held in a number of important art collections and museums.
Molly uses personal experiences to create artwork that both disturbs and informs her audience, exposing the delicate moments of her life. Her work is influenced by the human body, specifically the brain, its functions, and dysfunction. Creating layered, sculptural forms offers a means of healing through vulnerability; a struggle between the publicly exposed and the tormented and invisible. Otremba, born and raised in rural Minnesota, studied Studio Art and Art History at the University of Minnesota, Morris. There she developed a passion for ceramics and sculpture. She is currently a Post Baccalaureate Ceramic Student at Indiana University Southeast.
Hispanic + Latin(x/e) Heritage Month
In celebration of National Hispanic American Heritage Month, we have put together a feature commemorating Hispanic and Latine/Latinx artists and creators from across generations.
We recognize that not everyone being celebrated throughout this month align with using labels such as Hispanic or Latin(e/x) that we will be using for the title of this feature. Several terms are more accepted due to different movements in gender equity and nonbinary visibility as well as a collective push back on terms rooted in colonialism. We invite any and all people to celebrate this month and use this feature to explore more about the wide and diverse range of art, film, literature, and general culture of Hispanic and Latin(e/x) people.
For more on the topic of terms and labels, the New York Public Librarian's curator of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies Paloma Celis Carbajal shares more in their article "From Hispanic to Latine: Hispanic Heritage Month and the Terms That Bind Us."
For more on the topic, and this month-long celebration, consult some of the following resources:
- "When it Comes to Latinidad, Who Is Included and Who Isn’t?" (Remezcla)
- "The Problem With Latinidad" (The Nation)
- "'Latinidad' as Erasure: Words from a Critical Discussion on the Single Narrative of Latinidad" (up//root)
- "Yes, We're Calling It Hispanic Heritage Month And We Know It Makes Some Of You Cringe" (NPR)
About the Playlist
To provide an initial orientation to this feature and the contributions of Latinx artists, we have compiled a chronological survey of songs by musicians from these communities across time and genre. To learn more about Hispanic and Latinx musical worlds, check out some of the resources we used to create this playlist:
- "Latin artists once had to cross over to achieve global success. Now listeners are crossing over to them" (CNN)
- "1999's 'Latin Explosion' chased crossover hits. Today, Latino artists don't need them" (NPR It's Been a Minute podcast)
- "12 Latinx Musicians To Have On Your Radar" (Bustle)
- "15 Queer and Trans Latinx Musicians You Should Know" (Remezcla)
- "Meet the Latin Artists and Bookers Bridging Scenes Across the Pacific Northwest" (Bandcamp Daily)
- "How Latin American Electronic Artists Are Using Field Recordings to Reconnect With Nature" (Pitchfork)
- "The Latinx queer femme collectives shaping the future of Miami nightlife" (i-D Vice)
Next Steps
If you would like to engage more with this month-long celebration, the Libraries have curated a number of interrelated resources and features to continue and deepen the conversation. You'll find these, below:
- Latine/Latin American Artist Showcase (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Contemporary Latin American Art (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Hispanic History & Heritage Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Youth Materials on Latine Identity (Education Library)
- Youth Materials on Afro-Latine Identity (Education Library)
- Research Resources/Databases on Latinx Life & Culture (Race, Migration, & Indigeneity)
Fiction
Dominicana by ISBN: 9781250205933Publication Date: 2019-09-03Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. It doesn't matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year's Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by Cesar, Juan's free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay. As the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan returns to protect his family's assets, leaving Cesar to take care of Ana. Suddenly, Ana is free to take English lessons at a local church, lie on the beach at Coney Island, see a movie at Radio City Music Hall, go dancing with Cesar, and imagine the possibility of a different kind of life in America. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family. In bright, musical prose that reflects the energy of New York City, Angie Cruz's Dominicana is a vital portrait of the immigrant experience and the timeless coming-of-age story of a young woman finding her voice in the world.
Valleyesque by ISBN: 9780374604134Publication Date: 2022-05-03No one captures the border--its history and imagination, its danger, contradiction, and redemption--like Fernando A. Flores, whose stories reimagine and reinterpret the region's existence with peerless style. In his immersive, uncanny borderland, things are never what they seem: a world where the sun is both rising and setting, and where conniving possums efficiently take over an entire town and rewrite its history.The stories in Valleyesque dance between the fantastical and the hyperreal with dexterous, often hilarious flair. A dying Frédéric Chopin stumbles through Ciudad Juárez in the aftermath of his mother's death, attempting to recover his beloved piano that was seized at the border, while a muralist is taken on a psychedelic journey by an airbrushed Emiliano Zapata T-shirt. A woman is engulfed by a used-clothing warehouse with a life of its own, and a grieving mother breathlessly chronicles the demise of a town decimated by violence. In two separate stories, queso dip and musical rhythms are bottled up and sold for mass consumption. And in the final tale, Flores pieces together the adventures of a young Lee Harvey Oswald as he starts a music career in Texas. Swinging between satire and surrealism, grief and joy, Valleyesque is a boundary- and border-pushing collection from a one-of-a-kind stylist and voice. With the visceral imagination that made his debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, a cult classic, Flores brings his vision of the border to life--and beyond.
The Book of Wanderers by ISBN: 9780816545353Publication Date: 2022-03-01What do a family of luchadores, a teen on the run, a rideshare driver, a lucid dreamer, a migrant worker in space, a mecha soldier, and a zombie-and-neo-Nazi fighter have in common? Reyes Ramirez's dynamic short story collection follows new lineages of Mexican and Salvadoran diasporas traversing life in Houston, across borders, and even on Mars. Themes of wandering weave throughout each story, bringing feelings of unease and liberation as characters navigate cultural, physical, and psychological separation and loss from one generation to the next in a tumultuous nation. The Book of Wanderers deeply explores Houston, a Gulf Coast metropolis that incorporates Southern, Western, and Southwestern identities near the borderlands with a connection to the cosmos. As such, each story becomes increasingly further removed from our lived reality, engaging numerous genres from emotionally touching realist fiction to action-packed speculative fiction, as well as hallucinatory realism, magical realism, noir, and science fiction. Fascinating characters and unexpected plots unpack what it means to be Latinx in contemporary--and perhaps future--America. The characters work, love, struggle, and never stop trying to control their reality. They dream of building communities and finding peace. How can they succeed if they must constantly leave one place for another? In a nation that demands assimilation, how can they define themselves when they have to start anew with each generation? The characters in The Book of Wanderers create their own lineages, philosophies for life, and markers for their humanity at the cost of home. So they remain wanderers . . . for now.
Cemetery Boys by ISBN: 9781250250469Publication Date: 2020-09-01Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can't get rid of him. When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.
We the Animals by ISBN: 9780547844190Publication Date: 2012-09-11A NATIONAL BESTSELLER and an award-winning novel in stories surrounding a young, half-white, half-Puerto Rican boy grappling with life, love, and identity as he comes of age. In this groundbreaking debut, Justin Torres plunges us into the chaotic heart of one family, the intense bonds of three brothers, and the mythic effects of this fierce love on the people we must become.
Tender Is the Flesh by ISBN: 1982151307Publication Date: 2020-08-04Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans--though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition." Now, eating human meat--"special meat"--is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he's given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he's aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost--and what might still be saved.
Angelitos by ISBN: 9780814254592Publication Date: 2018-01-18From internationally renowned Ilan Stavans, in collaboration with award-winning illustrator Santiago Cohen, comes Angelitos: A Graphic Novel, an explosive new graphic novel about a college student and his interactions with Padre Chinchachoma, a charismatic Catholic priest who devotes himself to rescuing homeless children in Mexico. Though his work gives hope to the desperate masses of children on the streets of Mexico City, his efforts interfere with and infuriate the police--with dire consequences. Set in a deeply classist society and against the backdrop of the tragic destruction of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City, the core of the story also revolves around the student's fear that Padre Chincha might be sexually abusing the children he rescues, at a time and place when such actions went unchecked by the Catholic Church. Though Angelitos: A Graphic Novel is a fictional retelling of a desperate time, it draws on autobiographical elements to tell the real-life story of Alejandro García Durán de Lara, popularly known as Padre Chinchachoma, a complicated figure revered by some and reviled by others.
Speculative Fiction for Dreamers by ISBN: 9780814257982Publication Date: 2021-09-08An outstanding showcase of contemporary Latinx authors exploring identity through the conventions of sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism. Themes of family, migration, and community resonate throughout these 38 masterful stories. In a tantalizing array of new works from some of the most exciting Latinx creators working in the speculative vein today. Speculative Fiction for Dreamers extends the project begun with a previous anthology, Latinx Rising (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), to showcase a new generation of writers. Spanning diverse forms, settings, perspectives, and styles, but unified by their drive to imagine new Latinx futures, these stories address the breadth of contemporary Latinx experiences and identities while exuberantly embracing the genre's ability to entertain and surprise. With new work for new audiences in their teens and up, and especially for Latinx people navigating their identities in the ever-shifting, sometimes perilous, but always promising cultural landscape of the US, this book is for dreamers--and DREAMers--everywhere.
Olga Dies Dreaming by ISBN: 9781250786173Publication Date: 2022-01-04A blazing talent debuts with the tale of a status-driven wedding planner grappling with her social ambitions, absent mother, and Puerto Rican roots--all in the wake of Hurricane Maria. It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro "Prieto" Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan's power brokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1 percent but she can't seem to find her own. . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets. Olga and Prieto's mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.
American Delirium by ISBN: 9781250621283Publication Date: 2021-02-16From award-winning novelist Argentine Betina González, American Delirium is a dizzying, luminous English-language debut about an American town overrun by a mysterious hallucinogen and the collision of three unexpected characters through the mayhem. In a small Midwestern city, the deer population starts attacking people. So Beryl, a feisty senior and ex-hippie with a troubled past, decides to take matters into her own hands, training a squad of fellow retirees to hunt the animals down and to prove to society they're capable of more than playing bingo. At the same time, a group of protesters decides to abandon the "system" and live in the woods, leaving behind the demands of modern life--including their children. Nine-year-old Berenice never thought her mother would join the dropouts, but she's been gone for several days, leaving only a few clues about her past for Berenice to piece together. Vik, a taxidermist at the natural history museum and an immigrant from the Caribbean, is beginning to see the connections among the dropouts, the deer, and the discord. He's not normally the type to speak up, but when he finds a woman living in his closet, he's forced to get involved. Each of these engrossing characters holds a key to the city's unraveling—despite living on the margins of society—and just as their lives start to spin out of control, they rescue one another in surprising ways.
Velorio by ISBN: 9780063071377Publication Date: 2022-01-04Set in the wake of Hurricane Maria, Xavier Navarro Aquino's unforgettable debut novel follows a remarkable group of survivors searching for hope on an island torn apart by both natural disaster and human violence. Camila is haunted by the death of her sister, Marisol, who was caught by a mudslide during the huracán. Unable to part with Marisol, Camila carries her through town, past the churchyard, and, eventually, to the supposed utopia of Memoria. Urayoán, the idealistic, yet troubled cult leader of Memoria, has a vision for this new society, one that in his eyes is peaceful and democratic. The paradise he preaches lures in the young, including Bayfish, a boy on the cusp of manhood, and Morivivi, a woman whose outward toughness belies an inner tenderness for her friends. But as the different members of Memoria navigate Urayoán's fiery rise, they will need to confront his violent authoritarian impulses in order to find a way to reclaim their home. Velorio--meaning "wake"--is a story of strength, resilience, and hope; a tale of peril and possibility buoyed by the deeply held belief in a people's ability to unite against those corrupted by power.
The Twilight Zone by ISBN: 9781644450475Publication Date: 2021-03-16An engrossing, incantatory novel about the legacy of historical crimes by the author of Space Invaders It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández's mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man's face on the magazine's cover with the words "I Tortured People." His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian. Like a secret service agent from the future, through extraordinary feats of the imagination, Fernández follows the "man who tortured people" to places that archives can't reach, into the sinister twilight zone of history where morning routines, a game of chess, Yuri Gagarin, and the eponymous TV show of the novel's title coexist with the brutal yet commonplace machinations of the regime. How do crimes vanish in plain sight? How does one resist a repressive regime? And who gets to shape the truths we live by and take for granted? The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.
Jawbone by ISBN: 9781566896214Publication Date: 2022-02-08"Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?"Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of an abandoned cabin, kidnapped by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from Opus Dei Delta Academy for Girls convene after school, Annelise always spins the scariest stories and devises the riskiest games. Wearing her crocodile-jawbone crown, she leads them in rituals to her invented god: the rhinestone-encrusted firefly, the wandering womb, the mother pond of anacondas. Even more thrilling is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare that blurs the boundaries between affection and violence. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Obsessed with imitating her dead mother and immobilized by past traumas, each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.In her English-language debut, Ecuadorian author Mónica Ojeda crafts an ominous, multivocal novel about adolescence, obsession, horror, and the fine line between fear and desire.
Poetry
X/ex/exis by ISBN: 9780816544363Publication Date: 2021-08-17Written in the early days of the rise of world-wide fascism and the poet's gender transition, x/ex/exis: poemas para la nación/poems for the nation accepts the invitation to push poetic and gender imaginaries beyond the bounds set by nation. From teen dysphoria, to the incarceration of anticolonial activists Oscar López and Nina Droz Franco, to the entanglement of church and state, these poems acknowledge the violence of imposed binaries. For Salas Rivera, the x marks Puerto Rican transness in a world that seeks trans death, denial, and erasure. Instead of justifying his existence, he takes up the flag of illegibility and writes an apocalyptic book that screams into an uncertain future, armed with nothing to lose. In today's post-disaster Puerto Rico and a world shaped by the recurring waves of an ecological apocalypse, Salas Rivera's words feel visionary, mapping a decolonizing territory, a body, and identity of both soil and heart.
Little Devil and the Rose/El Diablito y la Rosa by ISBN: 9781558857926Publication Date: 2014-04-30Warm-hearted recollections of family members are woven through this collection of 54 poems, in English and Spanish, which uses the images from loteriacards to pay homage to small-town, Mexican-American life along the Texas-Mexico border. Cultural traditions permeate these verses, from the curanderas who cure every affliction to the daily ritual of the afternoon merienda, or snack of sweet breads and hot chocolate. The community's Catholic tradition is ever-present; holy days, customs and saints are staples of daily life. San Martin de Porres, or "El Negrito," was her grandmother's favorite saint, "for although she was pale too / she'd lived through the vestiges of the Mexican war / the loss of land, culture, language, and control / and it was El Negrito to whom she turned for hope" to bring enemies together.Fond childhood memories of climbing mesquite trees and eating raspas are juxtaposed with an awareness of the disdain with which Mexican Americans are regarded. Texas museums, just like its textbooks, feature cowboy boots worn by Texas Rangers, but have no "clue or sign of the vaqueros, the original cowboys / or the Tejas, the native Indians there." And some childhood memories aren't so happy. In "The Hand," she writes: "In the morning I arrived at my first grade class / knowing no English / at noon I got smacked by the teacher / for speaking Spanish outside, in the playground."Inspired by the archetypes found in the Mexican bingo game called loteria, these poems reflect the history--of family, culture and war--rooted in the Southwest for hundreds of years.
The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4 by ISBN: 9781642591293Publication Date: 2020-04-07In the dynamic tradition of the BreakBeat Poets anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext celebrates the embodied narratives of Latinidad. Poets speak from an array of nationalities, genders, sexualities, races, and writing styles, staking a claim to our cultural and civic space. Like Hip-Hop, we honor what was, what is, and what's next.
The Poet X by ISBN: 9780062662804Publication Date: 2018-03-06Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems. Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.
Floaters by ISBN: 9780393541038Publication Date: 2021-01-19Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry. Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the "I'm 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love--even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise. The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl's gently racist question. Whether celebrating the visionaries--the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets--or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father's Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.
Red Hot Salsa by ISBN: 0805076166Publication Date: 2005-04-01Red Hot Salsa is an extraordinary collection of bilingual poems from the bestselling editor of Cool Salsa i think in spanish i write in english i want to go back to puerto rico, but i wonder if my kink could live in ponce, mayagüez and carolina tengo las venas aculturadas escribo en spanglish abraham in español --from "My Graduation Speech," by Tato Laviera Ten years after the publication of the acclaimed Cool Salsa, editor Lori Marie Carlson has brought together a stunning variety of Latino poets for a long-awaited follow-up. Established and familiar names are joined by many new young voices, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos has written the Introduction. The poets collected here illuminate the difficulty of straddling cultures, languages, and identities. They celebrate food, family, love, and triumph. In English, Spanish, and poetic jumbles of both, they tell us who they are, where they are, and what their hopes are for the future.
Count by ISBN: 9780816544226Publication Date: 2021-08-31Count is a powerful book-length poem that reckons with the heartbreaking reality of climate change. Forty-three sections of myth-gathering, flora and fauna, accounts of climate devastation, personal narratives, witnessing, references to works of eco-art, and evocations of children unfold over the course of the book, creating a deeply nuanced image of the current climate crisis. Central to this vital work of ecopoetry is the idea of counting--counting down to the extinction of a species, counting the wonders of the natural world, counting our way back to the balance that is required to save ourselves from climate destruction. Filled with a sense of grief and sorrow for the current state of the planet, Count also offers a glimmering hope that future generations will restore our damaged environment. With sections that vary between poetry, science, Indigenous storytelling, numerical measurement, and narration, Valerie Martínez's new work results in an epic panorama infused with the timely urgency of facing an apocalyptic future. This beautiful, tragic, and unusual poem is a testimonial, a warning, and a call to action that will captivate lovers of contemporary poetry and ecopoetry, environmentalists, and climate activists alike. Count skillfully calls on our collective desire to leave a livable world, filled with the potential for healing, as a legacy to the generations of children that come after us.
Citizen Illegal by ISBN: 9781608469550Publication Date: 2018-09-04In this "devastating debut" (Publishers Weekly), poet José Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between. Combining wry humor with potent emotional force, Olivarez takes on complex issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and immigration using an everyday language that invites the reader in, with a unique voice that makes him a poet to watch.
Gentefication by ISBN: 9781945588969Publication Date: 2021-09-15"Gentefication" nuances Latinidad as not just an immigration question, but an academic one. It deals with Latinx death not as the literal passing of bodies, but as first tied with language. It asks, what are the hauntings of a tongue that is repeatedly told, 'one must learn English in order to succeed in this country'? What is the psychological trauma deployed not by right-wing bigots, but of white liberal institutions that give scholarships to Latinx students, but nevertheless prop up white supremacy by viewing their payments as charity? How do Latinx students become complicit in this tokenizing? "Gentefication" wrestles with this 'survivor's guilt' of higher education, of feeling as if you're the only one among your homies that 'made it.' And in an American moment dealing with scandals across multiple universities this work is a timely intervention that advocates for first-generation audiences, for readers of color, and for all those vested in the protracted struggle for our fair shot.
Dreaming the End of War by ISBN: 1556592396Publication Date: 2006-05-01This gripping suite of twelve dreams, infused with the conflict along the border of Mexico and the United States, traces humanity's addiction to violence and killing--from boys stepping on ants to men shooting animals, men shooting women, men shooting enemies. The Dreams begin in a desert landscape where poverty and wealth grate against each other, and the ever present war becomes "as invisible as the desert sands we trample on." The dreams, however, move toward a greater peace with Sáenz providing an unforgettable reading experience. From "The Fourth Dream: Families and Flags and Revenge": I don't believe a flag is important enough to kiss-- or even burn. Some men would hate me enough to kill me if they read these words. "Rage," Sáenz said in an interview, "must be a component of any writer's life. But this rage must also be contained--otherwise our very bodies will become chaos--our minds will become chaos. We need order." Sáenz finds that order in poems, transforming his rage into something "more beautiful and gracious and forgiving."
The Crazy Bunch by ISBN: 9780143132691Publication Date: 2019-04-02From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes "city life with a sense of the transcendent" (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a "crew" coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: "That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded."
Essays
My Time Among the Whites by ISBN: 9781250299437Publication Date: 2019-09-03In this sharp and candid collection of essays, critically acclaimed writer and first-generation American Jennine Capó Crucet explores the condition of finding herself a stranger in the country where she was born. Raised in Miami and the daughter of Cuban refugees, Crucet examines the political and personal contours of American identity and the physical places where those contours find themselves smashed: be it a rodeo town in Nebraska, a university campus in upstate New York, or Disney World in Florida. Crucet illuminates how she came to see her exclusion from aspects of the theoretical American Dream, despite her family's attempts to fit in with white American culture--beginning with their ill-fated plan to name her after the winner of the Miss America pageant. In prose that is both fearless and slyly humorous, My Time Among the Whites examines the sometimes hopeful, sometimes deeply flawed ways in which many Americans have learned to adapt, exist, and--in the face of all signals saying otherwise--perhaps even thrive in a country that never imagined them here.
Women Writing Resistance by ISBN: 9780807088197Publication Date: 2017-10-10Through poetry and essays, writers from the Anglophone, Hispanic, and Francophone Caribbean, including Puertorriquenas and Cubanas, grapple with their hybrid American political identities. Gloria Anzaldoa, the founder of Chicana queer theory; Rigoberta Mencho, the first Indigenous person to win a Nobel Peace Prize; and Michelle Cliff, a searing and poignant chronicler of colonialism and racism, among many others, highlight how women can collaborate across class, race, and nationality to lead a new wave of resistance against neoliberalism, patriarchy, state terrorism, and white supremacy.
A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back by ISBN: 9780816545247Publication Date: 2022-06-07In 1981, Chicana feminist intellectuals Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa published what would become a touchstone work for generations of feminist women of color--the seminal This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. To celebrate and honor this important work, editors gloria j. wilson, Joni B. Acuff, and Amelia M. Kraehe offer new generations A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back. In A Love Letter, creators illuminate, question, and respond to current politics, progressive struggles, transformations, acts of resistance, and solidarity, while also offering readers a space for renewal and healing. The central theme of the original Bridge is honored, exposing the lived realities of women of color at the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, advancing those early conversations on what it means to be Third World feminist conscious. A Love Letter recognizes the challenges faced by women of color in a twenty-first-century world of climate and economic crises, increasing gun violence, and ever-changing social media constructs for women of color. It also retains the clarion call Bridge set in motion, as Moraga wrote: "A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives--our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longing--all fuse to create a politic born of necessity."
Memoirs
A Cup of Water under My Bed by ISBN: 9780807014486Publication Date: 2014-09-09The PEN Literary Award-winning author "writes with honesty, intelligence, tenderness, and love" about her Colombian-Cuban heritage and queer identity in this poignant coming-of-age memoir (Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street) In this lyrical, coming-of-age memoir, Daisy Hernández chronicles what the women in her Cuban-Colombian family taught her about love, money, and race. Her mother warns her about envidia and men who seduce you with pastries, while one tía bemoans that her niece is turning out to be "una india" instead of an American. Another auntie instructs that when two people are close, they are bound to become like uña y mugre, fingernails and dirt, and that no, Daisy's father is not godless. He's simply praying to a candy dish that can be traced back to Africa. These lessons--rooted in women's experiences of migration, colonization, y cariño--define in evocative detail what it means to grow up female in an immigrant home. In one story, Daisy sets out to defy the dictates of race and class that preoccupy her mother and tías, but dating women and transmen, and coming to identify as bisexual, leads her to unexpected questions. In another piece, NAFTA shuts local factories in her hometown on the outskirts of New York City, and she begins translating unemployment forms for her parents, moving between English and Spanish, as well as private and collective fears. In prose that is both memoir and commentary, Daisy reflects on reporting for the New York Times as the paper is rocked by the biggest plagiarism scandal in its history and plunged into debates about the role of race in the newsroom. A heartfelt exploration of family, identity, and language, A Cup of Water Under My Bed is ultimately a daughter's story of finding herself and her community, and of creating a new, queer life.
Children of the Land by ISBN: 9780062825599Publication Date: 2020-01-28This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man's attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence. "You were not a ghost even though an entire country was scared of you. No one in this story was a ghost. This was not a story." When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary. With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family's encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father's deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother's heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor. Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
Don't Be Afraid, Gringo: a Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart by ISBN: 9780060972059Publication Date: 1989-07-19Don't be Afraid, Gringo is the award-winning oral history of Elvia Alvarado, a courageous campesina [peasant] activist in Honduras, the poorest country in Central America. Trained by the Catholic Church to organize women's groups to combat malnutrition, Alvarado began to question why campesinos were malnourished to begin with. Her growing political awareness, her travels by foot, over the back roads of Honduras, and her conversations with people from all over the country have given her insights into the internal workings of her society that far surpass those of the majority of campesinos who have never ventured from their villages. Working as a campesino organizer, Alvarado has led dangerous land recovery actions in an effort to enforce the national land reform laws. As a result of these actions, she has been harassed, jailed, and tortured at the hands of the Honduran military. Skillfully translated and edited by Medea Benjamin, an expert on Central America, Don't Be Afraid, Gringo takes us into the heart of campesino struggle and political conflict in Honduras today.
Ordinary Girls by ISBN: 9781643750163Publication Date: 2019-10-29In this searing memoir, Jaquira Díaz writes fiercely and eloquently of her challenging girlhood and triumphant coming of age. While growing up in housing projects in Puerto Rico and Miami Beach, Díaz found herself caught between extremes. As her family split apart and her mother battled schizophrenia, she was supported by the love of her friends. As she longed for a family and home, her life was upended by violence. As she celebrated her Puerto Rican culture, she couldn't find support for her burgeoning sexual identity. From her own struggles with depression and sexual assault to Puerto Rico's history of colonialism, every page of Ordinary Girls vibrates with music and lyricism. Díaz writes with raw and refreshing honesty, triumphantly mapping a way out of despair toward love and hope to become her version of the girl she always wanted to be. Reminiscent of Tara Westover's Educated, Kiese Laymon's Heavy, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, and Terese Marie Mailhot's Heart Berries, Jaquira Díaz's memoir provides a vivid portrait of a life lived in (and beyond) the borders of Puerto Rico and its complicated history--and reads as electrically as a novel.
High-Risk Homosexual by ISBN: 9781593767051Publication Date: 2022-01-11A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez's uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at thirteen years old to become a man. Readers follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor's office where he was diagnosed a 'high-risk homosexual.'
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by ISBN: 9780385546669Publication Date: 2022-07-12For Ingrid Rojas Contreras, magic runs in the family. Raised amid the political violence of 1980s and '90s Colombia, in a house bustling with her mother's fortune-telling clients, she was a hard child to surprise. Her maternal grandfather, Nono, was a renowned curandero, a community healer gifted with what the family called "the secrets": the power to talk to the dead, tell the future, treat the sick, and move the clouds. And as the first woman to inherit "the secrets," Rojas Contreras' mother was just as powerful. Mami delighted in her ability to appear in two places at once, and she could cast out even the most persistent spirits with nothing more than a glass of water. This legacy had always felt like it belonged to her mother and grandfather, until, while living in the U.S. in her twenties, Rojas Contreras suffered a head injury that left her with amnesia. As she regained partial memory, her family was excited to tell her that this had happened before: Decades ago Mami had taken a fall that left her with amnesia, too. And when she recovered, she had gained access to "the secrets." In 2012, spurred by a shared dream among Mami and her sisters, and her own powerful urge to relearn her family history in the aftermath of her memory loss, Rojas Contreras joins her mother on a journey to Colombia to disinter Nono's remains. With Mami as her unpredictable, stubborn, and often amusing guide, Rojas Contreras traces her lineage back to her Indigenous and Spanish roots, uncovering the violent and rigid colonial narrative that would eventually break her mestizo family into two camps: those who believe "the secrets" are a gift, and those who are convinced they are a curse. Interweaving family stories more enchanting than those in any novel, resurrected Colombian history, and her own deeply personal reckonings with the bounds of reality, Rojas Contreras writes her way through the incomprehensible and into her inheritance. The result is a luminous testament to the power of storytelling as a healing art and an invitation to embrace the extraordinary.
Spirit Run by ISBN: 9781948226462Publication Date: 2020-03-03Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother, who "slouched over a conveyor belt of fruit, shoulder to shoulder with mothers conditioned to believe this was all they could do with their lives." A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At nineteen, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group of Dené, Secwépemc, Gitxsan, Dakelh, Apache, Tohono O'odham, Seri, Purépecha, and Maya runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories alongside his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala that pushed him to his limits. He writes not only of overcoming hunger, thirst, and fear--dangers included stone-throwing motorists and a mountain lion--but also of asserting Indigenous and working-class humanity in a capitalist society where oil extraction, deforestation, and substance abuse wreck communities. Running through mountains, deserts, and cities, and through the Mexican territory his parents left behind, Álvarez forges a new relationship with the land, and with the act of running, carrying with him the knowledge of his parents' migration, and -- against all odds in a society that exploits his body and rejects his spirit -- the dream of a liberated future.
In the Dream House by ISBN: 9781644450031Publication Date: 2019-11-05A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope--the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman--through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado's dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.
Talking #browntv: Latinas & Latinos on the Screen by ISBN: 0814255590Publication Date: 2019-12-13Like two friends sitting down in front of the television together, Frederick Luis Aldama and William Anthony Nericcio dialogue about the representations of Latina/os in American television and film from the twentieth century to the present day. One part conversation, one part critique, one part visual cultural studies, and one part rant against the culture industry profiting off warped caricatures of Latina/o subjectivities, Aldama and Nericcio analyze the ways in which Latinx performers have been mediated--with varying degrees of complexity--on the American screen. A comprehensive review of the history of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Chicana/os, Latina/os, and Latinx performers in television and film. Talking #browntv boldly interrogates one of the largest paradoxes in the history of American television: Why are there so few Latina/os on television, and why, when they do appear, are they so often narcos, maids, strumpets, tarts, flakes, and losers? From the subversive critiques embedded in well-loved children's characters like Speedy Gonzalez to the perpetuation of racial stereotypes in modern-era pornography, from Eva Longoria as ethnic mannequin to J-Lo flipping the sexy Latina music video on its head in "I Luh Ya Papi," and with more than 150 full-color images, Aldama and Nericcio seek to expose the underlying causes as to why Latina/os constitute only 2 percent of mainstream cultural production when they're the majority minority in the US. In a moment when anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant rhetoric oozes from TV sets and medias platform. Talking #browntv emerges as a bold antidote, an eloquent rejoinder, and a thoughtful meditation on Latina/os on the American screen and in America today.
Contemporary Latina/o Media by ISBN: 9781479828913Publication Date: 2014-09-12The cultural politics creating and consuming Latina/o mass media. Just ten years ago, discussions of Latina/o media could be safely reduced to a handful of TV channels, dominated by Univision and Telemundo. Today, dramatic changes in the global political economy have resulted in an unprecedented rise in major new media ventures for Latinos as everyone seems to want a piece of the Latina/o media market. While current scholarship on Latina/o media have mostly revolved around important issues of representation and stereotypes, this approach does not provide the entire story. In Contemporary Latina/o Media, Arlene Dávila and Yeidy M. Rivero bring together an impressive range of leading scholars to move beyond analyses of media representations, going behind the scenes to explore issues of production, circulation, consumption, and political economy that affect Latina/o mass media. Working across the disciplines of Latina/o media, cultural studies, and communication, the contributors examine how Latinos are being affected both by the continued Latin Americanization of genres, products, and audiences, as well as by the whitewashing of "mainstream" Hollywood media where Latinos have been consistently bypassed. While focusing on Spanish-language television and radio, the essays also touch on the state of Latinos in prime-time television and in digital and alternative media. Using a transnational approach, the volume as a whole explores the ownership, importation, and circulation of talent and content from Latin America, placing the dynamics of the global political economy and cultural politics in the foreground of contemporary analysis of Latina/o media.
The Sounds of Latinidad by ISBN: 9781479859405Publication Date: 2015-06-19The Sounds of Latinidad explores the Latino music scene as a lens through which to understand changing ideas about latinidad in the New South. Focusing on Latino immigrant musicians and their fans in Charlotte, North Carolina, the volume shows how limited economic mobility, social marginalization, and restrictive immigration policies have stymied immigrants' access to the American dream and musicians' dreams of success. Instead, Latin music has become a way to form community, debate political questions, and claim cultural citizenship. The volume illuminates the complexity of Latina/o musicians' lives. They find themselves at the intersection of culture and politics, often pushed to define a vision of what it means to be Latino in a globalizing city in the Nuevo South. At the same time, they often avoid overt political statements and do not participate in immigrants' rights struggles, instead holding a cautious view of political engagement. Yet despite this politics of ambivalence, Latina/o musicians do assert intellectual agency and engage in a politics that is embedded in their musical community, debating aesthetics, forging collective solidarity with their audiences, and protesting poor working conditions. Challenging scholarship on popular music that focuses on famous artists or on one particular genre, this volume demonstrates how exploring the everyday lives of ordinary musicians can lead to a deeper understanding of musicians' role in society. It argues that the often overlooked population of Latina/o musicians should be central to our understanding of what it means to live in a southern U.S. city today.
LatinX Voices by ISBN: 9781315284118Publication Date: 2018-07-16LatinX Voices is the first undergraduate textbook that includes an overview of Hispanic/LatinX Media in the U.S. and gives readers an understanding of how media in the United States has transformed around this audience. Based on the authors' professional and research experience, and teaching broadcast media courses in the classroom, this text covers the evolving industry and offers perspective on topics related to Latin-American areas of interest. With professional testimonials from those who have left their mark in print, radio, television, film and new media, this collection of chapters brings together expert voices in Hispanic/LatinX media from across the U.S., and explains the impact of this population on the media industry today.
Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks by ISBN: 9781496827463Publication Date: 2020-03-30In Nerds, Goths, Geeks, and Freaks: Outsiders in Chicanx and Latinx Young Adult Literature, the outsider intersects with discussions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. The essays in this volume address questions of outsider identities and how these identities are shaped by mainstream myths around Chicanx and Latinx young people, particularly with the common stereotype of the struggling, underachieving inner-city teens. Contributors also grapple with how young adults reclaim what it means to be an outsider, weirdo, nerd, or goth, and how the reclamation of these marginalized identities expand conversations around authenticity and narrow understandings of what constitutes cultural identity. Included are analysis of such texts as I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Shadowshaper, Swimming While Drowning, and others. Addressed in the essays are themes of outsiders in Chicanx/Latinx children's and young adult literature, and the contributors insist that to understand Latinx youth identities it is necessary to shed light on outsiders within an already marginalized ethnic group: nerds, goths, geeks, freaks, and others who might not fit within such Latinx popular cultural paradigms as the chola and cholo, identities that are ever-present in films, television, and the internet.
Latinx Ciné in the Twenty-First Century by ISBN: 9780816537907Publication Date: 2019-09-24Today's Latinx motion pictures are built on the struggles—and victories—of prior decades. Earlier filmmakers threw open doors and cleared new paths for those of the twenty-first century to willfully reconstruct Latinx epics as well as the daily tragedies and triumphs of Latinx lives. Twenty-first-century Latinx film offers much to celebrate, but as noted pop culture critic Frederick Luis Aldama writes, there's still room to be purposefully critical. In Latinx Ciné in the Twenty-First Century contributors offer groundbreaking scholarship that does both, bringing together a comprehensive presentation of contemporary film and filmmakers from all corners of Latinx culture. The book's seven sections cover production techniques and evolving genres, profile those behind and in front of the camera, and explore the distribution and consumption of contemporary Latinx films. Chapters delve into issues that are timely, relevant, and influential, including representation or the lack thereof, identity and stereotypes, hybridity, immigration and detention, historical recuperation, and historical amnesia. With its capacious range and depth of vision, this timeless volume of cutting-edge scholarship blazes new paths in understanding the full complexities of twenty-first century Latinx filmmaking.
Latino TV by ISBN: 9781479868650Publication Date: 2022-01-25The history of Latina/o participation and representation in American television Whose stories are told on television? Who are the heroes and heroines, held up as intriguing, lovable, and compelling? Which characters are fully realized, rather than being cardboard villains and sidekicks? And who are our storytellers? The first-ever account of Latino/a participation and representation in US English-language television, Latino TV: A History offers a sweeping study of key moments of Chicano/a and Latino/a representation and authorship since the 1950s. Drawing on archival research, interviews with dozens of media professionals who worked on or performed in these series, textual analysis of episodes and promotional materials, and analysis of news media coverage, Mary Beltrán examines Latina/o representation in everything from children's television Westerns of the 1950s, Chicana/o and Puerto Rican activist-led public affairs series of the 1970s, and sitcoms that spanned half a century, to Latina and Latino-led series in the 2000s and 2010s on broadcast, cable, and streaming outlets, including George Lopez, Ugly Betty, One Day at a Time, and Vida. Through the exploration of the histories of Latina/o television narratives and the authors of those narratives, Mary Beltrán sheds important light on how Latina/os have been included--and, more often, not--in the television industry and in the stories of the country writ large.
Latino/as in the Media by ISBN: 9780745640075Publication Date: 2010-02-15The U.S. mainstream media have a love and hate relationship with Latina/os. On the one hand the media treat as hot property such stars as Jennifer Lopez, Eva Longoria and America Ferrera; on the other they contribute to the role of Latina/os as eternal foreigners, having continually to assert their belonging and citizenship. Latina/os and the Media brings together the scholarship of communication studies scholars working on issues of Latinidad and presents it in a coherent, vibrant and accessible form to shed light on the complex relationship between Latina/os and the media. Latina/os and the Media includes the coverage of the following: the participation of Latina/os in media production; the forms in which Latina/os are represented in media; the ways that Latina/os interpret media and that other audiences interpret Latina/os in the media; and the social scientific effects of the forms in which Latina/os are represented on Latina/os in particular and culture at large. The book draws on a rich set of examples to illustrate its conclusions.
Cinema Between Latin America and Los Angeles: origins to 1960 by ISBN: 9781978801240Publication Date: 2019-02-08Historically, Los Angeles and its exhibition market have been central to the international success of Latin American cinema. Not only was Los Angeles a site crucial for exhibition of these films, but it became the most important hub in the western hemisphere for the distribution of Spanish language films made for Latin American audiences. Cinema between Latin America and Los Angeles builds upon this foundational insight to both examine the considerable, ongoing role that Los Angeles played in the history of Spanish-language cinema and to explore the implications of this transnational dynamic for the study and analysis of Latin American cinema before 1960. The volume editors aim to flesh out the gaps between Hollywood and Latin America, American imperialism and Latin American nationalism in order to produce a more nuanced view of transnational cultural relations in the western hemisphere.
A sampling of scholarly articles from our electronic databases relevant to Latin(x/e) identity and culture:
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Anguiano, José G., Uriostegui, Marbella, Gussman, Melissa, & Kouyoumdjian, Claudia. “Sonic Counterspaces: The Role of Music in the Latino College Experience at a Predominantly White Institution.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, vol. 21, no. 1, 2022, pp. 67-81.
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Galvin, Rachel. “Transcreation and Self-Translation in Contemporary Latinx Poetry.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 49, no. 1, 2022, pp. 28-54.
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Gutiérrez, Arcelia. “Situating Representation As a Form of Erasure: #OscarsSoWhite, Black Twitter, and Latinx Twitter.” Television & New Media, vol. 23, no. 1, 2022, pp. 100-118.
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McFarland, Pancho. “Chicano Rap Roots: Black-Brown Cultural Exchange and the Making of a Genre.” Callaloo, vol. 29, no. 3, 2006, pp. 939-955.
- Prada, Josh. “Articulating Translanguaging as Pedagogy of Empowerment for Racialized Language-Minoritized Bilinguals: From Concepto to Proyecto through Digital Storytelling.” TESL Canada Journal, vol. 38, no. 1, 2022, pp. 171-185.
Feature Films
For a more comprehensive list of films (both features and documentaries) relevant to this celebration, please visit Media Service's guide to Hispanic History & Heritage Month Streaming and DVD Resources.
La Llorona by
Publication Date: 2019Alma is murdered with her children during a military attack in Guatemala, but when the general who ordered the genocide is found not guilty 30 years later, Alma returns to the world of the living to torment the man.
Real Women Have Curves by Publication Date: 2002The summer after Ana's high school graduation is a turning point in her life. She has to decide whether to go to college and experience life, or stay home, get married and work at her sister's struggling garment factory.Pelo Malo by
Publication Date: 2013A nine-year-old boy's preening obsession with straightening his hair elicits a tidal wave of homophobic panic in his hard-working mother, in this tender but clear-eyed coming-of-age tale. Junior is a beautiful boy, with big brown eyes, a delicate frame, and a head of luxurious dark curls. But Junior aches to straighten those curls, to acquire a whole new look befitting his emerging fantasy image of himself as a long-haired singer. As the opportunity approaches to have his photo taken for the new school year, that ache turns into a fiery longing. Junior's mother, Marta (Samantha Castillo), is barely hanging on. The father of her children has died, she recently lost her job as a security guard, and she now struggles to put a few arepas on the table for Junior and his baby brother. Junior doesn't even know yet what it means to be gay, but the very notion prompts Marta to set out to "correct" Junior's condition before it fully takes hold. This is a story of people doing what they feel they have to, partly out of fear, but also out of love.East Side Sushi by
Publication Date: 2015Single mom Juana can slice and dice anything with great speed and precision. After working at a fruit-vending cart for years, she decides to take a job at a local Japanese restaurant. Intrigued by the food, she learns to make a multitude of sushi on her own. Eventually she attempts to become a sushi chef, but is unable to because she is the 'wrong' race and gender. Against all odds, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, determined to not let anyone stop her from achieving her dream.
Selena by Publication Date: 2007Tells the story of the Grammy Award-winning South Texas singer Selena, whose life tragically ended just as she was taking Tejano music into mainstream America.
Coco by Publication Date: 2017In Disney/Pixar’s vibrant tale of family, fun and adventure, aspiring young musician named Miguel (voice of newcomer Anthony Gonzalez) embarks on an extraordinary journey to the magical land of his ancestors. There, the charming trickster Hector (voice of Gael Garcia Bernal) becomes an unexpected friend who helps Miguel uncover the mysteries behind his family’s stories and traditions.
Roma by Publication Date: 2018In Mexico City's upscale Colonia Roma district, a quiet but swift change is on its way. Pivoting around Dr Antonio's middle-bourgeoisie family, the lives of two women--the devoted live-in maid and housekeeper of Mixteco heritage, Cleo, and her academic employer, Sofía--become inextricably intertwined, as a seemingly ordinary business trip to Quebec paves the way for a bitter heartbreak. Over a span of one long year--from the quadrennial 1970s World Cup to the blood-drenched Corpus Christi Massacre--the unforeseen and sometimes unbearable complications of love; a new life amid death, and an almost stubborn will to find good in evil, pepper Sofía and Cleo's daily routines. And before irrevocable transformations and startling revelations, life always finds a way.West Side Story by
Publication Date: 1961A musical in which a modern day Romeo and Juliet are involved in New York street gangs. On the harsh streets of the upper west side, two gangs battle for control of the turf. The situation becomes complicated when a gang members falls in love with a rival's sister.I Carry You With Me by
Publication Date: 2021An epic love story spanning decades is sparked by a chance encounter between two men in provincial Mexico. Based on a true story, ambition and societal pressure propel an aspiring chef to leave his soulmate and make the treacherous journey to New York, where life will never be the same.Under The Same Moon by
Publication Date: 2008UNDER THE SAME MOON (LA MISMA LUNA) tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico. Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again
Documentaries
Latinos Beyond Reel: Challenging a Media Stereotype by Publication Date: 2015Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, and among the most diverse -- accounting for one-sixth of all Americans and tracing their origins to more than 20 countries. They are also a rising force in American politics. Yet across the American media landscape, from the broadcast airwaves to cable television and Hollywood film, the reality and richness of the Latino experience are virtually nowhere to be found. In Latinos Beyond Reel, filmmakers Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun examine how US news and entertainment media portray -- and do not portray -- Latinos. Drawing on the insights of Latino scholars, journalists, community leaders, actors, directors, and producers, they uncover a pattern of gross misrepresentation and gross under-representation -- a world in which Latinos tend to appear, if at all, as gangsters and Mexican bandits, harlots and prostitutes, drug dealers, and welfare-leeching illegals. The film challenges viewers to think critically about the wide-ranging effects of these media stereotypes, and to envision alternative representations and models of production more capable of capturing the humanity and diversity of real Latinos.
Dolores by Publication Date: 2017Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century--and she continues the fight to this day ... With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one's life to social change.
Wildness by Publication Date: 2012In WILDNESS, Wu Tsang offers a deeply felt portrait of the Silver Platter, a Latino Los Angeles LGBTQ bar that dates back to 1963, before the Stonewall riots. The storytelling format merges elements of fiction and documentary structures to explore Tsang’s complicated relationship with the bar, one that presents her role as an artist, activist, and member of a younger generation learning about the venue’s queer legacy. Tsang implicates herself as one of the newcomers and gentrifiers drawn by the art world’s attention to the club’s weekly Wildness party, and whose presence is affecting the dynamic for the Silver Platter’s working class, Latinx, and primarily immigrant regulars.
Underwater Dreams by Publication Date: 2014Underwater Dreams is a documentary on how undocumented Mexican immigrant high school students learned to build an underwater robot from spare parts and win a robotics competition which included MIT.
Latino Vote: Dispatches from the Battleground by Publication Date: 2020This film follows the efforts of community leaders working to ensure Latino voter turnout. How will these efforts impact the presidential election result, and will 2020 be a tipping point for the impact of the Latino vote?
The Hand That Feeds by Publication Date: 2016At a popular bakery café, residents of New York's Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back. Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve. In one roller-coaster year, they must overcome a shocking betrayal and a two-month lockout. Lawyers will battle in back rooms, Occupy Wall Street protesters will take over the restaurant, and a picket line will divide the neighborhood. If they can win a contract, it will set a historic precedent for low-wage workers across the country. But whatever happens, Mahoma and his coworkers will never be exploited again.
Los Graduados (The Graduates) by Publication Date: 2013This two-part special examines the many roots of the Latino dropout crisis through the eyes of six inspiring young students who are part of an ongoing effort to increase graduation rates for a growing Latino population.
Singing Our Way to Freedom by Publication Date: 2018Singing Our Way to Freedom is a vibrant, multilayered look at the life of Chicano musician, composer and community activist, Ramon "Chunky" Sanchez. The film chronicles Chunky's life from his humble beginnings as a farmworker in Blythe, California to the dramatic moment when he received one of his nation's highest musical honors at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 2013. As a young man in the 1960s, Chunky joined the picket lines in the California fields with Cesar Chavez, demanding justice and better wages for farmworkers. Early on, he discovered that the music he was creating could be a powerful weapon in creating social change and overcoming prejudice and racism.Mala Mala by
Publication Date: 2015A documentary about the power of transformation told through the eyes of 9 trans-identifying individuals in Puerto Rico.
No Más Bebés by Publication Date: 2015This Emmy-nominated classic documentary tells the story of Mexican immigrant mothers who, with the help of a young Chicana lawyer, sued doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth during the 1970s. Their efforts led to their landmark 1975 civil rights lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan, which asserted that a woman’s right to bear a child is guaranteed under the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. It celebrates the significant contribution of Chicana activists who sought to redefine reproductive politics to include the needs of poor women and women of color.
Short Films
Piñata People by Publication Date: 2021"Josué Ramírez's work has captivated me for years. It's audacious, colorful, and challenges our preconceived ideas about the cultural objects we're surrounded by in The Rio Grande Valley." - Charlie Vela on Piñata People
Yeah No, I'm Not Okay by Yeah No, I’m Not Ok, my new podcast made in collaboration with LAist Studios, is here to open up the conversation about mental health. Every week host Diane Guerrero will explore issues that youth face all over the world (addiction, depression, anxiety, suicide, radical self love, and much much more) through conversations with friends, colleagues, activists, artists and health care professionals, all people who have gone through something life-changing and are now healing from it.- Tres Cuentos');" />Tres Cuentos byTres Cuentos is a bilingual literary podcast dedicated to Latin America's narratives. Each episode is in Spanish and English. The podcast narrates a piece of literature and later reflects on the author, culture, or history behind the story.
Latino Rebels Radio by Commentary, news and analysis of the U.S. Latino world. Engaging traviesos. A 2019 iHeart Radio Podcast Awards nominee for Best Multicultural Podcast hosted by award-wining journalist Julio Ricardo Varela.
Locatora Radio by Locatora Radio is an independent podcast based out of Los Angeles that blends humor, pop culture analysis, and interviews with artists to engage listeners in nuanced discussions about feminism, sexual wellness, and arts and culture for a modern Latinx audience.
Latino USA by Latino USA offers insight into the lived experiences of Latino communities and is a window on the current and merging cultural, political and social ideas impacting Latinos and the nation.
Latinos Who Lunch by Latinos Who Lunch is a podcast hosted by artist FavyFav and art historian Babelito. Join them as they discuss everything from pop culture and art to issues of race, gender and class in Latinx communities.
Tres Cuentos');" />Asian American, Native Hawaiian, & Pacific Islander Heritage Month
The group of people honored and acknowledged during Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is vast and incredibly diverse. They occupy a wide swath of different immigrant experiences and pasts, from the Chinese immigration to the country’s west coast to prospect for gold to the influx of Indian immigrants that came following the establishment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In these times of prejudice and violence toward many in AAPI and Native Hawaiian communities, it is essential to develop solidarity and recognize our common humanity. People from Asian American and Pacific Islander backgrounds are reflective of America as a whole and their contributions, some of which are shown below, are vital to the quilted pattern of our country’s continually evolving self-expression. To learn more about this celebration, consult some of the resources below:
- "Asian American and Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Heritage Month" (National Parks Service)
- "Understanding Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month" (Texas A&M Today)
- "Why We Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month in May" (NPR)
- "What Does it Mean to Be AAPI?" (Teen Vogue)
- "The Inadequacy of the Term 'Asian American'" (Vox)
- "Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders: A FAQ" (NBC News)
The Playlist
As an entry point into this feature, we have put together a sampling of contemporary AANHPI artists and their contributions to music across genres. To learn more about these artists and communities, check out some of the resources we used to create the playlist:
- "What Is Asian American Music, Really?" (Pitchfork)
- "The Power of Music" (Smithsonian Magazine)
- "Introduction to the Music of Asian America" (Music of Asian America Research Center)
- "20 Asian American Musicians To Add To Your Playlist Now" (Elite Daily)
- "18 Asian Musicians to Listen To" (Teen Vogue)
- "These Native Hawaiian Musicians Are Bringing Their Island’s History To The World" (The Fader)
Next Steps
If you would like to engage more with this month-long celebration, the Libraries have curated a number of interrelated resources and features to continue and deepen the conversation. You'll find these, below:
- Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (Pasifika) Feature (Media Studies)
- Asian American Representation in the Media (Media Studies)
- Korea Remixed (Media Studies)
- Spotlight on Queer & Trans* Asian Literature and Poetics (Gender Studies)
- Asian American and Pacific Islander Philosophies (Philosophy)
- Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Media Resources (Media Services)
- Asian American Artists, Architects, and Designers (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- AAPI Identity - Recommended Reads from the Children's Collection (Education Library)
Fiction
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by ISBN: 9780525562023Publication Date: 2019-06-04On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
When the Emperor Was Divine by ISBN: 9780385721813Publication Date: 2003-10-14From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times. On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines. Don't miss Julie Otsuka's bestselling new novel, The Swimmers.
Interpreter of Maladies by ISBN: 039592720XPublication Date: 1999-06-01With a new Introduction from the author for the twentieth anniversary Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this stunning debut collection unerring charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations. In stories that travel from India to America and back again, Lahiri speaks with universal eloquence to everyone who has ever felt like a foreigner.
American Born Chinese by ISBN: 9781596432086Publication Date: 2006-09-05A tour-de-force by rising indy comics star Gene Yang,American Born Chinese tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he's the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny's life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twistin this action-packed modern fable.American Born Chinese is an amazing ride, all the way up to the astonishing climax. American Born Chinese is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature, the winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New, an Eisner Award nominee for Best Coloring and a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
The Leavers (National Book Award Finalist) by ISBN: 9781616206888Publication Date: 2017-05-02The Leavers, is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice. One morning, Deming Guo's mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon--and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he's ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents' desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind. Told from the perspective of both Daniel--as he grows into a directionless young man--and Polly, Ko's novel gives us one of fiction's most singular mothers. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heartwrenching choice after another. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It's a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.
The Sympathizer by ISBN: 9780802123459Publication Date: 2015-04-07The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a "man of two minds," a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.
Exhalation by ISBN: 9781101947883Publication Date: 2019-05-07Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories--two published for the very first time--all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity's oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will. Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic--revelatory.- Insurrecto by ISBN: 9781616959449Publication Date: 2018-11-13Two women, a Filipino translator and an American filmmaker, go on a road trip in Duterte's Philippines, collaborating and clashing in the writing of a film script about a massacre during the Philippine-American War. Chiara is working on a film about an incident in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, when Filipino revolutionaries attacked an American garrison, and in retaliation American soldiers created "a howling wilderness" of the surrounding countryside. Magsalin reads Chiara's film script and writes her own version. Insurrecto contains within its dramatic action two rival scripts from the filmmaker and the translator--one about a white photographer, the other about a Filipino schoolteacher. Within the spiraling voices and narrative layers of Insurrecto are stories of women--artists, lovers, revolutionaries, daughters--finding their way to their own truths and histories. Using interlocking voices and a kaleidoscopic structure, the novel is startlingly innovative, meditative, and playful. Apostol pushes up against the limits of fiction in order to recover the atrocity in Balangiga, and in so doing, she shows us the dark heart of an untold and forgotten war that would shape the next century of Philippine and American history.
Nobody Does the Right Thing by ISBN: 9780822346821Publication Date: 2010-06-10A young poet is killed by her lover, a politician, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. Soon afterward, across India in Bombay, an idealistic journalist is hired by a movie director to write a Bollywood screenplay about the murdered poet. Research for the script takes the writer, Binod, back to Bihar, where he and his cousin Rabinder were raised. While the high-minded Binod struggles to turn the poet's murder into a steamy tale about small towns, desire, and intrigue, Rabinder sits in a Bihari jail cell, having been arrested for distributing pornography through a cybercafé. Rabinder dreams of a career in Bollywood filmmaking, and, unlike his cousin, he is not burdened by ethical scruples. Nobody Does the Right Thing is the story of these two cousins and the ways that their lives unexpectedly intertwine. Set in the rural villages of Bihar and the metropolises of Bombay and Delhi, the novel is packed with telling details and anecdotes about life in contemporary India. At the same time, it is a fictional investigation into how narratives circulate and vie for supremacy through gossip, cinema, popular fiction, sensational journalism, and the global media.
Everything I Never Told You by ISBN: 9781594205712Publication Date: 2014-06-26"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet." So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
Poetry
More Than Organs by ISBN: 9781943977741Publication Date: 2020-03-12A love letter to Brown, Queer, and Trans futures, Kay Ulanday Barrett's More Than Organs questions "whatever wholeness means" for bodies always in transit, for the safeties and dangers they silo. These poems remix people of color as earthbenders, replay "the choreography of loss" after the 2015 Pulse shooting, and till joy from the cosmic sweetness of a family's culinary history. Barrett works "to build / a shelter // of / everyone / they] meet," from aunties to the legendary Princess Urduja to their favorite air sign. More Than Organs tattoos grief across the knuckles of its left hand and love across the knuckles of its right, leaving the reader physically changed by the intensity of experience, longing, strength, desire, and the need, above all else, to survive.
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by ISBN: 9781556594953Publication Date: 2016-04-05Ocean Vuong’s first full-length collection aims straight for the perennial “big”—and very human—subjects of romance, family, memory, grief, war, and melancholia. None of these he allows to overwhelm his spirit or his poems, which demonstrate, through breath and cadence and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the fiercest hungers.
Not Here by ISBN: 9781566895095Publication Date: 2018-04-10Not Here is a flight plan for escape and a map for navigating home; a queer Vietnamese American body in confrontation with whiteness, trauma, family, and nostalgia; and a big beating heart of a book. Nguyen's poems ache with loneliness and desire and the giddy terrors of allowing yourself to hope for love, and revel in moments of connection achieved.
The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void by ISBN: 1643620363Publication Date: 2021-02-02Jackie Wang's magnetic and spellbinding debut collection of poetry that attempts to speak in the language of dreams. The poems in The Sunflower Cast A Spell To Save Us From The Void read like dispatches from the dream world, with Jackie Wang acting as our trusted comrade reporting across time and space. By sharing her personal index of dreams with its scenes of solidarity and resilience, interpersonal conflict and outlaw jouissance, Wang embodies historical trauma and communal memory. Here, the all-too-familiar interplay between crisis and resistance becomes first distorted, then clarified and refreshed. With a light touch and invigorating sense of humor, Wang illustrates the social dimension of dreams and their ability to inform and reshape the dreamer's waking world with renewed energy and insight.
The Eclipses by ISBN: 1929918615Publication Date: 2005-04-01The Eclipses was selected by Michael S. Harper as winner of BOA's third A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Woo's artful remembrances weave together memory, mourning and transcendence. Ancestors, both literary and blood, are called forth as Woo struggles beyond his mother's death toward heart-intelligent truths. David Woo attended Harvard College, Stanford University and Yale University. His first poem appeared inThe New Yorker in 1990, followed by eight subsequent appearances. The son of immigrants from China, he lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Peach State by ISBN: 9780822988236Publication Date: 2021-03-23Peach State has its origins in Atlanta, Georgia, the author's hometown and an emblematic city of the New South, a name that reflects the American region's invigoration in recent decades by immigration and a spirit of reinvention. Focused mainly on food and cooking, these poems explore the city's transformation from the mid-twentieth century to today, as seen and shaped by Chinese Americans. The poems are set in restaurants, home kitchens, grocery stores, and the houses of friends and neighbors. Often employing forms--sonnet, villanelle, sestina, palindrome, ghazal, rhymed stanzas--they also mirror the constant negotiation with tradition that marks both immigrant and Southern experience.
Barbie Chang by ISBN: 9781556595165Publication Date: 2017-11-14Barbie Chang, Victoria Chang explores racial prejudice, sexual privilege, and the disillusionment of love through a reimagining of Barbie--perfect in the cultural imagination yet repeatedly falling short as she pursues the American dream. This energetic string of linked poems is full of wordplay, humor, and biting social commentary involving the quote-unquote speaker, Barbie Chang, a disillusioned Asian-American suburbanite. By turns woeful and passionate, playful and incisive, these poems reveal a voice insisting that "even silence is not silent." From "Barbie Chang Lives": Barbie Chang lives on Facebook has a house on Facebook street so she can erase herself Facebook is a country with no trees it allows her to believe people love her don't want to cover her Barbie Chang . . . Victoria Chang is the author of three previous poetry books. In 2013, she won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Chang teaches poetry at Chapman University and lives in Southern California.
Soft Science by ISBN: 9781938584992Publication Date: 2019-04-02Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness--how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness. "Choi creates an exhilarating matrix of poetry, science, and technology." --Publishers Weekly "Franny Choi combines technology and poetry to stunning effect." -BUSTLE "...these beautiful, fractal-like poems are meditations on identity and autonomy and offer consciousness-expanding forays into topics like violence and gender, love and isolation." -NYLON
0°, 0° by ISBN: 9780810126268Publication Date: 2009-08-260° , 0° is where the equator and prime meridian cross, but it is also, in Amit Majmudar's poetic cartography, "the one True Cross, the rood's wood warped and tacked / pole to pole." Unlikely intersections lie at the heart of Amit Majmudar's first collection of poetry. Mythical, biblical, political, and scientific allusion thrive side by side, inspiring surprise and wonder. Majmudar's training as a medical doctor is clearly at work as he is able to balance poetic forms requiring surgical precision--including the exceedingly difficult ghazal--with warmth and compassion for the world. Majmudar understands suffering on the large scale and the small, whether he is speaking up for the biblical character Job and "answering the whirlwind," or tallying the human cost of war at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Sông I Sing by ISBN: 9781566892797Publication Date: 2011-09-20When it feels like no one lets you live at your own volume You sing. Dynamic and eye-opening, this debut by a National Poetry Slam finalist critiques an America sleepwalking through its days and explores the contradictions of race and class in America. Bao Phi has been a National Poetry Slam finalist and appeared on HBO'sDef Poetry. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including2006 Best American Poetry. Phi lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and works at the Loft Literary Center.
Olelo No'eau by ISBN: 0910240930Publication Date: 1983-01-01Considered the finest compendium of traditional Hawaiian insight and lore handed down through generations of oral tradition. This book is a treasure of more than 3,000 proverbs and sayings displaying the knowledge, compassion, foibles, humor, morality, and beliefs of the Hawaiian people.
Essays
Trick Mirror by ISBN: 9780525510543Publication Date: 2019-08-06Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine's journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino's sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet.
World of Wonders by ISBN: 9781571313652Publication Date: 2020-09-08From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. "What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.
Minor Feelings by ISBN: 9781984820365Publication Date: 2020-02-25Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative--and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of "minor feelings." As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality--when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they're dissonant--and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche--and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.
From a Native Daughter by ISBN: 0824820592Publication Date: 1999-05-01Since its publication in 1993, From a Native Daughter, a provocative, well-reasoned attack against the rampant abuse of Native Hawaiian rights, institutional racism, and gender discrimination, has generated heated debates in Hawai'i and throughout the world. This 1999 revised work published by University of Hawai'i Press includes material that builds on issues and concerns raised in the first edition: Native Hawaiian student organizing at the University of Hawai'i; the master plan of the Native Hawaiian self-governing organization Ka Lahui Hawai'i and its platform on the four political arenas of sovereignty; the 1989 Hawai'i declaration of the Hawai'i ecumenical coalition on tourism; and a typology on racism and imperialism. Brief introductions to each of the previously published essays brings them up to date and situates them in the current Native Hawaiian rights discussion.
Memoirs
Crying in H Mart by ISBN: 9780525657743Publication Date: 2021-04-20From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
A History of Scars by ISBN: 9781982127282Publication Date: 2021-03-02From a writer whose work has been called "breathtaking and dazzling" by Roxane Gay, this moving, illuminating, and multifaceted memoir explores, in a series of essays, the emotional scars we carry when dealing with mental and physical illnesses--reminiscent of The Collected Schizophrenias and An Unquiet Mind. In this stunning debut, Laura Lee weaves unforgettable and eye-opening essays on a variety of taboo topics. In "History of Scars" and "Aluminum's Erosions," Laura dives head-first into heavier themes revolving around intimacy, sexuality, trauma, mental illness, and the passage of time. In "Poetry of the World," Laura shifts and addresses the grief she feels by being geographically distant from her mother whom, after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, is relocated to a nursing home in Korea. Through the vivid imagery of mountain climbing, cooking, studying writing, and growing up Korean American, Lee explores the legacy of trauma on a young queer child of immigrants as she reconciles the disparate pieces of existence that make her whole. By tapping into her own personal, emotional, and psychological struggles in these powerful and relatable essays, Lee encourages all of us to not be afraid to face our own hardships and inner truths.
Dear Girls by ISBN: 9780525508830Publication Date: 2019-10-15Ali Wong's heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters (the two she put to work while they were still in utero) cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad. "Knife-sharp . . . a genuine pleasure."--The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time * Variety * Chicago Tribune * Glamour * New York In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so strongly that she even became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads. The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she's learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal single life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong's letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by ISBN: 9781635571851Publication Date: 2019-03-05Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight. As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls. With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality,Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful. One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year:Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The Millions, Nylon, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Refinery29,and many more
When Breath Becomes Air by ISBN: 9780812988406Publication Date: 2016-01-12At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.
They Called Us Enemy by ISBN: 9781603094504Publication Date: 2019-07-16A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. New York Times Bestseller! A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon -- and America itself -- in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.- America Is in the Heart by ISBN: 9780295993539Publication Date: 2014-02-24First published in 1943, this classic memoir by well-known Filipino poet Carlos Bulosan describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West.
Not Quite Not White by ISBN: 9780143131380Publication Date: 2018-08-28A first-generation immigrant's "intimate, passionate look at race in America" (Viet Thanh Nguyen), an American's journey into the heart of not-whiteness. At the age of 12, Sharmila Sen emigrated from India to the U.S. The year was 1982, and everywhere she turned, she was asked to self-report her race - on INS forms, at the doctor's office, in middle school. Never identifying with a race in the India of her childhood, she rejects her new "not quite" designation - not quite white, not quite black, not quite Asian -- and spends much of her life attempting to blend into American whiteness. But after her teen years trying to assimilate--watching shows like General Hospital and The Jeffersons, dancing to Duran Duran and Prince, and perfecting the art of Jell-O no-bake desserts--she is forced to reckon with the hard questions: What does it mean to be white, why does whiteness retain the magic cloak of invisibility while other colors are made hypervisible, and how much does whiteness figure into Americanness? Part memoir, part manifesto, Not Quite Not White is a searing appraisal of race and a path forward for the next not quite not white generation --a witty and sharply honest story of discovering that not-whiteness can be the very thing that makes us American.
Making Asian American Film and Video by ISBN: 9780813565026Publication Date: 2015-01-30The words "Asian American film" might evoke a painfully earnest, low-budget documentary or family drama, destined to be seen only in small film festivals or on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). In her groundbreaking study of the past fifty years of Asian American film and video, Jun Okada demonstrates that although this stereotype is not entirely unfounded, a remarkably diverse range of Asian American filmmaking has emerged. Yet Okada also reveals how the legacy of institutional funding and the "PBS style" unites these filmmakers, whether they are working within that system or setting themselves in opposition to its conventions. Making Asian American Film and Video explores how the genre has served as a flashpoint for debates about what constitutes Asian American identity. Tracing a history of how Asian American film was initially conceived as a form of public-interest media, part of a broader effort to give voice to underrepresented American minorities, Okada shows why this seemingly well-intentioned project inspired deeply ambivalent responses. In addition, she considers a number of Asian American filmmakers who have opted out of producing state-funded films, from Wayne Wang to Gregg Araki to Justin Lin. Okada gives us a unique behind-the-scenes look at the various institutions that have bankrolled and distributed Asian American films, revealing the dynamic interplay between commercial and state-run media. More than just a history of Asian Americans in film, Making Asian American Film and Video is an insightful meditation on both the achievements and the limitations of institutionalized multiculturalism.
The Routledge Companion to Asian American Media by ISBN: 9781138846012Publication Date: 2017-03-13The Routledge Companion to Asian American Media offers readers a comprehensive examination of the way that Asian Americans have engaged with media, from the long history of Asian American actors and stories that have been featured in mainstream film and television, to the birth and development of a distinctly Asian American cinema, to the ever-shifting frontiers of Asian American digital media. Contributor essays focus on new approaches to the study of Asian American media including explorations of transnational and diasporic media, studies of intersectional identities encompassed by queer or mixed race Asian Americans, and examinations of new media practices that challenge notions of representation, participation, and community. Expertly organized to represent work across disciplines, this companion is an essential reference for the study of Asian American media and cultural studies.
Ghostlife of Third Cinema by ISBN: 9780816648306Publication Date: 2009-03-24Asian American filmmakers and video artists have created a substantial, diverse, and challenging body of work that reimagines the cultural and political representation of Asian Americans. Yet much of this work remains unknown. For Mimura, Asian American cinema is the spectral, ghostly return of the international film movement known as Third Cinema. Tracing contemporary Asian American cinema as a continuation of Third Cinema's radical enterprise of making marginalized subjects visible in the First World, Ghostlife of Third Cinema examines such potent issues as diasporic identity, historical memory, and queer sexuality through sophisticated readings of a wide range of film and video projects, including Trinh T. Minh-ha's experimental documentary Surname Viet Given Name Nam; avant-garde works by Japanese American filmmakers Rea Tajiri, Lise Yasui, and Janice Tanaka; and queer videos exploring the intersection of race, nation, and sexuality by Pablo Bautista, Ming-Yuen Ma, and Nguyen Tan Hoang. In Ghostlife of Third Cinema, Glen M. Mimura confronts the ongoing erasure of Asian American independent media and illuminates its cultural and political significance today.
Global Asian American Popular Cultures by ISBN: 9781479867097Publication Date: 2016-05-16A toolkit for understanding how Asian Americans influence, consume and are reflected by mainstream media. Asian Americans have long been the subject and object of popular culture in the U.S. The rapid circulation of cultural flashpoints--such as the American obsession with K-pop sensations, Bollywood dance moves, and sriracha hot sauce--have opened up new ways of understanding how the categories of "Asian" and "Asian American" are counterbalanced within global popular culture. Located at the crossroads of these global and national expressions, Global Asian American Popular Cultures highlights new approaches to modern culture, with essays that explore everything from music, film, and television to comics, fashion, food, and sports. As new digital technologies and cross-media convergence have expanded exchanges of transnational culture, Asian American popular culture emerges as a crucial site for understanding how communities share information and how the meanings of mainstream culture shift with technologies and newly mobile sensibilities. Asian American popular culture is also at the crux of global and national trends in media studies, collapsing boundaries and acting as a lens to view the ebbs and flows of transnational influences on global and American cultures. Offering new and critical analyses of popular cultures that account for emerging textual fields, global producers, technologies of distribution, and trans-medial circulation, this ground-breaking collectionexplores the mainstream and the margins of popular culture.
Asian American Media Activism by ISBN: 9781479835942Publication Date: 2016-01-01How activists and minority communities use media to facilitate social change and achieve cultural citizenship. Among the most well-known YouTubers are a cadre of talented Asian American performers, including comedian Ryan Higa and makeup artist Michelle Phan. Yet beneath the sheen of these online success stories lies a problem--Asian Americans remain sorely underrepresented in mainstream film and television. When they do appear on screen, they are often relegated to demeaning stereotypes such as the comical foreigner, the sexy girlfriend, or the martial arts villain. The story that remains untold is that as long as these inequities have existed, Asian Americans have been fighting back--joining together to protest offensive imagery, support Asian American actors and industry workers, and make their voices heard. Providing a cultural history and ethnography, Asian American Media Activism assesses everything from grassroots collectives in the 1970s up to contemporary engagements by fan groups, advertising agencies, and users on YouTube and Twitter. In linking these different forms of activism, Lori Kido Lopez investigates how Asian American media activism takes place and evaluates what kinds of interventions are most effective. Ultimately, Lopez finds that activists must be understood as fighting for cultural citizenship, a deeper sense of belonging and acceptance within a nation that has long rejected them.
Queering Contemporary Asian American Art by ISBN: 9780295741376Publication Date: 2017-05-01Queering Contemporary Asian American Art takes Asian American differences as its point of departure, and brings together artists and scholars to challenge normative assumptions, essentialisms, and methodologies within Asian American art and visual culture. Taken together, these nine original artist interviews, cutting-edge visual artworks, and seven critical essays explore contemporary currents and experiences within Asian American art, including the multiple axes of race and identity, queer bodies and forms, kinship and affect, and digital identities and performances. Using the verb and critical lens of "queering" to capture transgressive cultural, social, and political engagement and practice, the contributors to this volume explore the connection points in Asian American experience and cultural production of surveillance states, decolonization and diaspora, transnational adoption, and transgender bodies and forms, as well as heteronormative respectability, the military, and war. The interdisciplinary and theoretically informed frameworks in the volume engage readers to understand global and historical processes through contemporary Asian American artistic production.
Yellow Future by ISBN: 9780816649792Publication Date: 2010-10-05Yellow Future examines the emergence and popularity of techno-oriental representations in Hollywood cinema since the 1980s, focusing on the ways East Asian peoples and places have become linked with technology to produce a collective fantasy of East Asia as the future. Jane Chi Hyun Park demonstrates how this fantasy is sustained through imagery, iconography, and performance that conflate East Asia with technology, constituting what Park calls oriental style. Park provides a genealogy of oriental style through contextualized readings of popular films-from the multicultural city in Blade Runner and the Japanese American mentor in The Karate Kid to the Afro-Asian reworking of the buddy genre in Rush Hour and the mixed-race hero in The Matrix. Throughout these analyses Park shows how references to the Orient have marked important changes in American popular attitudes toward East Asia in the past thirty years, from abjection to celebration, invisibility to hypervisibility. Unlike other investigations of racial imagery in Hollywood, Yellow Future centers on how the Asiatic is transformed into and performed as style in the backdrop of these movies and discusses the significance of this conditional visibility for representations of racial difference.
- Feng, Peter X. “Asian American Media Studies and the Problem of Legibility.” Cinema Journal, vol. 56, no. 3, Mar. 2017, p. 125.
- Shimizu, Celine Parrenas. “Gnawing at the Whiteness of Cinema Studies: On Asian American Media Now.” Cinema Journal, vol. 56, no. 3, Mar. 2017, p. 119.
- Rachel Kuo, et al. “#FeministAntibodies: Asian American Media in the Time of Coronavirus.” Social Media + Society, vol. 6, Dec. 2020.
- Lee, Joann. “Asian American Actors in Film, Television and Theater, An Ethnographic Case Study.” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 8, no. 4, Jan. 2001, pp. 176–84.
- Chow, Sarah Kazuko. “Anna May Wong: Navigating Asian American Racial Identity in Early Hollywood.” Film Matters, vol. 11, no. 1, 2020, pp. 50–61.
Feature Films
The Farewell by
Publication Date: 2019Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there's a lot to celebrate.
Columbus by Publication Date: 2017Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) lives with her mother in a little-known Midwestern town haunted by the promise of modernism. Jin (John Cho), a visitor from the other side of the world, attends to his dying father. Burdened by the future, they find respite in one another and the architecture that surrounds them.
The Namesake by Publication Date: 2007The American-born son of Indian immigrants feels pulled between his ethnic heritage and his desire to assimilate, especially after becoming involved with two very different women.Mississippi Masala by
Publication Date: 1992In this exotic and erotic interracial love story, an African American businessman falls for a beautiful Indian immigrant, only to encounter shock and outrage from both families.Minari by
Publication Date: 2020A tender and sweeping story about what roots people that follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, this film shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.Children of Invention by
Publication Date: 2009Two young children living outside Boston are left to fend for themselves when their mother gets embroiled in a pyramid scheme and disappears.Better Luck Tomorrow by
Publication Date: 2002A group of seemingly "perfect" high-school buddies lead double lives. They fly high in a world of petty crime and material excess - a free-wheeling lifestyle that soon takes a downward spiral, leading to an unexpected, violent end.The Joy Luck Club by
Publication Date: 1993Follows the story of four lifelong friends, whose lives are filled with joy and heartbreak, and shows how their experiences have affected the hopes and dreams they hold for each of their children.Searching by
Publication Date: 2018After David Kim's sixteen-year-old daughter goes missing, a local investigation is opened and a detective is assigned to the case. But 37 hours later and without a single lead, David decides to search the one place no one has looked yet, where all secrets are kept today: his daughter's laptop. David must trace his daughter's digital footprints before she disappears forever.
Spa Night by Publication Date: 2016Los Angeles' Korean spas serve as meeting place and bridge between past and future for generations of immigrant families; Spa Night explores one Korean-American family's dreams and realities as each struggles with the overlap of personal desire, disillusionment and sense of tradition.
Documentaries
Documented by
Publication Date: 2013In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in the New York Times Magazine. Documented chronicles his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his public struggle as an immigration reform activist/provocateur; and his journey inward as he reconnects with his mother, whom he hasn't seen in 20 years. A broken immigration system leads to broken families and broken lives.Call Her Ganda by
Publication Date: 2018When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina transwoman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case, an activist attorney (Virgie Suarez), a transgender journalist (Meredith Talusan) and Jennifer's mother (Julita "Nanay" Laude), galvanize a political uprising, pursuing justice and taking on hardened histories of U.S. imperialism.
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision by Publication Date: 1994Reveals the origins of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and tells the story of its 21 year old creator, a Yale architecture student. Lin's plan was selected from over 1,000 different designs. And what began as one of the country's most bitterly disputed monuments became one of the world's most inspirational and frequently visited memorials.
Minding the Gap by Publication Date: 2018Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust-Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship.- Standing Above the Clouds by Publication Date: 2020This documentary follows Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists as they stands to protect their sacred mountain Mauna Kea from the building of the world's largest telescope.
Heart of the sea (Kapolioka'ehukai) by
Publication Date: 2002"Heart of the Sea" is the inspiring portrait of surf legend Rell "Kapoliokae̓hukai" Sunn, founding member of the Women's Professional Surfing Association and one of Hawai'i's most beloved community leaders. While known for her incredible physical power, grace and luminous beauty, it was her generous spirit and relentless works as a youth, environmental and breast cancer activist that made her an icon on the Islands. As she carved a path for women in a sport dominated by men, Sunn tragically discovered that she had breast cancer at the early age of 32. Despite the diagnosis, she continued surfing and promoting breast cancer awareness among native Hawai'ian and Pacific Islander women until her final days. Not only a moving profile of an important figure in contemporary Hawai'ian history, but an important look at Hawai'i as an integral part of America's rich cultural landscape and heritage. "Heart of the Sea" is an essential addition to courses in Asian/Pacific Islander Studies, American Studies, and Women's Health.
Long Distance by A documentary podcast and video series about stories in the Filipino diaspora.
Southern Fried Asian by Southern Fried Asian is a new podcast from The Nerds of Color hosted by Keith Chow. Typically, stories about Asian Americans are centered on the experiences of those who grew up on the coasts -- New York, Southern California, the Bay Area -- where communities of different Asian American subgroups have lived for many years. On this podcast, though, we're gonna look at a region of the country that isn't typically associated with these stories and unpack what it means to be Asian American in the American South.
They Call Us Bruce by Hosts Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.
Modern Minorities by Modern Minorities is a collection of conversations about work and life through the lens of race and gender. It is a show where we talk about “the thing” that everyone is thinking about, but nobody is actually talking about.
Asian Americana by Asian Americana is a podcast about slices of distinctly Asian American culture and history. Asian Americana is also a term based on the idea that Asian Americans are a rich and inherent part of the American cultural and historical tapestry. We weren't just present; we've actively built and shaped this nation with endless stories and contributions.
Black Histories & Futures Month
In recognition and celebration of Black History Month this February, we have curated a selection of books, films, podcasts, and music that celebrate the voices, writing, lives, and history of Black people in America. This collection loosely centers around Blackness in media—aiming to highlight Black music, pop culture, television, and performance. In these selections you will find Black creators discussing the impact of media misrepresentation on Black masculinity, connections between Black music and culinary traditions, rest as a form of resistance, the history of Black performance in America, Black feminist sound, and ekphrastic Black & queer futures alongside a variety of other topics. We hope that you can utilize this collection alongside additional IU Library resources to recognize and celebrate the work of Black intellectuals, writers, poets, chefs, directors, and creators this February.
Our collection is only a small sampling of texts. See below for additional reading lists:
- Black History Month Reading List (Monroe County Public Library)
- Reading Recommendations From Black Cultural Figures (T Magazine)
- Black Caucus, American Library Association Resources (BCALA)
- Black History Reading List (Innocence Project)
- Black History Month Reading List (The Century Foundation)
- Black Lives Matter Reading Lists (Powell's Books)
About the Playlist
In addition to the resources we've gathered in this feature, we've also curated a sampling of music by black artists, across time and genre. To learn more about the deep and varied contributions of black musicians to the development of this medium, take a look at some of the resources we used to make this and other related playlists in the Sounds of Black History Month feature.
Note: To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" (♡) button in the application to save.
Next Steps
National recognition months are a great opportunity to celebrate and participate in events and learning that honor the history of marginalized communities. We recognize, however, that these months, and the creation of resource guides, is only one small step in celebrating and recognizing the contributions of marginalized communities across America. We also recognize that reading books, engaging with films, and listening to music by Black creators is only one aspect of supporting Black communities. To engage more fully, consider supporting local Black-owned businesses, learning about the history and experiences of Black people in Bloomington and at IU, and supporting institutions at IU the are dedicated to Black students. Please see our feature on Local Black History for resources specific to Bloomington, Indiana.
In particular, we would like to highlight the Celebrating Black Cinema series hosted by the Black Film Center & Archive, the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, and the City of Bloomington. See the full list of events on the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Calendar.
To explore more programming at IU, see below:
- Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC at IU)
- A repository of materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era.
- Pride of IU Stories: Black History Month Features
While Black History Month, as a formulation, often emphasizes history and the present (and thus maintains a retrospective focus), we acknowledge that there are many Black futures that we can dream, cultivate, and grow together. While we have highlighted a number of resources that imagine a different world, in the (or "a") future we hope to shift our focus to looking forward, with new features and resources that highlight what is possible.
If you'd like to engage more deeply with Black History Month through library resources, the IU Libraries Arts & Humanities department has created a number of resources and features to provide more holistic coverage of Black history:
- The Sounds of Black History Month (Media Studies)
- Black LGBTQ+ Poetry (Gender Studies)
- Black Philosophy & Thought (Philosophy)
- In Memoriam: bell hooks (Philosophy)
- Local Black History (Race, Migration, & Indigeneity)
- Black American Poets and Poetry, 1770-Present (Literature)
- Black Freedom Movements in American History (History)
- African American Voices and History in University Collections (History)
- Contemporary Black Playwrights You Should Know (Theatre & Drama)
- Performance and Protest: Theatre, Politics, and Activism in America (Theatre & Drama)
- Black Artists & Designers (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Pan-Africanism in Art and Literature (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Afrocentric Architecture (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Juneteenth and Folklore (Folklore)
- Black History Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Youth Materials on Africa & African Identity (Education Library)
- Youth Materials on African American Identity (Education Library)
- Youth Materials on Afro-Latine Identity (Education Library)
How Beautiful We Were by ISBN: 9780593132425Publication Date: 2021-03-09We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue's powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made--and ignored. The country's government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price. Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community's determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman's willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people's freedom.
Freshwater by ISBN: 9780802127358Publication Date: 2018-02-13The astonishing debut novel from the acclaimed bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, and Pet, Freshwater tells the story of Ada, an unusual child who is a source of deep concern to her southern Nigerian family. Young Ada is troubled, prone to violent fits. Born "with one foot on the other side," she begins to develop separate selves within her as she grows into adulthood. And when she travels to America for college, a traumatic event on campus crystallizes the selves into something powerful and potentially dangerous, making Ada fade into the background of her own mind as these alters--now protective, now hedonistic--move into control. Written with stylistic brilliance and based in the author's realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace.
The Most Secret Memory of Men by ISBN: 9781635423273Publication Date: 2023-09-26In 2018, Diégane Latyr Faye, a young Senegalese writer in Paris, discovers a legendary book from the 1930s, The Labyrinth of Inhumanity. No one knows what became of its author, once hailed as the "Black Rimbaud," after the book caused a scandal. Enthralled by this mystery, Diégane decides to search for T.C. Elimane, going down a path that will force him to confront the great tragedies of history, from colonialism to the Holocaust. Alongside his investigation, Diégane becomes part of a group of young African writers in Paris. Together they talk, drink, make love, philosophize about the role of exile in artistic creation. Diégane grows particularly close to two women: the seductive Siga, who holds so many secrets, and the photojournalist Aïda, impossible to pin down. The Most Secret Memory of Men is an astonishing novel about the choice between living and writing, and the desire to transcend the divide between Africa and the West. Above all, it is an ode to literature and its timelessness.
The New Naturals by ISBN: 9781616208806Publication Date: 2023-11-14An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn't look like much. But to Rio, a young Black woman bereft after the loss of her newborn child, this hill becomes more than a safe haven--it becomes a place to start over. She convinces her husband to help her construct a society underground, somewhere safe, somewhere everyone can feel loved, wanted, and accepted, where the children learn actual history, where everyone has an equal shot. She locates a Benefactor and soon their utopia begins to take shape.
Luster by ISBN: 9780374194321Publication Date: 2020-08-04No one wants what no one wants. And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we're ready to take it? Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric's home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows. Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani's Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by ISBN: 9780593422946Publication Date: 2023-08-08In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us.
Open Water by ISBN: 9780802157942Publication Date: 2021-04-13A stunning first novel about two young Black artists in London falling in and out of love by a new literary virtuoso and finalist for the BBC Short Story Award, twenty-six-year-old writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson. In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control. Narrated with deep intimacy, Open Water is at once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity that asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body; to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength; to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, and blistering emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson gives a profoundly sensitive portrait of romantic love in all its feverish waves and comforting beauty. This is one of the most essential debut novels of recent years, heralding the arrival of a stellar and prodigious young talent.
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down by ISBN: 9781628973877Publication Date: 2022-07-19"Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A cowboy so bad he made a working posse of spells phone in sick. A bullwhacker so unfeeling he left the print of winged mice on hides of crawling women. A desperado so onery he made the Pope cry and the most powerful of cattlemen shed his head to the Executioner's swine." And so begins the HooDoo Western by Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo and one of America's most innovative and celebrated writers. Reed demolishes white American history and folklore as well as Christian myth in this masterful satire of contemporary American life. In addition to the black, satanic Loop Garoo Kid, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down features Drag Gibson (a rich, slovenly cattleman), Mustache Sal (his nymphomaniac mail-order bride), Thomas Jefferson and many others in a hilarious parody of the old Western.
The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories by ISBN: 9781594487330Publication Date: 2020-11-10The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history. Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief—all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history—about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight. In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ISBN: 9781573223782Publication Date: 2004-02-03The acclaimed debut short story collection that introduced the world to an arresting and unforgettable new voice in fiction, from multi-award winning author ZZ Packer. Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decide where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are starving, unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream. With penetrating insight, ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision. Fresh, versatile, and captivating, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a striking and unforgettable collection, sure to stand out among the contemporary canon of fiction.
Song of Solomon by ISBN: 0679445048Publication Date: 1995-11-14In this celebrated novel, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison created a new way of rendering the contradictory nuances of Black life in America. Its earthy poetic language and striking use of folklore and myth established Morrison as a major voice in contemporary fiction. Song of Solomon begins with one of the most arresting scenes in our century's literature: a dreamlike tableau depicting a man poised on a roof, about to fly into the air, while cloth rose petals swirl above the snow-covered ground and, in the astonished crowd below, one woman sings as another enters premature labor. The child born of that labor, Macon (Milkman) Dead, will eventually come to discover, through his complicated progress to maturity, the meaning of the drama that marked his birth. Toni Morrison's novel is at once a romance of self-discovery, a retelling of the Black experience in America that uncovers the inalienable poetry of that experience, and a family saga luminous in its depth, imaginative generosity, and universality. It is also a tribute to the ways in which, in the hands of a master, the ancient art of storytelling can be used to make the mysterious and invisible aspects of human life apparent, real, and firm to the touch.
Goliath by ISBN: 9781250782953Publication Date: 2022-01-25In his adult novel debut, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Award finalist and ALA Alex and New England Book Award winner Tochi Onyebuchi delivers a sweeping science fiction epic in the vein of Samuel R. Delany and Station Eleven. In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighborhoods are being cannibalized. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked. A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives—a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth's crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping—into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.
The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by ISBN: 9780063070875Publication Date: 2022-04-19In The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, futurist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, exploring how different threads of liberation—queerness, race, gender plurality, and love—become tangled with future possibilities of memo
