Ethnic Studies

Thomas Sowell provides us with a useful and concise record tracing the history of nine ethnic groups: Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans.

In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate Black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast.

In his books I Can't Date Jesus and I Don't Want to Die Poor, Michael Arceneaux established himself as one of the most beloved and entertaining writers of his generation, touching upon such hot-button topics as race, class, sexuality, labor, debt, and, of course, paying homage to the power and wisdom of Beyoncé. In this collection, Arceneaux takes stock of how far he has traveled—and how much ground he still has to cover in this patriarchal, heteronormative society.

The Conquest of Texas is the story of the struggle between Anglos and Indians for land. Anderson tells how Scotch-Irish settlers clashed with farming tribes and then challenged the Comanches and Kiowas for their hunting grounds. Next, the decade-long conflict with Mexico merged with war against Indians. For fifty years Texas remained in a virtual state of war. Piercing the very heart of Lone Star mythology, Anderson tells how the Texas government encouraged the Texas Rangers to annihilate Indian villages, including women and children. This policy of terror succeeded.

Haitian Vodou is a fascinating spiritual tradition rich with ceremonies and magic, songs and prayers, dances and fellowship. Yet outside of Haiti, next to no one understands this joyous and profound way of life. In Haitian Vodou, Mambo Chita Tann explores the historical roots and contemporary practices of this unique tradition.

With a tarot deck in hand, listeners will learn how to identify and access ancestral gifts, messages, powers, protectors, and healers. Tarot expert Nancy Hendrickson guides listeners through the basics of finding recent ancestors, and navigating the confusing maze of DNA and ethnic heritage. As a longtime tarot enthusiast, she shows listeners how to incorporate a metaphysical tool into a world of tradition.

Many young African Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity. Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community.

Mark DeYmaz presents seven common obstacles to building a healthy multi-ethnic church, taking the reader beyond merely understanding the need for diversity, to the practical challenges and ramifications of day-to-day leadership within a diverse congregation of faith.

We all know how identities - notably, those of nationality, class, culture, race, and religion - are at the root of global conflict, but the more elusive truth is that these identities are created by conflict in the first place. In provocative, entertaining chapters, Kwame Anthony Appiah interweaves keen-edged argument with engrossing historical tales and reveals the tangled contradictions within the stories that define us.

In this honest and welcoming book, diversity and inclusion expert, professor, and award-winning speaker Dr. Omekongo Dibinga argues that we must embark on a massive undertaking to re-educate ourselves on the stereotypes that have proven harmful, and too often deadly, to the black community.

In Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?, Mumia gives voice to the many people of color who have fallen to police bullets or racist abuse and offers the post-Ferguson generation advice on how to address police abuse in the United States. This collection of his radio commentaries on the topic features an in-depth essay written especially for this book to examine the history of policing in America, with its origins in the White slave patrols of the antebellum South and an explicit mission to terrorize the country's Black population.

African Founders explores the little-known history of how enslaved people from different regions of Africa interacted with colonists of European origins to create new regional cultures in the colonial United States. The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical principles, among other attributes. This startling history reveals how much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early years, producing a new distinctly American culture.

Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art—in particular music—and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world.

Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brian’s recounting of his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—reveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism provides expert insight into the complex, interconnected factors that are influencing patterns of human relations worldwide in a time of rising populist nationalism, intensified racial and religious tensions, and mounting hostilities towards immigrants and minorities. Analyzing the underlying forces which continue to drive global trends, this volume examines contemporary patterns based on the most recent evidence spanning five continents....

A delightful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, this is an account of Elizabeth Warnock Fernea's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. This volume gives a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.

In Plant Teachers, Narby and Pizuri hold a cross-cultural dialogue that explores the similarities between ayahuasca and tobacco, the role of these plants in indigenous cultures, and the hidden truths they reveal about nature. Juxtaposing two distinct worldviews, Plant Teachers invites listeners on a wide-ranging journey through anthropology, botany, and biochemistry, while raising tantalizing questions about the relationship between science and other ways of knowing.

Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, this classic collection includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as "a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race," and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that Black Americans lead.

Reprint of the classic textbook: 10th Anniversary 2021 Edition. Chicago history/culture with an Italian flair! There is something for everybody in this eclectic volume. Every reader will find a topic or a writer that s/he wants to know more about. Publication of Reconstructing Italians in Chicago is a major step toward making Chicago's Italians the best documented (and best understood) in the nation. It is a gateway to both the academic and the personal exploration of Italians in Chicago, loaded with references that lead the reader to just about every source of information on the subject. ...

Analyzing the tremendous changes in the history of America’s racial dynamics, Randall Kennedy challenges us to examine how prejudices and biases still fuel fears and inform our sexual, marital, and family choices. He takes us from the injustices of the slave era up to present-day battles over race matching adoption policies, which seek to pair children with adults of the same race.