Bøker utgitt av 2leaf Press

ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE, a memoir-travelogue first published in 1960, is being reissued with a critical introduction, including minor edits and annotations of the original text by scholar Tara Betts. Recognized as a prodigy at an early age, Philippa Duke Schuyler was heralded as America's first internationally-acclaimed mixed race celebrity. Her father, a conservative black journalist, and her mother, a white Texan heiress, dedicated Schuyler's development to the cause of integration with the claim that racial mixing could produce a superior hybrid human, a claim that Schuyler resisted, but would nonetheless hurl her into a destructive identity crisis that consumed her throughout her life. When the transition from child prodigy to concert pianist proved challenging in America, Schuyler, like many black performers before her, went abroad during the 1950s for larger audiences. Schuyler's witnessing first-hand the dissemblage of European colonies in Africa and the Middle East is the focus of ADVENTURES IN BLACK AND WHITE. This narrative connects the Harlem Renaissance to the prelude of the Civil Rights Movement at a time when the public conversation on interracial identity in America was just beginning. As Schuyler writes about Africa--"the homeland of her ancestors"--readers can begin to understand how the young musician would eventually find her way as an author and a journalist, and the books that followed.

THE BEAUTY OF BEING, A COLLECTION OF FABLES, SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS, is Abiodun Oyewole's debut collection of prose. Oyewole writes frankly about his experience as a young poet and activist, and provides life lessons with fables and a fascinating travelogue that promotes resilience and self-care to his readers. As the title suggests, THE BEAUTY OF BEING investigates a natural, moral, and sacred spiritual being of self-love, reminding readers if they use these elements as part of the beauty within, endless possibilities await. In his fables, Oyewole has a unique eye for the tiniest details that sheds light on the whole. In his essays, he provides an analysis about The Last Poets, the state of poetry today, and shares first-hand accounts of what activism means to him. Perhaps the most riveting part of this book are his stories of remembrance, which at first glance read like a travelogue but when closely examined, is a love story with a beautiful mediation on grief and loss. Throughout THE BEAUTY OF BEING, Oyewole brilliantly yet subtly interweaves mediations on race, class, culture, life and death, illusion and reality, while deftly showcasing several points of view in a contained space. In THE BEAUTY OF BEING, Oyewole connects to readers with sincerity, humor, heart and grace.

PAPOLiTICO, POEMS OF A POLITICAL PERSUASION is award-winning poet Jesus Papoleto Melendez' sixth book of poetry. Witty, wise, personal and political, Melendez, often weary of the social issues and politics of the day, has created an exciting compilation of new and previously published poems in a collection that he has daringly named after himself to nudge people out of complacency. His poetry is written with satirical and ironic wit, presented in a "cascading" style that dictates the beat and rhythm of his poems he has become known for. This volume contains some of Melendez' classic poems, like "A San Diego Southern/African Night," with new poems that are a bit edgier and challenge the status quo. Despite the frustrations and harsh realities we live in today, Melendez maintains an eternal belief that it is never too late for our future to be changed for the better, making PAPOLiTICO a poetic call for tolerance, reflection, reconciliation, and healing.

SUBSTANCE OF FIRE: GENDER AND RACE IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM brings readers inside the four-year college experience, unfolding multiple perspectives and voices. This multi-genre book, written by college professor Claire Millikin, explores how race and gender function within the privilege of the four-year college classroom. Additional contributions are from recent graduates and current faculty, who interrogate the forces of sexism and racism from the various perspectives of gay, straight, biracial, white, African American, and Latino writers and artists. How does being a female professor differ from being a male professor? How does being a lesbian student make a difference in terms of accessing a professor's time, attention, and respect? How does having dark skin or a non-Anglo last name impact a student's freedom to pursue different majors? These and more questions are examined in THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE. As the title suggests, race and gender are not topics "under control" in higher education but instead they are flash points, tinder, waiting just under the surface of our culture that still makes the claim of equal access to higher education even as so many lives testify to the incompleteness of this so-called equality. Gender and race can ignite, causing pain in the college setting. This book goes to the place of that fire.

SHRIMP, the debut poetry collection of jason vasser-elong, examines the African diaspora in a post-colonial context using shrimp as a metaphor for the small things in life. Using the shrimp motif, vasser-elong weaves together his ancestral past and present through nature, the topography of the land, and all creatures great and small, simultaneously casting a light on the broader cultural and sociopolitical issues of the day. As the author scavenges for answers about his own ancestry, vasser-elong stumbles onto the small things in life which he finds most meaningful, like the reclamation of self with a renaming that is tied to his roots in Cameroon; or colloquial name-calling reserved for those who are short in an ancestral society where being tall is the standard. The poet's journey into the past, the duality of his culture fired by eponymous random observations of life and love, leads to discoveries and an appreciation of life's lost moments. Throughout it all there is hope: something that is not always easy to hold on to when you are going through challenges both inside and outside yourself?--?but it is necessary if you are going to survive. SHRIMP is the realization of that journey.

CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL is Youssef Alaoui's debut full-length poetry collection, which explores human relationships between individuals, cultures, races, and genders. He deftly utilizes archaic tones to formulate an artistic approach to metaphor in verse, creating images that appear wholly in the mind and not on the page. This volume consists of ten sections that explores Alaoui's family and heritage, an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. Blending surrealism, magical realism, and language alchemy, Alaoui explores the human mythos of love, poverty, politics, racism, and war. A few of the poems are written in French and Spanish, translated to English. Post-beat verse from the San Francisco Bay area and the Big-Sur, CRITICS OF MYSTERY MARVEL touches the depth of the soul with poetry that is metaphorically luminous.

THE FOURTH MOMENT, JOURNEYS FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN is a memoir by Carole J. Garrison. A child of humble beginnings, Garrison paved the way for herself to accomplish great things, but for her, the journey was far from your typical "rags to riches" tale. Through a series of tragedies and triumphs, blunders and epiphanies, Garrison's life has been filled with a number of unusual detours from being a suburban housewife in Miami, to becoming a single mom and police officer in Atlanta, to returning to school to become a seasoned ethics and women studies professor in Ohio and Kentucky, to working in Cambodia as it emerged from decades of civil strife, all the while growing into the passionate humanitarian she is today. THE FOURTH MOMENT is a remarkable series of recollections from a woman whose experiences cover an extraordinary range of places, people, and interests. Eschewing the formulaic conventions of autobiography, THE FOURTH MOMENT consists of short stories--vignettes--that move back and forth across time and space to describe in vivid detail events and observations from a fascinating life. The stories reflect the acute perceptions of a woman for whom every day is a new adventure and a fresh opportunity to learn. In THE FOURTH MOMENT, Garrison reveals truths not always within everyday reach, but certainly within everyday aspirations, something that readers will be able to connect to.

BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED, A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, POEMS AND PERSONAL NARRATIVES, edited by Abiodun Oyewole, extends beyond the Black Lives Matter movement's primary agenda of police brutality to acknowledge that even when affronted with slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, racial injustice and inequality, black lives have always mattered. This anthology of essays, personal narratives, poetry and prose is organized into five sections: "Mourning Black Lives That Mattered," "Black Skin/White Masks," "Black Spaces/Black Places," "Black Lives Remembered/ Reclaimed," and "The Legacy of Black Protest Continues" that addresses a wide range of hot-button issues that disproportionately impact the black community. While written primarily by African American poets, writers, activists and scholars, selections are also from people of the Latino and African diasporas, and white activists. Collectively, these 79 contributors provide a call-to-action that challenges readers to confront long-held values and beliefs about black lives, as well as white privilege and fragility, as it surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and its persistence of structural inequality. More importantly, BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED provides a first-hand perspective to a problem known to the African American community long before the Black Lives Matter movement revealed it to the general public that black lives have always mattered. Connecting the past to the present, the contributors of BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED provide an eye-opening and engaging collection that has the potential to reignite a broader push for black liberation and equality for all.

A COUNTRY WITHOUT BORDERS, POEMS AND STORIES OF KASHMIR is the debut collection of Lalita Pandit Hogan, an expatriate Kashmiri scholar and poet who shares with readers the loss of identity and home, culture, migration, womanhood, otherness and exile. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven, evoking a home no longer accessible. A COUNTRY WITHOUT BORDERS is an invaluable collection for all who are interested in cultural remembrance and meditations that reflect postcolonial poetry, and for students reading South Asian literature and culture.

THE BEIGING OF AMERICA, BEING MIXED RACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY, takes on "race matters" and considers them through the firsthand accounts of mixed race people in the United States. Edited by mixed-race scholars Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, this collection consists of 39 poets, writers, teachers, professors, artists and activists, whose personal narratives articulate the complexities of interracial life. THE BEIGING OF AMERICA was prompted by cultural critic/scholar Hua Hsu, who contemplated the changing face and race of U.S. demographics in his 2009 The Atlantic article provocatively titled "The End of White America." In it, Hsu acknowledged "steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage" that undergirded assertions about the "beiging of America." THE BEIGING OF AMERICA is an absorbing and thought-provoking collection of stories that explore racial identity, alienation, with people often forced to choose between races and cultures in their search for self-identity. While underscoring the complexity of the mixed-race experience, these unadorned voices offer a genuine, poignant, enlightening and empowering message to all readers.

TRAILBLAZERS by Gabrielle David is a six-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over four hundred brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way. The lives profiled here include recognizable figures alongside some women that readers will be discovering for the first time, as well as those women who are shaping the era we live in today. This second volume of the TRAILBLAZERS series features women who are visual artists, women who served their country as elected officials or working in government, and composers, songwriters, and conductors. Each of these sections is preceded by an introduction, which provides insight into these women‿s stories in a historical timeline. This volume includes biographical essays of eighty-five women, illuminating the significant role each have played in shaping America‿s greatness, accompanied by powerful photographs that help illustrate who they are. In Volume 2 we learn about the first nationally known Black woman artist, sculptor Edmonia Lewis, the first Black woman cartoonist Jackie Ormes, photographer Carrie Weems, and a new generation of artists such as Kara Elizabeth Walker and Tschabalala Self. We realize that before notable politicians like Lori Lightfoot and Stacey Abrams, women like Crystal Bird Fauset, Velvalea “Velâ€? Phillips, and Shirley Chisholm paved the way. This book also shines a light on the handful of Black women who served on presidential cabinets, like Patricia Robert Harris, Condeleeza Rice, and Loretta Lynch. And as we venture into the world of music, we celebrate classical composers like Nora Holt and Florence Beatrice Price, choral conductor Eva Jessye, highly acclaimed singer-songwriters like Valerie Simpson and Missy Elliot, conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson, award-winning film and TV composer Kathryn Bostic, and breakout songwriter rapper Brittany “Starrahâ€? Hazzard. Their personal achievements reveal the best qualities of Black women in America. With TRAILBLAZERS, David has created an expansive and accessible reference book that provides significant information on the histories of the movements for feminism and civil rights. The book provides a hopeful and inclusive telling of history, one in which Black women receive the same recognition as their white and male counterparts. From the foremothers who broke gender and racial barriers to the mighty women of today, TRAILBLAZERS turns a much-deserved spotlight on these powerful and inspiring role models. This book is written in accessible prose that contain personal reflections for a broad audience, and it can also serve as a vital reference guide for use in schools and libraries. Â

Entre el sol y la nieve: escritos de fin de siglo / Between the Sun and Snow: Writing at the End of the Century presents a collection of selected newspaper articles by writer, cultural activist, and educator Myrna Nieves. The articles in this bilingual collection, which were originally written in Spanish and translated into English by Chris Brandt, first appeared in Nosotros los latinos, a magazine published in New York, between 1992 and 1995. Here, Nieves has brought together nineteen articles and a new essay in which the author navigates the complex story of a population that varies in many dimensions, including national origin and immigration status. Providing critical viewpoints from a Latinx perspective, these articles address a variety of issues including climate change, domestic violence, women's rights, and trends in literature and the arts. Together, these articles serve as a documentary history not only of the Latinx community, but also of the changing perspectives of the nation as a whole. The articles are accompanied by a generous collection of photographs by Néstor Barreto, Roger Cabán, Betty "BP" Cole, Perla de León, Frank Gimpaya, Nereo López Meza, George Malavé, Hiram Maristany, Eliud Martínez, Marlis Momber, Marina Ortiz, Marwin Schwartz, and Louis Servedio Morales, offering a fresh visual iconography of Latinx experience. Entre el sol y la nieve provides a rich collection of insights into this fast and diverse population.

A career-spanning collection of essays by a founding voice in ecosocialism.

"The past four hundred years have seen unprecedented growth in virtually every conceivable realm of life, from medicine to the arts, technology to finance. Far too often, however, when we think of the movers, shakers, and innovators behind these transformations, we picture a host of men - and white men, at that. With Trailblazers, Gabrielle David remedies that. The first anthology of black female innovators published in more than fifteen years, Trailblazers introduces us to more than one hundred and fifty American black women who have been instrumental in creating our contemporary life. We learn about activists and politicians like Fannie Lou Hamer, who in 1964 changed the Democratic National Convention forever by protesting efforts to disenfranchise black voters in her native Mississippi, and Lelia Foley, a black woman who overcame racism and poverty to become the first female African American mayor in the United States in 1973. David also introduces us to entertainers, athletes, and businesswomen - though not always in predictable ways. Beyoncâe Knowles-Carter makes an appearance, for example, not for her musical career, but as a businesswoman, reminding us of her multifaceted triumphs. David brings this volume together with a clarion call for recognition of the transformative work black women have done and continue to do. She reminds us of the debt we owe to these unsung heroes--and the place black women deserve at the table."--

"Mother of Orphans is the compelling true story of Alice, an Irish-American woman who defied rigid social structures to form a family with a black man in Ohio in 1899. Alice and her husband had three children together, but after his death in 1912, Alice mysteriously surrendered her children to an orphanage. One hundred years later, her great-grand daughter, Dedria Humphries Barker, went in search of the reasons behind this mysterious abandonment, hoping in the process to resolve aspects of her own conflicts with American racial segregation and conflict. This book is the fruit of Barker's quest. In it, she turns to memoir, biography, historical research, and photographs to unearth the fascinating history of a multiracial community in the Ohio River Valley during the early twentieth century.... Part personal journey, part cultural biography, Mother of Orphans examines a little-known piece of this country's past: interracial families that survived and prevailed despite Jim Crow laws, including those prohibiting mixed-race marriage."--Amazon.com, viewed April 17, 2020.

Naomi Raquel Enright's Strength of Soul proposes tangible strategies and ideas on how to challenge systemic racism through naming and resisting the ideology of racial difference and of the white supremacy at its root. Enright explores racism and the language that upholds this ideology through personal narratives that include an examination of her family's experience. Throughout this volume, Enright shares reflections of her identity growing up as a bilingual, multiethnic individual, and as the mother of a son presumed to be white. She also advances ideas about how to confront societal notions of an inherent difference between the lived experiences of white people and everyone else, notions which result in the widely held belief that there is an inevitable "us" and "them." Enright suggests that embracing one's total identity can allow people to challenge systemic racism as well as the language and ideology that created it and upholds it. In these poignant and deeply personal stories, Enright allows readers to imagine a society on a genuine path towards justice, healing, and true transformation. Strength of Soul is for anyone who is willing to rethink the status quo and is interested in creating systemic change regarding institutionalized and internalized racism.

Homelessness touches every corner of our country, even the most prosperous ones. In No Vacancy: Homeless Women in Paradise, Michael E. Reid tells the story of more than five hundred women living without shelter in the affluent sea-side communities of Monterrey, Pebble Beach, and Carmel, California. Even in these glittering cities, one by one, homeless women were dying, their bodies appearing in plain sight. When Reid, an Episcopal priest, became aware of these tragedies, he had to act, and he co-founded the Fund for Homeless Women. This new venture took him deep into the complex realities homeless women face. He found that the well-meaning policies and programs in place in fact often had the unintentional effect of widening the gap between the indigent and mainstream society. No Vacancy captures the realities of homelessness in affluent northern California and exposes pitfalls encountered by those who wish to combat it. Reid presents an unvarnished look at the culture of long-term homelessness, and his experience provides helpful guidance for fighting this crisis. He also explores the root causes that can result in homelessness, including marginalization and the gender-based bias--and its disproportionate effect on women of color. This timely book provides needed guidance from the frontlines of the fight against homelessness, especially as activists and homeless people face weakened political and financial support from the government and their communities.

Monsters: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and "Mathilda" presents Mary Shelley's most popular works, accompanied by a critical introduction and commentary by scholar Claire Millikin Raymond. Cultures create and ascribe meaning to monsters, endowing them with characteristics derived from their most deep-seated fears and taboos. In this volume, Millikin Raymond explores both Frankenstein and Mathilda from a feminist and cultural studies perspective, illuminating the cultural transgressions that each work presents through its monsters. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, conceived by Shelley at the age of nineteen and published before she was twenty, is the most famous and enduring imaginative work of the Romantic era. Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into Frankenstein. Monsters includes the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, which Shelley revised as an adult, respecting the artistic maturity and agency of the author. Mathilda, Shelley's second long work of fiction written between August 1819 and February 1820, deals with taboos that haunt our society to this day: incest and suicide. Published for the first time in 1959, it has become Shelley's best-known work after Frankenstein. The version edited by Elizabeth Nitchie in 1959 is presented here. Frankenstein and Mathilda capture readers by force of their astonishing fantasy and range of implication: the definition of "monster," which Millikin Raymond explores alongside other aspects of Shelley's work. Monsters will resonate profoundly with readers with a background or interest in science fiction, history, and literature, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and cultural change.

Born to an African American father and Japanese mother, Frederick D. Kakinami Cloyd, the narrator of Dream of the Water Children, finds himself not only to be a marginalized person by virtue of his heritage, but often a cultural drifter, as well. Indeed, both his family and his society treat him as if he doesn't entirely belong to any world. Tautly written in spare, clear poetic prose, this memoir explores the specific contours of Japanese and African American cultures, as well as the broader experience of biracial and multicultural identity. To tell his story, Cloyd incorporates photographs and Japanese writing, history, and memory to convey both rich personal experience and significant historical detail. Bringing together vivid memories with a perceptive cultural eye, Dream of the Water Children brings readers closer to a biracial experience, opening up our understanding of the cultural richness and social challenges people from diverse backgrounds face.