Download or read book The Beauty and the Burden of Being a Black Professor written by Cheron H. Davis and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By presenting discussions on professional development, and emphasizing the challenges and triumphs experienced by Black professors across disciplines, this book provides advice for junior Black scholars on how to navigate academe and tackle the challenges that Black scholars often face.

Download or read book Black on Earth written by Kimberly N. Ruffin and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American environmental literature has relied heavily on the perspectives of European Americans, often ignoring other groups. In Black on Earth, Kimberly Ruffin expands the reach of ecocriticism by analyzing the ecological experiences, conceptions, and desires seen in African American writing. Ruffin identifies a theory of "ecological burden and beauty" in which African American authors underscore the ecological burdens of living within human hierarchies in the social order just as they explore the ecological beauty of being a part of the natural order. Blacks were ecological agents before the emergence of American nature writing, argues Ruffin, and their perspectives are critical to understanding the full scope of ecological thought. Ruffin examines African American ecological insights from the antebellum era to the twenty-first century, considering WPA slave narratives, neo-slave poetry, novels, essays, and documentary films, by such artists as Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, Henry Dumas, Percival Everett, Spike Lee, and Jayne Cortez. Identifying themes of work, slavery, religion, mythology, music, and citizenship, Black on Earth highlights the ways in which African American writers are visionary ecological artists.

Download or read book We re Not OK written by Antija M. Allen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, only 6% of the 1.5 million faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions is Black. Research shows that, while many institutions tout the idea of diversity recruitment, not much progress has been made to diversify faculty ranks, especially at research-intensive institutions. We're Not Ok shares the experiences of Black faculty to take the reader on a journey, from the obstacles of landing a full-time faculty position through the unique struggles of being a Black educator at a predominantly white institution, along with how these deterrents impact inclusion, retention, and mental health. The book provides practical strategies and recommendations for graduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators, along with changemakers, to make strides in diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than a presentation of statistics and anecdotes, it is the start of a dialogue with the intent of ushering actual change that can benefit Black faculty, their students, and their institutions.

Download or read book Black Woman s Burden written by N. Rousseau and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-11-08 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the historical endeavors to regulate Black female sexuality and reproduction in the United States, through methods of exploitation, control, and repression.

Download or read book Black Faculty in the Academy written by Fred A. Bonner II and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through candid discussions and personal counter-narrative stories, Black Faculty in the Academy explores the experiences and challenges faced by faculty of color in academe. Black faculty in predominantly White college and university settings must negotiate multiple and competing identities while struggling with issues of marginality, otherness, and invisible barriers. This important book illuminates how faculty can develop a professional identity that leads to success in academe, while at the same time remaining true to cultural and personal identities. Through rich narratives, chapter authors situate race-related encounters at the center of their experience in an effort to deconstruct and challenge commonly held assumptions about life in academe. They also provide key recommendations and strategies to help faculty of color ensure their continued professional success. Framed by critical race theory, these stories show how faculty can successfully maneuver through all stages of a career in academe, including tenure and promotion, publication, mentoring, networking, teaching, and dealing with institutional climate issues. This valuable book is for faculty and administrators seeking to create an environment that nurtures professional growth and fosters success among Black faculty.

Download or read book Too Heavy a Yoke written by Chanequa Walker-Barnes and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black women are strong. At least that's what everyone says and how they are constantly depicted. But what, exactly, does this strength entail? And what price do Black women pay for it? In this book, the author, a psychologist and pastoral theologian, examines the burdensome yoke that the ideology of the Strong Black Woman places upon African American women. She demonstrates how the three core features of the ideology--emotional strength, caregiving, and independence--constrain the lives of African American women and predispose them to physical and emotional health problems, including obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and anxiety. She traces the historical, social, and theological influences that resulted in the evolution and maintenance of the Strong Black Woman, including the Christian church, R & B and hip-hop artists, and popular television and film. Drawing upon womanist pastoral theology and twelve-step philosophy, she calls upon pastoral caregivers to aid in the healing of African American women's identities and crafts a twelve-step program for Strong Black Women in recovery.

Download or read book Living While Black written by Guilaine Kinouani and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guardian “Best Book of 2021” Selection A powerful look at the impacts of anti-Black racism and a practical guide for overcoming racial trauma through radical self-care as a form of resistance Over the past 15 years, radical psychologist Guilaine Kinouani has focused her research, writing, and workshops on how racism affects both physical and mental health. Living While Black gives voice to the diverse, global experiences of Black people, using personal stories, powerful case studies, and eye-opening research to offer expert guidance on how to set boundaries and process micro-aggressions; protect children from racism; handle difficult race-based conversations; navigate the complexities of Black love; and identify and celebrate the wins. Based on her findings, Kinouani has devised tried-and-tested strategies to help protect Black people from the harmful effects of verbal, physical, and structural racism. She empowers Black readers to adopt self-care mechanisms to improve their day-to-day wellness to help them thrive, not just survive, and to find hope and beauty—or even joy—in the face of racial adversity. She also provides a vital resource for allies seeking to better understand the impacts of racism and how they can help. With the rise of far-right ideologies and the increase of racist hate crimes, Living While Black is both timely and instrumental in moving conversations from defining racism for non-Black majorities to focusing on healing and nurturing the mental health of those facing prejudice, discrimination, and the lasting effects of the violence of white supremacy.

Download or read book Teaching Beautiful Brilliant Black Girls written by Omobolade Delano-Oriaran and published by Corwin Press. This book was released on 2021-03-27 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Be a part of the radical transformation to honor and respect Beautiful Brilliant Black Girls! This book is a collective call to action for educational justice and fairness for all Black Girls – Beautiful, Brilliant. This edited volume focuses on transforming how Black Girls are understood, respected, and taught. Editors and authors intentionally present the harrowing experiences Black Girls endure and provide readers with an understanding of Black Girls’ beauty, talents, and brilliance. This book calls willing and knowledgeable educators to disrupt and transform their learning spaces by presenting: Detailed chapters rooted in scholarship, lived experiences, and practice Activities, recommendations, shorter personal narratives, and poetry honoring Black Girls Resources centering Black female protagonists Companion videos illustrating first-hand experiences of Black Girls and women Tools in authentically connecting with Black Girls so they can do more than survive – they can thrive.

Download or read book The Burden of Black Religion written by Curtis J. Evans and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion has always been a focal element in the long and tortured history of American ideas about race. In The Burden of Black Religion, Curtis Evans traces ideas about African American religion from the antebellum period to the middle of the twentieth century. Central to the story, he argues, was the deep-rooted notion that blacks were somehow "naturally" religious. At first, this assumed natural impulse toward religion served as a signal trait of black people's humanity -- potentially their unique contribution to American culture. Abolitionists seized on this point, linking black religion to the black capacity for freedom. Soon, however, these first halting steps toward a multiracial democracy were reversed. As Americans began to value reason, rationality, and science over religious piety, the idea of an innate black religiosity was used to justify preserving the inequalities of the status quo. Later, social scientists -- both black and white -- sought to reverse the damage caused by these racist ideas and in the process proved that blacks were in fact fully capable of incorporation into white American culture. This important work reveals how interpretations of black religion played a crucial role in shaping broader views of African Americans and had real consequences in their lives. In the process, Evans offers an intellectual and cultural history of race in a crucial period of American history.

Download or read book Fearing the Black Body written by Sabrina Strings and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as “diseased” and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals—where fat bodies were once praised—showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority. The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

Download or read book Ain t I a Beauty Queen written by Maxine Leeds Craig and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-20 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Black is Beautiful!" The words were the exuberant rallying cry of a generation of black women who threw away their straightening combs and adopted a proud new style they called the Afro. The Afro, as worn most famously by Angela Davis, became a veritable icon of the Sixties. Although the new beauty standards seemed to arise overnight, they actually had deep roots within black communities. Tracing her story to 1891, when a black newspaper launched a contest to find the most beautiful woman of the race, Maxine Leeds Craig documents how black women have negotiated the intersection of race, class, politics, and personal appearance in their lives. Craig takes the reader from beauty parlors in the 1940s to late night political meetings in the 1960s to demonstrate the powerful influence of social movements on the experience of daily life. With sources ranging from oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activists and men and women who stood on the sidelines to black popular magazines and the black movement press, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? will fascinate those interested in beauty culture, gender, class, and the dynamics of race and social movements.

Download or read book Black and White Thinking written by Kevin Dutton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking and timely book about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking. Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk: the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment—a drop in temperature, the crack of a branch—was essential to our survival as a species. Since then, the world has evolved—but we, for the most part, haven’t. Confronted with a panoply of shades of gray, our brains have a tendency to “force quit:” to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeon-hole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none. In our modern, interconnected world, it might seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges we face—that living with a binary brain is like trying to navigate a teeming city center with a map that shows only highways. In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world. Simply put, unless we perceived our environment as a chessboard, our brains wouldn’t be able to play the game. Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three “super categories”—fight or flight, us versus them, and right or wrong—and argues that they remain essential to not only convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better. Black-and-White Thinking is a scientifically informed wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our gray matter to see that gray really does matter.

Download or read book Burdens of Freedom written by Lawrence M. Mead and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Burdens of Freedom presents a new and radical interpretation of America and its challenges. The United States is an individualist society where most people seek to realize personal goals and values out in the world. This unusual, inner-driven culture was the chief reason why first Europe, then Britain, and finally America came to lead the world. But today, our deepest problems derive from groups and nations that reflect the more passive, deferential temperament of the non-West. The long-term poor and many immigrants have difficulties assimilating in America mainly because they are less inner-driven than the norm. Abroad, the United States faces challenges from Asia, which is collective-minded, and also from many poorly-governed countries in the developing world. The chief threat to American leadership is no longer foreign rivals like China but the decay of individualism within our own society. The great divide is between the individualist West, for which life is a project, and the rest of the world, in which most people seek to survive rather than achieve. This difference, although clear in research on world cultures, has been ignored in virtually all previous scholarship on American power and public policy, both at home and abroad. Burdens of Freedom is the first book to recognize that difference. It casts new light on America's greatest struggles. It re-evaluates the entire Western tradition, which took individualism for granted. How to respond to cultural difference is the greatest test of our times.

Download or read book The Book of More Delights written by Ross Gay and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, and St. Louis Public Radio** The New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy is back with exactly the book we need in these unsettling times. Margaret Roach of The New York Times says, “Yes, please. I'll have another dose of delight.” In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

Download or read book Afro Nostalgia written by Badia Ahad-Legardy and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2021-04-12 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, she reveals nostalgia’s capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments. Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remedy to contend with the disillusionment of the present and the traumas of the past.

Download or read book The Burden of Memory the Muse of Forgiveness written by Wole Soyinka and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Laureate in Literature Wole Soyinka considers all of Africa--indeed, all the world--as he poses this question: once repression stops, is reconciliation between oppressor and victim possible? In the face of centuries-long devastation wrought on the African continent and her Diaspora by slavery, colonialism, Apartheid, and the manifold faces of racism, what form of recompense could possibly suffice? In a voice as eloquent and humane as it is forceful, Soyinka boldly challenges in these pages the notions of simple forgiveness, confession, and absolution as strategies for social healing. Ultimately, he turns to art--poetry, music, painting, etc.--as the one source that can nourish the seed of reconciliation: art is the generous vessel that can hold together the burden of memory and the hope of forgiveness. Based on Soyinka's Stewart-McMillan lectures delivered at the DuBois Institute at Harvard, The Burden of Memory speaks not only to those concerned specifically with African politics, but also to anyone seeking the path to social justice through some of history's most inhospitable terrain.

Download or read book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome written by Joy DeGruy and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From acclaimed author and researcher Dr. Joy DeGruy comes this fascinating book that explores the psychological and emotional impact on African Americans after enduring the horrific Middle Passage, over 300 years of slavery, followed by continued discrimination. From the beginning of American chattel slavery in the 1500’s, until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse. Given such history, Dr. Joy DeGruy asked the question, “Isn’t it likely those enslaved were severely traumatized? Furthermore, did the trauma and the effects of such horrific abuse end with the abolition of slavery?” Emancipation was followed by another hundred years of institutionalized subjugation through the enactment of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, peonage and convict leasing, and domestic terrorism and lynching. Today the violations continue, and when combined with the crimes of the past, they result in further unmeasured injury. What do repeated traumas visited upon generation after generation of a people produce? What are the impacts of the ordeals associated with chattel slavery, and with the institutions that followed, on African Americans today? Dr. DeGruy answers these questions and more as she encourages African Americans to view their attitudes, assumptions, and emotions through the lens of history. By doing so, she argues they will gain a greater understanding of the impact centuries of slavery and oppression has had on African Americans. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome is an important read for all Americans, as the institution of slavery has had an impact on every race and culture. “A masterwork. [DeGruy’s] deep understanding, critical analysis, and determination to illuminate core truths are essential to addressing the long-lived devastation of slavery. Her book is the balm we need to heal ourselves and our relationships. It is a gift of wholeness.”—Susan Taylor, former Editorial Director of Essence magazine