Social Identity Resources

RACE

SIR 1: Privilege, Power and Difference by Allan G. Johnson: This brief supplemental book provides students with an easily applied theoretical model for thinking about systems of privilege and difference. Writing in accessible, conversational prose, Johnson joins theory with engaging examples in ways that enable students to see the nature and consequences of privilege and their connection to it.

SIR 2: Witnessing Whiteness: First Steps Toward an Antiracist Practice and Culture, by Shelly Tochluk: Witnessing Whiteness invites people, especially those of European ancestry, to consider their relationship to white privilege and the lingering shadows of racism. In an easy to read style, this book helps people understand why race is still a relevant issue, how race influences white people’s daily lives, and how to develop the beginnings of an antiracist practice.

SIR 3: It’s the Little Things by Lena Williams: Williams, a reporter for the New York Times, speaks from experience about a range of annoying to dangerous incidences that are caused by the lack of understanding between the races. Williams examines the arenas of the workplace, public places, school, home, social settings, and the media. She recounts incidents from the mundane to the infamous–the Charles Stuart and Susan Smith cases where whites accused fictitious black men of murder and kidnapping when they themselves were guilty. But Williams mostly focuses on daily situations: black people unable to get a cab or service at a restaurant, being followed in a store, or having difficulty selling a home unless they disguise their ownership. Williams also gives whites a say in the awkwardness of interaction between the races for fear of saying or doing something offensive. Revealing, sometimes amusing, look at the sad state of race relations.

SIR 4: White Privilege by Paula S Rothenberg: White Privilege, Second Edition, the revision to the ground-breaking anthology from Paula Rothenberg, continues her efforts from the first edition. Two new essays contribute to the discussion of the nature and history of white power. The concluding section again challenges readers to explore ideas for using the power and the concept of white privilege to help combat racism in their own lives.

SIR 5: Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel: Uprooting Racism explores the manifestations of racism in politics, work, community, and family life. It moves beyond the definition and unlearning of racism to address the many areas of privilege for white people and suggests ways for individuals and groups to challenge the structures of racism. Uprooting Racism‘s welcoming style helps readers look at how we learn racism, what effects it has on our lives, its costs and benefits to white people, and what we can do about it.

SIR 6: Shout Out: Women of Color Respond to Violence co-edited by Dr. Maria Ochoa (SJSU) and Dr. Barbara K. Ige (UCSB): Shout Out addresses a range of responses to the injustices that women everywhere are sustaining in their daily lives: physical abuse, murder, rape, poverty, and psychological terror. Through critical examinations, creative nonfiction, and poetry, the contributors provide living testimony for the need to put an end to oppression and violence.

SIR 7: White like me by Tim Wise: In White Like Me, Tim Wise offers a highly personal examination of the ways in which racial privilege shapes the lives of most white Americans, overtly racist or not, to the detriment of people of color, themselves, and society. The book shows the breadth and depth of the phenomenon within institutions such as education, employment, housing, criminal justice, and healthcare. By critically assessing the magnitude of racial privilege and its enormous costs, Wise provides a rich memoir that will inspire activists, educators, or anyone interested in understanding the way that race continues to shape the experiences of people in the U.S. Using stories instead of stale statistics, Wise weaves a narrative that is at once readable and scholarly, analytical and accessible.

SIR 8: Understanding White Privilege by Frances Kendall: Racial privilege is hard to see for those who were born with access to power and resources. Yet it is very visible for those to whom it was not granted. Understanding White Privilege is written for individuals and those in organizations who grapple with race every day, as well as for those who believe they don’t need to. It is written for those who have tried to build authentic professional relationships across races but have felt unable to do so. It is written for those who believe strongly in the struggle for racial justice and need additional information to share with their friends and colleagues. Inviting readers to think personally about how race–theirs and others’–frames experiences, relationships, and the way we each see the world, Understanding White Privilege focuses squarely on white privilege and its implications by offering specific suggestions for what we each can do to bridge the racial chasm.

SIR 9: Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity and Success at Capital High by Signithia Fordham: This innovative portrait of student life in an urban high school focuses on the academic success of African-American students, exploring the symbolic role of academic achievement within the Black community and investigating the price students pay for attaining it. Signithia Fordham’s richly detailed ethnography reveals a deeply rooted cultural system that favors egalitarianism and group cohesion over the individualistic, competitive demands of academic success and sheds new light on the sources of academic performance. She also details the ways in which the achievements of successful African-Americans are “blacked out” of the public imagination and negative images are reflected onto black adolescents. A self-proclaimed “native” anthropologist, she chronicles the struggle of African-American students to construct an identity suitable to themselves, their peers, and their families within an arena of colliding ideals. This long-overdue contribution is of crucial importance to educators, policymakers, and ethnographers.

SIR 10: Elite Discourse and Racism by Teun A.van Dijk: This study of ‘elite racism,’ which can be subtle but is in fact pervasive and sometimes mundane, is an important contribution to the study of racism and a fine example of comparative race and ethnic studies. Intended for undergraduate and graduate students and scholars, it can also be profitably read by anyone interested in understanding the multiple manifestations of racism in U.S. and European societies.

SIR 11: The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class by David R. Roediger: A second edition of this widely adopted study of working-class racism. The Wages of Whiteness provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. In an afterword to this second edition, Roediger discusses recent studies of whiteness and the changing face of labor itself. He surveys criticism of his work, accepting many such criticisms while challenging others, especially the view that the study of working-class racism implies a rejection of Marxism and radical politics.

SIR 12: Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys by Jawanza Kunjufu: Advice for parents, educators, community, and church members is provided in this guide for ensuring that African American boys grow up to be strong, committed, and responsible African American men.

SIR 13: The Education of a WASP by Lois Mark Stalvey: The Education of a WASP chronicles one white woman’s discovery of racism in 1960s America. First published in 1970 and highly acclaimed by reviewers, Lois Stalvey’s account is as timely now as it was then. Nearly twenty years later, with ugly racial incidents occurring on college campuses, in neighborhoods, and in workplaces everywhere, her account of personal encounters with racism remains deeply disturbing. Educators and general readers interested in the subtleties of racism will find the story poignant, revealing, and profoundly moving.

SIR 14: Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism by Elly Bulkin, Minnie Bruce Pratt and Barbara Smith: These thought-provoking personal essays examine the political reality of racism and anti-semitism from the perspectives of three lesbian activists from widely-differing backgrounds and identities who share mutual respect for each other’s work.

SIR 15: Saving Our Sons: Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World by Marita Golden: Through the story of raising her son against the backdrop of a racially divided society, Golden confronts the causes of the violence that surrounds the legacy of her own generation’s struggle for civil rights. She talks to psychologists, writers, and young Black men-criminals and scholars both-and explores how single Black mothers are often blamed for troubled youth. In this fiercely lyrical and revealing narrative, Golden has created a work of profound and lasting importance: a book that sensitively and uniquely addresses the problems of boyhood and emerging manhood. This is a book in which mothers across the country will see themselves and their sons.

SIR 16: The Devil is in the Details: Essays on Law, Race, Politics, and Religion by Ellisandro Washington: “black” or “Black”: a plea for legitimacy in legal scholarship — Racial designations in the Bible — Arguments against racial capitalization addressed and refuted

SIR 17: Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity and the Ambivalence of Assimilation edited by Gerald Early: It was W.E.B. Du Bois who, 100 years ago, raised the issue of our double consciousness: “an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body.” The contributors to this collection of essays were given this famous quotation as a point of departure. Early is to be congratulated on his selection of contributors – Glenn Loury, Nikki Giovanni, Molefi Kete Asante and Henry Louis Gates Jr., to name a few. Their diverse perspectives make this an exciting and insightful publication for everyone.

SIR 18: Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work and the Law by Herbert Hill: Covering the period from the abolition of slavery through the events that preceded and affected the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Black Labor and the American Legal System examines the major legislative and legal developments relating to the employment discrimination. The historical consequences of the racial practices of employers and organized labor, as well as of the federal government, are analyzed within the context of law and social change. The evolution of federal labor policy is traced through key decisions of the National Labor Relations Board and the courts as they have interpreted the application of labor law to racial discrimination.

SIR 19: Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America: 1945-1990 by Manning Marable: This contemporary history of black America outlines the basic problems and challenges during the crucial era of black reform. Aimed at students of Contemporary American politics and society, this acclaimed study by one of the most articulate and eloquent authorities on the movement for black freedom traces the divergent elements for political, social, and moral reform in non-white America since 1945. Through the 1950s and 1960s Marable traces the emergence of a powerful black working class, the successful effort to abolish legal segregation, the outbreak of Black Power, urban rebellion, and the renaissance of black nationalism. He explores the increased participation of blacks and ethnic groups in the electoral and governmental systems and the white reaction to racial progress.

SIR 20: “Where Something Catches” Work, Love and Identity in Youth by Victoria I. Munoz: Using an innovative framework, a psychology of identity is explored by incorporating an analysis of the cultural, historical, and political context of youths from different regions of Puerto Rico. Interviews with 56 Puerto Rican youths who were either studying to work at something they felt strongly about, working at something they loved, or trying to find work after dropping out of school provide portraits of young people in personal transition.

GENDER

SIG 1: Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide by Maureen Dowd: For Dowd, Are Men Necessary? represents a new twist on sexual politics, as she takes stock of the state of the sexes, 40 years after the dual events of women’s liberation and the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

SIG 2: Men’s Work: How to stop the Violence that tears our lives apart by Paul Kivel: Sexual harassment, child abuse, incest, rape, murder, war–it’s impossible today to hear a news report and not be informed of violent acts perpetrated by men. Acknowledging that there are no easy answers to the problem of male violence–particularly in a world that seems to thrive on aggression and physical force–Men’s Work reaches straight to its root causes. In his ground-breaking work, author Paul Kivel helps men confront the political, social, and personal forces that generate and reward misogyny, hatred, anger, and violent behavior. Combining years of personal study and reflection with his work with men in the Oakland Men’s Project, Men’s Work presents an innovative and workable approach to stopping male violence. Kivel shows men how to reclaim the power and responsibility needed to unlearn the lessons of control and aggression.

SIG 3: Boys will be men by Paul Kivel: While the women’s liberation movement produced dynamic changes in society’s assumptions about girls’ roles, little has changed about our attitude toward the role of boys. Yet the cycle of violence and oppression will not stop until boys are raised to become part of the struggle to end it. Boys will Be Men is for all parents who have a vision of a society where peace and justice exist; for parents raising their sons in economically disadvantaged communities; for feminists who feel confused about raising their sons, and for parents of color who need to add their sons’ strength to their communities.

SIG 4: Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating  Femininity by Julia Serano: A provocative manifesto, Whipping Girl is a gripping, no holds barred account that debunks popular misconceptions about transsexuality, while exposing the depth of the cultural belief that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive. Julia Serano, a transsexual woman, shares her experiences pre- and post-transition, revealing at every turn the ways in which fear, contempt, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole.

SIG 5: Sexual Inequalities and social justice by Niels Teunis: This pioneering collection of ten ethnographically rich essays signals the emergence of a new paradigm of social analysis committed to understanding and analyzing social oppression in the context of sexuality and gender. The contributors, an interdisciplinary group of social scientists representing anthropology, sociology, public health, and psychology, illuminate the role of sexuality in producing and reproducing inequality, difference, and structural violence among a range of populations in various geographic, historical, and cultural arenas. In particular, the essays consider racial minorities including Hispanics, Koreans, and African Americans; discuss disabled people; examine issues including substance abuse, sexual coercion, and HIV/AIDS; and delve into other topics including religion and politics. Rather than emphasizing sexuality as an individual trait, the essays view it as a social phenomenon, focusing in particular on cultural meaning and real-world processes of inequality such as racism and homophobia. The authors address the complex and challenging question of how the research under discussion here can make a real contribution to the struggle for social justice.

SIG 6: Healing from Violence: Latino Men’s journey to a new Masculinity by Welland Christauria: Although it appears that domestic violence occurs as frequently in Latino families as in Caucasian families, little research has been done on this topic, and very few counseling programs explicitly developed for Latino families currently exist. Healing from Violence fills this void. Drawing on a research study of 150 Latino men who completed a year of court-ordered treatment in Southern California, and a four-year pilot study, the authors provide counselors with an opportunity to hear first-hand how Latino men think about manhood (machismo), interpersonal relationships, (respeto, personalismo, and simpata), and family life (familismo). The authors then use these in-depth portraits to guide counselors in tailoring treatment plans to the specific needs of Latino men.

SIG 7: The War Against Women by Marilyn French: Bestselling author and feminist scholar Marilyn French has written a shocking and fascinating analysis of the history of women’s political, cultural, physical, and economic repression that is as controversial as it is utterly convincing. In this stunning work of resarch, Ms. French creates a devastating portrait of today’s male-dominated global society, with its underlying aim of destroying, subjugating, or mutilating women. Here is a devastating indictment of our values and an important step toward an urgent public discussion of human morality.

SIG 8: Feminist Foundations: Towards Transforming Sociology Editors Kristen A. Myers, Cynthia D. Anderson and Barbara J. Risman: There can be no doubt that feminism, and its influence on the academy, has wrought enormous changes on the social sciences in general and sociology in particular. This edited volume is an outgrowth of a discussion that began on the Sociologists for Women in Society Listserve, in which participants were asked to talk about key pieces in feminist scholarship that had particularly influenced their sociological thinking.

SIG 9: Gender by R.W. Connell: Connell discusses the development of masculinity studies in the ten years since the book’s initial publication. He explores global gender relations, new theories, and practical uses of masculinity research. Looking to the future, his new concluding chapter addresses the politics of masculinities, and the implications of masculinity research as a way of understanding current world issues. Against the backdrop of an increasingly divided world, one that is presently dominated by neo-conservative politics, Connell’s account highlights a series of compelling questions about the future of human society. This second edition of Connell’s classic book will be essential reading for students taking courses on masculinities and gender studies and will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.

CLASS

SIC 1: Class Matters: Cross-class alliance building for middle class activists by Betsy Leondar Wright: Based on interviews with 40 diverse activists and thinkers, Class Matters fills this gap by demystifying this taboo topic. A guide to building bridges across class lines and collaborating more effectively in mixed-class social change efforts, it is designed in lively, highly readable short “bites,” full of stories, ideas, quotations, tips and resources.

SIC 2: Where we stand: Class Matters by Bell Hooks: Where We Stand is a powerful new book by one of America’s most admired critics and writers. For years we have turned to bell hooks-feminist, social thinker, memoirist, teacher-for her deeply felt ideas on women, race, culture, sexuality, and more recently on love and children. Now Bell Hooks talks about class-the ‘elephant in the room’-the subject we all know is central to our culture and its problems but that hasn’t been given the attention it so desperately needs.

SIC 3: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity — a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate strategies for survival. Instantly acclaimed for its insight, humor, and passion, this book is changing the way America perceives its working poor.

SIC 4: Class Matters by NY Times: We Americans have long thought of ourselves as unburdened by class distinctions. We have no hereditary aristocracy or landed gentry, and even the poorest among us feel that they can become rich through education, hard work, or sheer gumption. And yet social class remains a powerful force in American life.  In Class Matters, a team of New York Times reporters explores the ways in which class—defined as a combination of income, education, wealth, and occupation—influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity.

SIC 5: Is Inequality Bad for our Health by Norman Daniels, Bruce Kennedy and Ichiro Kawachi: In this election year, health care again proves to be one of our nation’s most urgent issues. Daniels, Kennedy, and Kawachi shift the focus of the debate, forcing us to take a closer look at how our health is affected by social injustice and inequality. Arguing that it isn’t enough to increase access to doctors, they call for improving social conditions-such as poverty, lack of education and affordable housing, and harmful work environments-that damage our health. By urging us to work toward equality of opportunity for all, the authors situate health care reform among the larger social problems we must face.

SIC 6: Starving in the Shadow of Plenty by Loretta Schwartz-Nobel: President Ronald Reagan’s chief advisor on domestic affairs announced in December 1980 that poverty has been virtually wiped out in the United States and the systems of government aid have been a brilliant success. Now, Starving in the Shadow of Plenty lays bare the horrifying truth. For the first time since Robert Kennedy traveled the muddy back roads of Mississippi and the war on poverty rose and fell, starvation in America is documented. Loretta Schwartz-Nobel, twice winner of the Robert Kennedy Memorial Award for articles on hunger, has retraced Kennedy’s steps and found that Marasmus and Kwashiorkor, the most extreme diseases of protein and calorie deficiency, still exist in the United States today. The author spent seven years traveling across the country and speaking to the hungry in rural shacks, urban ghettos, on Indian reservations and in previously middle class homes. Her book is their story, told in their own words. But it is also the story of federal corruption and abuse. The government of the United States turns countless numbers of eligible people away from existing food programs, it allows millions of infants to be malnourished and it seems to be oblivious to citizens who are starving and dying.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION

SISO 1: Towards Acceptance: Sexual Orientation Issues on Campus by Vernon A Wall: oward Acceptance is a systematic study of the complex issues facing gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons on college campuses. Organized into five distinct sections, “Toward Acceptance” builds on the content included in Evans and Wall’s previous book, “Beyond Tolerance: Gays, Lesbians, and Bisexuals on Campus”

SISO 2: School Experiences of Gay and Lesbian Youth: The Invisible Minority by Mary B. Harris: Many essays exploring the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. Authors explain how to meet those needs of LGBT students and examine the consequences of failing to do so.

RELIGION/FAITH

SIF 1: Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding by David R Smock: As the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish contributors to this volume have discovered firsthand, religion is better at fostering peace than at fueling war. Rarely, conclude the authors, is religion the principal cause of international conflict, even though some adversaries may argue differently. But religion can often be invaluable in promoting understanding and reconciliation—and the need to exploit that potential has never been greater. Drawing on their extensive experience in organizing interaction and cooperation across religious boundaries in the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, Northern Ireland, and the Balkans, the contributors explore the formidable potential of interfaith dialogue.

SIF 2: Religion and social justice for immigrants by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo: This book examines how religious immigrants and religious activists are working for equitable treatment for immigrants in the United States. The essays in this book analyze the different ways in which organized religion provides immigrants with an arena for mobilization, civic participation, and solidarity. Contributors explore topics including how non-Western religious groups such as the Vietnamese Caodai are striving for community recognition and addressing problems such as racism, economic issues, and the politics of diaspora; how interfaith groups organize religious people into immigrant civil rights activists at the U.S.-Mexican border; and how Catholic groups advocate governmental legislation and policies on behalf of refugees.

ABILITY

SIA 1: The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf community by Harlan Lane: A look at the gulf that separates the deaf minority from the hearing world, this book sheds light on the mistreatment of the deaf community by a hearing establishment that resists understanding and awareness. Critically acclaimed as a breakthrough when it was first published in 1992, this new edition includes information on the science and ethics of childhood cochlear implants. An indictment of the ways in which experts in the scientific, medical, and educational establishment purport to serve the deaf, Mask of Benevolence describes how they, in fact, do them great harm.

SIA 2: Deaf World: A Historical Reader and Primary Sourcebook Edited by Lois Bragg: Editor Bragg collects essays, speeches, articles, and short stories to provide an “authentic self-portrait of the American deaf community.” The book’s first section examines early social expressions about deafness: assumptions that it was associated with lack of intelligence, debates about genetics and intermarriage among deaf people, controversies about whether and how to educate the deaf. The collection proceeds with sections on American Sign Language, deaf education, deaf ethics, and the deaf community.

SIA 3: The Disability Studies Reader by Lennard Davis : The Disability Studies Reader collects for the first time representative texts from the newly emerging field of disability studies. People with disabilities comprise fifteen percent of the population nationally and worldwide, making them the largest physical minority. Yet they have been marginalized not only in society at large but within the discourses of knowledge. This volume represents a major advance in presenting the most important writings about disability, with an emphasis on those writers working from a materialist and postmodern perspective. Drawing together experts in cultural studies, literary criticism, sociology, biology, the visual arts, pedagogy, and postcolonial studies, the collection attempts to provide a comprehensive approach to the issue of disability by problematizing the notion of the normal body, revealing ableist assumptions in the politics and poetics of social and physical space, sexuality, language, textuality, access to resources, and public policy decisions concerning the body.

SIA 4: Beyond Ramps: Disability at the end of the social contract by Marta Russell: Marta Russell exposes the neoliberal drive to shrink social services with the Reinventing Government mantra. “We are dangerously close to a Jerry Lewis democracy where middlemen beggars and corporate CEOs getting huge paychecks may replace entitlements with charity,” reveals Russell in her devastating analysis of the “reform” of the social safety net.

SIA 5: Voices from the edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities act by Roger M Smith: Voices from the Edge seeks to challenge the mindset of those who would deny equal protection to the disabled, while providing informative analysis of the intent and application of the ADA for those who wish to learn more about disability rights. Giving voice to the many types of discrimination the disabled face–at a small Southern College, in the Library of Congress, on a New York City sidewalk–while illustrating the personal stakes underlying legal disputes over the ADA, this collection offers unparalleled insight into the lives behind the law.

SIA 6: Cultural Locations of Disability by Sharon L Snyder: In Cultural Locations of Disability, Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell trace how disabled people came to be viewed as biologically deviant. The eugenics era pioneered techniques that managed “defectives” through the application of therapies, invasive case histories, and acute surveillance techniques, turning disabled persons into subjects for a readily available research pool. In its pursuit of normalization, eugenics implemented disability regulations that included charity systems, marriage laws, sterilization, institutionalization, and even extermination. Enacted in enclosed disability locations, these practices ultimately resulted in expectations of segregation from the mainstream, leaving today’s disability politics to focus on reintegration, visibility, inclusion, and the right of meaningful public participation.

SIA 7: Nothing about us without us: Disability oppression and empowerment by James L Charlton: James Charlton has produced a ringing indictment of disability oppression, which, he says, is rooted in degradation, dependency, and powerlessness and is experienced in some form by five hundred million persons throughout the world who have physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. Nothing About Us Without Us is the first book in the literature on disability to provide a theoretical overview of disability oppression that shows its similarities to, and differences from, racism, sexism, and colonialism. Charlton’s analysis is illuminated by interviews he conducted over a ten-year period with disability rights activists throughout the Third World, Europe, and the United States. Charlton finds an antidote for dependency and powerlessness in the resistance to disability oppression that is emerging worldwide. His interviews contain striking stories of self-reliance and empowerment evoking the new consciousness of disability rights activists.

SIA 8: Gendering Disability by Bonnie G Smith: Contributors to this innovative collection explore the intersection of gender and disability in the arts, consumer culture, healing, the personal and private realms, and the appearance of disability in the public sphere—both in public fantasies and in public activism. Beginning as separate enterprises that followed activist and scholarly paths, gender and disability studies have reached a point where they can move beyond their boundaries for a common landscape to inspire new areas of inquiry. Whether from a perspective in the humanities, social sciences, sciences, or arts, the shared subject matter of gender and disability studies—the body, social and cultural hierarchy, identity, discrimination and inequality, representation, and political activism—insistently calls for deeper conversation. This volume provides fresh findings not only about the discrimination practiced against women and people with disabilities, but also about the productive parallelism between these two categories.

SIA 9: The new disability history: American perspectives (History of Disability) by Paul Longmore: In The New Disability History: American Perspectives, editors Paul K. Longmore (The Invention of George Washington), professor of history and director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, and Lauri Umansky (Motherhood Reconceived), associate professor of history at Suffolk University, bring together the contributions of 14 academics from a variety of disciplines. With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, the editors write, awareness of the disabled reached an all-time, if controversial, high. As one of the contributors notes, however, the disabled have always been a part of America’s history, even if they have been missing from the histories we’ve written. With this work, Longmore and Umansky offer historians, sociologists and other readers intrigued by this area of scholarship an opportunity to understand disabilities as broader and more complex than a single, generic and primarily medical category.

SIZE/APPEARANCE

SIS 1: Fat!So?: Because you don’t have to apologize for your size by Marilyn Wann: The pervasiveness and dangers of anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders are undeniable; recent articles on the subject have appeared in periodicals ranging from People to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Wann, a 5’4″, 275-pound Californian, states unequivocally that America needs an attitude adjustment. Fear of fat, she says, supports a $40 billion a year diet industry, destroys both relationships and self-esteem, and engenders “loathing on a national level.” Her revolutionary idea? Eat right, exercise, and stop worrying about weight. Being thin doesn’t automatically equate with either health or happiness, the author reminds readers. She includes information from physicians, health experts, and medical journals to support her assertion that fitness contributes more to longevity than the “the f-word.” The book, named after her Web site and her zine, is an engaging blend of fact and humor. Charts, graphics, photos (“visual counterpropaganda”), testimonials, quotes, ideas for sassy comebacks, and much more can help teens of all sizes reevaluate their view of the “flabulous.” Fat! So? is irreverent and thought provoking, informative and fun.

SIS 2: Tipping the scales of justice: Fighting weight based discrimination by Sondra Solovay: Sondra Solovay documents cases of illegal hiring practices, workplace bias, harassment, unfair treatment, medical malpractice, and denial of public access resulting from weight-related prejudice. Telling the fascinating human stories behind precedent-setting cases and international headlines, she concludes with hopeful profiles of everyday people successfully fighting weight-based discrimination.

SIS3: Weight Bias: Nature, Consequences and Remedies by Kelly D Brownell: Discrimination based on body shape and size remains commonplace in today’s society. This important volume explores the nature, causes, and consequences of weight bias and presents a range of approaches to combat it. Leading psychologists, health professionals, attorneys, and advocates cover such critical topics as the barriers facing obese adults and children in health care, work, and school settings; how to conceptualize and measure weight-related stigmatization; theories on how stigma develops; the impact on self-esteem and health, quite apart from the physiological effects of obesity; and strategies for reducing prejudice and bringing about systemic change.

SIS 4: Fat Politics: The real story behind America’s obesity epidemic by Eric J Oliver: In Fat Politics, J. Eric Oliver shows how a handful of doctors, government bureaucrats, and health researchers, with financial backing from the drug and weight-loss industries, have campaigned to create standards that mislead the public. They mislabel more than sixty million Americans as “overweight,” inflate the health risks of being fat, and promote the idea that obesity is a killer disease. In reviewing the scientific evidence, Oliver shows there is little proof that obesity causes so much disease and death or that losing weight is what makes people healthier. Our concern with obesity, he writes, is fueled more by social prejudice, bureaucratic politics, and industry profit than by scientific fact. Misinformation pushes millions of Americans towards dangerous surgeries, crash diets, and harmful diet drugs, while we ignore other, more real health problems. Oliver goes on to examine why it is that Americans despise fatness and explores why, despite this revulsion, we continue to gain weight.

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