“Fierce and refreshing.”— Carlos Lozada, Washington Post Named a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review and the Washington Post, and one of the best books of the year by Spectator and Publishers Weekly, The Souls of Yellow Folk is the powerful debut from one of the most acclaimed essayists of his generation. Wesley Yang writes about race and sex without the polite lies that bore us all.
This is a book which talks about men’s souls. A special type of soul, a “folk” soul. Through the careful and curious eyes of a tireless traveller, encounters, anecdotes, and fortuitous coincidences present the European folk world in all its beauty and authenticity. A world made of music and musicians, dances and dancers, instruments and luthiers, festivals and enjoyment. But also of a heritage of culture and values which the centennial wisdom of the traditions has entrusted to a modern man ever more separated from the community, from nature, and from himself. In the age of internet, of technological progress, and of globalization, talking about traditions, proverbs, dialects, ancient instruments and popular dances might seem anachronistic. However, the messages within these pages will cause you to reflect on how these timeworn practices are alive and how they can lead man towards a path of enlightenment.
The Souls of Poor Folk is a collection of essays in the tradition of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic The Souls of Black Folk. The essays move between the scholarly, the narrative, and the testimonial just as they do in Du Bois's book. This text is meant to be a contribution to the critical dialogue around ways to alleviate poverty in our world. The contributors are diverse in their experience, origin, perspectives, and beliefs about the appropriate means to alleviate poverty and its many causes. This book is an essential companion to a multimedia initiative featuring a documentary and original music compilation available on compact disc that invites readers, listeners, and viewers to journey beyond the veil that hides the scars and blemishes of social problems, such as homelessness and poverty, especially in America. To learn more about the successful non-profit "Greater Love Project" initiative or to purchase other companion items including the CD, please visit: www.thesoulsofpoorfolk.org.
The Souls of Mixed Folk examines representations of mixed race in literature and the arts that redefine new millennial aesthetics and politics. Focusing on black-white mixes, Elam analyzes expressive works—novels, drama, graphic narrative, late-night television, art installations—as artistic rejoinders to the perception that post-Civil Rights politics are bereft and post-Black art is apolitical. Reorienting attention to the cultural invention of mixed race from the social sciences to the humanities, Elam considers the creative work of Lezley Saar, Aaron McGruder, Nate Creekmore, Danzy Senna, Colson Whitehead, Emily Raboteau, Carl Hancock Rux, and Dave Chappelle. All these writers and artists address mixed race as both an aesthetic challenge and a social concern, and together, they gesture toward a poetics of social justice for the "mulatto millennium." The Souls of Mixed Folk seeks a middle way between competing hagiographic and apocalyptic impulses in mixed race scholarship, between those who proselytize mixed race as the great hallelujah to the "race problem" and those who can only hear the alarmist bells of civil rights destruction. Both approaches can obscure some of the more critically astute engagements with new millennial iterations of mixed race by the multi-generic cohort of contemporary writers, artists, and performers discussed in this book. The Souls of Mixed Folk offers case studies of their creative work in an effort to expand the contemporary idiom about mixed race in the so-called post-race moment, asking how might new millennial expressive forms suggest an aesthetics of mixed race? And how might such an aesthetics productively reimagine the relations between race, art, and social equity in the twenty-first century?
Folk music of the 1960s and 1970s was a genre that was always shifting and expanding, yet somehow never found room for so many. In the sounds of soul-folk, Black artists like Terry Callier and Linda Lewis began to reclaim their space in the genre, and use it to bring their own traditions to light- the jazz, the blues, the field hollers, the spirituals- and creating something wholly new, wholly theirs, wholly ours. This book traces the growing imprints of soul-folk and how it made its way from folk tradition to subgenre. Along the way, it explores the musicians, albums, and histories that made the genre what it is.
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history. To develop this groundbreaking work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.
Beginning on the shores of West Africa in the sixteenth century and ending in the U.S. Lower South on the eve of the Civil War, Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh traces a bold history of the interior lives of bondwomen as they carved out an existence for themselves and their families amid the horrors of American slavery. With particular attention to maternity, sex, and other gendered aspects of women's lives, she documents how bondwomen crafted female-centered cultures that shaped the religious consciousness and practices of entire enslaved communities. Indeed, gender as well as race co-constituted the Black religious subject, she argues—requiring a shift away from understandings of "slave religion" as a gender-amorphous category. Women responded on many levels—ethically, ritually, and communally—to southern slavery. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Wells-Oghoghomeh shows how they remembered, reconfigured, and innovated beliefs and practices circulating between Africa and the Americas. In this way, she redresses the exclusion of enslaved women from the American religious narrative. Challenging conventional institutional histories, this book opens a rare window onto the spiritual strivings of one of the most remarkable and elusive groups in the American experience.
“A fabulous book! . . . If you enjoy tiny, detailed projects that allow for lots of creativity and personal handiwork, I cannot recommend this book enough!” —Feeling Stitchy Salley Mavor’s book Felt Wee Folk inspired tens of thousands to handcraft dolls from simple materials. Now, she invites you to return to the wee world with Felt Wee Folk—New Adventures, starring 120 dolls to spark smiles and creativity. As requested by fans, this long-awaited follow-up shares more challenging projects. Explore fresh scenes and an array of new outfits, hairstyles, and accessories, with full-sized patterns. Make bendable dolls that resemble you, your family, or your favorite fairy-tale characters with wool felt, chenille stems, and decorative stitching. Display the figures in a dollhouse, atop a wedding cake, or in a holiday scene to be cherished year after year. From the pages of Mavor’s award-winning children’s books to your home, the enchanting wee folk dolls appeal to crafters of all ages and skill levels. More dolls, more scenes, and more outfits Use your stash—wool felt, chenille stems, and simple embellishments Delightful, challenging projects, as requested by fans Felt Wee Folk was a Foreword Reviews’ GOLD WINNER for Crafts & Hobbies “While the original book included projects beyond Wee Folk dolls, the new volume focuses on the dolls themselves. Fairies and families, kings and knights, and even some not-too-scary pirates all grace the pages of the book, beckoning readers to at least admire, if not try to create, Wee Folk of their own.” —The Enterprise (Cape Cod)
Village Voice Favorite Books of 2000 The popular book challenging the idea of a model minority, now in paperback! “How does it feel to be a problem?” asked W. E. B. Du Bois of black Americans in his classic The Souls of Black Folk. A hundred years later, Vijay Prashad asks South Asians “How does it feel to be a solution?” In this kaleidoscopic critique, Prashad looks into the complexities faced by the members of a “model minority”-one, he claims, that is consistently deployed as "a weapon in the war against black America." On a vast canvas, The Karma of Brown Folk attacks the two pillars of the “model minority” image, that South Asians are both inherently successful and pliant, and analyzes the ways in which U.S. immigration policy and American Orientalism have perpetuated these stereotypes. Prashad uses irony, humor, razor-sharp criticism, personal reflections, and historical research to challenge the arguments made by Dinesh D’Souza, who heralds South Asian success in the U.S., and to question the quiet accommodation to racism made by many South Asians. A look at Deepak Chopra and others whom Prashad terms “Godmen” shows us how some South Asians exploit the stereotype of inherent spirituality, much to the chagrin of other South Asians. Following the long engagement of American culture with South Asia, Prashad traces India’s effect on thinkers like Cotton Mather and Henry David Thoreau, Ravi Shankar’s influence on John Coltrane, and such essential issues as race versus caste and the connection between antiracism activism and anticolonial resistance. The Karma of Brown Folk locates the birth of the “model minority” myth, placing it firmly in the context of reaction to the struggle for Black Liberation. Prashad reclaims the long history of black and South Asian solidarity, discussing joint struggles in the U.S., the Caribbean, South Africa, and elsewhere, and exposes how these powerful moments of alliance faded from historical memory and were replaced by Indian support for antiblack racism. Ultimately, Prashad writes not just about South Asians in America but about America itself, in the tradition of Tocqueville, Du Bois, Richard Wright, and others. He explores the place of collective struggle and multiracial alliances in the transformation of self and community-in short, how Americans define themselves.
While garnering the attention of professionals across disciplines, from medicine to public health to psychology, and frequently covered as a topic of public concern in the news media, the elevated occurrence of suicide attempts among LGBTQ persons has received little attention within the literature of theology and religious studies. This book fills that lacuna by addressing the role that religious, spiritual, and theological narratives play in shaping the souls of queer folk. Taking a narrative approach to qualitative interview material from LGBTQ individuals who survived their suicide attempts, Cody J. Sanders argues that theological narratives can operate violently upon the souls of LGBTQ people in ways that make life precarious and, at time, seem unlivable. The book critically addresses the violence of theological narratives upon queer souls, filling a crucial void in scholarship concerning the role of religion—specifically Christianity—in LGBTQ suicide. Ultimately, the author draws upon the interview material to move readers toward constructive methods of contributing to the resistance and resilience of queer souls in relation to soul violence, asking how we can intervene with practices of care in order to cultivate livability of life for queer people.
