This book explores how questions about home and belonging have been framed in the discourses on race, migration, and social relationships. It does this with the aim of envisioning alternative modes of living and reimagining our political communities in ways that question the legacy of colonization and constructed identities which detract from our sense of obligation to each other and the planet. The book questions problematic categories of difference to transform human relations beyond the materialism of our global political economy. Questions addressed in the volume include: In what ways are combative colonial identities of difference manufactured within our national and global spaces of encounter? How can we expel the racialized and tribalized political identities that seek to purify and deny the complexities and sacredness of being human? How do we embrace the notion that everyone we encounter is a mirror reflecting our fears of suffering and our desires for happiness? The book is set in the context of re-emerging ultra-nationalists and anti-migrant politicians on the national and international stage, advancing various strands of extreme-right and protectionist ideology couched as redemptive-welfarist strategies. The adverse impacts of these strategies seem to be reifying a possessive idea of citizenship and identity, engendering a national fantasy that portrays communities as homogenous entities inhabiting enclosed borders. This is essentially a compendium of conversations across the intersection of the racial, national, ethnic, spiritual, and sexual boundaries in which we live.
The first wave of Black immigrants arrived in North America during the 1960s and 1970s, coming originally from the Caribbean. An opportunity was missed, however, in documenting their everyday experience from a social science perspective: what did it mean for a Barbadian or a Jamaican to live in Toronto or New York? Were they Jamaicans or did they go with the descriptor ‘Black’? What relationship did they have with African Canadians or African Americans? Black Immigrants in North America answers these and other questions while documenting the second wave of Black immigration to North America, which started in the early 1990s. Theoretically and empirically grounded, the book is a documentation of the process of becoming Black – a radical identity transformation where a continental African is marked by Blackness. This, in turn, leads to a deeper understanding of what it means to encounter that social imaginary of, ‘Oh, they all look like Blacks to me!’ This encounter impacts what one learns and how one learns it, where learning English as a Second Language (ESL) is sidestepped in favor of Black English as a Second Language (BESL). Learning becomes a political and a pedagogical project of cultural, linguistic and identity investment and desire. Perfect for courses such as: Black Immigrants, Race Complexity, Critical Applied Linguistics, Ethnography, Graduate Course on Educational Foundations and Curriculum
Canada likes to present itself as a paragon of gay rights. This book contends that Canada’s acceptance of gay rights, while being beneficial to some, obscures and abets multiple forms of oppression to the detriment and exclusion of some queer and trans bodies. Disrupting Queer Inclusion: Canadian Homonationalisms and the Politics of Belonging seeks to unsettle the assumption that inclusion equals justice. The contributors detail how the fight for acceptance engenders complicity in a system that fortifies white supremacy, furthers settler colonialism, advances neoliberalism, and props up imperialist mythologies. They do this by highlighting the uneven relationships produced by normative articulations of sexual citizenship in a wide range of contexts – in prisons, at Pride House, Pride marches, fetish fairs, and the feminist porn awards – as well as within the laws and regulations governing marriage, hate crimes, citizenship, blood donation, and refugee claims.
Race Women Internationalists explores how a group of Caribbean and African American women in the early and mid-twentieth century traveled the world to fight colonialism, fascism, sexism, and racism. Based on newspaper articles, speeches, and creative fiction and adopting a comparative perspective, the book brings together the entangled lives of three notable but overlooked women: American Eslanda Robeson, Martinican Paulette Nardal, and Jamaican Una Marson. It explores how, between the 1920s and the 1960s, the trio participated in global freedom struggles by traveling; building networks in feminist, student, black-led, anticolonial, and antifascist organizations; and forging alliances with key leaders. This made them race women internationalists—figures who engaged with a variety of interconnected internationalisms to challenge various forms of inequality facing people of African descent across the diaspora and the continent.
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019! “Gripping and timely.” —People “The YA debut we’re most excited for this year.” —Entertainment Weekly “A book that knocks you off your feet while dropping the kind of knowledge that’ll keep you down for the count. Prepare to BE slain.” —Nic Stone, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin and Odd One Out Ready Player One meets The Hate U Give in this dynamite debut novel that follows a fierce teen game developer as she battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther–inspired video game she created and the safe community it represents for Black gamers. By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.” But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.” Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?
In a long overdue contribution to geography and social theory, Katherine McKittrick offers a new and powerful interpretation of black women’s geographic thought. In Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, black women inhabit diasporic locations marked by the legacy of violence and slavery. Analyzing diverse literatures and material geographies, McKittrick reveals how human geographies are a result of racialized connections, and how spaces that are fraught with limitation are underacknowledged but meaningful sites of political opposition. Demonic Grounds moves between past and present, archives and fiction, theory and everyday, to focus on places negotiated by black women during and after the transatlantic slave trade. Specifically, the author addresses the geographic implications of slave auction blocks, Harriet Jacobs’s attic, black Canada and New France, as well as the conceptual spaces of feminism and Sylvia Wynter’s philosophies. Central to McKittrick’s argument are the ways in which black women are not passive recipients of their surroundings and how a sense of place relates to the struggle against domination. Ultimately, McKittrick argues, these complex black geographies are alterable and may provide the opportunity for social and cultural change. Katherine McKittrick is assistant professor of women’s studies at Queen’s University.
The university is often regarded as a bastion of liberal democracy where equity and diversity are promoted and racism doesn’t exist. In reality, the university still excludes many people and is a site of racialization that is subtle, complex, and sophisticated. While some studies do point to the persistence of systemic barriers to equity in higher education, in-depth analyses of racism, racialization, and Indigeneity in the academy are more notable for excluding racialized and Indigenous professors. This book is the first comprehensive, data-based study of racialized and Indigenous faculty members’ experiences in Canadian universities. Challenging the myth of equity in higher education, it brings together leading scholars who scrutinize what universities have done and question the effectiveness of their equity programs. They draw on a rich body of survey data, interviews, and analysis of universities’ stated policies to examine the experiences of racialized faculty members across Canada who – despite diversity initiatives in their respective institutions – have yet to see meaningful changes in everyday working conditions. They also make important recommendations as to how universities can address racialization and fulfill the promise of equity in higher education.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller! Winner of the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe for New Talent Author Award Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy reinvents the King Arthur legend and “braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery” (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles). After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates. She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.