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First-Gen UVM Authors

11/03/2025
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November 3 - 8 is First-Gen Week. For the month of November, UVM Libraries honors UVM authors who were the first in their families to attend college. Did you know that Dr. Tromp is a first-generation college student? Visit the Howe Library Lobby display to find these books, plus many more.  

 


Cover Art Fear, loathing, and Victorian xenophobia by Tromp, Marlene (Editor), Bachman, Maria (Editor), Kaufman, Heidi (Editor) 

In this groundbreaking collection, scholars explore Victorian xenophobia as a rhetorical strategy that transforms "foreign" people, bodies, and objects into perceived invaders with the dangerous power to alter the social fabric of the nation and the identity of the English. Essays in the collected edition look across the cultural landscape of the nineteenth century to trace the myriad tensions that gave rise to fear and loathing of immigrants, aliens, and ethnic/racial/religious others. This volume introduces new ways of reading the fear and loathing of all that was foreign in nineteenth-century British culture, and, in doing so, it captures nuances that often fall beyond the scope of current theoretical models. "Xenophobia" not only offers a distinctive theoretical lens through which to read the nineteenth century; it also advances and enriches our understanding of other critical approaches to the study of difference. Bringing together scholarship from art history, history, literary studies, cultural studies, women's studies, Jewish studies, and postcolonial studies, Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia seeks to open a rich and provocative dialogue on the global dimensions of xenophobia during the nineteenth century.
 

Cover Art Hydrologic effects of a changing forest landscape by National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Hydrologic Impacts of Forest Management. 

Of all the outputs of forests, water may be the most important. Streamflow from forests provides two-thirds of the nation's clean water supply. Removing forest cover accelerates the rate that precipitation becomes streamflow; therefore, in some areas, cutting trees causes a temporary increase in the volume of water flowing downstream. This effect has spurred political pressure to cut trees to increase water supply, especially in western states where population is rising. However, cutting trees for water gains is not sustainable: increases in flow rate and volume are typically short-lived, and the practice can ultimately degrade water quality and increase vulnerability to flooding. Forest hydrology, the study of how water flows through forests, can help illuminate the connections between forests and water, but it must advance if it is to deal with today's complexities, including climate change, wildfires, and changing patterns of development and ownership. This book identifies actions that scientists, forest and water managers, and citizens can take to help sustain water resources from forests.
 

Cover Art Out of the closets & into the courts legal opportunity structure and gay rights litigation by Andersen, Ellen Ann 

Over the past 30 years, the gay rights movement has moved from the margins to the center of American politics, sparking debate from bedroom to boardroom to battlefield. Out of the Closets and into the Courts analyzes the most recent gay rights cases, and explores the complex relationship between litigation and social change. Ellen Andersen describes what happens when these cases--many overseen by the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the nation's oldest and largest gay rights defense firm--enter the courtroom, and explains why they have met with mixed success. Out of the Closets and into the Courts explores both the promise and the limits of using legal mobilization to effect social change. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, Ellen Andersen draws on the accumulated knowledge of political science, law, and sociology to explain the origins and outcomes of gay rights litigation. The resulting book is essential reading for anyone interested in gay rights, legal change, and social movements.
 
 

Cover Art Beyond filial piety : rethinking aging and caregiving in contemporary East Asian societies by Shea, Jeanne (Editor); Moore, Katrina (Editor); Zhang, Hong (Editor) 

Publication Date: 2022-04-08
Known for a tradition of Confucian filial piety, East Asian societies have some of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations on earth. Today these societies are experiencing unprecedented social challenges to the filial tradition of adult children caring for aging parents at home. Marshalling mixed methods data, this volume explores the complexities of aging and caregiving in contemporary East Asia. Questioning romantic visions of a senior's paradise, chapters examine emerging cultural meanings of and social responses to population aging, including caregiving both for and by the elderly. Themes include traditional ideals versus contemporary realities, the role of the state, patterns of familial and non-familial care, social stratification, and intersections of caregiving and death. Drawing on ethnographic, demographic, policy, archival, and media data, the authors trace both common patterns and diverging trends across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.
 

Cover Art Urban natures : living the more-than-human city by Edwards, Ferne (Editor); Popartan, Lucia Alexandra(Editor); Pettersen, Ida Nilstad (Editor) 

Efforts to create greener urban spaces have historically taken many forms, often disorganized and undisciplined. Recently, however, the push towards greener cities has evolved into a more cohesive movement. Drawing from multidisciplinary case studies, Urban Natures examines the possibilities of an ethical lively multi-species city with the understanding that humanity's relationship to nature is politically constructed. Covering a wide range of sectors, cities, and urban spaces, as well as topics ranging from edible cities to issues of power, and more-than-human methodologies, this volume pushes our imagination of a green urban future.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover Art How stories heal : writing our way to meaning & wholeness in the academy by Nash, Robert J. 

It is time for academics to embrace the fact that nothing is more appealing to readers - especially to our students - than personal stories with meaning-making implications that can touch all lives. No matter the age or stage in life, the personal or collective identity, everyone deals with meaning-making issues that challenge them - and others - throughout their lifetimes. And everyone we know finds that when encouraged to write their stories in the academy, they find meaning, wholeness, and healing. How Stories Heal illustrates the value of personal narrative writing. Referring to this type of writing as the «turn to the subjective I» or to «me-search research», this is a book about Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) writing, actually written in an SPN style. This book will satisfy a huge need in higher education and scholarship, particularly for students who are writing undergraduate and graduate theses and doctoral dissertations; and also for junior and senior faculty who are looking to construct alternative forms of scholarship for publication.
 
 
 

Cover Art Marine biodiversity of Costa Rica, Central America by Wehrtmann, Ingo S. (Editor); Cortés, Jorge (Editor) 

Life began in the sea, and even today most of the deep diversity of the planet is marine. This is often forgotten, especially in tropical countries like Costa Rica, renowned for their rain forests and the multitude of life forms found therein. Thus this book focusing on marine diversity of Costa Rica is particularly welcome. How many marine species are there in Costa Rica? The authors report a total of 6,777 species, or 3. 5% of the world's total. Yet the vast majority of marine species have yet to be formally described. Recent estimates of the numbers of species on coral reefs range from 1-9 million, so that the true number of marine species in Costa Rica is certainly far higher. In some groups the numbers are likely to be vastly higher because to date they have been so little studied. Only one species of nematode is reported, despite the fact that it has been said that nematodes are the most diverse of all marine groups. In better studied groups such as mollusks and crustaceans, reported numbers are in the thousands, but even in these groups many species remain to be described. Indeed the task of describing marine species is daunting - if there really are about 9 million marine species and Costa Rica has 3. 5% of them, then the total number would be over 300,000. Clearly, so much remains to be done that new approaches are needed. Genetic methods have en- mous promise in this regard.
 
 

Cover Art Will work for food : labor across the food chain by Mares, Teresa M.; Minkoff-Zern, Laura-Anne 

Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food, Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Teresa Mares chronicle labor across the food chain, connecting the entire food system--from fields to stores, restaurants, home kitchens, and even garbage dumps. Using a political economy framework, the authors argue that improving labor standards and building solidarity among frontline workers across sectors is necessary for creating a more just food system. What would it take, they ask, to move toward a food system that is devoid of human exploitation? Combining insights from food systems and labor justice scholarship with actionable recommendations for policy makers, the book is a call to action for labor activists, food studies students and scholars, and anyone interested in food justice.
 
 

Cover Art Music education on the verge : stories of pandemic teaching and transformative change by Lewis, Judy (Editor, Contribution by); Maas, Andrea (Editor, Contribution by) 

Music Education on the Verge is a collection of narratives by music teacher-educators describing how they responded to the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each chapter offers examples of innovative music pedagogy that can be adapted and applied by music educators and music teacher educators with their students.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover Art Sustainable wellbeing futures a research and action agenda for ecological economics 

Climate disruption, overpopulation, biodiversity loss, the threats of financial collapse, large-scale damage to our natural and social environments and eroding democracy are all becoming critically important concerns. The editors of this timely book assert that these problems are not separate, but all stem from our overreliance on an out-dated approach to economics that puts growth of production and consumption above all else. Ecological economics can help create the future that most people want - a future that iss94 prosperous, just, equitable and sustainable. This forward-thinking book lays out an alternative approach that places the sustainable wellbeing of humans and the rest of nature as the overarching goal. Each of the book's chapters, written by a diverse collection of scholars and practitioners, outlines a research and action agenda for how this future can look and possible actions for its realization. Sustainable Wellbeing Futures will be of value to academics and students researching environmental and ecological economics, as well as individuals interested in gaining a greater understanding of the concept of a wellbeing future and how we might act to achieve it.

Cover Art Code choice in the language classroom by Levine-West, Glenn 

Language Classroom argues that the foreign language classroom is and should be regarded as a multilingual community of practice rather than as a perpetually deficient imitator of an exclusive second-language environment. From a sociocultural and ecological perspective, Levine guides the reader through a theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical treatment of the important roles of the first language, and of code-switching practices, in the language classroom. Intended for SLA researchers, language teachers, language program directors, and graduate students of foreign languages and literatures, the book develops a framework for thinking about all aspects of code choice in the language classroom and offers concrete proposals for designing and carrying out instruction in a multilingual classroom community of practice.
 
 
 

Cover Art Teaching old logs new tricks : more absurdities and realities of education by Giangreco, Michael F. 

"Insightful and provocative humor! The cartoons spark smiles and a bit of reflection. Used in workshops and seminars, they initiate laughter. But more important, they prompt conversation."
—Jane Goldoski, Staff Development Specialist

"The cartoons are great! Michael Giangreco has done it again with his third book of right-on-target cartoons that make their points better and faster than most lectures."
—Irene R. McEwen, Professor
University of Oklahoma
 
 

Cover Art Flavor and soul : Italian America at its African American edge by Gennari, John 

In the United States, African American and Italian cultures have been intertwined for more than a hundred years. From as early as nineteenth-century African American opera star Thomas Bowers--"The Colored Mario"--All the way to hip-hop entrepreneur Puff Daddy dubbing himself "the Black Sinatra," the affinity between black and Italian cultures runs deep and wide. Once you start looking, you'll find these connections everywhere. Sinatra croons bel canto over the limousine swing of the Count Basie band. Snoop Dogg deftly tosses off the line "I'm Lucky Luciano 'bout to sing soprano." Like the Brooklyn pizzeria and candy store in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, or the basketball sidelines where Italian American coaches Rick Pitino and John Calipari mix it up with their African American players, black/Italian connections are a thing to behold and to investigate. John Gennari spotlights this affinity, calling it "the edge"--now smooth, sometimes serrated--between Italian American and African American culture. He argues that the edge is a space of mutual emulation and suspicion, a joyous cultural meeting sometimes darkened by violent collision. Through studies of music and sound, film and media, sports and foodways, Gennari shows how an Afro-Italian sensibility has nourished and vitalized American culture writ large, even as Italian Americans and African Americans have fought each other for urban space, recognition of overlapping histories of suffering and exclusion, and political and personal rispetto.
 

Cover Art Reclaim your challenging classroom : relationship-based behavior management by Harris, Alene H. 

Students in classrooms with teachers who excel at behavior management tend to be more engaged, less disruptive, and achieve better academic outcomes. Furthermore, effective behavior management practices are seen as a key to achieving the goal of inclusive education. Teaching is a stressful job, and no struggle causes greater stress to general education and special education teachers than student misbehavior. Creating a New Beginning helps teachers-both new and veteran-who are struggling with classroom management, with an emphasis on classrooms that have one or more students with an emotional/behavioral disorder (EBD). Even veteran teachers who have a student with EBD included in the classroom for the first time may find themselves struggling. Teachers who work through the materials in the book will develop effective classroom management skills, which will result in improved teacher-student relationships, increased time to teach and learn, increased student academic learning, and greater teacher satisfaction in teaching. This last will contribute to reduced teacher attrition. With the increased diversity of today's students and with the identified links between teacher burnout and classroom management, the need for this book is great, and will only increase.
 

Cover Art Free Fall/Caida LIbre by Escaja, Tina; Eisner, Mark (Translator) 

In awarding the book-length poem Caída Libre (Free Fall) the Government of the Canary Islands' prestigious 2003 Dulce María Loynaz International Poetry Prize, the jury highlighted the "authenticity and force in the language", reflecting the process of a pregnancy with a "hard, steeled language," a language, though, "not incisive, but very realistic and extraordinarily beautiful." "In a masterful form," the poem, "passes from the plane of the intimate to that of the almost-epic, using a figure not found commonly in poetry: the chronicle of a pregnancy." (Press notes from December 10th, 2003).But Caída Libre registers much more beyond that chronicle. Conception, delivery, and maternity unite in an epic of the derangement and celebration at the end of the millennium in New York City. And then shortly afterwards, the catastrophe of the Twin Towers with its agony and irreversible transformation of values: the fall of the West's formulation in the previous millennium. Caída Libre is a brilliant and fundamental book to understand ourselves in our current century, in its conflicts and atrocities, but also in its soundness and revelations. The importance of its read is amplified by its Hispanic perspective and gender, and this bilingual edition opens up its accessibility. The book is currently being taught at universities around the globe, and has been included in important critical studies.
 

Cover Art Foodways of the ancient Andes : transforming diet, cuisine, and society by Alfonso-Durruty, Marta P. (Editor); Blom, Deborah E. (Editor) 

Exploring the multiple social, ecological, cultural, and ontological dimensions of food in the Andean past, this book offers a diverse set of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that reveal the richness, sophistication, and ingenuity of Andean peoples. With 44 contributors from 10 countries, the studies presented in this volume employ new analytical methods, integrating different food data and interdisciplinary research to show how food impacts socio-political relationships and ontologies that are otherwise invisible in the archaeological record.
 
 
 
 

Cover Art Humanizing methodologies in educational research : centering non-dominant communities by Reyes, Cynthia C.; Haines, Shana J.; Clark/Keefe, Kelly 

This guide is for educational researchers interested in conducting ethically sound qualitative studies with diverse populations, including refugees, documented and undocumented immigrants, and people with disabilities. Through a description of a case study with refugee families, their children, school personnel, and liaisons, the authors highlight humanizing methods--a multidirectional and dynamic ethical compass with relationships at the center. Topics in the book include working within the limitations of Institutional Review Board (IRB) standards, using cultural and linguistic liaisons to communicate with research participants, and creating reciprocity with research participants and their families and communities. Through accessible real-world examples, the text covers the full arc of a project, from conceptualization, to navigating human subjects committees, to the complex task of representing ideas to academic and community-based audiences.
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This Women’s History Month, learn about female farmers here in Vermont and beyond. In collaboration with Fleming Museum’s Vermont Female Farmers exhibit, UVM Libraries is featuring Women in Agriculture. Explore this book display in order to learn more about the history of women farmers, their stories, and how women are leading innovation in the field of agriculture. Find these titles and more by visiting the display located in the Howe Library lobby. 
 

Vermont Female Farmers
On view February 4 – May 17, 2025, at the Fleming Museum of Art

Passion, labor, and grit abound in this striking portrait series from Vermont-based photographer JuanCarlos González. Whether capturing moments of intense concentration or joyous pride, the 45 works are an intimate look at the daily life and livelihoods of the women whose hands shape farming in Vermont.


 

Cover ArtVermont female farmers by González, JuanCarlos

This project focuses on the meaningful and impactful contributions that female farmers are making to Vermont's culture, identity, and economy yet who may be overlooked compared to their male counterparts. For Vermont Female Farmers, I visited 38 farmers and photographed them at work during their daily life on the farm. I attempt to center their livelihood, labor, and passion. Each is different and has a unique story, working with chickens, goats, cows, produce, saffron, flowers, and much more.
 
 
 

Cover ArtWomen in agriculture : professionalizing rural life in North America and Europe, 1880-1965

Women have always been skilled at feeding their families, and historians have often studied the work of rural women on farms and in their homes. However, the stories of women who worked as agricultural researchers, producers, marketers, educators, and community organizers have not been told until now. Taking readers into the rural hinterlands of the rapidly urbanizing societies of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, the essays in Women in Agriculture tell the stories of a cadre of professional women who acted to bridge the growing rift between those who grew food and those who only consumed it. The contributors to Women in Agriculture examine how rural women's expertise was disseminated and how it was received. Through these essays, readers meet subversively lunching ladies in Ontario and African American home demonstration agents in Arkansas. The rural sociologist Emily Hoag made a place for women at the US Department of Agriculture as well as in agricultural research. Canadian rural reformer Madge Watt, British radio broadcaster Mabel Webb, and US ethnobotanists Mary Warren English and Frances Densmore developed new ways to share and preserve rural women's knowledge. These and the other women profiled here updated and expanded rural women's roles in shaping their communities and the broader society. Their stories broaden and complicate the history of agriculture in North America and Western Europe.
 

Cover ArtWomen who dig : farming, feminism, and the fight to feed the world by Moyles, Trina

Weaving together the narratives of female farmers from across three continents, Women Who Dig offers a critical look at how women are responding to and increasingly rising up against the injustices of the global food system. Beautifully written with spectacular photos, it examines gender roles, access to land, domestic violence, maternal health, political and economic marginalization, and a rapidly changing climate. It also shows the power of collective action. With women from Guatemala, Nicaragua, the United States, Canada, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, and Cuba included, this book explores the ways women are responding, both individually and collectively, to the barriers they face in providing the world a healthy diet.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtOn behalf of the family farm : Iowa farm women's activism since 1945 by Devine, Jenny Barker

In on behalf of the family farm, Jenny Baker Devine demonstrates that in an era where technology, depopulation and rapid economic change dramatically altered rural life, Midwestern women met those challenges with an activism that reflected their own feminine vision of farm life. Focusing on women in four national farm organizations in Iowa -- the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, the National Farmers Organization, and the Porkettes -- Devine highlights specific movements in time when farm women had to reassess their roles and strategies for preserving and improving their way of life.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtWild mares : my lesbian back-to-the-land life by Hunter, Dianna

Dianna Hunter was a softball-loving, working-class tomboy in North Dakota, surviving the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Mutually Assured Destruction in the shadow of a strategic air command base. Communists and antiwar hippies were the enemy, but lesbians were a threat, too: they were unhealthy, criminal, and downright insane. It took Dianna a while to figure out that she was one, a little longer to discover how she fit in with her new communities in the city and the countryside. This is her story-a frank account by turns comic and painful of a well-behaved Midwestern girl finding her way through polite denial and repression and running head-on into the eye-opening events of the 1960s and '70s before landing on a dairy farm. A bumpy route takes Dianna to the Twin Cities, then to rural Minnesota and Wisconsin as-by way of the antiwar movement, women's liberation, and a dose of lesbian feminism-she and her friends try to establish a rural utopia free of sexual oppression, violence, materialism, environmental degradation-and men. They dream big, love as they see fit, and make do until they don't. Dianna buys a dairy farm and, with it, a new set of problems thanks to the Reagan-era farm crisis. A firsthand account of the lesbian feminist movement at its inception, Wild Mares is a deeply personal, wryly wise, and always engaging view of identity politics lived and learned in real life and, literally, on the ground, flourishing in the fertile soil of a struggling dairy farm in the American heartland.
 
 

Cover ArtPig years by Gaydos, Ellyn

This captivating memoir is a "startling testimony to the glories and sorrows of raising and harvesting plants and animals" (Anthony Doerr, best-selling author of All the Light We Cannot See), as an itinerant farmhand chronicles the wonders hidden within the ever-blooming seasons of life, death, and rebirth. Pig Years catapults American nature writing into the 21st century, and has been hailed by Lydia Davis and Aimee Nezhukumatathil as "engrossing" and "a marvel." As a farmer in Upstate New York and Vermont, Ellyn Gaydos lives on the knife edge between loss and gain. Her debut memoir draws us into this precarious world, conjuring with stark simplicity the lifeblood of the farm: its livestock and stark full moons, the sharp cold days lives near to the land. Joy and tragedy are frequent bedfellows. Fields go barren and animals meet their end too soon, but then their bodies become food in a time-old human ritual. Seasonal hands are ground down by the hard work, but new relationships are formed, love blossoms and Gaydos yearns to become a mother. As winter's dark descends, Pig Years draws us into a violent and gorgeous world where pigs are star-bright symbols of hope and beauty surfaces in the furrows, the sow, even in the slaughter. In hardy, lyrical prose that recalls the agrarian writing of Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry, Gaydos asks us to bear witness to the work that sustains us all and to reconsider what we know of survival and what saves us. Pig Years is a rapturous reckoning of love, labor, and loss within a landscape given to flux.
 

Cover ArtEveryday sustainability : gender justice and fair trade tea in Darjeeling by Sen, Debarati

Everyday Sustainability takes readers to ground zero of market-based sustainability initiatives--Darjeeling, India--where Fair Trade ostensibly promises gender justice to minority Nepali women engaged in organic tea production. These women tea farmers and plantation workers have distinct entrepreneurial strategies and everyday practices of social justice that at times dovetail with and at other times rub against the tenets of the emerging global morality market. The author questions why women beneficiaries of transnational justice-making projects remain skeptical about the potential for economic and social empowerment through Fair Trade while simultaneously seeking to use the movement to give voice to their situated demands for mobility, economic advancement, and community level social justice.
 
 
 

Cover ArtTurn here sweet corn : organic farming works by Diffley, Atina

When the hail starts to fall, Atina Diffley doesn't compare it to golf balls. She's a farmer. It's "as big as a B-size potato." As her bombarded land turns white, she and her husband Martin huddle under a blanket and reminisce: the one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds; the eleven-inch rainfall ("that broccoli turned out gorgeous"); the hail disaster of 1977. The romance of farming washed away a long time ago, but the love? Never. In telling her story of working the land, coaxing good food from the fertile soil, Atina Diffley reminds us of an ultimate truth: we live in relationships--with the earth, plants and animals, families and communities. A memoir of making these essential relationships work in the face of challenges as natural as weather and as unnatural as corporate politics, her book is a firsthand history of getting in at the "ground level" of organic farming. One of the first certified organic produce farms in the Midwest, the Diffleys' Gardens of Eagan helped to usher in a new kind of green revolution in the heart of America's farmland, supplying their roadside stand and a growing number of local food co-ops. This is a story of a world transformed--and reclaimed--one square acre at a time. And yet, after surviving punishing storms and the devastating loss of fifth-generation Diffley family land to suburban development, the Diffleys faced the ultimate challenge: the threat of eminent domain for a crude oil pipeline proposed by one of the largest privately owned companies in the world, notorious polluters Koch Industries. As Atina Diffley tells her David-versus-Goliath tale, she gives readers everything from expert instruction in organic farming to an entrepreneur's manual on how to grow a business to a legal thriller about battling corporate arrogance to a love story about a single mother falling for a good, big-hearted man.
 

Cover ArtBeyond the kitchen table : Black women and global food systems

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing amount of scholarship focused on race and food inequity. Much of this research is focused on the United States and its densely populated urban centers. Looking deeply into Black women?s roles?economically, environmentally, and socially?in food and agriculture systems in the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States, the contributors address the ways Black women, both now and in the past, have used food as a part of community building and sustenance. They also examine matrilineal food-based education; the importance of Black women?s social, cultural, and familial networks in addressing nutrition and food insecurity; the ways gender intersects with class and race globally when thinking about food; and how women-led science and technology initiatives can be used to create healthier and more just food systems. Contributors include Agnes Atia Apusigah, Neela Badrie, Kenia-Rosa Campo, Dara Cooper, Kelsey Emard, Claudia J. Ford, Hanna Garth, Shelene Gomes, Veronica Gordon, Wendy-Ann Isaac, Lydia Kwoyiga, Gloria Sanders McCutcheon, Eveline M. F. W. Sawadogo/Compaore, Ashanté M. Reese, Sakiko Shiratori, shakara tyler, and Marquitta Webb.

Cover ArtThe rise of women farmers and sustainable agriculture by Sachs, Carolyn E.

A profound shift is occurring among women working in agriculture--they are increasingly seeing themselves as farmers, not only as the wives or daughters of farmers. The authors draw on more than a decade of research to document and analyze the reasons for the transformation. As their sense of identity changes, many female farmers are challenging the sexism they face in their chosen profession. In this book, farm women in the northeastern United States describe how they got into farming and became successful entrepreneurs despite the barriers they encountered in agricultural institutions, farming communities, and even their own families. Their strategies for obtaining land and labor and developing successful businesses offer models for other aspiring farmers. Pulling down the barriers that women face requires organizations and institutions to become informed by what the authors call a feminist agrifood systems theory (FAST). This framework values women's ways of knowing and working in agriculture: emphasizing personal, economic, and environmental sustainability, creating connections through the food system, and developing networks that emphasize collaboration and peer-to-peer education. The creation and growth of a specific organization, the Pennsylvania Women's Agricultural Network, offers a blueprint for others seeking to incorporate a feminist agrifood systems approach into agricultural programming. The theory has the potential to shift how farmers, agricultural professionals, and anyone else interested in farming think about gender and sustainability, as well as to change how feminist scholars and theorists think about agriculture. 
 

Cover ArtThe Midwest farmer's daughter : in search of an American icon by Jack, Zachary Michael

The Midwest Farmer's Daughter presents the untold history and renewed cultural currency of an American icon at a time when fully 30 percent of new farms in the United States are woman-owned. It ranges widely from Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres to Laura Ingalls Wilder's commentaries for the Missouri Ruralist; from the critical importance of rural girls and young women to organizations such as the Farm Bureau, 4-H, and FFA to the entrepreneurial role today's female agriculturalists and sustainable farm advocates play in farmers' markets, urban farms, and community-supported agriculture.

Cover ArtPutting the barn before the house : women and family farming in early-twentieth-century New York by Osterud, Nancy Grey

Putting the Barn Before the House features the voices and viewpoints of women born before World War I who lived on family farms in south-central New York. As she did in her previous book, Bonds of Community, for an earlier period in history, Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor and highlights the strategies of mutuality that women adopted to ensure they had a say in family decision making. Sharing and exchanging work also linked neighboring households and knit the community together. Indeed, the culture of cooperation that women espoused laid the basis for the formation of cooperatives that enabled these dairy farmers to contest the power of agribusiness and obtain better returns for their labor. Osterud recounts this story through the words of the women and men who lived it and carefully explores their views about gender, labor, and power, which offered an alternative to the ideas that prevailed in American society. Most women saw "putting the barn before the house" - investing capital and labor in productive operations rather than spending money on consumer goods or devoting time to mere housework - as a necessary and rational course for families who were determined to make a living on the land and, if possible, to pass on viable farms to the next generation. Some women preferred working outdoors to what seemed to them the thankless tasks of urban housewives, while others worked off the farm to support the family. Husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, debated what was best and negotiated over how to allocate their limited labor and capital and plan for an uncertain future. Osterud tells the story of an agricultural community in transition amid an industrializing age with care and skill.
 

Cover ArtVermont farm women by Miller, Peter

Photographs and text of farm women'dairy, pigs, sheep, goats, emus, christmas trees, horses, beef cattle, cheese who work the small farm as owners and are passionate about their responsibility to the land, the animals and their community.

Cover ArtQueen of American agriculture : a biography of Virginia Claypool Meredith by Whitford, Fred

Virginia Claypool Meredith's role in directly managing the affairs of a large and prosperous farm in east-central Indiana opened doors that were often closed to women in late nineteenth century America. Her status allowed her to campaign for the education of women, in general, and rural women, in particular. While striving to change society's expectations for women, she also gave voice to the important role of women in the home. A lifetime of dedication made Virginia Meredith "the most remarkable woman in Indiana" and the "Queen of American Agriculture." Meredith was also an integral part of the history of Purdue University. She was the first woman appointed to serve on the university's board of trustees, had a residence hall named in her honor, and worked with her adopted daughter, Mary L. Matthews, in creating the School of Home Economics, the predecessor of today's College of Consumer and Family Sciences.
 
 

Cover ArtMore than a farmer's wife : voices of American farm women, 1910-1960 by Lauters, Amy Mattson

Examining how women were presented in farming and mainstream magazines over fifty years and interviewing more than 180 women who lived on farms, Lauters reveals that, rather than being victims of patriarchy, most farm women were astute businesswomen, working as partners with their husbands and fundamental to the farming industry.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtFruits of victory : the Woman's Land Army of America in the Great War by Weiss, Elaine F.

Imagine a more controversial Rosie the Riveter--a generation older and more outlandish for her time. She was the "farmerette" of the Woman's Land Army of America (WLA), doing a man's job on the home front during World War I. From 1917 to 1920 the WLA sent more than twenty thousand urban women into rural America to take over farm work after the men went off to war and food shortages threatened the nation. These women, from all social and economic strata, lived together in communal camps and did what was considered "men's work": plowing fields, driving tractors, planting, harvesting, and hauling lumber. The Land Army was a civilian enterprise organized and financed by women. It insisted on fair labor practices and pay equal to male laborers' wages for its workers and taught women not only agricultural skills but also leadership and management techniques. Despite their initial skepticism, farmers became the WLA's loudest champions, and the farmerette was celebrated as an icon of American women's patriotism and pluck.The WLA's short but spirited life foreshadowed some of the most significant social issues of the twentieth century: women's changing roles, the problem of class distinctions in a democracy, and the physiological and psychological differences between men and women. The dramatic story of the WLA is vividly retold here using long-buried archival material, allowing a fascinating chapter of America's World War I experience to be rediscovered.
 

Cover ArtWomen and sustainable agriculture : interviews with 14 agents of change by Anderson, Anna

This book looks deeply into the American food system and closely examines the need for change in the way food is grown and distributed in the United States. It is composed of twelve interviews with dynamic women who work on issues surrounding modern agriculture. These women are producers, academicians, advocates and activists. Some work in agricultural law and policy. All are devoted to changing the current system. Within a framework that offers brief overviews of the development of U.S. agriculture, the interviews allow the reader to hear firsthand what has gone wrong and what we can do about it. Part One focuses on concepts of traditional agriculture, organic growing and market viability. Part Two discusses pioneering agriculture and the process of restoring our farms to thriving habitats of biodiversity with clean water and healthy soil. Part Three considers the issues of industrial agriculture, exploring the controversy of genetically modified foods, farm foreclosures and the 2002 Farm Bill. Part Four returns us to sustainable agriculture and how we can make sustainability work for us. It includes discussions of farmers' markets, co-ops and local food systems.
 

Cover ArtLiving off the land : women farmers of today by Russell, Josephine

Based on extensive interviews with twelve varied and representative women farmers in County Kerry, Josephine Russell's text provides a unique insight into farming women of all ages and types: dairy, sheep, and organic, from the four corners and the three peninsulas of Kerry. Some remember the old life of physical work; others are as familiar with the computer as the animals. All the stories are engaging and entertaining.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtWorking the land : the stories of ranch and farm women in the modern American West by Schackel, Sandra

Helen Tiegs didn't take to driving a tractor when she became a farmer's wife, but after fifty years she considers herself the hub of the family operation. Lila Hill taught piano, then ultimately took a job off the farm to augment the family income during a period of rising costs. From Montana's cattle pastures to New Mexico's sagebrush mesas, women on today's ranches and farms have played a crucial role in a way of life that is slowly disappearing from the western landscape. Recalling her own family-farm ties, Sandra Schackel set out to learn how these women's lives have changed over the second half of the twentieth century. In Working the Land, she collects oral histories from more than forty women--in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas--recalling their experiences as ranchers and farmers in a modernizing West. Through this diverse group of women-white and Hispanic, rich and poor, ranging in age from 24 to 83--we gain a new perspective on their ties to the land. Although western ranch and farm women have often been portrayed as secondary figures who devoted themselves to housekeeping in support of their husbands' labors, Schackel's interviews reveal that these women have had a much more active role in defining what we know as the modern American West. As Schackel listened to their stories, she found several currents running through their recollections, such as the satisfaction found in living the rural lifestyle and the flexibility of gender roles. She also learned how resourceful women developed new ways to make their farms work--by including tourism, summer camps, and bed-and-breakfast operations--and how many have become activists for land-based issues. And while some like Lila made the difficult decision to work off the farm, such sacrifices have enabled families to hold onto their beloved land. Rich with memory and insight into what makes America's family farms and ranches tick, Working the Land provides a deeper understanding of the West's development over the last fifty years along with new perspectives on shifting attitudes toward women in the workforce. It is both a long-overdue documentation of the lives of hard-working farm women and a celebration of their contributions to a truly American way of life.

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Celebrate Black History Month with Howe Library by checking-out new fiction titles in our collection by Black authors. See also, our featured books post for “African Americans and Labor”, the theme selected for 2025 Black History Month by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. 

 

Find these books and more at the Howe Library Lobby display. 


Cover ArtGreat expectations : a novel. by Cunningham, Vinson

I'd seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency. When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator's idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he'll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States's first Black president. Great Expectations is about David's eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions-questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood, all of which force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.
 
 
 

Cover ArtLet us descend : a novel. by Ward, Jesmyn

Let Us Descend describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. A journey that is as beautifully rendered as it is heart wrenching, the novel is "[t]he literary equivalent of an open wound from which poetry pours" (NPR). Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Annis leads readers through the descent, hers is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation. From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this "[s]earing and lyrical...raw, transcendent, and ultimately hopeful" ( The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ) novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward's most magnificent novel yet.
 

Cover ArtRedwood court by Dameron, DéLana R. A.

Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write 'em in your books and show everyone who we are." So begins DéLana R.A. Dameron's stunning novel-in-stories, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Mosby spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and secrets, witnessing their struggles. Growing up on Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina where her grandparents live, Mika learns important, sometimes difficult lessons from the people who raise her: Her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who, in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette, and can't wait to taste real independence; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on Redwood Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors on the Court who hold tight to the community they've built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.
 

Cover ArtChain gang all stars by Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame

The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black, about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom. In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences. Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a "new and necessary American voice"
 

Cover ArtCome and get it by Reid, Kiley

It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtWe are all so good at smiling by McBride, Amber

When hospitalized for her clinical depression, Whimsy connects with a boy named Faerry, who also suffers from the traumatic loss of a sibling, and together they work to unearth buried memories and battle the fantastical physical embodiment of their depression.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtKin : rooted in hope by Weatherford, Carole Boston

A multi-generational family history told in the voices of the author's ancestors, spanning enslavement alongside Frederick Douglass at Maryland's Wye House plantation, service in the U.S. Colored Troops, and the founding of all-Black Reconstruction-era communities.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtWhat Napoleon could not do by Nnuro, DK

One of the Books Barack Obama Is Reading This Summer One of Vulture's Best Books of 2023 One of Goodreads' Buzziest Debut Novels of 2023 One of Essence's 31 Books You Must Read One of the most anticipated books by Town & Country and Elle America is seen through the eyes and ambitions of three characters with ties to Africa in this gripping novel When siblings Jacob and Belinda Nti were growing up in Ghana, their goal was simple: to move to America. For them, the United States was both an opportunity and a struggle, a goal and an obstacle. Jacob, an awkward computer programmer who still lives with his father, wants a visa so he can move to Virginia to live with his wife--a request that the U.S. government has repeatedly denied. He envies his sister, Belinda, who achieved, as their father put it, "what Napoleon could not do": she went to college and law school in the United States and even managed to marry Wilder, a wealthy Black businessman from Texas. Wilder's view of America differs markedly from his wife's, as he's spent his life railing against the racism and marginalization that are part of life for every African American living here. For these three, their desires and ambitions highlight the promise and the disappointment that life in a new country offers. How each character comes to understand this and how each learns from both their dashed hopes and their fulfilled dreams lie at the heart of what makes What Napoleon Could Not Do such a compelling, insightful read.
 

Cover ArtCool. Awkward. Black by Strong, Karen (Editor)

A girl who believes in UFOs; a boy who might have finally found his Prince Charming; a hopeful performer who dreams of being cast in her school's production of The Sound of Music; a misunderstood magician of sorts with a power she doesn't quite understand. These plotlines and many more compose the eclectic stories found within the pages of this dynamic, exciting, and expansive collection featuring exclusively Black characters. From contemporary to historical, fantasy to sci-fi, magical to realistic, and with contributions from a powerhouse list of self-proclaimed geeks and bestselling, award-winning authors, this life-affirming anthology celebrates and redefines the many facets of Blackness and geekiness--both in the real world and those imagined.
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtForever is now by Lockington, Mariama

When sixteen-year-old Sadie, a Black bisexual recluse, develops agoraphobia the summer before her junior year, she relies on her best friend, family, and therapist to overcome her fears.
"I'm safe here. That's how Sadie feels, on a perfect summer day, wrapped in her girlfriend's arms. School is out, and even though she's been struggling to manage her chronic anxiety, Sadie is hopeful better times are ahead. Or at least, she thought she was safe. When her girlfriend reveals some unexpected news and the two witness an incident of police brutality, Sadie's whole world is upended in an instant. I'm not safe anywhere. That's how Sadie feels every day after -- vulnerable, uprooted. She retreats as the weeks slip by. When Sadie's therapist gives her a diagnosis for her debilitating panic -- agoraphobia -- she starts on a path of acceptance and healing. Meanwhile, protests are taking place all over the city. Sadie wants to be a part of it, to use her voice and effect change. But how do you show up for your community when you can't even leave your house? I can build a safe place inside myself. That's what Sadie learns over the course of one life-changing summer. From critically acclaimed and Stonewall Honor-winning author Mariama J. Lockington comes a powerful young adult novel in verse about mental health, love, family, Black joy, and finding your voice and power in an unforgiving world.
 

Cover ArtThe Davenports by Marquis, Krystal

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love--even where they're not supposed to. There is Olivia, the beautiful elder Davenport daughter, ready to do her duty by getting married... until she meets the charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight and sparks fly. The younger daughter, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love--unless it's with her sister's suitor. Amy-Rose, the childhood friend turned maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business--and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest... until family pressure has her scheming to win his heart, just as someone else wins hers.
 

Cover ArtThe probability of everything by Everett, Sarah

When an asteroid has an 84.7% chance of colliding with the Earth in four days, eleven-year-old Kemi, who loves scientific facts and probability, assembles a time capsule to capture her family's truth as she tries to come to terms with saying goodbye.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe Heaven and Earth grocery store by McBride, James

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah's Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community--heaven and earth--that sustain us. Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
 

Cover ArtMoonrise over New Jessup by Minnicks, Jamila

It's 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. She falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup's status quo and could lead to the young couple's expulsion-or worse-from the home they hold dear. But as Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup's political power, Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheavals both in and out of town.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtMagic Enuff : poems by Stringfellow, Tara M.

An electrifying collection of poems that tells a universal tale of survival and revolution through the lens of Black femininity. Tara M. Stringfellow embraces complexity, grappling with the sometimes painful, sometimes wonderful way two conflicting things can be true at the same time. How it's possible to have a strong voice and also feel silenced. To be loyal to things and people that betray us. To burn as hot with rage as we do with love. Each poem asks how we can heal and sustain relationships with people, systems, and ourselves. How to reach for the kind of real love that allows for the truth of anger, disappointment, and grief. Unapologetic, unafraid, and glorious in its nuance, this collection argues that when it comes to living in our full humanity, we have-and we are-magic enough.
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This month we are highlighting new graphic novels in Howe Library! Check out our latest additions in fictional and non-fictional graphic novels.


 

Cover ArtHuda F cares? by Fahmy, Huda

This summer's exercise in Fahmy family sisterly bonding involves a trip to Disney World--which seems like it is headed for disaster when Huda gets into a fight with a boy making fun of her hijab.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtStamped from the beginning : a graphic history of racist ideas in America by Gill, Joel Christian

A comprehensive history of anti-black racism in graphic-novel format focuses on the lives of five major players in American history and highlights the debates that took place between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and anti-racists.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe great turkey walk by Bischoff, Léonie

Kathleen Karr's classic American story of grit, friendship, and turkeys finally reimagined as a sensational graphic novel. Missouri 1860: Simon Green is a bad student. His mother is dead and his father has disappeared. But he's daring, and so when he hears that turkeys fetch a higher price in Denver, he borrows his teacher's life savings and buys a herd of a thousand birds. Then he sets off on the thousand-mile trek with his dog and a pair of mules. To survive the odyssey that follows, Simon will need grit, luck, and smarts--and a colorful cast of friends.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe mythmakers by Hendrix, John

The rich worlds of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have enchanted readers both young and old for generations. But before they created these literary landmarks, Lewis and Tolkien were simply two friends who shared a love of stories. The Mythmakers chronicles their lives, from their horrific tour in the trenches of World War I, their first meeting at Oxford in 1929, and the literary discussions of the Inklings, to World War II, the publications of their works, and their legacies. Their personal stories are so intertwined that neither can be easily told without the other....The Mythmakers reveals how these remarkably creative minds influenced each other--their world-building philosophies, their ideas of mythology and faith, and their belief in the truth behind the human imagination. The Mythmakers is a masterful work capturing the extraordinary lives and literary contributions of Liews and Tolkien, two of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtToxic : a tour of the Ecuadorian Amazon by Fiske, Amelia

This graphic novel ethnography takes the reader on a "toxic tour" of the Ecuadorian Amazon and reveals the struggles for environmental justice in everyday life.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtZodiac : a graphic memoir by Ai, Weiwei

As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. Although they were restricted by the confines of political propaganda, Ai Weiwei was struck by the artists' ability to express their thoughts on art and humanity through graphic storytelling. Now, decades later, Ai Weiwei and Italian comic artist Gianluca Costantini present Zodiac, Ai Weiwei's first graphic memoir. Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. The narrative shifts back and forth through the years--at once in the past, present, and future--mirroring memory and our relationship to time. As readers delve deeper into the beautifully illustrated pages of Zodiac, they will find not only a personal history of Ai Weiwei and an examination of the sociopolitical climate in which he makes his art, but a philosophical exploration of what it means to find oneself through art and freedom of expression.
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe Puerto Rican War : a graphic history by Mejias, John Vasquez

Rendered in gorgeously carved wood blocks and buffeted with historical supplemental material, John Vasquez Mejias's The Puerto Rican War tells the story of the the 1950 insurrection on the island that resulted in 38 deaths and a failed assassination attempt against President Harry S. Truman. Told as a fable, in which the leaders of the movement are visited by the ghosts of Michael Collins and Gandhi, this book showcases an important and often overlooked moment in American history and a historical touchstone for the Puerto Rican independence movement.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtLies my teacher told me : a graphic adaptation by Loewen, James W.

A graphic adaptation of the bestselling book about what most American history textbooks get wrong.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtComics and modernism : history, form, and culture by Najarian, Jonathan (Editor)

Since the early 1990s, cartoonist Art Spiegelman has made the case that comics are the natural inheritor of the aesthetic tradition associated with the modernist movement of the early twentieth century. In recent years, scholars have begun to place greater import on the shared historical circumstances of early comics and literary and artistic modernism. Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture is an interdisciplinary consideration of myriad social, cultural, and aesthetic connections. Filling a gap in current scholarship, an impressively diverse group of scholars approaches the topic from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and methodologies. Drawing on work in literary studies, art history, film studies, philosophy, and material culture studies, contributors attend to the dynamic relationship between avant-garde art, literature, and comics. Essays by both established and emerging voices examine topics as divergent as early twentieth-century film, museum exhibitions, newspaper journalism, magazine illustration, and transnational literary circulation. In presenting varied critical approaches, this book highlights important interpretive questions for the field. Contributors sometimes arrive at thoughtful consensus and at other times settle on productive disagreements. Ultimately, this collection aims to extend traditional lines of inquiry in both comics studies and modernist studies and to reveal overlaps between ostensibly disparate artistic practices and
 movements.
 
 

Cover ArtForecasts by Schuster, Caroline; Bernardou, Enrique (Illustrator); Bueno, David (Illustrator)

Based in the agrarian world of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, Forecasts tells a story about what happens when global insurance companies promise financial safety nets to local farmers struggling with the effects of climate change. This striking graphic novel brings together original ethnographic research and Paraguayan gothic art to confront the limitations of finance to respond to a deteriorating environment. Taking a human-centered approach to complex weather and financial models, Forecasts offers new ways of looking at overlapping speculative futures in a more-than-human landscape. Based on more than a year of fieldwork in Paraguay, the book follows one man's possible journeys through a season of planting and harvesting, buffeted by losses and sustained by the hope that he can cultivate conditions that will help his family thrive. Forecasts makes a sweeping account of environmental and financial risk accessible through the intimate story of one family's triumphs, heartbreaks, and hopes for the future. The graphic novel is followed by appendices that provide historical, anthropological, and methodological insights, as well as classroom guides, exercises, and questions that make this book ideal for teaching.
 
 
 

Cover ArtUndesirables by Boum, Aomar; Berber, Nadjib (Illustrator)

In this gripping graphic novel, a Jewish journalist encounters an extension of the horrors of the Holocaust in North Africa. In the lead-up to World War II, the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism in Europe foreshadowed Hitler's genocidal campaign against Jews. But the horrors of the Holocaust were not limited to the concentration camps of Europe: antisemitic terror spread through Vichy French imperial channels to France's colonies in North Africa, where in the forced labor camps of Algeria and Morocco, Jews and other "undesirables" faced brutal conditions and struggled to survive in an unforgiving landscape quite unlike Europe. In this richly historical graphic novel, historian Aomar Boum and illustrator Nadjib Berber take us inside this lesser-known side of the traumas wrought by the Holocaust by following one man's journey as a Holocaust refugee. Hans Frank is a Jewish journalist covering politics in Berlin, who grows increasingly uneasy as he witnesses the Nazi Party consolidate power and decides to flee Germany. Through connections with a transnational network of activists organizing against fascism and anti-Semitism, Hans ultimately lands in French Algeria, where days after his arrival, the Vichy regime designates all foreign Jews as "undesirables" and calls for their internment. On his way to Morocco, he is detained by Vichy authorities and interned first at Le Vernet, then later transported to different camps in the deserts of Morocco and Algeria. With memories of his former life as a political journalist receding like a dream, Hans spends the next year and a half in forced labor camps, hearing the stories of others whose lives have been upended by violence and war. Through bold, historically inflected illustrations that convey the tension of the coming war and the grimness of the Vichy camps, Aomar Boum and Nadjib Berber capture the experiences of thousands of refugees through the fictional Hans, chronicling how the traumas of the Holocaust extended far beyond the borders of Europe.
 
 

Cover ArtVisions of the crow by John-Kehewin, Wanda

A new girl at school. A mysterious crow. Weird visions he can't explain. Grade 12 just got a lot more complicated for Damon Quinn... "Your ancestors have called us to help you." "I think you have the wrong number." Damon Quinn just wants to get through his senior year unscathed. His mom struggles with alcohol and is barely coping with the day-to-day. Marcus and his cronies at school are forever causing him trouble. The new girl, Journey, won't mind her own business. To make matters worse, now a mysterious crow is following him everywhere. After he is seized by a waking dream in the middle of a busy street, he's forced to confront his mom with some hard questions: Why haven't I met my dad? Where did we come from? Who am I? Damon must look within himself, mend the bond with his mother, and rely on new friends to find the answers he so desperately needs. Travelling through time and space, Damon will have to go back before he can move forward. The Dreams series of graphic novels explores cultural connection as a path to healing. Volume 1, Visions of the Crow, explores urban Indigenous experiences through the eyes of a Cree-Métis teen as he learns about his identity and finding home. Ultimately, Damon will learn what it takes to be a good leader for his people.
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtA first time for everything : a true story by Santat, Dan

Dan is used to feeling invisible. After being bullied in middle school, Dan has low expectations about everything, including the class trip to Europe with the same girls who love to make fun of him. But during his travels, a series of firsts begin to change him -- first Fanta, first fondue, and maybe even... first girlfriend? Funny, heartfelt, and embarrassingly true, this graphic novel memoir is based on Caldecott Medal Winner Dan Santat's most awkward middle school memories.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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