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Women in Agriculture

03/01/2025
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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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National Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2025
02/24/2025
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National Eating Disorder Awareness Week is February 24 – March 2 and we have put together a reading list that explores topics related to anti-fat bias, body image, diet culture, and fat phobia. All of these books can be found in our collection and are on display at the Dana Health Sciences Library during this awareness week. See a full list with descriptions below.  

Cover ArtFat talk by Sole-Smith, Virginia

"By the time they reach kindergarten, most kids have learned that "fat" is bad. As they get older, kids learn to pursue thinness in order to survive in a world that ties our body size to our value. Multibillion-dollar industries thrive on consumers believing that we don't want to be fat. Our weight-centric medical system pushes "weight loss" as a prescription, while ignoring social determinants of health and reinforcing negative stereotypes about the motives and morals of people in larger bodies. And parents today, having themselves grown up in the confusion of modern diet culture, worry equally about the risks of our kids caring too much about being "thin" and about what happens if our kids are fat. Sole-Smith shows how the reverberations of this messaging and social pressures on young bodies continue well into adulthood--and what we can do to fight them. Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of "fat," which is not synonymous with "unhealthy," "inactive," or "lazy." Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America's focus on solving the "childhood obesity epidemic" has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society's internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop "preventing obesity" and start supporting kids in the bodies they have. Continuing conversations started by works like Girls & Sex, Under Pressure, and Essential Labor, Fat Talk is a stirring, deeply researched, and groundbreaking book that will help parents learn to reckon with their own body biases, identify diet culture messaging, and ultimately empower their kids to navigate this challenging landscape. Sole-Smith offers an alternative framework for parenting around food and bodies, and a way for us all to work toward a more weight-inclusive world--because it's not our kids, or their bodies, who need fixing"
 

Cover ArtWhat we don't talk about when we talk about fat by Gordon, Aubrey

Anti-fatness is everywhere. In What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people's experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, "I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice." By sharing her experiences as well as those of others--from smaller fat to very fat people--she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and 13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe their fat patients as "awkward, unattractive, ugly and noncompliant"; and in 48 states, it's legal--even routine--to deny employment because of an applicant's size. Advancing fat justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will require work from all people. What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.
 

Cover ArtUnshrinking by Manne, Kate

The definitive takedown of fatphobia, drawing on personal experience as well as rigorous research to expose how size discrimination harms everyone, and how to combat it--from the acclaimed author of Down Girl and Entitled. For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She's been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not. Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. Over the last several decades, implicit bias has waned in every category, from race to sexual orientation, except one: body size. Manne examines how anti-fatness operates--how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person's attractiveness, fortitude, and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect, and poor educational outcomes; it is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential. In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of "body reflexivity"--a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for: ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.
 

Cover ArtYou have the right to remain fat by Tovar, Virgie

Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it--and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she's been helping others to do the same. Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and how to reject diet culture's greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtFraming fat : competing constructions in contemporary culture by Kwan, Samantha

According to public health officials, obesity poses significant health risks and has become a modern-day epidemic. A closer look at this so-called epidemic, however, suggests that there are multiple perspectives on the fat body, not all of which view obesity as a health hazard. Alongside public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are advertisers of the fashion-beauty complex, food industry advocates at the Center for Consumer Freedom, and activists at the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Framing Fat takes a bird's-eye view of how these multiple actors construct the fat body by identifying the messages these groups put forth, particularly where issues of beauty, health, choice and responsibility, and social justice are concerned. Samantha Kwan and Jennifer Graves examine how laypersons respond to these conflicting messages and illustrate the gendered, raced, and classed implications within them. In doing so, they shed light on how dominant ideas about body fat have led to the moral indictment of body nonconformists, essentially "framing" them for their fat bodies.
 
 

Cover ArtFat shame : stigma and the fat body in American culture by Farrell, Amy Erdman

Locating the origins of the cultural denigration of fatness in the mid 19th century, Amy Erdman Farrell argues that the stigma associated with a fat body preceded any health concerns about a large body size. Farrell draws on a wide array of sources, including political cartoons, popular literature, postcards, advertisements, and physician's manuals to explore the link between our historic denigration of fatness and our contemporary concern over obesity. She explores the ways that those who seek to shed stigmatized identities, whether of gender, race, ethnicity or class, often take part in weight reduction schemes and fat mockery in order to validate themselves as "civilized."
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe body is not an apology : the power of radical self-love by Taylor, Sonya Renee

Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all. This second edition includes stories from Taylor's travels around the world combating body terrorism and shines a light on the path toward liberation guided by love. In a brand new final chapter, she offers specific tools, actions, and resources for confronting racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia. And she provides a case study showing how radical self-love not only dismantles shame and self-loathing in us but has the power to dismantle entire systems of injustice. Together with the accompanying workbook, Your Body Is Not an Apology, Taylor brings the practice of radical self-love to life.
 
 
 

Cover ArtFat girls in black bodies : creating communities of our own by Cox, Joy

Combatting fatphobia and racism to reclaim a space of belonging at the intersection of fat, Black, and female. into three sections--"belonging," "resistance," and "acceptance"--and informed by personal history, community stories, and deep research, Fat Girls in Black Bodies breaks down the myths, stereotypes, tropes, and outright lies we've been sold about race, body size, belonging, and health. Cox's razor-sharp cultural commentary exposes the racist roots of diet culture, healthism, and the ways we erroneously conflate body size with personal responsibility. She explores how to reclaim space and create belonging in a hostile world, pushing back against tired pressures of "going along just to get along," and dismantles the institutionally ingrained myths about race, size, gender, and worth that deny fat Black women their selfhood.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtFearing the black body : the racial origins of fat phobia by Strings, Sabrina

There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as "diseased" and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals;where fat bodies were once praised;showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of "savagery" and racial inferiority. The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn't about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.
 

Cover ArtThings no one will tell fat girls : a handbook for unapologetic living by Baker, Jes

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls is a manifesto and call to arms for women of all sizes and ages. With smart and sassy eloquence, veteran blogger Jes Baker calls on women to be proud of their bodies, fight against fat-shaming, and embrace a body-positive worldview to change public perceptions and help women maintain mental health. With the same straightforward tone that catapulted her to national attention when she wrote a public letter addressing the sexist comments of Abercrombie & Fitch's CEO, Jes shares personal experiences along with in-depth research in a way that is approachable, digestible, and empowering. Featuring notable guest authors, Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls is an invitation for all women to reject fat prejudice, learn to love their bodies, and join the most progressive, and life-changing revolution there is: the movement to change the world by loving their bodies.
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe body liberation project : how understanding racism and diet culture helps cultivate joy and build collective freedom by King, Chrissy

When King first joined a gym, she fell into the all-too-common cycle of "not enough-ness": no matter what she achieves, there was always something she felt she needed to change about her body, her appearance, herself. She came to understand that diet and fitness industries rooted in white supremacy were the problem: Euro-centric beauty standards were the problem. Here King shares the wisdom, the tools, and the inspiration to motivate readers to find body liberation. Even more important, to pass it on.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtMore of you the fat girl's field guide to the modern world by Beck, Amanda Martinez

Too often, fatness has been viewed as a moral failing. Fat Christian women in particular are shamed and marginalized by the message that they are failing God because they can't change their bodies. More of You will challenge that status quo, teaching readers to resist the shame and guilt that is pressed onto them by the world and instead to embrace their bodies, take up space, and learn to navigate the world in ways that allow them to flourish. With wit and candor, Amanda Martinez Beck, a fat woman herself, compiles her hard-won wisdom to give the skinny on thriving in a fat body to others who have been pushed to the margins of acceptance. Offering helpful tools like The Fat Girl's Bill of Rights and a script for a weight-neutral doctor's visit, this book addresses real needs in the fat acceptance community, from how to find self-love in a thin-obsessed world, to navigating a world built for butts smaller than yours, to advocating for equality and justice for fat women's medical care.
 
 
 

Cover ArtUnashamed : musings of a fat, black Muslim by Vernon, Leah

Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn't any room for imperfection. Good Muslim girls listened more than they spoke. They didn't have a missing father or a mother with mental illness. They didn't have fat bodies or grow up wishing they could be like the white characters they saw on TV. They didn't have husbands who abused and cheated on them. They certainly didn't have secret abortions. In Unashamed, Vernon takes to task the myth of the perfect Muslim woman with frank dispatches on her love-hate relationship with her hijab and her faith, race, weight, mental illness, domestic violence, sexuality, the millennial world of dating, and the process of finding her voice. She opens up about her tumultuous adolescence living at the poverty line with her fiercely loving but troubled mother, her deadbeat dad, and her siblings, and the violent dissolution of her 10-year marriage. Tired of the constant policing of her clothing in the name of Islam and Western beauty standards, Vernon reflects on her experiences with hustling paycheck to paycheck, body-shaming, and redefining what it means to be a "good" Muslim"
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtBody stories in and out and with and through fat

Body stories capture a nuanced, interconnected, interactive, and complex telling of our understanding, perception, and experience of and through our bodies. Plenty has been published on body image but image suggests a static fixed body, unmitigated through our social interactions and varying times and spaces. This book is not a "how-to" guide for fat confidence. It's not a compendium of fat suffering. It's simply a collection of narratives about what it's like to survive in a weight-hating world. It resists the ways that marginalized bodies are being written and researched and put into other people's ideas about our existence. The stories in this book are celebratory and are painful. They look at intersections of race and queerness; they destabilize womanhood by presenting a range of possible female embodiments. They explore issues of disability and madness. The full range of possibilities that are collected here give a picture of what it means to live in a society with strong and powerful messages about size, about normalcy, about what a moral and healthy life and body look like. This book is a snapshot of its place and time, but these stories remind us that we're here to stay. The body stories will change but we will keep owning our own narratives. While story, especially written by women, is often seen as outside the academic canon, these stories, these creative offerings, are theory, are research, and are activism. They are nothing less than the blueprint for liberation. Writing about fat and about bodies outside of medicalized narratives, without ignoring the impact of race, sexuality, class, ability, gender, fashion, appearance, and beyond, is radical and rigorous. It is impossible to think about the future without wishing for liberation. Liberation can come in many forms. It can mean an awareness, the ability to confront. The stories in this book display the ways that liberation isn't a finish line or a thing we can complete—rather it is a million small actions
 

Cover ArtThe full body project by Nimoy, Leonard

In his provocative new book, photographer and actor Leonard Nimoy captures images of full-bodied women, some of whom are involved in what is known as the "fat acceptance" movement. "The average American woman," Nimoy writes, "weighs 25 percent more than the models selling the clothes. There is a huge industry built up around selling women ways to get their bodies closer to the fantasy ideal. Pills, diets, surgery, workout programs. . . . The message is 'You don't look right. If you buy our product, you can get there.'" Leonard Nimoy, best known to the public from his role as Spock on Star Trek, has been a lifelong photographer. His work has been widely exhibited and is in numerous private and public collections. A previous book of his photographs, Shekhina, was published in 2002.
 

Cover ArtSupporting fat birth supporting body positive birth by Silver, A. J.

This pioneering guide provides birth professionals, pregnant people, and advocates with comprehensive insight into navigating conception, pregnancy, birth, and the perinatal period whilst fat. Drawing on the author's decade of experience as well as evidence-based research and case studies from people sharing their own perspectives and stories, this authoritative and compassionate book provides practical and effective advice on how to improve quality of care for fat parents. It covers a wide range of topics across the birth journey and beyond including interviews with a number of high-profile people including Nicola Salmon and Amber Marshall and empowers readers to feel reassured and confident in their choices and rights. This ground-breaking resource challenges the pervasive bias against fat service users in the birthing world and acts as a call to action to dismantle the fatphobic stigma present in our healthcare systems in order to create an environment that is inclusive of all bodies.
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtIt's always been ours : rewriting the story of Black women's bodies by Wilson, Jessica

A dietitian, storyteller, and community organizer offers a cultural discussion of body image, food, health and wellness by focusing on the bodies of Black women and how our culture's obsession with thin, white women reinforces racist ideas and ideals.
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Graphic Novels 2024
12/20/2024
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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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Hispanic Heritage Month 2024
12/20/2024
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Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Howe Library. See our latest Books Spotlight for fiction, nonfiction, English, and Spanish language books featuring Hispanic and Latinx voices. Be sure to visit our display on the first floor of Howe Library for even more books!  

 

Cover ArtWild Tongues Can't Be Tamed by Saraciea J. Fennell (Editor)

In Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed, bestselling and award-winning authors as well as up-and-coming voices interrogate the different myths and stereotypes about the Latinx diaspora. These fifteen original pieces delve into everything from ghost stories and superheroes, to memories in the kitchen and travels around the world, to addiction and grief, to identity and anti-Blackness, to finding love and speaking your truth. Full of both sorrow and joy, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is an essential celebration of this rich and diverse community
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtThe Belly of the Whale by Claudia Prado; Rebecca Gayle Howell (Translator)

In this South American epic, poet Claudia Prado imagines her ancestors? nineteenth-century migration from the Basque Country into Argentina and, ultimately, southward into the oceanic desert. At its original publication in 2000, El interior de la ballena received Argentina's National Fund for the Arts prize, helping usher in a poetics of Patagonia. Prado's poetry honors her homeland's wide open desert and its ancient silences, offering a vision that braids intergenerational migrations into a chorus of monologues and intimate voices, all looking for home. Here speaks a woman who, against her will, is taken to that desert; here is revealed the thoughts of an orphan laborer; here, a chicken thief celebrates his sad prize. In El interior de la ballena, Prado uses her page to privilege the often unseen and unheard, composing in silence as much as sound. When read together, the poems quilt a place, time, and lineage through a story of strong women, wounded and wounding men, and a rural and unforgiving landscape from which hardscrabble labor is the origin of survival. El interior de la ballena | The belly of the whale is now rendered into English for the first time by award-winning poet and translator Rebecca Gayle Howell. In this completely bilingual edition, readers of either language can immerse themselves in Prado?s Patagonia, as well as this unique collaboration between Prado and Howell that begs us to ask if language itself is our endless migration.

 
 

Cover ArtThe Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives.
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Cover ArtOur Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar; Héctor Tobar

"Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" assembles the Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar's personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students to offer a spirited rebuke to racist ideas about Latino people. Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and seeks to give voice to the angst and anger of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes about "illegals" and have faced insults, harassment, and division based on white insecurities and economic exploitation.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtEn el nombre de Salomé by Alvarez, Julia

En el verano de 1960, Camila Henríquez Ureña está a punto de viajar desde Poughkeepsie a Cuba para unirse a la revolución de Fidel Castro. Como hija de Solomé Ureña, la poeta revolucionaria dominicana del siglo XIX, el activismo es parte de la herencia de Camila. Sin embargo, también conoce la confusión del exilio y una dolorosa curiosidad por la madre que nunca conoció. Ahora, mientras retoma el legado de su madre, profundiza en los hechos públicos de la vida de su madre y reconstruye la historia de la Solomé privada y, por tanto, su propia historia.

translation: It the summer of 1960, Camila Henríquez Urena is about to travel from Poughkeepsie to Cuba to join Fidel Castro's revolution. As the daughter of Solomé Urena-the 19th -century revolutionary Dominicana poet-activism is part of Camila's inheritance. Yet she also knows the confusion of exile and a painful curiosity about the mother she never knew. Now, as she takes up her mother's legacy, she delves behind the public facts of her mother's life and pieces together the story of the private Solomé-and thus her own story.
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtLatinx belonging : community building and resilience in the United States by Deeb-Sossa, Natalia (Editor); Mendez, Jennifer Bickham (Editor)

What does it mean to be Latinx? This pressing question forms the core of Latinx Belonging, which brings together cutting-edge research to discuss the multilayered ways this might be answered. Latinx Belonging is anchored in the claim that Latinx people are not defined by their marginalization but should instead be understood as active participants in their communities and contributors to U.S. society. The volume's overarching analytical approach recognizes the differences, identities, and divisions among people of Latin American origin in the United States, while also attending to the power of mainstream institutions to shape their lives and identities. Contributors to this volume view "belonging" as actively produced through struggle, survival, agency, resilience, and engagement. This work positions Latinxs' struggles for recognition and inclusion as squarely located within intersecting power structures of gender, race, sexuality, and class and as shaped by state-level and transnational forces such as U.S. immigration policies and histories of colonialism. From the case of Latinxs' struggles for recognition in the arts, to queer Latinx community resilience during COVID-19 and in the wake of mass shootings, to Indigenous youth's endurance and survival as unaccompanied minors in Los Angeles, the case studies featured in this collection present a rich and textured picture of the diversity of the U.S. Latinx experience in the twenty-first century.

 
 

Cover ArtAlma and how she got her name by Martinez-Neal, Juana

When Alma Sofia Esperanza José Pura Candela asks her father why she has so many names, she hears the story of her name and learns about her grandparents.
 

Cover ArtDominicana by Cruz, Angie

Fifteen-year-old Ana Canción never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did. But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she must say yes. It doesn't matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them. Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. So on New Year's Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by César, Juan's free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay. As the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan returns to protect his family's assets, leaving César to take care of Ana. Suddenly, Ana is free to take English lessons at a local church, lie on the beach at Coney Island, dance with César at the Audubon Ballroom, and imagine the possibility of a different kind of life in America. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family. In bright, musical prose that reflects the energy of New York City, Dominicana is a vital portrait of the immigrant experience and the timeless coming-of-age story of a young woman finding her voice in the world.

 
 
 

Cover ArtThe five wounds : a novel by Quade, Kirstin Valdez

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path. Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby's first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo's mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel's mother, whom Angel isn't speaking to; and disapproving Tío Tíve, keeper of the family's history. In the absorbing, realist tradition of Elizabeth Strout and Jonathan Franzen, Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.

 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtChicano-Chicana Americana : pop culture pluralism starring Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Robert Beltran, and Lupe Ontiveros by Macias, Anthony F.

ISBN: 9780816547234
Chicano-Chicana Americana is a cultural history of Mexican Americans in film, television, and theater. Each chapter presents an in-depth case study analyzing the lives and creative careers of four underappreciated actors--Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Robert Beltran, and Lupe Ontiveros-to answer the question: How do racially and socio-economically marginalized Latino-Latina subjects contribute to U.S. culture, beyond the black-white binary? Drawing on methods borrowed from cultural studies, Macías argues that these performers, neither assimilationists nor nationalists, expressed a dynamic, complex ethnic identity, created an alternative strategy for how Latinos and Latinas are seen in popular culture, and carved out a space for imagining a polycultural America. These artists altered cinematic representations and audience expectations of ethnic Mexicans by challenging, undermining, and surpassing stereotypes. By documenting their presence in motion picture studio-era movies, and public, network, and cable TV, Chicano-Chicana Americana demonstrates how Chicanas and Chicanos made their mark on Americana.

 

 

Cover ArtSí, se puede : the Latino heroes who changed the United States by Anta, Julio

ISBN: 9781984860910
From community activism to the halls of government, pop-culture, arts, and beyond, Latinos have shaped every aspect of American life. Nevertheless, these significant figures and their contributions are often left out of our textbooks. Sí, Se Puede, named after the "Yes, We Can" motto of the United Farm Workers, brings Latino history in the U.S. to the forefront. The book follows a group of Hispanic-Americans as they embark on an interactive museum tour to meet Latino heroes they may not have learned about in school. The high tech, immersive exhibit allows the tour group to virtually travel through time, visiting the Hispanic Union soldiers of the Civil War; marching with César Chávez and Dolores Huerta in the farmworkers struggle; going to space with Ellen Ochoa, the first Latina to leave Earth's atmosphere; meeting the youngest woman to ever serve in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; and more. This ensemble of unlikely friends discover the rich history of Latinos in the United States, and gain new insights into their own American experiences.
 


 
 

Cover ArtIllustrating Spain in the US by Merino, Ana (Editor); Gonzalez-Cutre, Marta (Translator)

ISBN: 9781683965084
A combination of comics and essays sheds light on the rich but often overlooked contributions of Spanish immigrants to the political, cultural, and scientific history of the US.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtIsla to island by Castellanos, Alexis

A wordless graphic novel in which twelve-year-old Marisol must adapt to a new life [in] 1960s Brooklyn after her parents send her to the United States from Cuba to keep her safe during Castro's regime.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtFrizzy by Ortega, Claribel A.; Bousamra, Rose (Illustrator)

Marlene loves three things: art, her cool tía Ruby and hanging out with her best friend, Camilla. But according to her mother, Paola, the only things she needs to focus on are school and growing up. That means straightening her hair every weekend so she can have "presentable," "good" hair. But Marlene hates being in the salon and doesn't understand why her curls are not considered pretty by those around her. With a few hiccups, a dash of embarrassment, and the much-needed help of Camila and Tía Ruby -- she slowly starts a journey to learn to appreciate and proudly wear her curly hair.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtDesolación by Mistral, Gabriela

Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1945. Mistral has fascinated scholars, writers, and artists, who have tried to piece together the variegated layers of her persona and her "emotionally outspoken verses," as Langston Hughes described them. Sundial House's centenary edition commemorates Mistral's debut anthology, Desolación (1922), edited by Federico de Onís at Columbia University. This bilingual edition, featuring 37 poems translated by Langston Hughes, breathes new life into the Mistral's first anthology and makes available in English an intimate portrait of an ardent observer of life. Desolación is an evocative collection of poems and haunting poetic prose that explore desire, grief, motherhood, childhood, nature, and spirituality with radical sensibility.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtEl viento conoce mi nombre by Allende, Isabel

Traza el efecto dominó de la guerra y la inmigración en dos niños: Samuel, de cinco años, cuya madre lo mete en un tren Kindertransport desde la Austria ocupada por los nazis a Inglaterra en 1938, y Anita, de siete años, que aborda otro tren ocho décadas más tarde a los EE.UU., donde se separa de su madre.

translation: Traces the ripple effects of war and immigration on two children--five-year-old Samuel, whose mother puts him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England in 1938, and seven-year-old Anita, who boards another train eight decades later to the U.S., where she is separated from her mother.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cover ArtEn agosto nos vemos by García Márquez, Gabriel

Cada mes de agosto Ana Magdalena Bach toma el transbordador hasta la isla donde está enterrada su madre para visitar la tumba en la que yace. Esas visitas acaban suponiendo una irresistible invitación a convertirse en una persona distinta durante una noche al año. Escrita en el inconfundible y fascinante estilo de García Márquez, En agosto nos vemos es un canto a la vida, a la resistencia del goce pese al paso del tiempo y al deseo femenino. Un regalo inesperado de uno de los escritores más queridos de nuestra lengua.

translation: The extraordinary rediscovered novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love--an unexpected gift from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.
 
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