Myers Book Award Celebrates Social Justice

And Tango Makes Three, illustrated by Henry Cole, was one of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding books of 2006.

The Outstanding Book Awards of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights recognize exemplary works that challenge social injustices, uncover erased histories, and belie the pessimism that says change is impossible. The Center was established in 1984 and works to promote an equitable world for all. The 2006 exemplary books and authors are: What If All The Kids Are White? Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families by Louise Derman-Sparks and Patricia G. Ramsey with Julie Olsen Edwards (Teachers College Press, 2006). Written for early childhood teachers, this innovative guidebook discusses how white children learn, and can un-learn, the "power codes" of racism. Roots, Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America by Matthew Frye Jacobson (Harvard University Press, 2006). Jacobson presents an astute analysis of how white Ellis Island ethnicity came to trump Black power starting in the 1960s as a way to blunt pressures from the freedom movement. The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide by Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles, Betsy Leondar Wright, Rose M. Brewer, and Rebecca Adamson (The New Press, 2006). The authors present a multicultural history of how the wealth of the US is racialized and gendered. Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace by Nancy MacLean (Russell Sage/Harvard University Press, 2006). MacLean's contemporary history reveals how the quest for jobs and justice led to more inclusive workplaces despite organized resistance. Storming Caesar's Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty by Annelise Orleck (Beacon Press, 2005). Orleck's book reclaims the story of audacious women who operated a community anti-poverty program that truly made a difference in the 1960s and 1970s. Creating Black Americans: African-American History & Its Meaning: 1619 to the Present by Nell Irvin Painter (Oxford University Press, 2006). Painter interweaves 150 mostly full-color art works in a retelling of the arts of those in the African Diaspora. We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11 by Tram Nguyen (Beacon Press 2005). Nguyen, editor of ColorLines magazine, shares the voices of those experiencing Homeland Security policies and practices which exacerbated already-existing anti-immigrant animosity. Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America by Karenna Gore Schiff (Miramax, 2006). This book highlights several women whose histories have been "erased" yet have been and remain innovative change agents. Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino (Random House, 2006). Yoshino shares his evolving gay male story, as well as astute analyses of how civil rights laws today protect a person's "being" but not "doing." And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell, and Henry Cole (Simon and Schuster, 2005). This illustrated children's book fictionalizes the true story of two male penguins who became partners and raised a penguin chick in the Central Park Zoo.