July/August 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award Winners

The books listed here, featuring a range of styles, stories, and topics, were named winners of the 2002 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. The award was made on Human Rights Day by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, a national organization which works to promote ways for people to become more active in creating an equitable world for all. The center, housed at Simmons College in Boston, was founded in 1984. (Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115; 617-521-2171)

The awards were made by an eclectic review panel from across America representing a wide variety of ages, occupations, cultures, and ethnic groups. What the books have in common, says Myers Center Director Loretta Williams, is that they all offer readers a chance to step beyond common assumptions and hesitancies and “connect in different ways to dismantling bigotry.”

The 18th annual award winners are:

Fire in Beulah, Rilla Askew (Viking 2001)
Fire in Beulah tells historically accurate events in the form of fiction. Askew’s riveting novel is set within the context of the 1920s Oklahoma oil rush and the Tulsa “race riots,” showing the social and racial ramifications of towns infused with new money in an era of greed and staggering racism.

A Place to Stand: The Making of a Poet, Jimmy Santiago Baca (Grove Atlantic Press 2001)
Disadvantages faced by poor persons of color grow exponentially when they are incarcerated due to both the nature of the prison system and life, and an apathetic public that has no desire to address issues of “bad” folk. Baca’s book is a page-turner of a memoir about growing up in New Mexico disenfranchised due to a combination of factors, and about his learning to read and write while incarcerated. Now a noted poet, Baca tells a story of resiliency.

Cultural Dilemmas in Progressive Politics: Styles of Engagement Among Grassroots Activists, Stephen Hart (University of Chicago Press 2001)
This book examines how citizens might best engage persuasively with social and political activism and change. Hart looks at the way community and advocacy groups frame their messages, and sometimes diminish their effectiveness by not being culturally robust.

Witness, Karen Hesse (Scholastic Press 2001)
Witness is a young adult novel centering on bigotry and mounting tensions in a small Vermont town in the 1920s, conveying what drew some people to the Ku Klux Klan in the turbulent years following World War I, and how others with small but significant acts of courage broke the power of the Klan.

Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios, Latina Feminist Group (Duke University Press 2001)
Telling to Live deliberately weaves practice and theory to make compelling narratives of 18 women forging their lives’ journeys, and their academic and political stances.

Erased Faces, Graciela Limón (Arte Publico Press 2001)
The three main characters come together in the struggles of the Chiapas people for liberation from the abusive Mexican government. The author weaves the portrayal of “big” societal issues of oppression and resistance into the stories of her characters, yielding a compelling portrait of a society in transition.

Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, Rubén Martinez (Metropolitan Books 2001)
Martinez, associate editor at Pacific News Service, spent four years living among one extended indigenous family. The book follows a southwestern Mexican family, and the amalgam of cultures, as various family members deal with conditions on a tomato farm in Missouri, strawberry farms in California, and slaughterhouses in Wisconsin.

Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor, Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel Cazenave (Routledge 2001)
This is a powerful exposé of a deeply-rooted form of racism that hits poor people in general, not just those of color. The authors examine the federal and state welfare reform in the 1990s that made finding the way out of poverty the “personal responsibility” of mothers. They show how racist stereotypes about welfare recipients resulted in escalating antipathy toward public assistance. Practical recommendations for action are offered.

A History of Affirmative Action 1619-2000, Philip F. Rubio (University Press of Mississippi 2001)
Philip Rubio paints a comprehensive historical backdrop for looking at how white privilege dominates the casting of the US as a nation and society. The impetus for this historical review is Rubio’s curiosity about the emotional intensity generated—particularly among white workers, but also some of color—by the modest 20th century policy of affirmative action as a compensatory measure to help correct racial inequities.

Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing, Neil Websdale (Northeastern University Press 2001)
Community policing is touted as one step forward in making urban communities more habitable, but Websdale vehemently disagrees. He provides data and analysis from his ethnographic study of a Nashville public housing development. He talked with both the police and the “policed,” to conclude that community policing is a contemporary parallel to slave patrols before the Civil War, and the segregated patterns of punitive control under Jim Crow.

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