Confronting Both Our Histories and Our Future:
1998 Winners of the Myers Outstanding Books Awards

Loretta J. Williams, Ph.D., is Director of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry.

The United Nations recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of the coming together of leaders from diverse countries, language backgrounds, "races," ethnicities, and religious faiths to forge a commitment to common standards of human dignity. In 1948, three years after the end of World War II, these initiators of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights met to denounce dehumanizing oppressions and build protections against them.

In the struggle to meet those standards we have the help of the Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry, in Boston. This is the 14th year that the Myers Center has reviewed the season's books for their contribution to public understanding of oppression and of anti-oppression strategies. Close to 300 books published in 1997 were reviewed over the past year by a national panel of readers, diverse in age, race, ethnicity, occupation, sexual orientation, place of residence, physical ability, and worldview.

The winners of the 1998 Myers Outstanding Book Awards are an eclectic mix: fourteen books, different in genre, methodology, foci, intended audience.

Award winners were selected from a mix of academic studies, anthologies, historical reconstructions, commentaries by journalists, even storybooks for young readers and fiction focused on North America. The panel chose "cutting edge" and "unheralded" works which increase understanding of the multiplicities of histories and social relations in the United States. The Myers Center seeks to make books about oppression available to a broader readership. Too often there is a gap in communication between what is being found and talked about in university circles, and what is needed in the real world of community organizing, whether community is defined by turf, identity, or issue. Thus reviewers read with an eye towards learning from and sharing what might enhance positive and equitable interaction between groups and populations comprising the diversity of peoples and world in which we live.

• Ansell, Amy Elizabeth, New Right, New Racism: Race and Reaction (New York: NYU Press, 1997). Ansell, a Bard College professor, provides a thorough analysis of how language and tactics have been utilized by the Right to evoke anxieties and simplistic solutions. She explains the rightward turn of the US and the UK toward a more authoritarian version of liberal democracy. Readers learn how resentment at gains made in the recent civil rights era has been politicized, and how the bigoted response hides behind a liberal face. The racialized populism diverts attention from structural inequalities.
• Collison, Gary, Shadrach Minkins: From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) Collison narrates the travails and triumphs of a fugitive slave from Virginia, reconstructing the life of Minkins from his escape to his final settlement in Montreal. Threaded on the thin string of recorded and known facts of his life is a rich complexity of stories of African Americans, enslaved, escaped and "free." Collison's perceptive scholarship is accessible to the general public. Young people can learn a lot about how people functioned in the face of both fear and strength, faithfulness and faithlessness, brutality and blindness, accountability and evasions of accountability.
• Espada, Martin, Ed., El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997) The arts play a major role in sustaining a people's dignity, and in strengthening its ability to combat bigotry as the poems selected by Martin Espada demonstrate. The Myers Award pays tribute to the numerous Latino/a writers living and or/working in New England. Espada introduces the historical, sociopolitical, and literary context in which to read these poems by female and male poets from at least ten countries. Some writing is intensely personal; some overtly political; and some, provocatively, combine the two. The Myers Review Panel found the collection aesthetically, politically, and linguistically outstanding. As one reviewer noted: "These poems, like all good art, enable us to step inside an artist's experience, to see the world through the experiences of an other, to read/hear English with a Spanish inflection or to read across the page from the Spanish to an English translation. We experience some of the petty indignities and major pains, and we celebrate the joy of being/looking/sounding different in the US. We absorb history lessons along with our delight in metaphor and other uses of language."
• Ferriss, Susan & Sandoval, Ricardo, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (NY: Harvest Books, 1997) Dismantling structures of inequity is difficult work; yet time and time again successful challenges have been made. The Fight in the Fields tells us a lot about persistence over odds. Writing as an accompaniment to a documentary PBS film, the authors show that this was actually a movement, not totally the work of one man. The changing complexion of the farmworker population will be new information for some: Chinese immigrants until the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed; then poor whites, then Japanese; then Mexicans.
• Foley, Neil, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) Foley's historical study breaks new ground, focusing on the role of poor whites in the context of the racial, social and economic web of power and privilege in central Texas. Poor whites are the "scourge" of the title. Foley shows how the presence of poor whites in this setting undermined the possibility of a white skin color-based superiority. The book teaches about anti-Mexican organizing, agricultural capitalism, the power of gender constructions as they affect race and work roles, and the social constructions of "race." Foley highlights current anti-immigrant movements such as English Only and the denial of services and human dignity to "undocumented" workers and their families.
• Gordon, Lewis R, Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997) This book challenges readers with a series of reflective philosophical essays on the conservative antiblackness that permeates society. Power relations today are in essence colonial relationships, argues Gordon, a Brown University professor. They attempt to dehumanize those with dark skin color. Gordon effectively demonstrates that blackness is the prime racial signifier of consequence. The Myers Review Panel noted that Gordon's analysis is academic--read dense at times--which more people need to hear as we build ways to live more equitably in a pluralistic society.
• Harjo, Joy & Gloria Bird, Eds., Reinventing the Enemy's Language (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997) This anthology is an excellent collection of articles and strategies of resistance written by Native American women. Fifty indigenous nations are represented among the one hundred plus authors addressing oppression, racism and sexism. Through various genres--poetry, essays, fiction--these writers explore aspects of indigenous existence: colonization, the encroachment of white culture into Indian culture, the impact of alcoholism on tribal communities, native ways of healing, and more. These are voices that are not often heard, and they come in loud and clear. This is a book of witness, which helps us relate to other oppressive situations.
• Hinks, Peter P., To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) Another historical book expands our understanding of the broad base of slave resistance, assessing the life and impact of David Walker whose "An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World" (1829) played a major role in organizing and uniting Black opposition to enslavement. Walker's strong call for individual moral improvement and uplift as well as organized resistance to enslavement was rooted in evangelical Christian belief. A particular strength of the book is the detail on the system of communication across distances among Southern slaves, particularly along the coasts.
• Kelley, Robin D. G., Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997) Too often people perceive Black urban culture as monolithic. Kelley, writing with intellect and wit, leads readers to question their assumptions. His analysis of youth entrepreneurial responses to commodification is masterful, as is his message that class and race are not in competition. Kelley sees progress via strategies that build upon the multiracial/ethnic/gender character of the ordinary working class folk: nursing home workers, food processors and servers, new immigrant laborers, retail clerks and others in the low wage workforce.
• Lawrence, Charles R., III and Mari J. Matsuda, We Won't Go Back: Making the Case for Affirmative Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1997) The authors argue for the expansion, not the end, of affirmative action: "Affirmative action is an expression of the best parts of the human condition. It affirms the human family, our connectedness, our inevitable interdependency, and out potential to live generous lives. There is joy in deciding to take on the whole world as home, treating every path as sacred, treating every person as deserving of respect and care, taking less so that all the children are fed, needing less so that your soul can sleep in peace. This we learned at our parents' table. It is the heart of affirmative action." The authors cut through every argument against affirmative action that has been put forward. Along the way they share personal reflections on the influences on their own path to teaching law.
• Mills, Charles W., The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997) Charles Mills' treatment of the biases in western philosophy in The Racial Contract is a tour de force. Prior to the "social contract" as conceptualized by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, says Mills, there was a racial contract based on white judgments of nonwhites as lesser beings. The social construction of race is intentional, not an afterthought or aberration. He demonstrates that definitions of race and of the racial contract are always in flux. Readers are encouraged to "think against the grain."
• Minow, Martha, Not Only For Myself: Identity, Politics & the Law (New York: New Press, 1997) Harvard Law School professor Minow wrestles with racial identity issues and politics, discussing both recent and longstanding dilemmas arising when diverse populations interact. The law and official decision-makers greatly impact structures and practices of power and the distribution of wealth based on how a person is identified. Minow points out that people who are eager to reclaim their history and identity along group lines may actually trap themselves into a categorical lead identity that deprives them of access to certain opportunities and resources. Lawmakers must devise rules and practices that are responsive to the experiences of people both as individuals and as members of groups. Each of us has multiple identities; Minow proposes that we not try to resolve that paradox, but that we instead recognize identity as a process of negotiation.
• Nash, Gary B.; Charlotte Crabtree; Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) The next book was honored for its excellence in explaining how the Right in the US can manipulate popular opinion. The authors begin with their travails in trying to introduce a more inclusive history for the public schools. Walking real multiculturalism into practice elicits the wrath of the Right wing. The book describes this backlash, and, most importantly, places the current culture wars over public education and the meaning of democracy into an historical and international context.
• Roberts, Dorothy, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Pantheon, 1997) Dorothy Roberts offers "cutting edge" commentary on the intersections of the anti-Black, anti-women, and anti-welfare movements, breaking new ground by describing the connections between the early rise of the eugenics movement, racism, welfare "reform/deform," and the growing bio-ethics debate. At a time when poor Black women are blamed as the source of social problems, readers gain a deeper understanding of the exploitation of Black women's sexuality.

The Myers Center commends these outstanding writers for their contribution to public understanding of both the root causes and practices of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways of being and doing. We thank the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Twenty-First Century Foundation, Boston University School of Social Work, our national sponsors and others for their support of these awards. (List of Honorable Mention awards available on request.)

A few words on trends:

• Reviewers commented on the large number of books published since the mid 1980s in the area of whiteness studies, and noted several among the Honorable Mentions. Theodore Allen, Mike Hill, and others claim the problem of intolerance is a "white problem."
• They also commented on the increasing number of anthologies that can be recommended to teachers. They include The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis and Double Exposure: Poverty and Race in America edited by Chester Hartman.
• More books are being published by and about women of color. Yen Le Espiritu's Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws and Love; Winona LaDuke's Last Standing Woman; T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting's Spoils of War: Women of Color, Cultures, and Revolutions are examples.
• Many law professors are choosing to publish in the area of human rights and bigotry. Among them: Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Bryan K. Fair, Barbara J. Flagg, Paul Harris, Randall Kennedy, Paul D. Moreno (all Honorable Mentions) as well as winners Martha Minor and Dorothy Roberts.
• Noted journalists chose to explore issues of race relations and racism: Jonathan Coleman, David K. Shipler. Each advances public understanding of the complexities of race relations, and the difficulties of misperception and miscommunication.
• Gay, lesbian, and transgender perspectives are increasing. Among the notable books published in 1997 were Hate Crimes: New Social Movements and the Politics of Violence by Valerie Jenness and Kendal Broad; Poisoned Ivy: Lesbian and Gay Academics Confronting Homophobia by Toni A. H. McNaron; and Queerly Classed: Gay Men & Lesbians Write About Class, edited by Susan Raffo.
• A number of scholarly works were noted: Yamasto Ichihashi's internment writings, Morning Glory, Evening Shadow, edited by Gordon Chang; Albert Lindemann's Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews.
• Writers are examining political repression: Secrets: the CIA's War At Home by Angus MacKenzie, for example.
• There aren't enough books for children and youth that address these subjects. An excellent exception: Anne Frank by Yona Zeldis McDonough.
• For the first time in its 14-year history, the Myers Center recognized books of fiction among those receiving Honorable Mention. As one reviewer noted, the ability of a novelist to cut through distortions and look at a phenomenon from a different angle can contribute to positive change as much as an academic tome, witness Elizabeth Cox's "coming of age" story Night Talk: A Novel.

The Myers Center does not claim to have reviewed all the books published in 1997. Nominations come from reviewers, readers, and publishers. As Director, I am pleased that publishers are choosing to offer more books in this area. The Award was originally established so that publishers would pay more attention to human rights issues here in the States, and so that ordinary people would see the common threads of struggle in the many communities of identity and concern. I am particularly pleased with the "cross-fertilizing" potential of the Awards and review process. Our reviewers gain wonderful insights through this process. I am delighted when I discover books and ideas that I never would have known of if not for the Myers review process. The larger vision of the Myers Center is to share resources and information which foster anti-oppression work and cross-cultural understanding in local communities and organizations.

The intellectual work is being done, as evidenced by the books honored this year. However, the substance of this work is not yet being communicated broadly enough. All of us can "translate" or circulate these analyses beyond the traditional academic circles. The Myers Center will continue to be about this task. The Center has begun the review process for books published in 1998. We invite nominations from interested readers, c/o Loretta J. Williams, Ph.D. Gustavus Myers Center BUSSW, 264 Bay State Rd. ,Boston, MA 02215. http://www.bu.edu/ssw/myerscenter/index.htm