Does "Asian American" denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of Euro- and Asian American parents, Asian... American? What does it mean to refer to first generation Hmong refugees and fifth generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American? In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action-all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans-in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies. Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of "America," Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity-- a fact Chang criticizes as harmful to Asian Americans. Defining the many "borders" that operate in positive and negative ways to construct America as we know it, Chang analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how "the family" operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America. "Has profound political implications for race relations in the new century"—Michigan Law Review, May 2001

In December of 1845, Muhammad as-Saffar was sent by the reigning Moroccan sultan on a special diplomatic mission to Paris. During the journey, as-Saffar... took careful notes and upon his return he hurriedly wrote this travel account.Why was the sultan, descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, and head of a dynasty that had ruled Morocco for more than two hundred years, so eager to read this account? Perhaps he thought it would illuminate some troubling matters: how the French acquired their power and their mastery over nature; how they led their daily lives, educated their children, treated their women and servants. In short, the sultan wanted to know the condition of French civilization and why it differed from his. As-Saffar provided the answers.Moreover, as we read the account, Muhammad as-Saffar comes alive for us. We see him reflecting on the beauty of women, contorting during his ritual ablutions, and suffering from boredom at endless dinners. His opinions and ideas infuse every page. For him the journey was more than a catalog of curiosities; it was a transforming experience. Given our very limited knowledge of the time and the absence of other voices that speak with equal clarity, this travel account enlarges our understanding of the relationship between nineteenth-century Morocco and France.

Following the abolition of slavery in New England, white citizens seemed to forget that it had ever existed there. Drawing on a wide array of primary... sources-from slaveowners' diaries to children's daybooks to racist broadsides-Joanne Pope Melish reveals not only how northern society changed but how its perceptions changed as well. Melish explores the origins of racial thinking and practices to show how ill-prepared the region was to accept a population of free people of color in its midst. Because emancipation was gradual, whites transferred prejudices shaped by slavery to their relations with free people of color, and their attitudes were buttressed by abolitionist rhetoric which seemed to promise riddance of slaves as much as slavery.Melish tells how whites came to blame the impoverished condition of people of color on their innate inferiority, how racialization became an important component of New England ante-bellum nationalism, and how former slaves actively participated in this discourse by emphasizing their African identity. Placing race at the center of New England history, she contends that slavery was important not only as a labor system but also as an institutionalized set of relations. The collective amnesia about local slavery's existence became a significant component of New England regional identity.

"He seems to have brought to this book the ear of a musician and the eye of a painter . . . the premier war correspondence of Vietnam."--Washington... Post. "The best book I have ever read on men and war in our time."--John le Carre." . . . Dispatches puts the rest of us in the shade."--Hunter S. Thompson.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Written on the front lines in Vietnam, Dispatches became an immediate classic of war reportage when it was published in... 1977.From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr’s unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time.Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.

A revolutionary book that offers a fresh, bold approach to confronting the juvenile crime epidemic With the rise of violent crimes committed by... teenagers in recent years, heated discussion has arisen over the societal factors that lead to juvenile criminality and the ways that public institutions are failing to curtail them. Now a team of experts with decades of collective hands-on experience present a book that cuts through the hype and paranoia to offer real solutions. Drawing on actual case studies, Dispatches from Juvenile Hall shows how conventional ?tough on crime? tactics have only worsened the problem, and presents a new blueprint for change that incorporates punitive action, rehabilitation, and family intervention?a progressive program that will encourage and enlighten all those concerned about the future of our youth.

Dispatches charts Latin America’s aspirations and challenges. From the laboratory of neoliberalism—popularly known as "globalization"... —Latin America has transformed itself into a launching pad for resistance. As globalization began to spread its devastation, robust and thoughtful opposition emerged in response—in the recovered factory movement of Argentina, in the presidential elections of indigenous leaders and radicals like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, against the privatization of water in Bolivia. Across Latin America, people are building social movements to take back control of their countries and their lives. Dispatches from Latin America reports on countries from Mexico to Argentina to map the contemporary political and social territory. Drawn from the pages of the well-respected NACLA Report, this collection offers a riveting series of accounts that bring new insight into the region’s struggles and victories.With shrewd analysis rendered in accessible language, Dispatches lays plain the complex and vitally important conditions unfolding in 21st-century Latin America. Praise for Dispatches“After suffering half a century of vicious military dictatorship and state terror, and the disaster of rigid adherence to the neoliberal doctrines of the "Washington consensus," Latin America has undergone remarkable changes that offer real hope for a better future. Among the most promising signs are the dynamic mass movements that have engaged the traditionally marginalized and repressed majorities in political and social life as nowhere else, with popular assemblies, worker-run factories, participatory budgets, grassroots political activism, and much more. The informed and penetrating in-depth studies that appear in Dispatches explore the complex variety of popular initiatives that are taking shape, their achievements and prospects, in what has become perhaps the most exciting region of the world.” NOAM CHOMSKY —author of Failed States and Turning the Tide: US Intervention in Central America Praise for NACLA "NACLA's Report is an indispensable resource for us as readers, citizens, writers and editors." VICTOR NAVASKY — publisher of The Nation  "It's a magazine I always grab in a crisis, since it has often been ahead in analyzing and interpreting political trends in Latin America and in Washington." SEYMOUR HERSH — Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist"NACLA is an indispensable resource for those of us living in the borderlands. NACLA has always made sense of the senseless, tried to right wrongs, cast light on the shadows.  It is a priceless bridge across the borders that continue to separate the peoples of the Americas." RUBÉN MARTÍNEZ — Salvadoran-Mexican journalist and author of Crossing Over"I would be thrown for a serious loss if I had to make sense of the news from Latin America without having NACLA Report for guidance." JOHN WOMACK, JR. — professor of Latin American history and economics, Harvard University

Acclaimed examination of the British government’s complicity in torture.In this set of devastating essays, Gareth Peirce analyzes the corruption of... legal principles and practices in both the US and the UK that has accompanied the ‘War on Terror’. Exploring the few cases of torture that have come to light, such as those of Guantánamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Binyam Mohamed, Peirce argues that they are evidence of a deeply entrenched culture of impunity among those investigating presumed radicals among British Muslim nationals and residents, who constitute the new suspect community in the UK. Peirce shows that the British government has colluded in a whole range of extrajudicial activities—rendition, internment without trial, torture—and has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal its actions. Its devices for maintaining secrecy are probably more deep-rooted than those of any other comparable democracy. If the government continues along this path, Peirce argues, it will destroy the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.

What constitutes black studies and where does this discipline stand at the end of the twentieth century? In this wide-ranging and original volume,... Manning Marable -- one of the leading scholars of African American history -- gathers key materials from contemporary thinkers who interrogate the richly diverse content and multiple meanings of the collective experiences of black folk. Here are numerous voices expressing very different political, cultural, and historical views, from black conservatives, to black separatists, to blacks who advocate radical democratic transformation. Here are topics ranging from race and revolution in Cuba, to the crack epidemic in Harlem, to Afrocentrism and its critics. All of these voices, however, are engaged in some aspect of what Marable sees as the essential triad of the black intellectual tradition: describing the reality of black life and experiences, critiquing racism and stereotypes, or proposing positive steps for the empowerment of black people. Highlights from Dispatches from the Ebony Tower:• Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Manning Marable debate the role of activism in black studies. • John Hope Franklin reflects on his role as chair of the President's race initiative.• Cornel West discusses topics that range from the future of the NAACP through the controversies surrounding Louis Farrakhan and black nationalism to the very question of what "race" means. • Amiri Baraka lays out strategies for a radical new curriculum in our schools and universities. • Marable's introduction provides a thorough overview of the history and current state of black studies in America.

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the... way we watch the news. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life. After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother. As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him. But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family's troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale. Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before -- ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarejevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda -- but he had never seen human misery quite like this. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth. Striking, heartfelt, and utterly engrossing, Dispatches from the Edge is an unforgettable memoir that takes us behind the scenes of the cataclysmic events of our age and allows us to see them through the eyes of one of America's most trusted, fearless, and pioneering reporters.

From one of America's leading reporters comes a deeply personal, extraordinarily powerful look at the most volatile crises he has witnessed around the... world, from New Orleans to Baghdad and beyond. "Dispatches from the Edge of the World" is a book that gives us a rare up-close glimpse of what happens when the normal order of things is suddenly turned upside down, whether it's a natural disaster, a civil war, or a heated political battle. Over the last year, few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has become the touchstone of twenty-first century journalism. This book explores in a very personal way the most important - and most dangerous - crises of our time, and the surprising impact they have had on his life. From the devastating tsunami in South Asia to the suffering Niger, and ultimately Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Cooper shares his own experiences of traversing the globe, covering the world's most astonishing stories. In his first book, that passion communicates itself through a rich fabric of memoir and reportage, reflection and first-person narrative. Unflinching and utterly engrossing, this is the story of an extraordinary year in a reporter's life.

Penned by advanced graduate students amidst their dissertation fieldwork, these provocative essays capture the challenges and intricacies of that... anthropological rite of passage. The collection’s authors frankly portray the mistakes they made in the field, their struggle to analyze the events unfolding before their eyes, the psychological and emotional frustration seemingly endemic to "doing" ethnography, and the ethical complexities of researching living people. The authors present these essays not as models of ideal fieldwork or as a series of lessons about how to overcome potential hurdles one faces in the field, but rather as a window into the complexities of "being" an ethnographer in the contemporary world. Against a backdrop of subject populations increasingly informed about global relations of power and, more specifically, informed about the topography of American imperialism, these humanistic essays vividly reflect recent shifts in both the focus and methods of anthropological research, as well as the dilemmas underlying the construction of anthropological knowledge. They are meant to spark discussion and debate. While tailored to an audience relatively new to ethnographic fieldwork (and intended as a teaching tool), this collection should appeal to anthropologists and ethnographers at all points in their career. Titles of related interest also from Waveland Press: Anderson, Around the World in 30 Years: Life as a Cultural Anthropologist (ISBN 9781577660576); Anderson, First Fieldwork: The Misadventures of an Anthropologist (ISBN 9780881334913); Barley, The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut (ISBN 9781577661566); Bohannan-van der Elst, Asking and Listening: Ethnography as Personal Adaptation (ISBN 9780881339871); DeVita, Stumbling toward Truth: Anthropologists at Work (ISBN 9781577661252); and McCloskey, Economical Writing, Second Edition (ISBN 9781577660637).