Reading List – September 2024

Our monthly newsletter shares notices of new book publications that our members email us about. If you or someone whose permission you have has had a book published within the past 12 months, please share the title, subject or (inter)disciplinary area(s), and link in this form, and we will share it with members.

California, A Slave State | Jean Pfaelzer 
By looking west to California, Jean Pfaelzer upends our understanding of slavery as a North-South struggle and reveals how the enslaved in California fought, fled, and resisted human bondage. In unyielding research and vivid interviews, Pfaelzer exposes how California gorged on slavery, an appetite that persists today in a global trade in human beings lured by promises of jobs but who instead are imprisoned in sweatshops and remote marijuana grows, or sold as nannies and sex workers. Learn more.

Farm-to-Freedom: Vietnamese Americans and Their Food Gardens | Roy Vu
Farm-to-Freedom uses the concept of emancipatory foodways as a lens into gardens that serve a semi-palliative purpose by succoring the experienced tragedies of war and exile for Vietnamese immigrants and Vietnamese Americans, which arguably adds another dimension to the importance of the home garden. Vũ covers topics including but not limited to culinary citizenship, food democracy, culinary justice, and food sovereignty. Learn more.

Not Made of Lines: Poetic Meditations on Time, Space, and Other Matters | Madeleine Moon-Chun
This is a collection of poetry and visual arts by young poet and writer Madeleine Moon-Chun. Through themes of time, matter, space, and energy in a variety of formats-prose poetry, haiku, photos, and drawings-she explores and expresses her feelings as well as her relationships with other humans, animals, and nature. She also allows the reader to hear from the voice of nature and animals. Her writing touches upon pain, desire, love, youth, and aging. Learn more.

Teaching the Invisible Race: Embodying a Pro-Asian American Lens in Schools | Tony DelaRosa

In Teaching the Invisible Race, anti-bias and anti-racist educator and researcher Tony DelaRosa (he, siya) delivers an insightful and hands-on treatment of how to embody a pro-Asian American lens in your classroom while combating anti-Asian hate in your school. The author offers stories, case studies, research, and frameworks that will help you build the knowledge, mindset, and skills you need to teach Asian-American history and stories in your curriculum. Learn more.