BiblioVault - Books about Carrying

Carrying On

Another School of Thought on Pregnancy and Health

Brittany Clair

Rutgers University Press, 2022

In the twenty-first century, expecting parents are inundated with information and advice from every direction, but are often strapped for perspective on how to think through it. Unlike traditional pregnancy guidebooks that offer recommendations, Carrying On helps expecting parents make sense of the overwhelming amount of counsel available to them by shedding light on where it all came from. How and why did such confusing and contradictory guidance on pregnancy come to exist?

Carrying On investigates the origin stories of prevailing prenatal health norms by exploring the evolution of issues at the center of pregnancy, ranging from morning sickness and weight gain to ultrasounds and induction. When did women start taking prenatal vitamins, and why? When did the notion that pregnant women should “eat for two” originate? Where did exercise guidelines come from? And when did women start formulating birth plans?

A learning project with one foot in the past and the other in the present, Carrying On considers what history and medicine together can teach us about how and why we treat pregnancy–and pregnant women–the way we do. In a world of information overload, Carrying On offers expecting parents the context and background they need to approach pregnancy and prenatal health from a new place of understanding.

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Carrying the Burden of Peace

Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities Through Story

Sam McKegney

University of Arizona Press, 2021

Can a critical examination of Indigenous masculinities be an honor song—one that celebrates, rather than pathologizes; one that seeks diversity and strength; one that overturns heteropatriarchy without centering settler colonialism? Can a critical examination of Indigenous masculinities even be creative, inclusive, erotic?

Sam McKegney answers affirmatively. Countering the perception that masculinity has been so contaminated as to be irredeemable, the book explores Indigenous literary art for understandings of masculinity that exceed the impoverished inheritance of colonialism.

Carrying the Burden of Peace weaves together stories of Indigenous life, love, eroticism, pain, and joy to map the contours of diverse, empowered, and non-dominant Indigenous masculinities. It is from here that a more balanced world may be pursued.

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Carrying the Colors

The Life and Legacy of Medal of Honor Recipient Andrew Jackson Smith

W. Robert Beckman

Westholme Publishing, 2020

An Escaped Slave who Fought for the Union and Whose Wartime Heroism was Finally Recognized with the Nation's Highest Honor for Military Valor

In 1862, Andrew “Andy” Jackson Smith, son of a white landowner and enslaved woman, escaped to Union troops operating in Kentucky, made his way to the North, and volunteered for the 55th Massachusetts, one of the newly formed African American regiments. The regiment was deployed to South Carolina, and during a desperate assault on a Confederate battery, the color bearer was killed. Before the flag was lost, Smith quickly retrieved it and under heavy fire held the colors steady while the decimated regiment withdrew. The regiment’s commanding officer promoted Smith to color sergeant and wrote him a commendation for both saving the regimental flag and bravery under fire. Honorably discharged, Smith returned to Kentucky, where over the course of the next forty years he invested in land. In the early twentieth century, Burt G. Wilder, medical officer of the 55th, contacted Smith about his experiences for a book he was writing. During their correspondence, Wilder realized Smith was eligible for the nation’s highest award. In 1916, Wilder applied to the army, but his request for Smith’s medal was denied due to the “absence of records.” At Smith’s death in 1932, his daughter Caruth received a box of his papers revealing the extent of her father’s heroism. Her nephew took up the cause and through long and painstaking research located the lost records. With the help of historians, local politicians, and others, Andrew Jackson Smith received his long overdue Medal of Honor in 2001.

In Carrying the Colors: The Life and Legacy of Medal of Honor Recipient Andrew Jackson Smith, the riveting journey from slavery to a White House ceremony is revealed, with the indomitable spirit of Smith—slave, soldier, landowner, father—mirrored by the dogged pursuit of his grandson and his allies in the quest to discover the truth about an American who dedicated his life to the service of his community and country.

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Carrying the Word

The Concheros Dance in Mexico City

Susanna Rostas

University Press of Colorado, 2009

In Carrying the Word: The Concheros Dance in Mexico City, the first full length study of the Concheros dancers, Susanna Rostas explores the experience of this unique group, whose use of dance links rural religious practices with urban post-modern innovation in distinctive ways even within Mexican culture, which is rife with ritual dances.

The Concheros blend Catholic and indigenous traditions in their performances, but are not governed by a predetermined set of beliefs; rather they are bound together by long standing interpersonal connections framed by the discipline of their tradition. The Concheros manifest their spirituality by means of the dance. Rostas traces how they construct their identity and beliefs, both individual and communal, by its means. The book offers new insights into the experience of dancing as a Conchero while also exploring their history, organization and practices.

Carrying the Word provides a new way for audiences to understand the Conchero's dance tradition, and will be of interest to students and scholars of contemporary Mesoamerica. Those studying identity, religion, and tradition will find this social-anthropological work particularly enlightening.

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