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I Lived to Tell the World
Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War
Elizabeth Mehren
Oregon State University Press, 2024

As Americans increasingly question how each of us fits into our nation's cultural tapestry, I Lived to Tell the World presents thirteen inspiring profiles of refugees who have settled in Oregon. They come from Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, Syria, and more-different stories, different conflicts, but similar paths through loss and violence to a new, not always easy, life in the United States. The in-depth profiles are drawn from hours of interviews and oral histories; journalist Elizabeth Mehren worked collaboratively with the survivors to honor the complexity of their experiences and to ensure that the stories are told with, and not just about, them. Mehren also weaves in historical, cultural, and political context alongside these personal stories of resilience.

In the face of global cruelty and hatred, the courage and fortitude of these individuals illuminate the darkness. Their stories inspire readers to reflect on their own experiences and to view newcomers to America with renewed respect. As more states adopt Holocaust and genocide education curricula and as issues around refugees, immigration, and racial justice gain attention, I Lived to Tell the World highlights the purposeful lives led by these Oregonians despite their painful pasts. Their experiences not only humanize the atrocities often seen in headlines, but also convey a universal message of hope. 

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Illegal
Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant
Jose Angel N.
University of Illinois Press, 2014
A day after José Ángel N. first crossed the United States border from Mexico, he was caught and then released onto the streets of Tijuana. Undeterred, N. crawled back through a tunnel to San Diego, where he entered the United States to stay. Illegal: Reflections of an Undocumented Immigrant is his timely and compelling memoir of building a new life in America.

Arriving in the 1990s with a ninth grade education, N. traveled to Chicago where he found access to ESL and GED classes. He eventually attended college and graduate school and became a professional translator.

Despite having a well-paying job, N. was isolated by a lack of legal documentation. Travel concerns made promotions impossible. The simple act of purchasing his girlfriend a beer at a Cubs baseball game caused embarrassment and shame when N. couldn't produce a valid ID. A frustrating contradiction, N. lived in a luxury high-rise condo but couldn't fully live the American dream. He did, however, find solace in the one gift America gave him–-his education. Ultimately, N.'s is the story of the triumph of education over adversity. In Illegal, he debunks the stereotype that undocumented immigrants are freeloaders without access to education or opportunity for advancement. With bravery and honesty, N. details the constraints, deceptions, and humiliations that characterize alien life "amid the shadows."

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Immigrant Voices
New Lives in America, 1773-2000
Edited by Thomas Dublin
University of Illinois Press, 2014

A classroom staple, Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-2000 has been updated with writings that reflect trends in immigration to the United States through the turn of the twenty-first century. New chapters include a selection of letters from Irish immigrants fleeing the famine of the 1840s, writings from an immigrant who escaped the civil war in Liberia during the 1980s, and letters that crossed the U.S.-Mexico border during the late 1980s and early '90s. With each addition editor Thomas Dublin has kept to his original goals, which was to show the commonalities of the U.S. immigrant experience across lines of gender, nation of origin, race, and even time.


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In The Vineyard
Working In African American Studies
Perry A. Hall
University of Tennessee Press, 1999
“This book is unprecedented in the field in its approach and content. . . . A  must for the serious student in African American studies.”—Delores P. Aldridge, Emory University

The emergence of African American studies in the 1970s filled a critical gap in higher education. Now a prominent scholar who has helped to define the contours of that field integrates personal reflection with an analysis of its development to recount the political, cultural, and intellectual issues that helped shape the discipline.

A participant in the Black Student Movement in its early years, Perry A. Hall provides an insider's look at the struggle to persuade academia to accept the mission of Black Studies and the struggle inside the movement to define its objectives. He examines how the discipline evolved within the context of the wider social revolution changing the face of America, showing how the presence of blacks on campuses brought about the need for new perspectives in college curricula. And because African American Studies today represents a variety of approaches, he examines how they evolved and how they interact both within the field and with other areas of knowledge.

Hall critiques the popular "Afrocentric" approach in African American Studies, arguing that it is not synonymous with the discipline overall. He develops an alternative "transformationist" paradigm that builds on the idea of double-consciousness advanced by W. E. B. Du Bois and shows how it can be used to sort out conceptions of black identity that have emerged from sociology and psychology. He explores the importance of vernacular culture—especially popular music—in creating unique frames of reference for African Americans and also applies his paradigm to education and public policy analysis.

An important intellectual autobiography, Hall's work shows how insights gleaned over thirty years can be applied in the vineyards of academia today. Its message speaks clearly to scholars of his own generation and today's, and shows how African American Studies can continue to be relevant in the next century.

The Author: Perry A. Hall is associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and a former member of the executive board of the National Council for Black Studies. His articles have appeared in Western Journal of Black Studies, Word: A Black Culture Journal, Journal of Negro Education, and the Black Studies Handbook.
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Written by Herself, Now with "A True Tale of Slavery" by John S. Jacobs, Enlarged Edition
Harriet A. Jacobs and John S. Jacobs; edited by Jean Fagan Yellin
Harvard University Press, 2000

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.

This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative now completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John Jacobs's short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother's perspective to Harriet Jacobs's own autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents additional historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Importantly, it presents the people, places, and events Harriet Jacobs wrote about from the different perspective of a male narrator. Once more, Jean Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication. She has also brought her Introduction up to date.

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Is It Nation Time?
Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism
Edited by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
University of Chicago Press, 2002
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Power movement provided the dominant ideological framework through which many young, poor, and middle-class blacks made sense of their lives and articulated a political vision for their futures. The legacy of the movement is still very much with us today in the various strands of black nationalism that originated from it; we witnessed its power in the 1995 Million Man March, and we see its more ambiguous effects in the persistent antagonisms among former participants in the civil rights coalition. Yet despite the importance of the Black Power movement, very few in-depth, balanced treatments of it exist.

Is It Nation Time? gathers new and classic essays on the Black Power movement and its legacy by renowned thinkers who deal rigorously and unsentimentally with such issues as the commodification of blackness, the piety of cultural recovery, and class tensions within the movement. For anyone who wants to understand the roots of the complex political and cultural desires of contemporary black America, this will be an essential collection.

Contributors:
Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Farah Jasmine Griffin
Phillip Brian Harper
Gerald Horne
Robin D. G. Kelley
Wahneema Lubiano
Adolph Reed Jr.
Jeffrey Stout
Will Walker
S. Craig Watkins
Cornel West
E. Francis White
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Islam and Me
Narrating a Diaspora
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel
Rutgers University Press, 2023
Growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel was immersed in the language and culture of Italy, Somalia’s former colonizer. Yet when she moved to Italy as a young mother in the 1970s, she discovered a country where immigrants and Muslims were viewed with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion­–where, even today, she and her children must seemingly prove they are Italian. 
 
In Islam and Me, Fazel tells her story and shares the experiences of other Muslim women living in Italy, revealing the wide variety of Muslim identities and the common prejudices they encounter. Looking at Italian school textbooks, newspapers, and TV programs, she invites us to change the way Muslim immigrants, and especially women, are depicted in both news reports and scholarly research. Islam and Me is a meditation on our multireligious, multiethnic, and multilingual reality, as well as an exploration of how we might reimagine national culture and identity so that they become more diverse, inclusive, and anti-racist. 

 
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Izyaslav and Gertrude
The King and Queen of Rus’ at the Nexus of Medieval Europe
Christian Raffensperger
Harvard University Press
Rus’ is traditionally seen as part of Ukrainian or Russian history, and rarely part of medieval European history. This work focuses on two well-known Rusian rulers, King Izyaslav and Queen Gertrude, and situates them in a larger medieval context. Their story progresses from their dynastic marriage, as part of an agreement between the rulers of Rus’ and Poland; to their rule in Rus’, including the power that Gertrude and Rusian women were able to wield and their cultural contributions; to their travels in Europe during exile, including to Gertrude’s family in Poland and the German Empire, as well as to the pope himself; and, finally, their ultimate fates and their impact on their descendants. Through Izyaslav and Gertrude, readers will see the Rusian royalty as not an eastern Other, but part of the broader complex of medieval European royalty.
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