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Sacred Divorce
Religion, Therapeutic Culture, and Ending Life Partnerships
Jenkins, Kathleen E
Rutgers University Press, 2014
 Even in our world of redefined life partnerships and living arrangements, most marriages begin through sacred ritual connected to a religious tradition. But if marriage rituals affirm deeply held religious and secular values in the presence of clergy, family, and community, where does divorce, which severs so many of these sacred bonds, fit in?  Sociologist Kathleen Jenkins takes up this question in a work that offers both a broad, analytical perspective and a uniquely intimate view of the role of religion in ending marriages.

For more than five years, Jenkins observed religious support groups and workshops for the divorced and interviewed religious practitioners in the midst of divorces, along with clergy members who advised them. Her findings appear here in the form of eloquent and revealing stories about individuals managing emotions in ways that make divorce a meaningful, even sacred process. Clergy from mainline Protestant denominations to Baptist churches, Jewish congregations, Unitarian fellowships, and Catholic parishes talk about the concealed nature of divorce in their congregations.  Sacred Divorce describes their cautious attempts to overcome such barriers, and to assemble meaningful symbols and practices for members by becoming compassionate listeners, delivering careful sermons, refitting existing practices like Catholic annulments and Jewish divorce documents (gets), and constructing new rituals.          

With attention to religious, ethnic, and class variations, covering age groups from early thirties to mid-sixties and separations of only a few months to up to twenty years, Sacred Divorce offers remarkable insight into individual and cultural responses to divorce and the social emotions and spiritual strategies that the clergy and the faithful employ to find meaning in the breach.  At once a sociological document, an ethnographic analysis, and testament of personal experience, Sacred Divorce provides guidance, strategies and answers to readers looking for answers and those looking to heal.
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The Science and Fiction of Autism
Laura Schreibman
Harvard University Press, 2007

Autism is a complex and incurable constellation of bizarre behaviors, impaired cognition, limited language, and most distressingly, a lack of responsiveness to other people, and it has been the center of impassioned debates for decades. What is it? What causes it? How can it be treated?

In The Science and Fiction of Autism, one of the country's leading experts in behavioral treatments approaches autism through the context of its controversies, showing where extraordinary and unfounded claims have falsely raised hopes, stirred fears, and ruined lives. Arguing that autism is an entirely biological disorder, however complex its neurological origins, Laura Schreibman lays waste to the beliefs that it is caused by "refrigerator mothers" or the MMR vaccine, as well as to the simplistic claims that it can be cured by a variety of unsubstantiated treatments.

Drawing from her own long clinical experience with autistic children and their parents, Schreibman arms her readers--students, educators, psychologists, and parents alike--with information and arguments to deal with the onslaught of good, bad, deficient, and irrelevant ideas about autism.

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Selling Transracial Adoption
Families, Markets, and the Color Line
Elizabeth Raleigh
Temple University Press, 2017

While focused on serving children and families, the adoption industry must also generate sufficient revenue to cover an agency’s operating costs. With its fee-for-service model, Elizabeth Raleigh asks, How does private adoption operate as a marketplace? Her eye-opening book, Selling Transracial Adoption, provides a fine-grained analysis of the business decisions in the adoption industry and what it teaches us about notions of kinship and race. 

Adoption providers, Raleigh declares, are often tasked with pitching the idea of transracial adoption to their mostly white clientele. But not all children are equally “desirable,” and transracial adoption—a market calculation—is hardly colorblind. Selling Transracial Adoption explicitly focuses on adoption providers andemploys candid interviews with adoption workers, social workers, attorneys, and counselors, as well as observations from adoption conferences and information sessions, toillustrate how agencies institute a racial hierarchy—especially when the supply of young and healthy infants is on the decline. Ultimately, Raleigh discovers that the racialized practices in private adoption serve as a powerful reflection of race in America.

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Sexual Bargaining
Power Politics in the American Marriage
John Scanzoni
University of Chicago Press, 1982
Is the institution of marriage in America breaking down? Is marriage as we have known it largely irrelevant? Are the forms of marriage changing? Are the changes in women's roles in society related to the breakdown, irrelevance, and formal alteration of marriage?

In this updated edition of his fundamental study of modern marriage, John Scanzoni challenges the widespread assumption that marriage is a dying institution. By analyzing the "reward seeking" which generates conflicts between males and females, he shows that marriage indeed has a future but that its form will continue to change as sex-role equality emerges both within and outside of marriage.
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Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans
An Evolutionary Perspective on Male Aggression against Females
Martin N. Muller
Harvard University Press, 2009

Conflict between males and females over reproduction is ubiquitous in nature due to fundamental differences between the sexes in reproductive rates and investment in offspring. In only a few species, however, do males strategically employ violence to control female sexuality. Why are so many of these primates? Why are females routinely abused in some species, but never in others? And can the study of such unpleasant behavior by our closest relatives help us to understand the evolution of men’s violence against women?

In the first systematic attempt to assess and understand primate male aggression as an expression of sexual conflict, the contributors to this volume consider coercion in direct and indirect forms: direct, in overcoming female resistance to mating; indirect, in decreasing the chance the female will mate with other males. The book presents extensive field research and analysis to evaluate the form of sexual coercion in a range of species—including all of the great apes and humans—and to clarify its role in shaping social relationships among males, among females, and between the sexes.

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Shades of White
White Kids and Racial Identities in High School
Pamela Perry
Duke University Press, 2002
What does it mean to be young, American, and white at the dawn of the twenty-first century? By exploring this question and revealing the everyday social processes by which high schoolers define white identities, Pamela Perry offers much-needed insights into the social construction of race and whiteness among youth.
Through ethnographic research and in-depth interviews of students in two demographically distinct U.S. high schools—one suburban and predominantly white; the other urban, multiracial, and minority white—Perry shares students’ candor about race and self-identification. By examining the meanings students attached (or didn’t attach) to their social lives and everyday cultural practices, including their taste in music and clothes, she shows that the ways white students defined white identity were not only markedly different between the two schools but were considerably diverse and ambiguous within them as well. Challenging reductionist notions of whiteness and white racism, this study suggests how we might go “beyond whiteness” to new directions in antiracist activism and school reform.
Shades of White is emblematic of an emerging second wave of whiteness studies that focuses on the racial identity of whites. It will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as to those involved with high school education and antiracist activities.
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The Silent Garden
A Parent's Guide to Raising a Deaf Child
Paul W. Ogden
Gallaudet University Press, 2017
For over 30 years, The Silent Garden has offered parents of deaf children the support and unbiased information needed to fully realize their children’s potential. This completely revised third edition is a must-have resource that will help parents navigate the complex and unique challenges they face. Accessible, practical, and, above all, open-minded, The Silent Garden educates parents quickly and thoroughly about the many conflicting points of view on what is best for their deaf children.
       Authors Paul W. Ogden and David H. Smith, who are both deaf, present examples and research that guide parents through often unfamiliar territory. From coping mechanisms for parents to advice on creating healthy home environments, the authors cover a range of topics that impact day-to-day actions and decision-making. The topic of communication is discussed extensively as communication access and language development are crucial not only for intellectual growth, but also for positive family and social relationships. The authors look at American Sign Language, listening and spoken language, written English, and various other modes of communication available to deaf children. Different educational options are presented, and technology—including the debate about cochlear implants—is reviewed. Deaf children with special needs are considered here as well. Each topic is accompanied by real-life stories that offer further insight.
       Always encouraging, The Silent Garden empowers parents to be the best advocates for their deaf children. Throughout, the authors emphasize that each choice is highly personal, and they stress that all deaf children have the potential to lead rich, productive, and exciting lives.

Also available in Spanish - El Jardín Silencioso: Una guía para los padres para criar a un niño sordo is a condensed Spanish edition that features the first five chapters of The Silent Garden. Topics covered include coping mechanisms for parents, creating healthy family environments, fostering independence, and understanding the perspectives of siblings.
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The Silent Garden
A Parent’s Guide to Raising a Deaf Child
Paul W. Ogden
Gallaudet University Press, 2016
For over 30 years, The Silent Garden has offered parents of deaf children the support and unbiased information needed to fully realize their children’s potential. This completely revised third edition is a must-have resource that will help parents navigate the complex and unique challenges they face. Accessible, practical, and, above all, open-minded, The Silent Garden educates parents quickly and thoroughly about the many conflicting points of view on what is best for their deaf children.
       Authors Paul W. Ogden and David H. Smith, who are both deaf, present examples and research that guide parents through often unfamiliar territory. From coping mechanisms for parents to advice on creating healthy home environments, the authors cover a range of topics that impact day-to-day actions and decision-making. The topic of communication is discussed extensively as communication access and language development are crucial not only for intellectual growth, but also for positive family and social relationships. The authors look at American Sign Language, listening and spoken language, written English, and various other modes of communication available to deaf children. Different educational options are presented, and technology—including the debate about cochlear implants—is reviewed. Deaf children with special needs are considered here as well. Each topic is accompanied by real-life stories that offer further insight.
       Always encouraging, The Silent Garden empowers parents to be the best advocates for their deaf children. Throughout, the authors emphasize that each choice is highly personal, and they stress that all deaf children have the potential to lead rich, productive, and exciting lives.

Also available in Spanish - El Jardín Silencioso: Una guía para los padres para criar a un niño sordo is a condensed Spanish edition that features the first five chapters of The Silent Garden. Topics covered include coping mechanisms for parents, creating healthy family environments, fostering independence, and understanding the perspectives of siblings.
[more]

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Six Generations Here
A Farm Family Remembers
Marjorie McLellan
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1997

Six Generations Here: A Farm Family Remembers
by Marjorie L. McLellan, with an essay by Kathleen Neils Conzen and a foreword by Dan Freas

Discover the story of the Krueger family, as images of farm, family, and landscape reveal the struggles of rural immigrant life in Wisconsin. Drawing on snapshots, memorabilia, and interviews, Six Generations Here brings together the voices of the past and the present to create a distinctive portrait of Wisconsin farm life.
Leaving their German home in 1851, the Kruegers came to America for economic opportunity. But like other immigrant families, they struggled to make ends meet. Only with the whole family helping out did they manage to get their Watertown farm up and running. By the turn of the century, they had achieved a life of middle-class comfort in the midst of the rigors of dairy farming. Over the generations, the Kruegers incorporated their past traditions with the needs of the present, adapting to the challenges of rural American life and, when necessary, breaking from the past. Despite these changes, their commitment to hard work and family persisted, shaped their identity, and ensured their success.
Through photographs, documents, and family stories, the Kruegers left a deep history of who they were and how they sought to be remembered. Follow their family through six generations as they compile a rich and varied record of Wisconsin life.

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Social Change and the Family in Taiwan
Arland Thornton and Hui-Sheng Lin
University of Chicago Press, 1994
Until the 1940s, social life in Taiwan was generally organized through the family—marriages were arranged by parents, for example, and senior males held authority. In the following years, as Taiwan evolved rapidly from an agrarian to an industrialized society, individual decisions became less dependent on the family and more influenced by outside forces. Social Change and the Family in Taiwan provides an in-depth analysis of the complex changes in family relations in a society undergoing revolutionary social and economic transformation.

This interdisciplinary study explores the patterns and causes of change in education, work, income, leisure time, marriage, living arrangements, and interactions among extended kin. Theoretical chapters enunciate a theory of family and social change centered on the life course and modes of social organization. Other chapters look at the shift from arranged marriages toward love matches, as well as changes in dating practices, premarital sex, fertility, and divorce.

Contributions to the book are made by Jui-Shan Chang, Ming-Cheng Chang, Deborah S. Freedman, Ronald Freedman, Thomas E. Fricke, Albert Hermalin, Mei-Lin Lee, Paul K. C. Liu, Hui-Sheng Lin, Te-Hsiung Sun, Arland Thornton, Maxine Weinstein, and Li-Shou Yang.
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Sold Separately
Children and Parents in Consumer Culture
Seiter, Ellen
Rutgers University Press, 1993

"A radical approach to children's TV. . . . Seiter argues cogently that watching Saturday cartoons isn't a passive activity but a tool by which even the very young decode and learn about their culture, and develop creative imagination as well. Bolstered by social, political, developmental, and media research, Seiter ties middle-class aversion to children's TV and mass-market toys to an association with the 'uncontrollable consumerism'––and hence supposed moral failure––of working class members, women, and 'increasingly, children.' . . . Positive guidance for parents uncertain of the role of TV and TV toys in their children's lives."––Kirkus Reviews

"Sold Separately is about television and toys, and the various roles that they play in the lives of children and parents. In particular, Seiter examines toy advertising, both in print media and on television; TV commercials; toy-based video for girls, with an in-depth look at "My Little Pony"; action TV for boys, using "Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters" as her case study; and the stores where toys are sold, both Toys "R" Us and the more upscale shops . . . contains many provocative observations."––Women's Review of Books

"Ellen Seiter has a holiday message for yuppie parents who feel guilty shopping at Toys "R" Us. The mass-produced toys that dominate the chain's shelves need not be the enemy of every right-thinking parent. "Ghostbuster" figurines and "My Little Pony" can share the toy chest with those sensible wooden blocks."––Chronicle of Higher Education

"Emphasizing problems of socioeconomic class, gender, and race stereotyping, this study acknowledges the usual parental complaints about toys like Barbie and G.I. Joe, but insists that they do play an important role in children's culture, especially for working class families. A thought-provoking analysis."––Wilson Library Journal

"In this thought provoking study, Seiter reasonably urges parents and others to put aside their own tastes and to understand that children's consumer culture promotes solidarity and sociability among youngsters."––Publishers Weekly

"An important book for those desiring an overview of the toy industry's impact on consumer culture . . . [it] presents a fair and well-balanced view of the industry."––Kathleen M. Carson, associate editor, Playthings

"A refreshing, thoughtful, and insightful investigation of an enormously important subject––consumer culture for kids. . . . I can't recommend it highly enough."––Janice Radway, Duke University, author of Reading the Romance

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Some Reflections Upon Marriage
Mary Astell. Introduction by John A. Dussinger
University of Illinois Press, 2015
Published anonymously in 1700, Some Reflections upon Marriage lamented the inequities of the institution of marriage and reasoned against it with both traditional and innovative arguments. Mary Astell's tract, written in response to an infamous divorce case, forcefully argued against the grim but all-too-common prospect of a marriage of necessity to a man in search of power, money, or a trophy wife. Astell proposed education as the solution to women's second-class status, stating that knowledge alone could lead to a partnership based on friendship and respect. "Let us learn to pride ourselves in something more excellent than the invention of a fashion," she wrote, and her well-reasoned arguments soon won her a wide readership.
 
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Someday All This Will Be Yours
A History of Inheritance and Old Age
Hendrik Hartog
Harvard University Press, 2011

We all hope that we will be cared for as we age. But the details of that care, for caretaker and recipient alike, raise some of life’s most vexing questions. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, as an explosive economy and shifting social opportunities drew the young away from home, the elderly used promises of inheritance to keep children at their side. Hendrik Hartog tells the riveting, heartbreaking stories of how families fought over the work of care and its compensation.

Someday All This Will Be Yours narrates the legal and emotional strategies mobilized by older people, and explores the ambivalences of family members as they struggled with expectations of love and duty. Court cases offer an extraordinary glimpse of the mundane, painful, and intimate predicaments of family life. They reveal what it meant to be old without the pensions, Social Security, and nursing homes that now do much of the work of serving the elderly. From demented grandparents to fickle fathers, from litigious sons to grateful daughters, Hartog guides us into a world of disputed promises and broken hearts, and helps us feel the terrible tangle of love and commitments and money.

From one of the bedrocks of the human condition—the tension between the infirmities of the elderly and the longings of the young—emerges a pioneering work of exploration into the darker recesses of family life. Ultimately, Hartog forces us to reflect on what we owe and are owed as members of a family.

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Somos Latinas
Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists
Andrea-Teresa Arenas
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018
Twenty-five Latina agents of change share their inspirational stories.

Celebrated Latina civil rights activist Dolores Huerta once said, “Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.” These are the stories of some of the Latina activists from Wisconsin who have lived Huerta’s words. Somos Latinas shares the powerful narratives of 25 activists—from outspoken demonstrators to collaborative community-builders to determined individuals working for change behind the scenes—providing proof of the long-standing legacy of Latina activism throughout Wisconsin. 

Somos Latinas draws on activist interviews conducted as part of the Somos Latinas Digital History Project, housed at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and looks deep into the life and passion of each woman. Though Latinas have a rich history of community activism in the state and throughout the country, their stories often go uncelebrated. Somos Latinas is essential reading for scholars, historians, activists, and anyone curious about how everyday citizens can effect change in their communities.  
 
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Speed Trap
eighty robberies and fifty years
William W. Allen
Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2012
“In this personal account that reads like a novel,
 Allen describes the exhilaration of his youthful rule-breaking behavior
as well as the crushing reality that followed.”
– William Stephens, Ph.D.
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Spinal Cord Injury and the Family
A New Guide
Michelle J. Alpert M.D.
Harvard University Press, 2008

Spinal cord injury, or SCI, is frequently sudden and unexpected—through accident, disease, or violence, patients temporarily lose control of their bodies and, it seems, their lives. With rehabilitation, they can learn to navigate their world once more, retraining muscles and mind to compensate for paralyzed limbs and diminished strength. But as Dr. Michelle Alpert shows here, there is far more to recapturing full, independent lives than regaining movement. Central to long-term success is mending the family unit.

Combining Dr. Alpert’s clinical experience with patients’ own stories, Spinal Cord Injury and the Family is for individuals and their families who must climb back from injury: for the young quad couple, both quadriplegic, who wish to conceive and raise a child; for the paraplegic dad who wants to teach his daughter to drive; for the couple wondering how they can regain the sexual spark in their relationship.

The authors cover the causes of and prognosis for SCI through case studies, review common courses of rehabilitation, and answer the “what now?” questions—from daily routines to larger issues concerning sex, education and employment, childbearing, and parenting with SCI. Rich in clinical information and practical advice, the book shows how real patients and their families are living full lives after spinal cord injury.

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Starting with Goodbye
A Daughter's Memoir of Love after Loss
Lisa Romeo
University of Nevada Press, 2018
Starting with Goodbye begins with loss and ends with love, as a midlife daughter rediscovers her enigmatic father after his death. Lisa has little time for grief, but when her dead dad drops in for “conversations,” his absent presence invites Lisa to examine why the parent she had turned away from in life now holds her spellbound.

Lisa reconsiders the affluent upbringing he financed (filled with horses, lavish vacations, bulging closets), and the emotional distance that grew when he retired to Las Vegas and she remained in New Jersey where she and her husband earn moderate incomes. She also confronts death rituals, navigates new family dynamics, while living both in memory and the unfolding moment.

In this brutally honest yet compelling portrayal and tribute, Lisa searches for meaning, reconciling the Italian-American father—self-made textile manufacturer who liked newspapers, smoking, Las Vegas craps tables, and solitude—with the complex man she discovers influenced everything, from career choice to spouse.

By forging a new father-daughter “relationship,” grief is transformed to hopeful life-affirming redemption. In poignant, often lyrical prose, this powerful, honest book proves that when we dare to love the parent who challenged us most, it’s never too late.
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Still Connected
Family and Friends in America Since 1970
Claude S. Fischer
Russell Sage Foundation, 2011
National news reports periodically proclaim that American life is lonelier than ever, and new books on the subject with titles like Bowling Alone generate considerable anxiety about the declining quality of Americans' social ties. Still Connected challenges such concerns by asking a simple yet significant question: have Americans' bonds with family and friends changed since the 1970s, and, if so, how? Noted sociologist Claude Fischer examines long-term trends in family ties and friendships and paints an insightful and ultimately reassuring portrait of Americans' personal relationships. Still Connected analyzes forty years of survey research to address whether and how Americans' personal ties have changed—their involvement with relatives, the number of friends they have and their contacts with those friends, the amount of practical and emotional support they are able to count on, and how emotionally tied they feel to these relationships. The book shows that Americans today have fewer relatives than they did forty years ago and that formal gatherings have declined over the decades—at least partially as a result of later marriages and more women in the work force. Yet neither the overall quantity of personal relationships nor, more importantly, the quality of those relationships has diminished. Americans' contact with relatives and friends, as well as their feelings of emotional connectedness, has changed relatively little since the 1970s. Although Americans are marrying later and single people feel lonely, few Americans report being socially isolated and the percentage who do has not really increased. Fischer maintains that this constancy testifies to the value Americans place on family and friends and to their willingness to adapt to changing circumstances in ways that sustain their social connections. For example, children now often have schedules as busy as their parents. Yet today's parents spend more quality time with their children than parents did forty years ago—although less in the form of organized home activities and more in the form of accompanying them to play dates or sports activities. And those family meals at home that seem to be disappearing? While survey research shows that families dine at home together less often, it also shows that they dine out together more often. Americans are fascinated by the quality of their relationships with family and friends and whether these bonds fray or remain stable over time. With so many voices heralding the demise of personal relationships, it's no wonder that confusion on this topic abounds. An engrossing and accessible social history, Still Connected brings a much-needed note of clarity to the discussion. Americans' personal ties, this book assures us, remain strong.
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The Storytelling Coloring Book
Ojibwe Traditions Coloring Book Series
Cassie Brown
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018
This series offers children and their families the opportunity to learn about Ojibwe lifeways and teachings in an engaging and accessible manner. Included in each coloring book are word scrambles, mazes, and other activities to help children and their families engage more deeply with the information and have fun at the same time. While younger children (3+) can enjoy simply coloring the images, older children (6+) can also use the stories and glossaries to start learning more about the language and traditions of the Ojibwe people. The four books in this series focus on different aspects of Ojibwe life and traditions, from the powwow to wild ricing.
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Strangers and Kin
The American Way of Adoption
Barbara Melosh
Harvard University Press, 2002

Strangers and Kin is the history of adoption, a quintessentially American institution in its buoyant optimism, generous spirit, and confidence in social engineering. An adoptive mother herself, Barbara Melosh tells the story of how married couples without children sought to care for and nurture other people's children as their own. It says much about the American experience of family across the twentieth century and our shifting notions of kinship and assimilation. Above all, it speaks of real people striving to make families out of strangers.

In the early twentieth century, childless adults confronted orphanages reluctant to entrust their wards to the kindness of strangers. By the 1930s, however, the recently formed profession of social work claimed a new expertise--the science and art of child placement--and adoption became codified in law. It flourished in the United States, reflecting our ethnic diversity, pluralist ideals, and pragmatic approach to family. Then, in the 1960s, as the sexual revolution reshaped marriage, motherhood, and women's work, adoption became a less attractive option and the number of adoptive families precipitously declined. Taking this history into the early twenty-first century, Melosh offers unflinching insight to the contemporary debates that swirl around adoption: the challenges to adoption secrecy; the ethics and geopolitics of international adoption; and the conflicts over transracial adoption.

This gripping history is told through poignant stories of individuals, garnered from case records long inaccessible to others, and captures the profound losses and joys that make adoption a lifelong process.

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Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession
Global Perspectives
Lamb, Sarah
Rutgers University Press, 2017
In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging—striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.
 
The contributors to Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession explore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal—aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.
 
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The Sugarbush Coloring Book
Ojibwe Traditions Coloring Book Series
Cassie Brown
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018
This series offers children and their families the opportunity to learn about Ojibwe lifeways and teachings in an engaging and accessible manner. Included in each coloring book are word scrambles, mazes, and other activities to help children and their families engage more deeply with the information and have fun at the same time. While younger children (3+) can enjoy simply coloring the images, older children (6+) can also use the stories and glossaries to start learning more about the language and traditions of the Ojibwe people. The four books in this series focus on different aspects of Ojibwe life and traditions, from the powwow to wild ricing.
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Survived by One
The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer
Robert E. Hanlon, PhD with Thomas V. Odle
Southern Illinois University Press, 2013

On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation.  The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life.  However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences in 2003, changed Odle’s sentence to natural life.

The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Odle.  Prior to the commutation of his death sentence, Odle lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime. Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution associated with his death sentence, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality.  A future.  As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family.  He reached out to Dr. Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past. Dr. Hanlon engaged Odle in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book.

Hanlon tells a gripping story of Odle’s life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Odle’s unadorned reflections of his childhood, finding a new family on death row, and his belief in the powers of redemption.

As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the U.S., Survived by One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur.  However, Survived by One offers a never-been-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.

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Swaying
Essays on Intercultural Love
Jessie Carroll Grearson
University of Iowa Press, 1995

Intercultural couples struggle, often quite successfully, with the kind of questions anyone who wants to live responsibly in a multicultural world must raise. They live, as we must all learn to do, in a place where multiple cultures find expression. This engaging anthology of literary nonfiction celebrates the creative potential of choosing diversity and explores in many voices the real-life social, cultural, and spiritual consequences of this choice. These are the honest voices of women who have made commitments across national and cultural lines, who have moved toward the revitalizing and educating potential of such partnerships.

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