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The definitive analysis of how the presence of women politicians affects young people.

From Kamala Harris to Nikki Haley, women in public life are widely expected to inspire young people, especially girls, to follow in their footsteps. See Jane Run provides the definitive analysis of women politicians as role models. With wide-ranging data and attention to gender, race, and party, David E. Campbell and Christina Wolbrecht find that women in politics help convince young people, regardless of gender, that women are capable of political leadership. For young women, women role models enhance faith in democracy and inspire political engagement, including running for office themselves. As role models, women politicians help ensure a more inclusive democracy.

"Terrence Roberts is in the truest sense an upstander - an individual whose voice and actions compel us to explore difficult topics and challenge us to face our shared history, honestly. His words and reflections celebrate the notion of difference, model socially responsible behavior and promote tolerance in our daily lives. Reading this book, you will be inspired, in Dr. Roberts's words, to 'think  beyond the ordinary."
----Margot  Stern Strom, Executive  Director, Facing History and Ourselves, Inc.

"Terrence  Roberts  challenges  all of  us to make the world  more inclusive  by adjusting  our 'mental maps.'  He reminds  us that we will not achieve that long-sought  beloved  community  until we  recognize   the  value  of  each  individual-until  we  affirm  each  other.  Simple,  NotEasy is one trailblazer's  mingling  of  history  and  contemporary  mattersto engage a new conversations on community, social responsibility and tolerance. A powerful  book  by  a civil rights  legend."
--- Lawrence J. Pijeaux, Jr., Ed.D.,

The twenty-first century is already riddled with protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards are young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind-the-scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry—and young people’s participation in it—contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation’s attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love.
 
Drawing upon detailed observations and in-depth interviews, Chepp tells the story of a diverse group of young adults from Washington, D.C. who use spoken word to create a more just and equitable world. Outlining the contours of this approach, she interrogates spoken word activism’s emphasis on personal storytelling and “truth,” the strategic uses of aesthetics and emotions to politically engage across difference, and the significance of healing in sustainable movements for change. Weaving together their poetry and personally told stories, Chepp shows how poets tap into the beautiful, emotional, personal, and therapeutic features of spoken word to empathically connect with others, advance intersectional and systemic analyses of inequality, and make social justice messages relatable across a diverse public. By creating allies and forging connections based on friendship, professional commitments, lived experiences, emotions, artistic kinship, and political views, this activist approach is highly integrated into the everyday lives of its practitioners, online and face-to-face.
 
Chepp argues that spoken word activism is a product of, and a call to action against, the neoliberal era in which poets have come of age, characterized by widening structural inequalities and increasing economic and social vulnerability. She illustrates how this deeply personal and intimate activist approach borrows from, builds upon, and diverges from previous social movement paradigms. Spotlighting the complexity and mutual influence of modern-day activism and the world in which it unfolds, Speaking Truths contributes to our understanding of contemporary social change-making and how neoliberalism has shaped this political generation’s experiences with social injustice.

A captivating auto-ethnography and study of statelessness.

"In the springtime of the year that I was twenty-one, I found myself stuck at the border between two familiar countries, unable to enter either. I had never felt my statelessness so keenly.”

Japan’s 1971 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Tienshi “Lara” Chen was one of them, born to Chinese parents in Yokohama’s Chinatown. What does it mean to be stateless? What does it feel like?

To answer, Stateless presents Chen’s engaging autobiographical account of her bi-cultural upbringing and Japanese education. She reflects on her experience of statelessness eventually led her into a career spanning academia and activism, and she analyzes the contradictions inherent in the concepts of nationality, nation-state, and citizenship, in a world where individual nationality, identity, and experience are increasingly complex. She concludes that the current system of regulating individuals with citizenship is unworkable in the long run.

Blending life writing, auto-ethnography, and a study of stateless communities around Asia, this book unpacks the idea of citizenship by showing the hidden everyday narratives and lived experiences of stateless persons who have no legal ties to any nation-state. Originally published in Japanese, this adapted and updated English edition critically engages with questions of borders, mobility, belonging, and identity.


 

Political turmoil surrounding immigration at the federal level and the inability of Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform have provided an opening for state and local governments to become more active in setting their own immigration-related policies. States largely dictate the resources, institutions, and opportunities immigrants can access: who can get a driver’s license or attend a state university, what languages are spoken in schools and public offices, how law enforcement interacts with the public, and even what schools teach students about history. In States of Belonging, an interdisciplinary team of immigration experts – Tomás R. Jiménez, Deborah J. Schildkraut, Yuen J. Huo, and John F.  Dovidio – explore the interconnections among immigration policies, attitudes about immigrants and immigration, and sense of belonging in two neighboring states – Arizona and New Mexico – with divergent approaches to welcoming newcomers.
 
Arizona and New Mexico are historically and demographically similar, but they differ in their immigration policies. Arizona has enacted unwelcoming policies towards immigrants, restricting the access of immigrants to state resources, social services, and public institutions. New Mexico is more welcoming, actively seeking to protect the rights of immigrants and extending access to state resources and institutions. The authors draw on an original survey and in-depth interviews of a cross-section of each state’s population to illustrate how these differing approaches affect the sense of belonging not only among immigrants, but among the U.S.-born as well.
 
Respondents in Arizona, regardless of whether they were foreign- or native-born or their ethno-racial background, agreed that the state is unwelcoming to immigrants, and they pointed to Arizona’s restrictive policies as the primary factor. The sense of rejection perceived by Latinos in Arizona, including the foreign-born and the U.S.-born, was profound. They felt the effects of administrative and symbolic exclusions of the state’s unwelcoming policies as they went about their daily lives.
 
New Mexico’s more welcoming approach had positive effects on the Latino immigrant population, and these policies contributed to an increased sense of belonging among U.S.-born Latinos and U.S.-born whites as well. The authors show that exposure to information about welcoming policies is associated with an improved sense of belonging across most population groups. They also find that the primary dividing line when it came to reactions to welcoming policies was political, not ethno-racial. Only self-identified Republicans, Latino as well as white, showed reduced feelings of belonging. 
 
States of Belonging demonstrates that welcoming policies cultivate a greater sense of belonging for immigrants and other state citizens, suggesting that policies aimed at helping immigrants gain a social, economic, and political foothold in this country can pay a broad societal dividend.