Presents five lectures in which the author asks how we might achieve a world where color doesn't matter, drawing on psychological theories of projection as a possible first step towards a solution

A coming-of-age memoir of a white boy growing up in predominantly African-American and Latino housing projects on New York's Lower East Side reveals how race and class were pivotal factors in his life. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Within the Hmong American community, mothers and aunts of teenagers use bangles, lace and traditional handwork techniques to create dazzling displays reflecting the gender and ethnicity of their sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, as they participate in an annual courtship ritual. This book examines these events to show how dress is used to transform gender construction and create positive images of African American and Hmong American youth. Coming-of-age rituals serve as arenas of cultural revision and change. For each of these communities, the choice of dress represents cultural affirmation. This author shows that within the homogenizing context of American society, dress serves as a site for the continual renegotiation of identity - gendered, ethnic and otherwise.

Essays argue that Blacks are more oppressed by doubt than racism, looks at the origins of racial conflict in America, and assess the failures of social policies designed to lessen racial differences

Examines the background of the Civil Rights movement

Few works in world literature have inspired so vast an audience, in nations with radically different languages and cultures, as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, two Sanskrit verse epics written some 2,000 years ago. In Ramayana (written by a poet known to us as Valmiki), William Buck has retold the story of Prince Rama--with all its nobility of spirit, courtly intrigue, heroic renunciation, fierce battles, and triumph of good over evil--in a length and manner that will make the great Indian epics accessible to the contemporary reader. The same is true for the Mahabharata--in its original Sanskrit, probably the longest Indian epic ever composed. It is the story of a dynastic struggle, between the Kurus and Pandavas, for land. In his introduction, Sanskritist B. A. van Nooten notes, "Apart from William Buck's rendition [no other English version has] been able to capture the blend of religion and martial spirit that pervades the original epic." Presented accessibly for the general reader without compromising the spirit and lyricism of the originals, William Buck's Ramayana and Mahabharata capture the essence of the Indian cultural heritage. Few works in world literature have inspired so vast an audience, in nations with radically different languages and cultures, as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, two Sanskrit verse epics written some 2,000 years ago. In Ramayana (written by a poet known to us as Valmiki), William Buck has retold the story of Prince Rama--with all its nobility of spirit, courtly intrigue, heroic renunciation, fierce battles, and triumph of good over evil--in a length and manner that will make the great Indian epics accessible to the contemporary reader. The same is true for the Mahabharata--in its original Sanskrit, probably the longest Indian epic ever composed. It is the story of a dynastic struggle, between the Kurus and Pandavas, for land. In his introduction, Sanskritist B. A. van Nooten notes, "Apart from William Buck's rendition [no other English version has] been able to capture the blend of religion and martial spirit that pervades the original epic." Presented accessibly for the general reader without compromising the spirit and lyricism of the originals, William Buck's Ramayana and Mahabharata capture the essence of the Indian cultural heritage.

"Paul Gilroy contends that race-thinking has distorted the finest promises of modern democracy. He compels us to see that fascism was the principal political innovation of the twentieth century - and that its power to seduce did not die in a bunker in Berlin. Aren't we in fact using the same devices that Nazis used in their movies and advertisements when we make spectacles of our identities and differences? Gilroy examines the ways in which media and commodity culture have become preeminent in our lives in the years since the 1960s and especially in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop and other militancies. With this trend, he contends, much that was wonderful about black culture has been sacrificed in the service of corporate interests and new forms of cultural expression tied to visual technologies. He argues that the triumph of the image spells death to politics and reduces people to mere symbols"--BOOK JACKET.

Featuring a new introduction, a classic memoir of life in the barrio of Spanish Harlem recounts the author's redemption from a life of crime and drugs after his discovery of his own talent for poetry. Original. 15,000 first printing.