diversityinya:

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and to celebrate, we at Diversity in YA are going to be featuring some Asian American YA authors and books. But we’d also like to invite you to participate! Do you have a favorite YA novel about the Asian American experience?…

Hmmm… let me think on that one. 

For the past few months I’ve been exploring the wealth gap through New Deal-era policy with a particular focus on housing. 

…For those keeping count, the current exploration involves the following books:

1.) Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns

2.) Tom Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty

3.) Arnold Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto

4.) Beryl Satter, Family Properties

5.) Antony Beevor, The Second World War (I didn’t feel like I could really understand New Deal policy without understanding World War II)

6.) Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself

7.) Douglass Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid (just started on the plane out here)

For those new to this I would start with Wilkerson’s book. And I’d add two more that I read a few years back: Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis, and Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White. 

—Lucy Parsons, the Haymarket Square widow who internationalized the struggle for the eight-hour day and whose work led to the May Day rallies held around the world. Happy May Day!

Check this out for more on the Haymarket Martyrs, the origins of May Day, and Lucy Parsons: Lucy Parsons: An American Revolutionary

likeafieldmouse:

Christopher Bucklow - Guests (2005)

“Solar pin-hole photographs of luminous silhouettes, for which the technical process is a cross between photography and drawing.

Strongly influenced by Carl Jung’s theory of the Anima and Animus, the idea of the repressed parts of the psyche feature repeatedly throughout Bucklow’s work.” 

(Source: patoney)

thebooksmith:

June Bookswap is pride-themed!

Special guests: MICHELLE TEA & ALI LIEBGOTT

Michelle Tea is the author of four memoirs, a novel, a book of poetry and the young adult fantasy tale, A Mermaid in Chelsea Creek new from McSweeney’s. She has edited anthologies about class, fashion and literature, and is Editor of the City Lights/Sister Spit series. Michelle is founder and Executive Director of RADAR Productions, a literary non-profit that oversees the Sister Spit international performance tours, the monthly RADAR Reading Series in San Francisco, the annual Radar LAB Retreat, and other programs.

Ali Liebegott is the author of the award-winning books The Beautifully Worthless and The IHOP Papers. In 2010 she took a train trip across America interviewing female poets for a project titled, The Heart Has Many Doors; excerpts from these interviews are posted monthly on The Believer Logger. Along with a reprint of her road classic The Beautifully Worthless, her newest novel Cha-Ching! is the latest release from City Lights/Sister Spit. In addition, she is the founding editor at Writers Among Artists whose first publication, Faggot Dinosaur, was released in 2012.

damekap:

http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2012/12/10/it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white-the-racism-of-ya-book-covers/

“Book covers — not to mention the books being published — need to represent the diversity of people actually reading books.”

This infuriates me! I love YA books, especially because they have the power to teach us empathy. And yet, publishers manipulate book covers, marginalizing the people of colors and the very characters who readers find so empowering!

(via isallornothingthebestwecando)

thesmithian:

If you would guess the first Asian or Asian American music act to make the…Hot 100, you might think of Jay Sean, Bruno Mars, or the Far East Movement, but the earliest I know about is The Rocky Fellers, whose hit Killer Joe reached 16 on the…Hot 100 in 1963.

more, plus clips, here.

(via yanettcanhazsoul)

readingismyhustle:

Alison Bechdel reads.