June 26, 2003
Book Picks
African American Women Confront the West: 1600–2000
Editor, Quintard Taylor, professor of history with Shirley Ann Wilson Moore
University of Oklahoma Press
African American women in the West have long been stereotyped as socially and historically marginal, existing in isolation from other women in the West and from their counterparts in the East and South. Quintard Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore disprove this stereotype, arguing that African American women in the West played active, though sometimes unacknowledged, roles in shaping the political, ideological, and social currents that influenced the United States over the past three centuries. African American Women Confront the West: 1600–2000 is the first major historical anthology on the topic.
Faith, Food, and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community
By Carol Zane Jolles, research associate professor of anthropology, with Elinor Mikaghaq Oozeva
University of Washington Press
Relying on oral history blended with ethnography and ethnohistory, Carol Zane Jolles views the contemporary Yupik people in terms of the enduring beliefs and values that have contributed to the community’s survival and adaptability. She draws on extensive interviews with villagers, archival records, and scholarly studies, as well as on her ten years of fieldwork in Gambell and the wisdom of Yupik elder advisor, Elinor Mikaghaq Oozeva, to demonstrate the central importance of three aspects of Yupik life: religious beliefs, devotion to a subsistence life way, and family and clan ties.
Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing
By Charles Johnson, professor of English
Scribner
“Were it not for the Buddhadharma,” says Charles Johnson in his preface to Turning the Wheel, “I’m convinced that, as a black American and an artist, I would not have been able to successfully negotiate my last half century of life in this country. Or at least not with a high level of creative productivity.” In this collection of provocative and intimate essays, Johnson writes of the profound connection between Buddhism and creativity, and of the role of Eastern philosophy in the quest for a free and thoughtful life.
–Compiled by Debbie Kilgren
