All too often, groups who do not effectively define themselves find that others assume the power to explain them. Until recently, this has certainly been the case with American Latinos/as, as evidenced by demeaning media stereotypes and the groups's near-invisibility in U.S. history texts. Indeed, as the demise of the Soviet empire shifted America's national anxieties to domestic irritants, images of Latinos/as changed for the worse. Immigration reform acts in 1965 and 1986 brought millions of new immigrants from Latin American countries. By the end of the 1980s, their presence had become vexing to many. English-only movements sprang up. Bilingual education came under attack. Movements to close the border gained momentum. Now, Latinos/as are speaking back. The Latino Condition brings together some of these new voices, and some of the pioneers, in law, sociology, history, politics, and literature. This pathbreaking volume addresses such questions as: Who exactly is a Latino/a? Who is Hispanic? Who is Chicano/a? How did Spanish-speaking people come to the United States? Should the United States try to control Latino/a immigration and is this even possible? How has "the silent minority" been stereotyped by popular culture? Why don't traditional civil rights remedies work for Latinos/as? Is assimilation possible, or even desirable, for all Latinos/as? What makes for conflict between Latinos/as and other racial groups? Are Latinos/as a race or an ethnicity? Should Latino/a children be taught in Spanish? What can border theory tell us about culture, language, and power?

Chicanas/os are part of the youngest, largest, and fastest growing racial/ethnic 'minority' population in the United States, yet at every schooling level, they suffer the lowest educational outcomes of any racial/ethnic group. Using a 'counterstorytelling' methodology, Tara Yosso debunks racialized myths that blame the victims for these unequal educational outcomes and redirects our focus toward historical patterns of institutional neglect. She artfully interweaves empirical data and theoretical arguments with engaging narratives that expose and analyse racism as it functions to limit access and opportunity for Chicana/o students. By humanising the need to transform our educational system, Yosso offers an accessible tool for teaching and learning about the problems and possibilities present along the Chicano/a educational pipeline.

Cultural Writing. Essays. Latino/Latina Studies. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldua's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the groundbreaking essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged how we think about identity. BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA remapped our understanding of what a "border" is, seeing it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us. This twentieth-anniversary edition features new commentaries from prominent activists, artists, and teachers on the legacy of Gloria Anzaldua's visionary work.

Does "Asian American" denote an ethnic or racial identification? Is a person of mixed ancestry, the child of Euro- and Asian American parents, Asian American? What does it mean to refer to first generation Hmong refugees and fifth generation Chinese Americans both as Asian American? In Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law, and the Nation State, Robert Chang examines the current discourse on race and law and the implications of postmodern theory and affirmative action-all of which have largely excluded Asian Americans-in order to develop a theory of critical Asian American legal studies. Demonstrating that the ongoing debate surrounding multiculturalism and immigration in the U.S. is really a struggle over the meaning of "America," Chang reveals how the construction of Asian American-ness has become a necessary component in stabilizing a national American identity-- a fact Chang criticizes as harmful to Asian Americans. Defining the many "borders" that operate in positive and negative ways to construct America as we know it, Chang analyzes the position of Asian Americans within America's black/white racial paradigm, how "the family" operates as a stand-in for race and nation, and how the figure of the immigrant embodies a central contradiction in allegories of America. "Has profound political implications for race relations in the new century" --Michigan Law Review, May 2001

The sociology of race relations in America typically describes an intersection of poverty, race, and economic discrimination. But what is missing from the picture--sexual difference--can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial difference in the field of sociology. He shows how canonical sociology--Gunnar Myrdal, Ernest Burgess, Robert Park, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William Julius Wilson--has measured African Americans' unsuitability for a liberal capitalist order in terms of their adherence to the norms of a heterosexual and patriarchal nuclear family model. In short, to the extent that African Americans' culture and behavior deviated from those norms, they would not achieve economic and racial equality. Aberrations in Black tells the story of canonical sociology's regulation of sexual difference as part of its general regulation of African American culture. Ferguson places this story within other stories--the narrative of capital's emergence and development, the histories of Marxism and revolutionary nationalism, and the novels that depict the gendered and sexual idiosyncrasies of African American culture--works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. In turn, this book tries to present another story--one in which people who presumably manifest the dys-functions of capitalism are reconsidered as indictments of the norms of state, capital, and social science. Ferguson includes the first-ever discussion of a new archival discovery--a never-published chapter of Invisible Man that deals with a gay character in a way thatcomplicates and illuminates Ellison's project. Unique in the way it situates critiques of race, gender, and sexuality within analyses of cultural, economic, and epistemological formations, Ferguson's work introduces a new mode of discourse--which Ferguson calls queer of color analysis--that helps to lay bare the mutual distortions of racial, economic, and sexual portrayals within sociology. A hard-hitting look at the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing African American culture.

This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today's most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the "bottom of the well." Book Features: A unique exploration of the intersections of race, class, and dis/ability. New insights into longstanding problems of inequity in American education. An examination of the ways in which certain students come to fit into certain categories of dis/ability. Creative ways to achieve changes in theory, research, practice, and policy that will promote more socially just education systems.

Linking powerful first-person narratives with structural analysis, The Pedagogy of Pathologization explores the construction of criminal identities in schools via the intersections of race, disability, and gender. amid the prevalence of targeted mass incarceration. Focusing uniquely on the pathologization of female students of color, whose voices are frequently engulfed by labels of deviance and disability, a distinct and underrepresented experience of the school-to-prison pipeline is detailed through original qualitative methods rooted in authentic narratives. The book's DisCrit framework, grounded in interdisciplinary research, draws on scholarship from critical race theory, disability studies, education, women's and girl's studies, legal studies, and more.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds--the intertwinement of the mental and the physical--in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations. She reads (dis)ability in neo-slave narratives by Octavia Butler (Kindred) and Phyllis Alesia Perry (Stigmata) not only as representing the literal injuries suffered under slavery, but also as a metaphor for the legacy of racial violence. The fantasy worlds in works by N. K. Jemisin, Shawntelle Madison, and Nalo Hopkinson--where werewolves have obsessive-compulsive-disorder and blind demons can see magic--destabilize social categories and definitions of the human, calling into question the very nature of identity. In these texts, as well as in Butler's Parable series, able-mindedness and able-bodiedness are socially constructed and upheld through racial and gendered norms. Outlining (dis)ability's centrality to speculative fiction, Schalk shows how these works open new social possibilities while changing conceptualizations of identity and oppression through nonrealist contexts.

What does it mean to engage in Deaf Studies and who gets to define the field? What would a truly deaf-led Deaf Studies research program look like? What are the research practices of deaf scholars in Deaf Studies, and how do they relate to deaf research participants and communities? Whatinnovations do deaf scholars deem necessary in the field of Deaf Studies? In Innovations in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars, volume editors Annelies Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, and Dai O'Brien and their contributing authors tackle these questions and more.Spurred by a gradual increase in the number of Deaf Studies scholars who are deaf, and by new theoretical trends in Deaf Studies, this book creates an important space for contributions from deaf researchers, to see what happens when they enter into the conversation. Innovations in Deaf Studiesexpertly foregrounds deaf ontologies (defined as "deaf ways of being") and how the experience of being deaf is central not only to deaf research participants' own ontologies, but also to the positionality and framework of the study as a whole. Further, this book demonstrates that the research andmethodology built around those ontologies offer suggestions for new ways for the discipline to meet the challenges of the present, which includes productive and ongoing collaboration with hearing researchers.Providing fascinating perspective and insight, Kusters, De Meulder, O'Brien, and their contributors all focus on the underdeveloped strands within Deaf Studies, particularly on areas around deaf people's communities, ideologies, literature, religion, language practices, and politicalaspirations.

The Chicana M(other)work Anthology weaves together emerging scholarship and testimonios by and about self-identified Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars, activists, and allies who center mothering as transformative labor through an intersectional lens. Contributors provide narratives that make feminized labor visible and that prioritize collective action and holistic healing for mother-scholars of color, their children, and their communities within and outside academia. The volume is organized in four parts: (1) separation, migration, state violence, and detention; (2) Chicana/Latina/WOC mother-activists; (3) intergenerational mothering; and (4) loss, reproductive justice, and holistic pregnancy. Contributors offer a just framework for Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars, activists, and allies to thrive within and outside of the academy. They describe a new interpretation of motherwork that addresses the layers of care work needed for collective resistance to structural oppression and inequality. This anthology is a call to action for justice. Contributions are both theoretical and epistemological, and they offer an understanding of motherwork through Chicana and Women of Color experiences.