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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
[Review Of] Sameer Y. Abraham And Nabeel Abraham, Eds. Arabs In The New World, Akram Khater
[Review Of] Sameer Y. Abraham And Nabeel Abraham, Eds. Arabs In The New World, Akram Khater
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
This book is a collection of sociological essays on immigrant Arab communities in the United States. It is divided into three sections: the first provides historical background to the flow of immigrants from Arab countries; the second is devoted to case studies of Arab communities in the Detroit area (where the greatest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States is located); and the third provides a useful bibliography of current scholarship about Arab-Americans.
[Review Of] Richard D. Alba. Italian Americans: Into The Twilight Of Ethnicity, Rose Scherini
[Review Of] Richard D. Alba. Italian Americans: Into The Twilight Of Ethnicity, Rose Scherini
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Rejoice, students of ethnicity and Italian Americans generally! A body of scholarly literature on the Italian American experience is growing. Richard Alba's book, one of the Ethnic Groups in American Life Series (Milton M. Gordon, editor) is a recent addition to the quality social science writings about this ethnic group.
[Review Of] Paula Gunn Allen. The Woman Who Owned The Shadows, Annette Van Dyke
[Review Of] Paula Gunn Allen. The Woman Who Owned The Shadows, Annette Van Dyke
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Paula Gunn Allen's novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, is important -- one of few written by an American Indian woman focusing on an Indian woman's life. (Other examples are Sophia Alice Callahan's Wynemia: A Child of the Forest, 1891, and Mourning Dove's Cogewea, the Half Blood, 1927). Allen writes out of her Laguna Pueblo heritage (she says she is Laguna Pueblo/Sioux/Lebanese-American), and gives the reader a view of a contemporary Indian woman's life through her character, Ephanie.
[Review Of] Mariama Ba. So Long A Letter, Anne E. Freitas
[Review Of] Mariama Ba. So Long A Letter, Anne E. Freitas
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
So Long A Letter is the story of Ramatoulaye, a recently-widowed Sengalese [Senegalese] woman, as she writes to her long-time friend Aissatou. It is the articulate, often anguished narrative of a Muslim woman faced with the sudden second marriage of her husband of twenty-five years. Although polygamy is accepted by her religion and her society, Ramatoulaye feels rejected and betrayed. Yet she chooses to remain in her marriage and prepares to " share equally" her husband with her new co-wife, as dictated by Muslim law. Her husband, however, abandons her completely, to manage their twelve children alone. Upon his death …
[Review Of] R. H. Barnes. Two Crows Denies It: A History Of Controversy In Omaha Sociology, David M. Gradwohl
[Review Of] R. H. Barnes. Two Crows Denies It: A History Of Controversy In Omaha Sociology, David M. Gradwohl
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
The subtitle of this book clearly reflects the scope of work Barnes sets out to accomplish. It also suggests that the study is aimed at a disciplinary readership consisting of anthropologists, sociologists, and some social historians more than an interdisciplinary audience reflected by the membership of the National Association for Ethnic Studies. Specialists in Plains anthropology and world-wide kinship studies will undoubtedly welcome this historical review of the Omaha tribal social system. Non-specialists can glean some insights as well.
[Review Of] Gretchen M. Bataille And Kathleen M. Sands. American Indian Women, Telling Their Lives, Carol J. Scott
[Review Of] Gretchen M. Bataille And Kathleen M. Sands. American Indian Women, Telling Their Lives, Carol J. Scott
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
American Indians are not conquered. The heart of the American Indian woman is not on the ground. In taking over the control of the telling of her life, she preserves the reality and meaning of tribal history and culture. In asserting the reality of her heritage, she establishes and proclaims a unique identity with which she will shape her furture [future].
[Review Of] Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, And Cosmo Pieterse, Eds. Summer Fires, New Poetry Of Africa, David K. Bruner
[Review Of] Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, And Cosmo Pieterse, Eds. Summer Fires, New Poetry Of Africa, David K. Bruner
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
When Angus Calder, Jack Mapanje, and Cosmo Pieterse sat as judges for the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award of 1981, they were faced with some 3,000 entries from more than 700 contestants from which they were to award three cash prizes and a number of book prizes. In the introduction to the book which they subsequently edited, consisting of eighty-two poems from forty-five writers from thirteen countries in Africa, they explain that they had told all entrants they were looking for "originality and imagination as well as evidence of technical skill." They state, also, that they "strove to deliberate …
[Review Of] Stephen Castles. Here For Good: Western Europe's New Ethnic Minorities, Zora Devrnja Zimmerman
[Review Of] Stephen Castles. Here For Good: Western Europe's New Ethnic Minorities, Zora Devrnja Zimmerman
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
A disturbing, extremely important book. The wealth of information provided by the authors illuminates the present circumstances of ethnic minorities in Western Europe, principally West Germany, and points to potential dangers and repercussions in the future. The thesis of Here for Good posits the change in status of the guest worker from that of migrant or temporary resident to that of immigrant or permanent settler in one of seven major host countries in Western Europe. This shift should mark a parallel shift in the political and economic policies which address the needs of the immigrants and their impact upon the …
[Review Of] John R. Chavez. The Lost Land: The Chicano Image Of The Southwest, Joe Rodriguez
[Review Of] John R. Chavez. The Lost Land: The Chicano Image Of The Southwest, Joe Rodriguez
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
The Lost Land is a fine example of ethnic cultural history. Chavez contends that various attitudes of Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo settlers who migrated to the Southwest (the states of California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas) have shaped the sense of identity of contemporary Chicanos in terms of where they live. Many Chicanos feel like " strangers in their own land," and certain features of non-indigenous cultures have fostered a sense of alientation [alienation].
[Review Of] Jeffrey J. Crow And Flora J. Hatley, Eds. Black Americans In North Carolina And The South, Ashton Wesley Welch
[Review Of] Jeffrey J. Crow And Flora J. Hatley, Eds. Black Americans In North Carolina And The South, Ashton Wesley Welch
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Current trends in Afroamerican history toward local, regional, and quantitative history accentuate the prior preoccupation of historians of the Afroamerican experience with considerations of national significance to the all but total disregard of local black history. This volume is consistent with the present drift. With the exception of the concluding essay, Black Americans in North Carolina and the South is an historiographical exercise. It is a result of a 1981 symposium, of the same title, sponsored by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. Another historiographical volume on North Carolinian history, also co-edited by Jeffrey Crow, resulted from the …
[Review Of] Betty Sue Cummings. Say These Names (Remember Them), Gretchen M. Bataille
[Review Of] Betty Sue Cummings. Say These Names (Remember Them), Gretchen M. Bataille
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
The mid-nineteenth century was a time of turmoil for many American Indian tribes, but two groups stand out as vivid examples of attempts by tribes to maintain their place along the eastern seaboard: the Cherokee and the collection of peoples that historians have called the Seminole. Betty Sue Cummings has used historical facts about Seminoles to craft a novel about a Miccosukee Indian woman in Florida who stands as a representative of her people. The novel begins in 1835 and See-ho-kee, onl y a young girl at the beginning of the novel, marries Fixonechee rather than the younger Yaha Chatee …
[Review Of] Gilbert C. Fite. Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture 1865-1980, Charles C. Irby
[Review Of] Gilbert C. Fite. Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture 1865-1980, Charles C. Irby
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Cotton Fields No More ... should be required reading for all individuals associated with the development of agricultural policies in the U.S. Congress, because their perceptions of farming are probably influenced to a large degree by the ideology of Jeffersonian agrarianism. Although Fite's purpose is to analyze commercial agricultural development in the eleven former Confederate States since the end of the Civil War (stretching from Virginia to Texas), he successfully captures the essence of contemporary agricultural problems throughout the United States: Farming as a way of life died after World War II and agribusiness was the successor, but too many …
[Review Of] Frederick Hale. The Swedes In Wisconsin, Susan Carlson
[Review Of] Frederick Hale. The Swedes In Wisconsin, Susan Carlson
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
The Swedes in Wisconsin, Frederick Hale concludes, were the ''invisible immigrants' of nineteenth and early twentieth-century America," never accounting for more than two percent of the Wisconsin state population. Hale avoids promoting the Swedes and, instead, realistically presents them as a minor part of a major European immigration. Hale's realism means his primary focus is on the fluctuation and integration which characterized the Wisconsin Swedish presence.
[Review Of] Linda Hogan. Eclipse, Steve Pett
[Review Of] Linda Hogan. Eclipse, Steve Pett
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Linda Hogan's poetry is of the "world," a word which recurs frequently in Eclipse, her latest book of poems. The poems are personal yet not confessional. She speaks of the earth -- and for the earth -- in the roles of human being, Native American, woman, mother, daughter, and granddaughter. They are not the poems of self absorption, of reduction
[Review Of] Eddie Iroh. The Siren In The Night, Robbie Jean Walker
[Review Of] Eddie Iroh. The Siren In The Night, Robbie Jean Walker
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
The historical novel presents many of the same problems of interpretation posed by the docudrama, both genres possessing an ambiguity attributable to the absence of clearly defined distinctions between fact and fiction. Eddie Iroh, author of The Siren in the Night, obviates the reader's task of inferring these distinctions by announcing in the "Author's Note" the fidelity of his presentation to both the nature and sequence of actual events and admitting the liberty taken in his creation of a military post that did not exist during the time period covered in the novel. The Siren in the Night, the third …
[Review Of] Hadley Irwin. I Be Somebody, Linda P. Young
[Review Of] Hadley Irwin. I Be Somebody, Linda P. Young
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
At the turn of this century, a group of American blacks from the midwest migrated to Canada to become homesteaders in the remote town of Athabasca, Alberta. Hadley Irwin's latest novel for young people focuses on this little-known chapter of American history. The movement of entire towns of blacks north in search of freedom provides Hadley Irwin an ideal setting for a young boy's search for identity. Rap Davis' growth toward maturity, his determination to "be somebody" parallels the growth and determination of a people to be somebody.
[Review Of] G.M.K. Kpedekpo. Essentials Of Demographic Analysis For Africa, Barbara Entwisle
[Review Of] G.M.K. Kpedekpo. Essentials Of Demographic Analysis For Africa, Barbara Entwisle
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Based on lecture notes used by Kpedekpo at a number of African universities, this textbook for undergraduates provides an introduction to techniques of demographic analysis. Its twelve chapters are broad in coverage and address such topics as sources of population data; rates of fertility, mortality, and population growth; age and sex standardization; life table analysis; marriage and nuptiality; internal and international migration; methods for projecting population size and structure; stable and quasi-stable population theory; and methods for coping with deficient data. Numerous tables, charts, and worked examples help to illustrate demographic principles and techniques. An index is also included.
[Review Of] Ken Levine And Ivory Waterworth Levine. Becoming American, The Oddysey [Odyssey] Of A Refugee Family (Film Or Video), Margaret A. Laughlin
[Review Of] Ken Levine And Ivory Waterworth Levine. Becoming American, The Oddysey [Odyssey] Of A Refugee Family (Film Or Video), Margaret A. Laughlin
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Becoming American is an extraordinary documentary which traces the odyssey of Hang Sou and members of his extended family as they flee the highland hills of war-torn Laos, await resettlement in a refugee camp in Thailand, and eventually resettle in the United States. Sou and his family are preliterate farmers, who served as mercenaries for the CIA's "secret war" in Laos. The Sou family face months of intense culture shock and prejudice after being transported thousands of miles in physical distance from their homeland as they seek to adapt to their new urban and alien environment in Seattle. For the …
[Review Of] Fred Mctaggart. Wolf That I Am: In Search Of The Red Earth People, Nancy M. Osborn
[Review Of] Fred Mctaggart. Wolf That I Am: In Search Of The Red Earth People, Nancy M. Osborn
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Fred McTaggart's engaging narrative Wolf That I Am: In Search of the Red Earth People is as much a personalized story of self discovery as it is a discussion of surviving Mesquakie folklore. In the early 1970s, as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, McTaggart set out to gather and to analyze the folk stories told among Mesquakies, known historically to the non-Indian world as the combined Indian tribes of the Sac and Fox. Today the main body of this Native American group resides on a tribally-owned settlement (decidely [decidedly] not a government-controlled "reservation" as mentioned in the …
[Review Of] William Oandasan. Round Valley Songs, Victor Macaruso
[Review Of] William Oandasan. Round Valley Songs, Victor Macaruso
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
William Oandason, Senior Editor of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal and editor of his own journal, A, a Journal of Contemporary Literature, has published other books of poetry, A Branch of California Redwood (reviewed by Kenneth M. Roemer, Explorations in Sights and Sounds, Summer, 1984) and Moving Inland.
[Review Of] Henry H. Pontell. A Capacity To Punish, Linda M. C. Abbott
[Review Of] Henry H. Pontell. A Capacity To Punish, Linda M. C. Abbott
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Given the extraordinary costs of prisons, the current political climate which pushes for less government and lowered public spending, and the incapacity of the legal system to carry the entire burden of social control, Pontell argues for reexamination of the criminal justice system from a sociological perspective. Drawing upon data from the 1966-1974 period, Pontell's doctoral study, the basis for the book, searched for ecological relationships among crime rates, expenditures, conviction rates, and demographic features in the California counties under review.
[Review Of] Kenneth Ramchand. The West Indian Novel And Its Background, Faythe Turner
[Review Of] Kenneth Ramchand. The West Indian Novel And Its Background, Faythe Turner
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Kenneth Ramchand's The West Indian Novel and Its Background is a useful guide for exploring this literature. First published in 1973 and reissued in 1983, Ramchand's book (which has a complete bibliography of West Indian writers) gives us some of the information necessary to understand the difficulties facing the offspring of British colonialism in the West Indies.
[Review Of] Glenda Riley. Women And Indians On The Frontier, 1825-1915, Kristin Herzog
[Review Of] Glenda Riley. Women And Indians On The Frontier, 1825-1915, Kristin Herzog
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
This book makes a simple, but important, point and proves it on the basis of painstaking research: pioneer women went to the frontier with a mental baggage of myths and prejudices about themselves and Indians, but while living in the West they changed their self-image as well as their image of the natives, establishing close relationships with them more frequently than men.
[Review Of] Edward Rivera. Family Installments: Memories Of Growing Up Hispanic, Luis L. Pinto
[Review Of] Edward Rivera. Family Installments: Memories Of Growing Up Hispanic, Luis L. Pinto
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Puerto Ricans have been writing about their experiences in the mainland for a very long time. At the beginning, the majority of the texts were written in Spanish by Puerto Rican writers residing in this country or by Puerto Rican writers who lived here for periods of time. A careful study of the works published about the life of Puerto Ricans in the mainland shows that they were written in prose.
[Review Of] Anya Peterson Royce. Ethnic Identity: Strategies For Diversity, Gloria Eive
[Review Of] Anya Peterson Royce. Ethnic Identity: Strategies For Diversity, Gloria Eive
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
"... Ethnic identity requires the maintenance of sufficiently consistent behavior to enable others to place an individual or group in some given social category, thus permitting appropriate interactive behavior." With this definition by George De Vos as thesis, Anya Peterson Royce examines ethnic identity, considering it as " ... one of many identities available to people ... developed, manipulated or ignored ... " as the particular situation demands. She identifies power, perception and purpose as the fundamental criteria which determine behavior in any inter-ethnic situation. Colonialism, nationalism and mass immigration are analyzed from an historical and theoretical perspective and as …
[Review Of] Robert Fay Schrader. The Indian Arts And Crafts Board, Helen Schuster
[Review Of] Robert Fay Schrader. The Indian Arts And Crafts Board, Helen Schuster
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
The current popularity, eminence, and international appreciation of the creativity of American Indian artists are such a viable part of the contemporary art scene that most of us are well aware of this distinguished achievement. But it was not always so. Robert Fay Schrader presents detailed, historic review of the trials, endeavors, and vicissitudes of a small but select group of men and women who sought to gain public recognition of American Indian arts and crafts during the first half ofthe twentieth century. The general focus is on the activities of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, an advisory and …
[Review Of] Elaine Showalter, Ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays On Women, Literature And Theory, Faye Pauli Whitaker
[Review Of] Elaine Showalter, Ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays On Women, Literature And Theory, Faye Pauli Whitaker
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Two publications important in the study of women's literature appeared this spring -- The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, edited by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and this anthology of previously published essays on feminist literary theory. These volumes will probably have greatest impact on university courses in women's literature, but one should not overlook their significance for ethnic studies. Like studies in ethnic literatures, feminist criticism has before it the task of defining a tradition outside of the main-stream and establishing a literary canon not previously acknowledged as valid.
[Review Of] Michael Soh. Son Of A Mother, Dennis Stewart
[Review Of] Michael Soh. Son Of A Mother, Dennis Stewart
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
Three-quarters of this short novel chronicle eldest son Leng' s thoughts, conversations, and actions in endeavoring to fulfill his dying father's charge: "Ah Leng, you're grown up now and I expect you to nurture your character, be a man responsible for bringing up a family of your own. Offspring are very essential to carry down the ancestral line, you know. Of course in so bringing up your own family you must not forget your own parents for they are the ones who brought you up."
[Review Of] John Tateishi. And Justice For All: An Oral History Of The Japanese American Detention Camps, Russell Endo
[Review Of] John Tateishi. And Justice For All: An Oral History Of The Japanese American Detention Camps, Russell Endo
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
In one of the blatant injustices in American history, 120,000 West Coast Japanese Americans were evacuated from their homes by military authorities just after the outbreak of World War II and interned in concentration camps. This episode was the culmination of decades of anti-Asian agitation and more immediate pressures by politicians, newspaper editors, farm and labor organizations, nativist groups, and military officials based on false accusations of Japanese American disloyalty and fifth-column activity by Japanese Americans.
[Review Of] Veronica E. Velarde Tiller. The Jicarilla Apache Tribe: A History, 1846-1970, Wolfgang Binder
[Review Of] Veronica E. Velarde Tiller. The Jicarilla Apache Tribe: A History, 1846-1970, Wolfgang Binder
Explorations in Sights and Sounds
This first comprehensive history of the Jicarilla Apaches proves an indispensible [indispensable] tool for understanding this tribe, government and Indian relations, and the history of the state of New Mexico. Veronica Tiller was, despite being part of a prominent Jicarilla family, able to strike a balance between giving the reader a wealth of detailed facts pertaining to the tribe and its smaller organizational units and placing them within the larger context of government or New Mexico state policies. The author, who used an impressive number of government documents, is modest and clear sighted enough not to claim an Indian point …