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Contributors

Explorations in Ethnic Studies

Notes on contributors to Explorations in Ethnic Studies, Volume 15, Issue 1, 1992

[Review Of] Raymond 1. Demallie And Douglas R. Parks. Eds. Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition And Innovation, David M. Gradwohl

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Most of the papers included in this anthology were presented in Bismarck in 1982 at a conference entitled "American Indian Religion in the Dakotas: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives." The conference was funded by the North Dakota Humanities Council and brought together a wide array of academicians and lay people representing different and sometimes conflicting experiential and philosophical points of view.

[Review Of] Sandra Cisneros. Woman Hollering Creek And Other Stories, Cortland P. Auser

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

This collection reveals Cisneros as a refreshing writer of a variety of fictional forms. Her work at times may remind readers of Chicana short fiction by Estella Portillo. Cisneros has the distinct ability of writing vividly and imaginatively in her pictorialization of Mexican American life. She creates sketches, short stories, vignettes, and descriptive "essays."

[Review Of] Elias Miguel Munoz. Crazy Love, Phillipa Kafka

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

In a supposed "interview" with Rolling Stone, Muñoz's major character, lead singer-composer Julian Toledo of Julian and the L.A. Scene, sums up Paul Simon's song "Crazy Love" as "about the love of music, about relationships ... about family." Indeed, this book takes the form of a song in which the author is simultaneously the composer and conductor orchestrating the three elements of music, relationship, and family harmonically into the text through the deployment of a dazzling grab bag of modem and postmodern authorial techniques. These include mock-ups of interviews (written) and in video format; songs seemingly printed as appendices to …

[Review Of] A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff And Jerry W. Ward, Jr., Eds. Redefining American Literary History, Hartwig Isernhagen

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

The collection by Ruoff and Ward stands within the canon discussion in American literary history, which it briefly recapitulates, placing itself in the multiculturalist camp. The first section of the four-part book can perhaps be called programmatic in just this sense: It points out how much has been overlooked among writings produced in America, and it tries to develop rationales according to which such exclusion might be rectified. Much space is here taken up by questions that concern the material and practical side of research and teaching: anthologies, MLA sessions, and the like. Much is program rather than execution, and …

[Review Of] Edith Blicksilver. The Ethnic American Woman: Problems. Protests. Lifestyle, Ann Rayson

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

The original edition of The Ethnic American Woman was published in 1978 with 381 pages. For the 1989 edition, the author has added two new sections with a total of ninety-three new pages. "Unit Thirteen: Daring To Be Different" contains sixty-three pages of fiction, poetry, and memoirs from contemporary women writers of German, Russian, Jewish, Anglo, African American, Mennonite, Italian, Chicana, Rumanian, Polish and Irish backgrounds. "Unit Fourteen: Scholarly Essays" is a particularly welcome addition of thirty pages containing essays by Evelyn Avery on blacks and Jews in the fiction of ethnic women, Caroline Dillman on the Southern woman as …

[Review Of] Richard D. Alba. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation Of White America, Phillips G. Davies

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Believing that a relatively small amount of research has been done with the ethnic identity of white Americans, Alba surveyed 524 whites in the Albany, New York, area. The majority were English, French, German, and Scottish whose forebears had been in this country for several generations. There were also numerous Irish, and among later immigrants, fairly large numbers of Italian and Polish descent.

Abstracts From The Twentieth Annual Conference, "Ethnicity And Racism In The Americas"

Explorations in Ethnic Studies

Early in March participants gathered in Boca Raton, Florida, for the Twentieth Annual Conference of the National Association for Ethnic Studies. The conference theme, "Ethnicity and Racism in the Americas," provided the opportunity to examine perspectives related to the Quincentennial and the encounter among various populations in what is now collectively identified as the "Americas." Presenters discussed the impact of five hundred years of colonialism as well as the experiences of "new" immigrants, many of them from continents other than Europe.

Strategies To Increase The Number Of Minority Teachers In The Public Schools, Glenn M. Kraig

Explorations in Ethnic Studies

There can be very little argument that in recent years the teaching profession has become whiter and whiter as fewer minorities and people of color have entered and remained in the teaching profession, and as such, the percentage of white Americans in the field has continued to increase. Out of the approximately 2.3 million K-12 teachers in 1987, only 10.3 percent were minority group members. Current estimates report that by the mid 1990s this number will be further reduced to about five percent.[1] If this trend is not reversed, the teaching profession will be close to being entirely white by …

[Review Of] Leslie Marmon Silko. Almanac Of The Dead, Cortland P. Auser

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

For Leslie Marmon Silko aficionados, the "novel" may surprise them. Highly successful as a short story writer and the creator of the unusually spiritual novel Ceremony, Silko writes a tome, Dickensian in length and in the number of its dramatis personae.

[Review Of] Gretchen M. Bataille And Kathleen M. Sands. American Indian Women: A Guide To Research, Cynthia R. Kasee

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

This much needed resource is an annotated bibliography of nearly sixteen hundred works in print and on film or video. As the authors note in the "Introduction," the common fallacy is that there is little available research -- either of historic or contemporary focus -- on the topic of Native American women. This is clearly not true, as evidenced by the wealth of materials detailed in this guide.

[Review Of] E. Ellis Cashmore. Ed. Dictionary Of Race And Ethnic Relations. 2nd Ed., Alberto Pulido

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

A recurrent theme in the sociological study of racial and ethnic relations is the discipline's inability to provide a clear and focused research agenda. Scholars in the field are troubled by their inability to agree as to the nature and scope of the discipline, and hence, the lack of an all-encompassing definition for the study of racial and ethnic relations. For example, a continual semantic debate exists over the appropriate usage and application of such concepts as "race" versus "racial" in sociological discourse. The Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations has been developed with this concern in mind.

[Review Of] Nicolas Kanellos And Jorge A. Huerta, Eds. Nuevos Pasos: Chicano And Puerto Rican Drama, Phillipa Kafka

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

The major weakness of this text is that it is a reprint of a 1979 special edition of Revista Chicano-Riqueña. Unfortunately, both the overall introduction (a history of Spanish American, Chicano, and New York Puerto Rican theater), as well as introductions to each play (which contain biographical data, analysis, and practical suggestions for staging) does not extend beyond 1979. Also, although most illustrations are excellent, the pictorial centerfold is a crowded and confusing collage.

[Review Of] Roy Harvey Pearce. Savagism And Civilization: A Study Of The Indian And The American Mind. Rev. Ed. Of The Savages Of America, D. C. Cole

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

This classic volume on the image of the Indian in the American mind first appeared in 1953. Although both limited and incomplete, Pearce's work compelled a virtual revolution in literary and historical approaches to analysis of public view concerning the role of Indians in the American past.

[Review Of] Judith Ortiz Cofer. Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance Of A Puerto Rican Childhood, Angelo Costanzo

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

This is a rather loose collection of cuentos, or stories, by a person of two very different worlds. In the years of her youth, Judith Ortiz was shuttled between Paterson, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. Her parents were immersed in the Spanish culture of the Caribbean tropics; but like so many other Puerto Ricans, her father left the island in the 1950s to secure a better life for his family. He joined the US Navy and spent six months of every year at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the rest of the time at sea. When he was stationed in …

[Review Of] Laura Coltelli. Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak, Hartwig Isernhagen

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Among the interviews in this volume, which were conducted in September 1985, some are quite important, all of them are extremely interesting, and together they form an aggregate that cannot be ignored by anyone currently working in the field, for collectively they raise a number of issues that are central to current discussions of (specifically) American Indian and (generally) "minority" literatures.

[Review Of] Ruth Pelz. Black Heroes Of The Wild West, George H. Junne Jr

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Ruth Pelz's book, illustrated by Leandro DelIa Piana, is written for elementary school children. Among the nine black heroes and heroines profiled are three women. They include the rough and tough "Stagecoach Mary Fields, the brave Biddy Mason, and the hard working Clara Brown." The men are the early explorer, Estevan; Chicago founder Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable; one of Washington State's founders, George Washington Bush; and mountain man James Beckwourth. Businessman and government leader Mifflin Gibbs and rodeo star Bill Pickett round out those featured. Some are more well-known than others, but all were important figures in the West.

[Review Of] Choong Soon Kim. Faithful Endurance: An Ethnography Of Korean Family Dispersal, Jim Schnell

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Kim's book evidences his ability to present well substantiated data using a storytelling perspective. His work is well grounded. Thirty-six pages (one fifth of the book) provide notes and bibliographic information. However, the reading is light. It is as if through his research he has prepared a fairly complex cross-cultural perspective ready for easy consumption. Again, he provides "an interpretation," but I would not call it an academic interpretation. His strength (personal familiarity with the culture being studied) is also a weakness (a predisposed bias).

[Review Of] Susheila Nasta, Ed. Motherlands: Black Women's Writing From Africa, The Caribbean And South Asia, Opal Palmer Adisa

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

In recent years writings by black women outside of the US have gained acceptance, and many such works have been included in syllabi. Motherlands provides critical, comparative analyses of several important black women (Asian women are included in this category) writing throughout the world, and as such, sets a precedent as it is probably the first such collection. Divided into three sections, Mothers/Daughters/Mother(land), the essays examine writers who have become icons, Bessie Head, Jean Rhys, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal el Sa' adawi, Michelle Cliff, Joan Riley, Lorna Goodison, and Nayantara Sahgal. Some of the essays, however, explore use of …

[Review Of] Herman J. Viola And Carolyn Margolis, Eds. Seeds Of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration, Cortland P. Auser

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

n this year of the quincentennial, Seeds of Change should be read by scholars, teachers, and students across the curricula and by those interested in multicultural interdisciplinary subjects of prime importance. The editors have done an outstanding job of bringing together essays by experts on the subjects related to "the massive changes since the contact of the Old and New World." One of the effects that a couple of the authors touch on and examine -- the gastronomic revolution -- was observed by German Aremiegas's America in Europe in 1975.

[Review Of] Werner Sollors, Cd. The Invention Of Ethnicity, Hartwig Isernhagen

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

The Invention of Ethnicity is obviously and admittedly shaped after Hobsbawm's and Ranger's Invention of Tradition, published in 1986, when the essays in this volume were finished. In the meantime, much of what Sollors argues for in his editor's introduction has become accepted knowledge under the general heading of the constructedness of identity and subjectivity. If, however, the book has not, as might appear probable at first sight, been overtaken and made obsolete by the very success of the views it advocates -- if the reverse, rather, seems to be true and to justify a belated discussion in these pages …

[Review Of] Jewelle Taylor Gibbs. Young, Black And Male In America: An Endangered Species, Calvin E. Harris

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

This is a collection of summaries of studies conducted over the past decade or more focusing on such problems or problem areas as: Education and Achievement of Young Black Males, Employment and Unemployment of Young Black Males, Delinquency Among Black Male Youth, and Teenage Fathers -- Issues Confronting Young Black Males. In fact, the central focus of the studies cited in this anthology are on young black males ranging from their mid-teens to mid-twenties. Besides Gibbs, the other contributors are Ann Brunswick of Columbia University; Michael Connors of Cal State University, Long Beach; Richard Dembo of the University of South …

[Review Of] Benjamin B. Ringer And Elinor R. Lawless. Race-Ethnicity And Society, Alberto Pulido

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

The heritage of European colonization in the "New World" left a legacy of dualism for the contemporary nation-states of South, Central, and North America, according to Ringer and Lawless. As a major focus of their work, their "duality thesis" contends that European colonists constructed a society modeled in their racial, religious, and national image, resulting in the formation of a lasting colonial plural structure with a permanently established elite. Racial and ethnic groups emerged first as sojourner colonizers and then formalized their relationship with the establishment of colonies and the creation of racially segmented and subjugated societies. Dominant ethnic/racial groups …

[Review Of] St. Clair Drake. Black Folk Here And There , Vol. I, Bamidele J. Bracy, Jean E. Daniels

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

St. Clair Drake, the recently deceased anthropologist, has written an elaborate "summary essay" on the black experience as it relates to the continent of Africa. In his latter years at Stanford University, Drake was head of the University's Black Studies program. It appears obvious that Drake's consciousness was raised during this particular time span. The research and writing of this book is far different from his seminal work with Clayton (Black Metropolis, 1945). In his "emeritus" years, Drake decided to seek the high ground of an historical anthropological-philosopher and address certain issues that W.E.B. DuBois considered paramount to the study …

Du Bois And The Boys' Club Of The 'Great Books', Bill Farrell

Trotter Review

During the autumn of 1990 the Encyclopedia Britannica published the Great Books of the Western World, its selection of Western civilization's sixty best works. Newspapers respectfully reported the event. Commentators acclaimed the set's affirmation of Western culture. A scholarly symposium at the Library of Congress celebrated the collection's publication. The National Press Club, usually concerned with major politicians and famous journalists, invited Mortimer Adler, the series editor in chief, to address it.

In his interviews and public appearances connected with the publication of the series, Adler stressed that to be a great book a work must discuss a large …

Are Today's Teachers Being Prepared For Diversity? An Analysis Of School Catalogues, James Jennings, Illene Carver

Trotter Review

A recent content analysis study shows that while leading educators in Massachusetts stress the importance of preparing teachers for an increasingly diverse world, most teacher preparation schools virtually ignore the issue of racial and ethnic diversity in catalogues recruiting new students. This not only discourages people from diverse backgrounds from becoming teachers, but could also create a lack of understanding in the classroom of the black, Latino, and Asian students being taught.

A summary of A Content Analysis of Racial and Ethnic Themes in Catalogues Distributed by Teacher Preparation Schools in Massachusetts, 1989 and 1990, a report issued by …

[Review Of] Richard Jensen, Et. Al. Eyewitness At Wounded Knee, Cortland P. Auser

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Any student of the relations between Native Americans and the US government and anyone who has read with deep interest Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee should add this work to his or her library or reading list. James A. Handson, Director of the Nebraska State Historical Society, provides an excellent foreword. He indicates that it has been the main intention of the work to interpret the photographs taken by men, many of whom were from Nebraska, in the light of the centennial of the massacre in 1990; also, the work is published in commemoration of the sesquicentennial …

[Review Of] Toni Morrison. Jazz, Cortland P. Auser

Explorations in Sights and Sounds

Francis Davis, writing about jazz in the Atlantic Monthly (August 1988, p.71), defined it as "a protean music with a sense of manifest destiny." I personally feel this definition may be well used to accurately describe Morrison's latest fiction. Stylistically and structurally it is a masterpiece, for mood and mode match. The stories about its main characters are told in the book's sections, and yet the sections are interwoven because of the interrelationships of these characters. In each such section time past and present are also interwoven in a "seamless" way. The lyricism of many of the passages spoken by …

Gong Lum V. Rice: The Convergence Of Law, Race And Ethnicity, Malik Simba

Explorations in Ethnic Studies

In the constitutional case of Gong Lum v. Rice (1927), the United States Supreme Court, composed entirely of Bok Guey (whites), adjudged Hon Yen (Chinese) to be in the same social classification as Lo Mok (blacks).[1] The case, which pertained to "racially" segregated schools, reveals the problematic of law, race, and ethnicity.

Critique [Of Gong Lum V. Rice: The Convergence Of Law, Race And Ethnicity By Malik Simba], Otis L. Scott

Explorations in Ethnic Studies

For all intent and purposes the United States of America in 1927 was an apartheid state. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 determined that the best social policy for this nation to pursue was one which required racial separation. The Plessy decision essentially capped a series of Supreme Court decisions which underscored the destruction of Reconstruction and the return of "states rights" to southern governments. Decisions like the Slaughter House Cases (1872) and the Civil Rights Cases (1883) gave clear evidence of the federal government's hasty retreat from serving as an advocate for the civil rights of African Americans.