Research Guides: NYU Solidarity Week: Staff Picks

About these Selections

The reading selections listed below were chosen by members of the NYU Division of Libraries staff.

Staff Picks: Articles & Other Resources

Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative, by Mario Ramirez
Independent Voices: An Open Access Collection of an Alternative Press

About the collection: Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. For more info about this online multimedia project, read why it was published.

Staff Picks: Ebooks

Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements by Walidah Imarisha (Editor); adrienne maree brown (Editor)
Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.
It's Been Beautiful: Soul! and Black Power Television by Gayle Wald
In It's Been Beautiful, Gayle Wald tells the story of Soul!, casting this influential but overlooked program as a bold and innovative use of television to represent and critically explore black identity, culture, and feeling during a transitional period in the black freedom struggle.
Struggling for Ordinary: Media and Transgender Belonging in Everyday Life by Andre Cavalcante
An in-depth look at the role of media in the struggle for transgender inclusion.
This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror by Moustafa Bayoumi
Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake "Mustafa Bayoumi" was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media as pushing an "anti-American, pro-Islam" agenda, and was asked by a U.S. citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed.
Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? by Heath Fogg Davis
Beyond Trans pushes the conversation on gender identity to its limits: questioning the need for gender categories in the first place. Whether on birth certificates or college admissions applications or on bathroom doors, why do we need to mark people and places with sex categories? Do they serve a real purpose or are these places and forms just mechanisms of exclusion?
LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader by Marla Brettschneider (Editor); Susan Burgess (Editor); Christine Keating (Editor)
A definitive collection of original essays on queer politics. From Harvey Milk to ACT UP to Proposition 8, no political change in the last two decades has been as rapid as the advancement of civil rights for LGBTQ people.
Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader by Penny A. Weiss (Editor)
A wide-reaching collection of groundbreaking feminist documents from around the world.
Rethinking Japanese Feminisms by Julia C. Bullock (Editor); Ayako Kano (Editor); James Welker (Editor)
Rethinking Japanese Feminisms offers a broad overview of the great diversity of feminist thought and practice in Japan from the early twentieth century to the present.
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
In As We Have Always Done, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson locates Indigenous political resurgence as a practice rooted in uniquely Indigenous theorizing, writing, organizing, and thinking. Indigenous resistance is a radical rejection of contemporary colonialism focused around the refusal of the dispossession of both Indigenous bodies and land. Simpson makes clear that its goal can no longer be cultural resurgence as a mechanism for inclusion in a multicultural mosaic. Instead, she calls for unapologetic, place-based Indigenous alternatives to the destructive logics of the settler colonial state, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation.
Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones takes a reader deep into lived experience, into a charged world divided among unstable yet entrenched lines: racial, gendered, political, sexual, familial. Here we absorb each quiet resistance, each whoop of joy, a knowledge of violence and of desire, an unbearable ache/loss/yearning.
The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution by Ann Travers
A groundbreaking look at the lives of transgender children and their families Some "boys" will only wear dresses; some "girls" refuse to wear dresses; in both cases, as Ann Travers shows in this fascinating account of the lives of transgender kids, these are often more than just wardrobe choices. Travers shows that from very early ages, some at two and three years old, these kids find themselves to be different from the sex category that was assigned to them at birth. How they make their voices heard--to their parents and friends, in schools, in public spaces, and through the courts--is the focus of this remarkable and groundbreaking book.
The End of Imagination by Arundhati Roy
The End of Imagination brings together five of Arundhati Roy's acclaimed books of essays into one comprehensive volume for the first time and features a new introduction by the author.
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez
A myth-shattering work that draws on new evidence to reveal the massive enslavement of tens of thousands of North American Indians, from its beginnings in the early 1500s to its last gasp in the late 1800s.
Transforming Japan: How Feminism and Diversity are Making a Difference by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow (Editor)
A volume of essays by Japan's leading female scholars and activists exploring their country's recent progressive cultural shift.
Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century by Tey Meadow
Trans Kids is a trenchant ethnographic and interview-based study of the first generation of families affirming and facilitating gender nonconformity in children.
Coming Out of Communism: The Emergence of LGBT Activism in Eastern Europe by Conor O'Dwyer
Combining an historical overview with interviews and case studies in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, Conor O'Dwyer analyzes the development and impact of LGBT movements in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe.
Gender Violence in Russia: The Politics of Feminist Intervention by Janet Elise Johnson
Just a few years ago, most Russian citizens did not recognize the notion of domestic violence or acknowledge that such a problem existed. Today, after years of local and international pressure to combat violence against women, things have changed dramatically. Gender Violence in Russia examines why and how this shift occurred--and why there has been no similar reform on other gender violence issues such as rape, sexual assault, or human trafficking.
Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Forging vital links between daily life and collective action and between theory and pedagogy, Mohanty has been at the vanguard of Third World and international feminist thought and activism for nearly two decades. This collection highlights the concerns running throughout her pioneering work: the politics of difference and solidarity, decolonizing and democratizing feminist practice, the crossing of borders, and the relation of feminist knowledge and scholarship to organizing and social movements.