Remembering Nelson Mandela, 1918–2013

The passing of Nelson Mandela is sure to inspire a global outpouring of mourning, testimonials, and commentary, perhaps on a scale without precedent in the age of the Internet and social media. His life story and character have long moved and inspired many millions of people. Mandela received a life sentence for treason in 1964 for his anti-apartheid activism and spent 27 years in prison. After his release in 1990, he began leading negotiations for a peaceful end to apartheid with F.W. de Klerk, then-president of South Africa. In 1994, Mandela was elected president in the nation's first free multiracial elections. Shortly thereafter, he instigated a truth and reconciliation process that sought forgiveness in forging a new multiracial democracy.

Mandela stepped down from the presidency after one term and became a global statesman. He devoted his time over the next few years to peace negotiations in other African countries, charitable work, and advocacy for such causes as human rights, poverty eradication, and HIV/AIDS prevention. In 1993, Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president, shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Mandela's leadership was not without criticism in some aspects, and South Africa today still struggles with inequality, corruption, and violent crime, while the African National Congress (ANC) he led is a divided party. However, he leaves behind a functional democracy and sub-Saharan Africa's largest economy—outcomes that were hardly assured in the last days of apartheid.

Mandela is without dispute among the 20th century's most significant, influential, and revered figures, and will be studied globally for many years to come. In South Africa he remains both Madiba (his Xhosa clan name) and "The Father of the Nation."

New Primary Resource Collection: Explorers of the American West

We are pleased to announce the addition of a rich collection of primary resources to our United States Geography Online Solution!

Sacajawea is depicted guiding the Lewis and Clark expedition through the Rocky Mountains in this painting.

Users have access to a plethora of fascinating and illuminating primary sources such as journal entries and artwork. The new collection includes:

• 60 journal excerpts from some of the most notable explorers of the 19th century
• 50 pieces of primary source media, which includes artwork from the expeditions, pdf maps, and photographs of journal pages
• 6 interactive expedition maps that feature pop-up boxes with journal excerpts that correspond to locations on the maps. These maps are one-of-a-kind, produced in-house from coordinates found in the journals themselves, and only found at ABC-CLIO!
• Timelines for each featured expedition with links to their corresponding journal excerpts
• Essays describing each expedition
• A feature story, “Ocian in View Celebrated,” that serves as our gateway to the collection and includes an Examine activity analyzing primary documents
• Two lesson plans on the support site to accompany the collection in which students analyze primary documents: Concept of Place in the American West and Explorers of the American West and Native American

Click the linked text above to begin exploring these unique and informative resources.

Not a United States Geography subscriber? Sign up for a FREE 30-day trial and don't miss out on these one-of-a-kind interactive resources found only in ABC-CLIO Solutions!

Congratulations to Our VOYA Five-Foot Bookshelf Featured Titles!

The VOYA Five-Foot Bookshelf is an annual collection featuring VOYA reviewers' picks for best books for professionals who serve teens. We are honored to see so many of our Libraries Unlimited titles make the list!

Adult Learners: Professional Development and the School Librarian
Carl A. Harvey II
978-1-61069-039-3

Managing Children's Services in Libraries, Fourth Edition
Adele M. Fasick and Leslie Edmonds Holt
978-1-61069-100-0

Integrating Young Adult Literature through the Common Core Standards
Rachel L. Wadham and Jonathan W. Ostenson
978-1-61069-118-5

Teen Talkback with Interactive Booktalks!
Lucy Schall
978-1-61069-289-2









Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children's Books with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content
Jamie Campbell Naidoo
978-1-59884-960-8

Library Leadership in the United States and Europe: A Comparative Study of Academic and Public Libraries
Peter Hernon and Niels Ole Pors, Editors
978-1-61069-126-0










View the electronic issue of VOYA here. Find the Five-Foot Bookshelf feature on pages 8 and 9.

Zoot Suit Riots

The following interview features Roger Bruns, historian and former deputy executive director of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives in Washington, DC. He is the author of many books, including Encyclopedia of Cesar Chavez: The Farm Workers' Fight for Rights and Justice; Negro Leagues Baseball; and Icons of Latino America: Latino Contributions to American Culture. He has written several biographies for young readers on such figures as Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr.  He is author of the forthcoming Zoot Suit Riots, part of the Landmarks of the America Mosaic series.

You have written a book to be published next spring by ABC-Clio on the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles during World War II.  First of all, what are zoot suits? 

Although the exact origins of the zoot-suit are unclear, many Mexican-American youth in Los Angeles in the early 1940s adopted the so-called “drape” look worn by African-Americans they had seen in pictures and movies, especially in eastern cities, and, most especially, in Harlem. The jazz music and the jitterbug dance craze had made their way to the West Coast along with the clothes that spoke of youthful rebellion and urban identity. There was the oversized coat with broad shoulders and ballooned and pegged pants, large broad-brimmed hat, with a watch chain often dangling down the side. Thick-soled shoes called Calcos added to the look.

Mostly, the youngsters were Mexican-Americans born in the U.S. to parents who had immigrated. Walking around the streets wearing the drapes with friends from their neighborhoods gave them, both young men and women,  a group identity – admiration from some in their own community; disgust and ridicule from others, especially Anglos.  Many young men took on the name “pachucos” and women “pachucas,” terms of uncertain origins that mostly came to mean those in adolescent gangs wearing zoot-suits. Not every pachuco wore a zoot suit, however, and certainly most members of the Mexican-American community did not consider themselves part of the pachuco rage. Indeed, the parents of many of those adolescents involved were unquestionably anxious and concerned about the fidelity of their sons and daughters to this new cultural phenomenon. 

But the zoot-suit rage grew. Pachucos intermixed English and Spanish with slang they called “Chuco,” much of it from a Caló dialect that could be traced to early Spanish wanderers and outcasts. They gathered in groups that carried names of Mexican-American neighborhoods – 39^th Street, White Fence, Alpine Street, and Happy Valley.

What led to riots?

Most of all, we have to remember the entrenched prejudice against Mexican-Americans in this period. It was not only invidious but out in the open for all to see. Many public facilities were closed to Mexican-Americans. Some churches would allow Mexican-Americans inside only on certain days. Many cemeteries, even those publicly operated, reserved special sections specifically for Mexican-Americans, thus separating them in death from Anglos just as they had been during life. Some theaters did allow Mexican-Americans and Afro-Americans access but only on certain nights. There were actually signs that read “No Mexicans or Dogs Allowed.”

Mexican-Americans read stories in Los Angeles newspapers that called them “undesirables.” They were accused by law enforcement officials and political leaders of being inclined to engage in criminal activities and were, therefore, a threat to law and order. When arrested for petty crimes, many were subjected to what was euphemistically called the “third degree” – from beatings with rubber hoses to “three-day hunger tests.”

The Zoot Suit Riots are inextricably linked to the infamous, so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder in August 1941 southeast of Los Angeles.  The Sleepy Lagoon was a reservoir used to irrigate crops and a swimming hole and meeting place for many Mexican-American youths. At a party at a nearby house on August 1, a young man named Jose Diaz was found dead after a brawl among a group of youngsters from the neighborhood around 38^th Street and some youths from other neighborhoods. The Los Angeles Police Department, in a zealous demonstration of combating juvenile delinquency, rounded up in a dragnet more than 600 young people, mainly those who wore zoot suits. Unable to tie any single individual to the crime, a grand jury indicted over 20 youngsters for murder, an unprecedented and outrageous overreach. In the subsequent trial, marked by unbridled bias and judicial misconduct by the judge, most were convicted of first or second degree murder. They would later be released on appeal after serving significant time in jail.

Within months of the convictions, Los Angeleserupted in a riot. On June 3, 1943, with tensions escalating between U.S.sailors stationed in Los Angelesand Mexican-American zoot suiters, some 50 sailors on shore leave ventured into Mexican-American neighborhoods armed with clubs and other weapons. Their mission, supposedly in retaliation for earlier attacks on servicemen, was simple – beat up and rip the clothing from any “zoot suiter” they could find. For several days, sporadic attacks by servicemen against Mexican-Americans threw parts of downtown Los Angelesinto chaos and rioting. For a week, sailors and other servicemen dragged kids off streetcars, from restaurants, and out of movie theaters. The boys were beaten and stripped of their zoot suits, a kind of ritualistic cultural humiliation.

Thousands of white civilians egged on the servicemen. At one point at the end of the week of carnage, an estimated 1000 servicemen rampaged through the Mexican district, storming into bars, penny arcades, theaters, stores, and dance halls with relative impunity. A number of taxi drivers joined the fun, offering free rides to servicemen and civilians to the riot areas. .

Eventually, with news of the riots reaching the national press and with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt referring to the spectacle as race riots against Mexican-Americans, local and military police eventually restored order. Of the many hundreds of  individuals herded off to jail, almost all were Mexican-Americans, the targets of the attackers.  They were mostly charged with disturbing the peace.

In the end, the Los Angeles City Council banned the wearing of zoot suits on Los Angelesstreets.

What was the highlight of your research? In the course of your research, what discovery surprised you the most?

Records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, at NARA’s records center in Riverside, California, and at the Franklin Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, had a wealth of original documents about the deep concern of the U.S.government that the trial and riots were damaging the country’s relations with Mexico and Latin Americaduring wartime. In late 1942, the Office of War Information (OWI), an agency designed to coordinate news releases favorable to U.S.interests during the war, worried that open hostility toward Mexican-Americans in Los Angeleswas being exploited by the enemy. Axis propaganda sent to the U.S., Mexico, and other Latin American countries attacked as a sham U.S. claims that it was a democratic nation free of the persecution of minorities. The OWI sent Alan Cranston, a former journalist who would later become a U.S. Senator from California. Cranston met managing editors and publishers of all four of the major newspapers in the city encouraging them to stop slandering Mexican-Americans in their articles. He also encouraged city officials to prepare a plan to help ameliorate the conditions under which Mexican-Americans were struggling in the city.

Also State Department officials had numerous communications and face-to-face meetings with Mexican diplomatic figures trying to temper the anger and suspicions aroused by the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the riots.

What effects did the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the Zoot Suit Riots have on the Mexican-American community and how are these events from 60 years ago relevant today?

So outrageous had been the treatment accorded to Mexican-American citizens in Los Angeles during wartime that activists, reformers, and the immigrant community itself  began to fight back, to make demands, and seek ways to come together to force change against the kind of  systemic prejudice and  dehumanization so evident in the trial and the riots.

In coming years organizers would win a landmark case of Mendez v. Westminster (1947) that would outlaw segregation of Mexican-Americans in public schools. In the same year, reformers founded the Community Services Organization (CSO), a civic-action group dedicated to promote community improvement, awareness of citizenship rights and responsibilities and to fight against human and civil rights abuses. It would fight discrimination in housing, employment, and education; promote political involvement; and establish self-help programs.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the so-called Chicano Movement produced a new generation of activists and leaders who brought to national attention a variety of issues vital to the Mexican American community and sought to remedy the ills of discrimination and powerlessness through direct political action.  In the early 1960s, Cesar Chavez, a zoot-suiter in his youth, began his historic fight to establish a union of farmworkers. One of his friends and allies, Luis Valdez, who would later be called by many “the Father of Chicano Theater, wrote a play called  Zoot Suit that opened on Broadway in 1978. It related the events of the early 1940s to the continuing struggles of Mexican-Americans and played for the first time in Mexico City in 2010, the same year that the state of Arizona passed draconian legislation against immigration. As the nation continues to grapple with such issues as immigration, fair employment and educational opportunities, and the many aspects of civil rights for Latinos, the story of the Zoot Suits Riots remains a compelling reminder of how far we have come but how daunting remain the challenges.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Encyclopedia of Latino Culture

It is important to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. U.S. Latinos/as today constitutes a dynamic and very diverse population in this country. Their growth in the past few decades has been very rapid to the point where they have already surpassed African Americans as the largest ethnic minority in the United Sates. According to the 2010 U.S. census, there had been a 43 percent increase in the Latino/a population since 2000, from a total of 35 million to over 50 million inhabitants. They are expected to become an increasingly important force culturally, politically, and economically in the next few decades. 

It is very important to understand that U.S. Latinos/as share strong cultural bonds and a common heritage and language, but at the same time they are very diverse in many other respects; their histories are different and they also differ racially and ethnically. For example, many Mexican Americans come from families that have lived in the U.S. Southwest for many generations and many others come from families who have arrived in the United States from Mexico. Many Latinos/as, whose past can be traced to countries such as Mexico, the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the Andean countries of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile, have brought with them a rich Indian and mestizo ancestry. Many Latinos/as from the Caribbean countries of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the island of Puerto Rico, and Brazil can trace their ancestry as far back the beginning of African slavery in the New World. It would be a mistake to think that U.S. Latinos/as form a monolithic and homogeneous group. In addition to their racial and ethnic differences, they are diverse in other ways including: economic status; political preferences; religious affiliations; education, language proficiency in both English and Spanish; rates of assimilation into U.S. society; ongoing connections to their countries of origin; customs; and cultural practices. It is this last aspect of U.S. Latino/a culture that led to the creation of the Encyclopedia of Latino Culture.

When I was asked by the editors at Greenwood Press to edit this three-volume publication, I did not hesitate. I knew that this would this would afford me a marvelous opportunity to become more knowledgeable about the breadth of U.S. Latino/a culture because most of my published research and teaching had been focused on the literature and popular culture of Mexican Americans. I knew also that in seeking out contributors to write the various entries, I would become better acquainted with experts in many different aspects of U.S. Latino/a culture. These were somewhat selfish reasons for taking on what became a two-year project, but I also believed that such an encyclopedia designed for the general reader and the high school student would be different and more accessible than similar projects. I am now in the final year of my long academic career, and am gratified that bringing this huge project to fruition will, I hope, contribute to an overall better understanding and appreciation of the rich cultural contributions and customs of U.S. Latinos/as.    

Charles M. Tatum, PhD, is the editor of the forthcoming, Encyclopedia of Latino Culture: From Calaveras to Quinceañeras, November 2013, ISBN: 978-1-4408-0098-6

He is Professor of Spanish and Chicano Studies at the University of Arizona. He was for fifteen years dean of College of Humanities. He has written and edited several books on Chicana/o literature and popular culture including Chicano Popular Culture: Que hable el pueblo (2001), Chicano and Chicana Literature: Otra voz del pueblo (2006) and Lowriders in Chicano Culture: From Low to Slow to Show (2001). He the co-founder of the journal, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. 

Interview with O.C. Edwards Jr., Author of A Nation with the Soul of a Church

Why is the publication of A Nation with the Soul of a Church important at this moment in history—that is, how does it relate to today's news headlines or connect to contemporary questions or issues?

I think the publication of A Nation with the Soul of a Church is important at this time both for its vivid reminder of the strong influence of religion on the public life of the United States and its analysis of some of the ways that influence is exercised for good or evil. Different religious groups are taking opposing stands on so many of the issues before the country today and those stands are often communicated to congregations through the sermons of clergy. At the moment there are few clergy whose names are household words, but thousands of pastors are swaying their congregations at the local level and cumulatively they have a national influence.

What drew you to the topic of A Nation with the Soul of a Church? How does the topic relate to you personally?

I was drawn to the topic of how Christian proclamation had shaped American history by Praeger's commission to write a book on it. After completing my long history of preaching I had not known I wanted to write another book, but when I heard the topic I started salivating. It gave me a motive for relating my interest in the wider topic to life in my own society.

What did you learn in the course of your research; what discovery surprised you the most?

Writing the book certainly refreshed and improved my knowledge of American history in general and taught me a lot about  a number of interesting clergy. I believe Bill Coffin was the only one discussed whom I had ever met personally, but I had heard Billy Graham when he was just becoming well known and, since I live near him,  had even seen him in a local restaurant, although I did not impose myself on him. I suppose the biggest surprise to me was to see how the stories of the individual preachers had connections with one another and together created an impressionistic history of American Christianity.

What challenges did you face in your research or writing?

The biggest challenge to me in writing was in living some distance from a major theological library. I was fortunate in being able to persuade the theological librarian at Sewanee, Jim Dunkly, to both tell me what I ought to read and  provide me with it.

What do you want readers to learn from your book?

 I think I would like secularists to be reminded of what a force religion still is in our society and for Christians to see that not all religious influences are for the good of society. I would also like folks to know how much good really good people can do.

If your book inspired one change in the world, what would you want it to be?

My book concludes with "an extra sermon at no extra charge" in which I warn fellow Americans of the dangers of believing in American exceptionalism. While I believe that our standards are some of the highest ever incorporated in government documents, I am afraid that all to often we have failed to live up to them, partly because too many of us assume we can do no evil. Pride always goes before a fall.

Where might others focus their energies in following on your work in this area?

Because my book covers so much territory, a great deal more could be discovered about each of its subjects and the influence of their preaching in their society.

What are you working on now?

Right now I am revising a mystery novel I wrote in 1980. It is set in a fictitious Episcopal seminary during the Vietnam War and one seminarian who was a Medal of Honor winner in the war is suspected of murdering a fellow student who was a flower child.

O.C. Edwards Jr., PhD, is a retired Episcopal priest. He is a former president and professor emeritus of preaching at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary at Evanston, IL, has cochaired the Faith and Order Commission, and served on the executive committee of the National Council of Churches. His books include A History of Preaching and How Holy Writ Was Written. With John Westerhoff he edited A Faithful Church: Issues in the History of Catechesis.

A Group Interview with the Editors of Queering Christianity - Part II

Part II of yesterday's interview:

What do you want readers to learn from your book?

R. Shore-Goss (RS): As non-LGBTQI readers read the book, they will see how queer Christians share some of the similar experiences of Christianity with unique differences as well. There is a place for all of us at the table. The mission of the open and inclusive table, that repeats the historical Jesus, is a powerful symbol of God’s wild grace.

Cheng (PC): My hope is that the readers of our book will recognize the diversity of perspectives that exist within queer theology, and that the book can help others to find their own theological voices.

Bohache (TB):That God’s table has always been open. It is the gatekeepers who have restricted it.

Thomas (NT): I would like readers to hear both an alternative voice and the liberation that the book offers to our Sacred Text. Many will, I hope, give God a second, third or  . . . chance to discover a liberating, loving and inclusive God.

J. Shore-Goss (JSG): My chapters were about allowing space for deep listening, yet throughout the book there is the challenge to open up, allow light into the places that were once dark and know—truly know—that all are welcome to the table . . . that in the Creator's eyes we are all one, all worthy, and all loved.

More (MM): I hope they think, and question what they thought they knew, and become aware of a greater expanse of God’s grace in the world.

Saniuk (JS):To give themselves permission to see Jesus in the light of their own experiences, not just in what they have been taught to believe; to see him as a companion who encountered incredible brutality . . . and then rose again.

If your book inspired one change in the world, what would you want it to be?

RS: Greater inclusiveness of the Christian denominations of queer theologies and voices and more “green” churches.

PC: I would love to see religious discussions about LGBTQI issues move from polarized debates to polyvalent conversations in which multiple perspectives are held together in creative tension.

TB:More inclusivity and greater discussion of queer issues in the church and more interest in theology within the queer community(ies).

NT: The ultimate and radical full inclusion of God’s people regardless of gender, gender identity, race, color, faith experience, age, or other “ism” that excludes and separates people into an “in” or “out” group!

JSG: My wish would be that all churches and religions find a place for LGBTQI persons at their tables. Once our faith communities find a way of seeing all as equal, so will the rest of our societies.

MM: The one change I would pray for is that people come to openly accept transgenders as they wish to be—normalized in society without the stigma of hate and marginalization, and without being abused by fundamentalist misuse of the Bible as a weapon against them.

JS:For churches to stop demonizing LGBTQI people (among others) in the name of God.

Where might others focus their energies in following on your work in this area?

RS: The development of heterosexual queer theologies, more reflections on transgendered and intersexed theologies, a theology of sexuality (inclusive of married, single, and alternative configurations) that pushes the exploration of the interconnections of sexuality and spirituality.

PC: My hope is that more LGBTQI theologians will write about the intersections of race and sexuality and, in particular, about the significant contributions that LGBTQI people of color have made to queer theology.

TB:Sexual minorities within the LGBTQI community(ies)

NT: I hope that a Theology of Inclusion might one day be developed.

JSG: This is a Christianity-based book coming out of the Metropolitan Community Churches experience of the open table. I would love to see other people of faith start to explore and see what something similar may look like in their context, Christian and non-Christian alike.

JS:I would love to see even more “queered” worship forms! We have an incredible freedom in MCC to re-make our collective spiritual practice. The open Communion table is just the beginning.

What are you working on now?

RS: I have the copyright for Jesus ACTED UP: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto. It appeared in 1993 and was a classic in starting queer theology. I was just introduced as the “father of queer theology” at the UCC General Synod by a queer clergy. I intend to publish this classic in Kindle form: Jesus ACTED UP: Then and Now. I will re-publish the original book, and I have asked several scholars to talk about the then and the now (where are we going). I am also enmeshed in a Christian green theology and hope to have completed it in the fall of 2014.

PC: I am currently writing about what theologians need to know about queer theory for a forthcoming work on theology, sexuality, and gender.

TB: A book on “queering the Body of Christ” – expanding the disreputable ecclesiology touched on in my chapter “Unzipping Church” in Queering Christianity.

NT: Continue to work on marriage equality, immigration, the environment, equal access to health care, HIV/AIDS, poverty. Future book: "A Theology of Inclusion: The Emerging Church in the 21st Century."

JSG: I am currently studying and researching for my Ph.D. through the Graduate Theological Foundation. I am looking at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as an international queer pluralistic spiritual community for the 21^stcentury.

JS: There is really interesting work on shame in congregations that is just coming out. I also am looking more deeply into the particularities of the “T” side of LGBTQI, and intersections with race and gender that I haven’t yet been able to explore.

A Group Interview with the Editors of Queering Christianity - Part I

Why is the publication of Queering Christianity important at this moment in history—that is, how does it relate to today's news headlines or connect to contemporary questions or issues?

Robert Shore-Goss (RS): As the ghettoized church is drawing to an end, except for some geographic areas, it brings LGBTQI experience into dialogue with mainstream Christian denominations. At the recent UCC General Synod, the head of the Open and Affirming Churches(some 1,200 churches) indicated plans to recommend the book. There is a strong parallel between marriage equality and churches opening up to include LGBTQI people into their churches, ordaining them and marrying them. This has led an upsurge of gay/lesbian students in the seminaries.

Patrick Cheng (PC): LGBTQI issues have been in the headlines recently with the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California Proposition 8. Religious debates over LGBTQI issues remain hotly contested, however, and I believe that books such as Queering Christianity are important contributions to the broader conversations about LGBTQI issues.

Thomas Bohache (TB): In the public/civil/secular sphere we see more and more progress in rights for LGBTQI people. However, we do not see the same sort of progress in the religious sphere. This book I believe will open non-queer people to some points of view foreign to them; for queer people, the book will make them realize that they do indeed have a place at the table, even if they have not yet found it.

Neil Thomas (NT): In the changing religious and political scene, with the growing acceptance of LGBTQI peoples in mainline religious organizations, this book is both vital and timely in the ongoing understanding and evolution of God’s revealed Word.

Joseph Shore-Goss (JSG): As the marriage equality movement moves forward in the United States and in other countries there are still places where the LGBTQI community are still persecuted and even killed for being who they are…created and loved in God’s image. This book helps move that conversation forward…but more importantly, move it forward in a Christian context.

Megan More (MM): With the increased focus on the LGBTQI community regarding marriage equality and job protections, removing the stigma and dispelling the ignorance is more important than ever, especially when it comes to religion and dogma.

Joan Saniuk (JS): We are in the midst of an incredible sea change in the culture. The overturning of DOMA is a legal acknowledgment that LGBTQI people, and the families we form (or not), are for real. Queering Christianitygives voice to the experience, and wisdom, that this community has learned in the past half-century. It’s a perfect time to bring that wisdom out into the open.

What drew you to the topic of Queering Christianity? How does the topic relate to you personally?

PC: As an openly gay seminary professor and a queer theologian, I have written extensively about the intersections of theology, pastoral care, and the spiritual lives of LGBTQI people.

TB: Inclusivity is extremely important to me for it is the central message of Jesus. We cannot call ourselves followers of Christ if we do not embrace and encourage inclusivity across all boundaries. I am a gay man who was ejected from the table and told not to make a reservation again, so this topic is very dear to my heart. After 25 years of ministry to the LGBTQI community(ies), I see that it is still just as important as it was in my youth.

NT: As a pastor in Metropolitan Community Churches for the past 24 years, this is both my journey and my story to understand that God’s Word is queer, subversive, and includes me.

JSG: I have to admit my husband is an editor so I am close to the context to begin with. I had just finished my M.A. thesis on pastoral care and counseling with transgendered youth and that is what actually led to the invite to write for the book. I have been openly gay and active in the LGBTQI community since I was 22. I have always been involved deeply in my community, and this book allowed me to engage some topics in a deep spiritual context where my passion for my faith and my community can come together.

MM: As a transwoman and ordained minister, I feel that a legitimate "trans" voice must be heard.

JS: I joined MCC in the 1990s –a time of horrific stress in the queer and HIV-affected communities. It was both baffling, and alarming, to see many organizations disintegrate, whether through exhaustion or with bizarre infighting, as Eric Rofes and Urvashi Vaid among others have chronicled. I needed to understand how I—how we as MCC—could maintain a ministry of hope amid all that chaos.

What did you learn in the course of your research; what discovery surprised you the most?

TB: That the diverse types of discrimination are all located in the concept of power—who has it, who wants it, and what people do to keep it.

Thomas: I discovered much more about God’s radical inclusion and the misinterpretation of God’s Word as revealed through evangelical Christianity, which has dominated the religious discourse in this past century. This dominant culture is shifting and changing, and a more progressive voice is emerging.

JSG: What truly astounded me in my research was that no one--I mean no one--had addressed pastoral care for transgendered youth. This is one of the most underserved populations within the queer community and a group at the highest risk as often they are kicked out of homes, living on the streets, susceptible to drug abuse, prostitution, and/or rape.

MM: Little surprised me in relation to my own writing, since these are issues that have been dear to my heart for some time. Realizing how this has affected other theologians and authors was my own pleasant surprise.

JS: I discovered Leanne McCall Tigert’s work on trauma theory at the same time that I was studying congregations where there had been abuse. Suddenly, all the drama I’d observed began to fit into a larger pattern.

What challenges did you face in your research or writing?

JSG: The most difficult thing was taking old concepts or hetero-normative language and seeking out the expression of thought that I believed would be more accessible to the LGBTQI community.

MM: My only real challenges is the lack of writing on this issue overall. Transgenders in religion is not a very expansive subject, yet.

JS: I really struggled with how to apply the information from trauma theory, to talk about some very real psychological challenges without pathologizing. 

The Dead Tree Version of the Internet: Using Books in the Digital Age High School

By: Nick Burns, Student, Marketing Intern, ABC-CLIO

To the publishers of the world be contented to know that you are, in fact, still needed. For high school research papers, at least. Of course, the volume of information available on the Internet has grown, is growing, and always will grow—that is the fundamental trait of the Internet—but this information remains (and likely will remain) for the most part scattered, undeveloped, and insufficiently specific for even high school research purposes. That is, if the high school student in question wants to write a halfway-decent paper.

I did want to write a halfway-decent paper earlier this year for my AP US History class, on the writings of Henry David Thoreau and how they shaped the later American conservation movement that starred personalities like the bravado-inebriated Teddy Roosevelt, the eccentric Gifford Pinchot, and the solitary saint of Yosemite, John Muir. The Internet was the place to start. Online resources, since they cater to reduced attention spans and to the most general of audiences, and thanks to the interconnectedness of the Internet, are usually the most useful to start with. The ABC-CLIO page on the American conservation movement, in the American History database, serves as an excellent example of this. I came across names I'd heard of (Thoreau, Emerson, Muir) but also important ones I hadn't (George Marsh was the most important of these). The broad network that is the Internet let me get the minimum level of knowledge to be able to navigate more complicated analyses of the time period.

However, an understanding of history, like an understanding of most things, is not complete without an array of biased and unbiased sources that must be synthesized into a complete picture. Coming to that understanding requires in these perspectives a fair amount of specificity, and perhaps even more importantly the right amount of bias—not bias, maybe, but inflection: not a sterile encyclopedia article, yet not a zealot ranting on a comments page—something that can only be found in books. What's more, a well-researched, well-written nonfiction book is a specific, personal investigation into an issue. That's what differentiates books from crowd-sourced Internet articles.

The databases were useful for gaining the level of knowledge necessary to be able to parse more sophisticated reference materials. To gain further detail and insight necessary to build a well-researched and well-thought-out enough argument it took me a backpack full of biographies, books on conservation history, books by Thoreau, Emerson, and Muir themselves, as well as essays by Wallace Stegner, and lastly the magnificently useful, diversely fascinating, and ridiculously heavy American Earth, Bill McKibben's compilation of the most important primary documents in American conservation history.

History papers can be—and, unfortunately, for the most part are—written using only Wikipedia articles, but these papers usually don't possess any valuable insights, unless those insights come solely from the (hormone-addled, nascent and naïve) mind of the kid writing it. In other words, the Internet—in the sense of trying to form conclusions about history—is a tool, and an endlessly useful one, but one that can only take you so far. A book—in the same sense—is a tool, but it can also be something greater: a journey, because it requires commitment on the part of both author and reader. This commitment makes insight possible in a way that no other medium can, and this is why books will always have a place in the in the world of high school research papers, and in the world at large.

                        

 

Conflict in Egypt

By: Nancy Gallagher

On July 3, 2013, the military overthrew the elected Egyptian government. Led by the Muslim Brotherhood (the Society of Muslim Brothers), the government had come to power on June 30, 2012. Was it a second revolution, a necessary correction in the path of the January 25 (2011) Egyptian Revolution, or a military coup? Who were the Muslim Brothers, how did they rise to power, and why did they fall so spectacularly?

Hasan El-Banna, a schoolteacher and religious leader, established the Muslim Brothers in 1928. The organization initially sought to Islamize society in order to drive the British out, but King Farouk (reigned 1936–1952) and Gamal Abdel Nasser (president 1952–1970) severely suppressed it. Most of the Muslim Brothers leadership came to follow the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, who advocated the assassination of political leaders who did not adopt his interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, calling them “infidels.” Over the years, the organization won many supporters because of its grassroots religious leadership and extensive social welfare organizations. In the elections that followed the January 25 Revolution, the Muslim Brothers candidate, Mohammad Morsi, was elected to power with 52% of the vote. His opponent, the candidate of the old regime, went into exile.

Many people voted for Morsi because he had vowed to carry out the goals of the revolution. He, however, soon demonstrated that he would carry out the goals of the Muslim Brothers. He proved unwilling to work with other factions. He did not take steps to reform the brutal and corrupt state security sector. He did not reach out to the opposition. He did not include Coptic Christians and women in his government, despite his many campaign promises. In November, six months after being elected, he issued a decree that would shield him from judicial review. After intense opposition, he revoked the decree, but the damage was done. He then forced through a constitution that was narrow and exclusionary. Women feared they would lose their hard- and recently won rights. Copts and other minorities feared for their future in Egypt. The government did little to reassure them. Morsi and his appointees proceeded to go after the media, the NGOs, the judiciary, and the arts.

Before being elected he had announced a program to revive the economy, but it did not materialize. The economy continued to sink. A loan from the International Monetary Fund could not be obtained. Tourists did not return. He appointed a member of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya—the organization allegedly responsible for the massacre of 62 people, mostly tourists, in Luxor in1997—to the post of mayor of Luxor.

He thought he had tamed the military when he dismissed Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi, who had been Egypt's de facto ruler after the 2011 revolution, but Tantawi’s replacement, Abdul Fatah El-Sisi, proved to be the ultimate power broker.  When Morsi broke relations with Syria and encouraged his followers to wage jihad against the Syrian regime, without first informing him, Sisi decided Morsi had to go. 

On June 30, a year after Morsi came to power, at least two million people demonstrated against the government in response to the Tamarod (rebel) campaign that began with a petition calling for early elections. Egyptians claimed it was the largest demonstration in history. The Muslim Brothers bused members from outside Cairo to stage a rival demonstration, but the extent of public disaffection was clear.

On July 3, the army arrested Morsi. His supporters then confronted the military and dozens were killed. On July 8 the military opened fire on a demonstration in front of the Republican Guards headquarters, killing 59 and wounding over 300.

It was a military coup against an elected government, but one supported by a vast number of people who felt that the country could not survive such misrule much longer. The military hastily made Adly Mansour, head of the High Constitutional Court, interim president. Six judges and four lawyers were to revise the 2012 constitution. Noted economist Hazem el-Beblawi became prime minister, and opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei vice-president. The Gulf States rushed billions of dollars in aid to support the collapsing Egyptian economy. Nearly all the leaders of the Muslim Brothers were arrested and its television stations were closed.

The Muslim Brothers remain convinced that they were elected in free and fair elections and should have been allowed to complete their terms. Egyptis deeply polarized. The economy is weak, the security forces are unreformed, and the role of the military in future governments is unclear. Will the revolutionaries be able to realize their goals of “bread, freedom, and social justice?” The struggle has barely begun.

Nancy Gallagher teaches Middle East history at the American University in Cairo and is a research professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). She is a widely published expert on the Middle East and Arab North Africa.

. . . 

For more on Egypt and its history, check out these resources:

Global Security Watch—Egypt: A Reference Handbook

Denis J. Sullivan and Kimberly Jones

Egypt

Mona Russell

B(l)ack in the Kitchen: Food Network

by Lisa Guerrero
 

Introduction by David J. Leonard

The conversation surrounding Paula Deen and her use of the “N word” has simultaneously erased the accusations of job discrimination and harassment all while ignoring the larger issues of race and Food Network. In fact, Deen’s ultimate firing by the Food Network has allowed the network to position itself as anti-racist, as America’s moral conscience. Refusing to allow prejudice to stain its airwaves, the Food Network has situated itself as a progressive force of accountability and justice.

Deen, however, is reflective of their brand—one that normalizes and operationalizes whiteness all while reimagining the world of food as racially transcendent. Revelations regarding Deen burst that illusion. With this in mind, we are sharing an excerpt from Lisa Guerrero’s brilliant chapter from our recent book, African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings

. . .

In all of its programming, even within programs where race is undeniably apparent, either because of the celebrity or the cuisine, food is presented as a race-neutral cultural object.  Unfortunately, in a race-based society, as the United Statesis, “race-neutral” invariably gets translated as “white.”  Food Network trades in the notion of the “racelessness” of food to create a commodified sense of neoliberal inclusion and equality, wherein the focus is placed on individuals and not on systems. Food is portrayed across the network as a “universal language;” but as discussed above, it is definitely constructed as a specifically class-based language, as well as a language constructed in specifically racialized terms.  To be fair, Food Network is no different from most other cable television networks where whiteness is predominant and becomes easily normalized and rendered invisible to most viewers.

Ironically, the relatability that Food Network carefully crafts around its personalities is almost completely belied by the “everyday” lifestyles many of the network celebrities are show to have as they are strategically integrated into their respective shows, most notably with Ina Garten, Giada DeLaurentis, and Bobby Flay.  While the wealth and whiteness displayed in these, and much of Food Network’s other programming is conspicuous, they are treated as commonplace, the effect of which is twofold:  1) it creates a socioracial standard when it comes to the act of food consumption; and 2) it suggestively endorses the idea of food as a racial and economic privilege. 

Through its successful erasure of race and class, Food Networkperpetuates certain understandings about the social landscape in which people think about food consumption and commodification as being generally equal amongst various populations, even as statistically and programmatically most people can see that food equality isn’t a reality.  But Food Network is able to maintain this profitable food fantasy by constructing its food narratives in a very particular sociohistorical vacuum that allows audiences to distance themselves from not only certain tediums surrounding daily food habits, but also the sociohistorical and socioeconomic systems of food production and preparation in the United States.  The strategic use of blackness on the network is one of the primary ways in which this distancing is enabled.

The relative absence of blackness on Food Network, while not unlike the relative absence of blackness on network television generally speaking, succeeds in denying the significant place African Americans have, both historically and contemporaneously, in the creation of American food culture and foodways.  This erasure, while creating an amputated impression of American food backgrounds, does so in deliberate ways that are in keeping with long histories of using whiteness to signify notions of expertise, virtuosity, superiority, propriety, and polish.  In other words, in order to cement the network’s guiding narrative of elevating food to a craft, an art, an aspiration, it needs to simultaneously elevate whiteness, usually white maleness. 

 Not surprisingly, the programming on Food Network frames American food in very Eurocentric terms, tracing food origins and traditions to primarily Western, European nations, while periodically recognizing the “exotic” fare of Latin America or Asia.  There is little to no recognition of African cuisines within programming, despite the growing popularity of African food and restaurants among American consumers sparked by growing numbers of African immigrants to the United States, and probably represented most notably by the often tokenized celebrity chef, Marcus Samuelsson, who was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden.  Neither is there much linkage drawn between the specificity of African American soul food and the development of much of what is considered American “southern food.”  The erasure of these African and African-American cultural linkages to American food habits and histories effectively reimagines a significant portion of American food architecture as almost exclusively white, a reimagining not supported by history. 

Now certainly Food Network isn’t The History Channel, and viewers aren’t necessarily expecting to be provided with critically accurate or developed histories of food origins, routes, or social significances.  Nonetheless, its lack of wider, more representative narrative frames within its programming results in two things:  First, there is a barely perceptible, encompassing whitening of both the network itself, as well as the perspectives it creates about food relationships within American populations.  Secondly, when racial “diversity” and representation do occur, they have the effect of “tokenism” rather than inclusion.  Nowhere is this latter effect more apparent than in the network’s small club of Black cooking personalities.

 The framing of Food Network and The Cooking Channel break down into simplistic terms as “The U.S.” and “The Global,” respectively.  As such, The Cooking Channel does appear to embrace diversity in a larger, more transparent way than Food Network.  However, the apparent differentials of framing are really only on a cosmetic level.  There are more people of color that appear regularly on The Cooking Channel, but only slightly more, and considering the overbearing whiteness of Food Network, it really wouldn’t take much to have “more” racial diversity.  But the neutralized by emphasizing the notion of  “the exotic.”  The people of color on The Cooking Channel are, by and large, not of the United States, creating a comforting distance between U.S. audiences and any troublesome considerations about racism. 

In scholarly terms, it wouldn’t be far off the mark to think about Food Network as “the colonial” and The Cooking Channel as “the postcolonial.”  In other words, Food Networkdenies race and its systems by trying to devalue and/or erase race altogether, while The Cooking Channel denies race and its systems by putting race on display in almost exhibitional terms so that audiences don’t relate to it as a “real” thing.  In both cases, whiteness is positioned as the fulcrum of food experiences and knowledges.  And ultimately, blackness, especially American blackness, is relegated to becoming the specialty ingredient that gets used sparingly in the recipe of televisual food programming for fear that its flavor won’t be palatable to American consumers.

 

Postscript: 

As we’ve seen over the last few days not only with the vociferous response by Deen supporters, but also with SCOTUS gutting the Voting Rights Act, Texas scrambling to capitalize on that decision by pushing through a Voter ID bill, the dehumanizing tactics of the defense counsel in the George Zimmerman trial, and the countless racist microaggressions the accounts of which we are bombarded with daily, Paula Deen’s words and behaviors are, in themselves, unsurprising and relatively unremarkable, but rather indicative of the banality of American racism.  As several scholars have articulately pointed out in response to the Deen controversy, (including David J. Leonard), and as I have tried to address in this piece in broader ways, while Deen should certainly be held responsible for the ways in which her actions contribute to the continuation of systemic and ideologic racisms in the United States, the problem is much bigger than her use of racial epithets and her disturbing bucolic nostalgia for the racial order of the antebellum South. 

Perhaps the biggest problem of which Deen is but one very small symptom, is a problem which will, in all likelihood strangle equality and freedom for allAmerican citizens; it is the problem of the United States’ misguided belief in its own magnanimity of race; the delusion that we have remedied our racial illnesses and no longer need to be vigilant about the sickness, and in fact, can be prideful about the “past tense” of our racial struggles.  This blind hubris (which Justice Ginsburg so aptly identified in her dissension to the Voting Rights Act decision), allows for people like Paula Deen to sincerely dislocate their actions from the insidiousness of racism…since racism has been fixed, (so it goes), then certainly what people do and to whom they do it can’t be considered racism. 

Unfortunately, this racist psychosis, the inability to see racism even as you are enacting it, supporting it, contributing to it, benefitting from it, is one of many deleterious side-effects of our post-racial nation, and is sure to kill us quicker than a Paula Deen recipe.   

. . . 

Lisa A. Guerrero is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University Pullman.  She is the editor of Teaching Race in the 21st Century: College Professors Talk About Their Fears, Risks, and Rewards (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and co-editor of African Americans onTelevision: Race-ing for Ratings (Praeger Press) with David J. Leonard.