Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

For centuries, the women in Ninon Moise’s family have been afflicted by obscure, inexplicable medical phenomena. Unlike her forebears, Ninon refuses to passively accept her cursed fate and rebels against the indifferent medical professionals who dismiss her condition as uninteresting, feminine, obscure, niche, or incurable.

One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. From the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington, Judy Heumann recounts her lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.

Academia isn’t an easy place to be if your brain isn’t quite right. Psychiatrically disabled people working in higher education are reminded every day that their privilege, their very livelihoods, can be stripped away by the groundless suspicions of others. This book aims to make higher education, and the rest of our society, more humane.

What is the direct impact that disability studies has on the lives of disabled people today? The editors and contributors to this essential anthology, Barriers and Belonging, provide thirty-seven personal narratives that explore what it means to be disabled and why the field of disability studies matters.

An original memoir from the acclaimed poet and author about the accident that left him a paraplegic, and his struggle to find independence, love, and a life on his own terms.

Born into a ‘formerly untouchable family in small-town India,’ Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear ‘Dalit looking.’ Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste’s influence in India and how it has carried over to US institutions.

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. These stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon. A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection of horror, fantasy, science fiction, and gritty crime by both new and established Indigenous authors.

‘In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. I was ten years old.’ Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations -- those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square.

Bob was determined to solve, in one stroke, the problems of overpopulation and racism. The charming, larger-than-life lawyer and his brilliant wife, Sheryl, launched a radical experiment to raise their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx. Matthew Pratt Guterl, one of the children, narrates a family saga of astonishing originality, in which even the best intentions would prove woefully inadequate.

The immersive and eye-opening story of Southlake, Texas, a district that seemed to offer everything parents would want for their children. But after a series of racist incidents became public, a plan to promote inclusiveness was proposed in response -- and a coordinated, well-funded conservative backlash erupted, lighting the fire of a national movement on the verge of changing the face of public schools across the country.

Jewish women were undeniably instrumental in shaping the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Yet historians and participants themselves have overlooked their contributions as Jews. This has left many vital questions unasked and unanswered -- until now. Delving into archival sources and conducting extensive interviews with these fierce pioneers, Joyce Antler has broken the silence about the confluence of feminism and Jewish identity.

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million -- all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian. Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the 20th century.