Preface

ONE GROWING UP AND GROWING OLDER

Introduction

CHARLOTTE NEKOLA

Good Mothers, Bad Daughters, What does Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" have to do with growing up female in the 1950s?

TOMMI AVICOLLI

He Defies You Still: The Memoirs of a Sissy, "School was one of the more painful experiences of my youth." Avicolli remembers growing up gay.

LYDIA MINATOYA

from Talking to High Monks in the Snow: An Asian American Odyssey "And so my parents gave me an American name and hoped that I could pass. They nourished me with the American dream: Opportunity, Will, Transformation."

ALFRED KAZIN

The Kitchen, Kazin recalls his mother's kitchen on the Friday nights of his childhood: the khalleh bread, the gefillte fish, the chicken soup with noodles and dumplings, the nutcake filled with almonds, the samovar of Russian tea.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin considers his father's legacy to him, the corrosive bitterness caused by racism.

LESLIE LAWRENCE

The Death of Fred Astaire Lawrence takes us on a modern journey from intention through conception to lesbian motherhood.

JULES HENRY

Human Obsolescence In this study of a public hospital for the aged, Henry shows us how human beings can be made obsolete, turned into junk.

NANCY MAIRS

Carnal Acts Mairs receives a letter asking her for a talk "on how you cope with your M.S. disability, and also how you discovered your voice as a writer."

TWO EDUCATION

Introduction

JONATHAN KOZOL

from Death at an Early Age An art teacher tries to extinguish what little life remains in an eight-year-old inner city student.

SANTHA RAMA RAU

By Any Other Name In India, under British colonial rule, a school headmistress gives Santha and Premila "pretty English names".

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

The Paterson Public Library A writer remembers the risks she once took to get to the library and the rewards that awaited her there.

MICHAEL DORRIS

Trusting the Words A Native American writer encounters a tough dilemma as he reads aloud to his young daughters a book he loved as a child.

MIKE ROSE

The Politics of Remediation The students that pass through UCLA's Tutorial Center find the ways of higher education alienating and bewildering.

BARBARA EHRENREICH

Premature Pragmatism Why are college students abandoning "erotic reverie, metaphysical speculation, and schemes for universal peace and justice" in order to engage in "contemplation of future tax shelters and mortgage payments"?

JUNE JORDON

Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan College students in a course on Black English respond to an act of violence.

THREE MASS CULTURE

Introduction

STUART EWEN

ELIZABETH EWEN

In the Shadow of the Image Everywhere we look, mass produced images pour into our eyes--and later pop up in our behavior.

JERRY MANDER

Television: Audiovisual Training for the Modern World Inherent in the intersection of television technology and human physiology are a number of unfortunate probabilities: brainwashing, passivity, hyperactivity in children, the erosion of creativity.

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

TV's Black World Turns--But Stays Unreal There is a "gulf that separates the images of black people...on television and the reality that blacks experience every day." Tune in to the "Cosby" show.

BENJAMIN DEMOTT

Class Struggle in Hollywood Demott looks at several Hollywood treatments of social class and discovers that social class doesn't exist in America.

BARBARA EHRENREICH

The Wretched of the Hearth Why is one of our favorite television personages a "fat, loudmouthed" working-class feminist?

SUSAN FALUDI

Beauty and the Backlash In the 1980s, if a woman wasn't built like a fashion mannequin (34-23-36), she wasn't in style.

LISA JONES

1-800-WASP "Catalogs are mighty image banks these days." And less than 5% of the images are black.

ROLAND BARTHES

Toys What is the difference between a set of wooden blocks and a plastic doll that drinks water and wets its diaper?

FOUR GENDER

Introduction

SUSAN BROWNMILLER

Emotion Why are women expected to weep, blush, adore babies, and live for love?

AUDRE LORDE

Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prosthesis "A mastectomy is not a guilty act that must be hidden in order for me to regain acceptance or protect the sensibilities of others."

CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

Lalita Mashi An Indian woman, now living in California, tries to piece together and to reimagine the tragic story of her aunt, who died in a small Bengal village.

SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

The Men We Carry in Our Minds Growing up "dirt poor," the author saw men, not women, as victims.

DAVE BARRY

Why Sports Is a Drag "...to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it."

LEONARD KRIEGEL

On the Beach at Noordwijk "No man ever quite rids himself of the anxiety of performance."

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ

Huck Finn, Dan Quayle and the Value of Acceptance A gay man, the son of immigrants, reflects on the meaning of "family values."

LINDSY VAN GELDER

Marriage as a Restricted Club, "...the next wedding I attend will be my own--to the woman I've loved and lived with for nearly six years."

FIVE RACE AND ETHNICITY

Introduction

STEPHEN JAY GOULD

Racist Arguments and IQ Why are some researchers so eager to prove one group of people less intelligent than another?

ANNA QUINDLEN

The Great White Myth, Is affirmative action unfair to white males?

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

from Colored People, An African American wishes he could "experience a humanity that is neither colorless nor reducible to color."

BARBARA EHRENREICH

Cultural Baggage, A woman struggles to overcome the shame of having no "ethnic background."

AMY TAN

Mother Tongue, A Chinese American novelist refuses to see her mother's speech as "broken" English.

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

The Myth of the Latina Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria "...to the others, in their tailored skirts and silk blouses, we must have seemed `hopeless' and `vulgar'."

MICHAEL PARENTI

Luigi, Tony, and the Family, "In the world of commercials, Italians tend to be simpleminded oral creatures. They taste, sip, eat, chew, and offer exclamations such as `Mama Mia! Datza spicy meatball!'"

MICHAEL DORRIS

For Indians, No Thanksgiving This cherished holiday represents a continuing denial of the crimes committed against Native Americans.

TONI MORRISON

A Slow Walk of Trees (as Grandmother Would Say), Hopeless (as Grandfather Would Say), What does the future hold for black Americans?

SIX MONEY, WORK, AND SOCIAL CLASS

Introduction

JAMAICA KINCAID

from A Small Place, Kincaid takes us on a trip to her native Antigua where we will, minute by minute, grow ugly.

STUDS TERKEL

Mike LeFevre, A steelworker ponders the human costs of alienated labor and offers several fantasies of a better way to organize and reward work.

BARBARA GARSON

Whistle While You Work, "The crime of modern industry is not forcing us to work, but denying us real work."

JESUS COLON

On The Docks It Was Cold, A man remembers his first jobs forty years earlier as a dock and train-yard worker.

JUDY BRADY

I Want a Wife, A woman thinks about the work she does as a wife and concludes that someone is getting a good deal here.

ELLEN GOODMAN

The Company Man "He worked himself to death, finally and precisely, at 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning."

JERRY MANDER

Corporations as Machines, Corporations have a many-tentacled life of their own, separate from individuals or groups of human beings connected with them.

SEVEN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Introduction

ELLEN ULLMAN

Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life Living and working in a very strange world, computer programmers are desperately eager to get "closer to the machine."

JOY HARJO

Three Generations of Native American Women's Birth Experience, Giving birth in a high-tech hospital reminds Harjo of the wisdom of traditional ways.

WILLIAM H. TUCKER

To Make Nature an Accomplice, Again and again, scientists have used the most contradictory evidence to "prove" that blacks are inferior to whites.

LEWIS THOMAS

The Tucson Zoo, His surprisingly delightful encounter with beavers and otters leads a scientist to rethink his notion of human nature.

SUSAN GRIFFIN

His Certainty: How He Rules the Universe, "The movements of his life, he says, are determined by the predictable lines of logic. Each move he makes is an improvement, he declares. All his efforts lead to betterment."

PAUL GOODMAN

A Causerie at the Military-Industrial, At the height of the Vietnam War, an anti-war radical is invited to address a symposium of military industrialists and denounces them soundly.

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

Advanced Biology, A junior high school girl who's had a religious upbringing is "offended and excited" by an older boy who tutors her in science.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD

Moon, Mann, and Otto, A paleontologist defends Darwin's theories against cowardly textbook publishers and the promoters of "creation science".

EIGHT NATURE/THE ENVIRONMENT

Introduction

JOY WILLIAMS

Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp "Nature has become a world of appearances, a more source of materials. You've been editing it for some time; now you're in the process of deleting it."

BARRY COMMONER

At War with the Planet, The ecosphere and the technosphere have different shapes and different laws--and "the two worlds are at war."

WENDELL BERRY

Mayhem in the Industrial Paradise, To whom does the earth belong: to us and our children or to Kentucky River Coal and Bethlehem Steel?

ELIZABETH MARTINEZ

When People of Color Are an Endangered Species, The nation's biggest hazardous waste landfill is located in a community 78.9% black--coincidence or environmental racism?

SUSAN GRIFFIN

Matter: How We Know, "Because we know ourselves to be made from this earth." How do we come to know this?

ALICE WALKER

Am I Blue? The narrator's encounters with a white horse pastured next door teach her some-thing about loss and grief, aesthetics, and how humans treat each other.

MICHAEL POLLAN

Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns, "For if lawn mowing feels like copying the same sentence over and over again, gardening is like writing out new ones, an infinitely variable process of invention and discovery."

JOYCE CAROL OATES

Against Nature, Oates's first memories of Nature include picking leeches off her toes.

NINE WAR

Introduction

PAUL FUSSELL

My War An English professor remembers the Second World War, which changed his life, and his view of life, forever.

JEANNE WAKATSUKI HOUSTON

JAMES D. HOUSTON

from Farewell to Manzanar Across the ocean in California, a young Japanese American girl and her family feel the repercussions of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

JONATHAN SCHELL

from The Fate of the Earth, "Where a second before there had been a city getting ready to go about its daily business on a peaceful, warm August morning, now there was a heap of debris and corpses and a stunned mass of injured humanity."

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

In the Belly of the Beast, A decommissioned Titan nuclear missile silo has been turned into a museum and a skeptical writer goes for a visit.

GLORIA EMERSON

from Winners and Losers The Vietnam War takes a serious toll on a working-class family in Massachusetts.

TIM O'BRIEN

On the Rainy River, At the height of the Vietnam war, a draft notice presents a young man with the greatest dilemma of his life.

JUNE JORDAN

On War and War and War and ... A Writer and activist rages against the waste and destructiveness of the Gulf War.

TEN PROTEST AND CHANGE

Introduction

PATRICIA MAINARDI

The Politics of Housework, Men can be quite skillful at evading housework, but women are not without resources.

PAUL MONETTE

Mustering, Gravely ill with AIDS, a gay man travels to Washington, D.C. to march for his rights.

ANNE MOODY

from Coming of Age in Mississippi, Black and white college students suffer insults and violence as they try to integrate the lunch counter at Woolworth's.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Letter From Birmingham Jail, A letter to eight white "moderate" religious leaders outlines the theory and techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience.

NOAM CHOMSKY

On Resistance What are we obligated to do when our government is waging a hideous and immoral war?

ALICE WALKER

Journal, A writer gets herself arrested at the Concord Naval Weapons Station to protest the shipment of arms to Central America.

WENDELL BERRY

Think Little, We cannot hope to save the environment unless we change our own lives.

STUDS TERKEL

Joe Gump, Jean Gump's Husband and #03789-045, a.k.a. Jean Gump, Having taken hammers to nuclear missiles, two grandparents gladly serve their time in jail.

ELEVEN ART AND THE ARTIST

Introduction

ADRIENNE RICH

How does a poet put bread on the table? Rarely are poets able to support themselves through their creative work. So when do they write?

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN

from Brothers and Keepers, His brother arrives at Wideman's house in Laramie, Wyoming, on the run, one day ahead of the police. Wideman keeps writing about that night, trying to make some sense out of it.

CHANG-RAE LEE

The Faintest Echo of Our Language, "In our life together, our strange language is the bridge...It is the last earthly thing we have." Lee remembers and narrates his mother's dying and his discovery of an artistic voice.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Jabberwocky, What is the artist's responsibility to the truth? And what really happened during the Gulf War?

JOHN DOS PASSOS

Architect, "Building a building is building the lives of the workers and dwellers in the building." Dos Passos introduces us to Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect.

JOAN DIDION

Georgia O'Keeffe, "Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant," writes O'Keeffe. "It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest." Didion, however, is as fascinated with O'Keeffe herself as with the artist's work.

JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA

Past Present, Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca revisits prison as part of a film crew and is plunged back into the volcanic anger of his memories of the prison system.

TONI CADE BAMBARA

A Sort of Preface, Bambara intimates the trouble that lies in wait should you be so foolish as to write fiction based on your own life.

Credits

Index of Authors and Titles