Books about Post multicultural from Amazon.com

Arguing that the contemporary commitment to the importance of cultural identity has renovated rather than replaced an earlier commitment to racial identity, Walter Benn Michaels asserts that the idea of culture, far from constituting a challenge to racism, is actually a form of racism. Our America offers both a provocative reinterpretation of the role of identity in modernism and a sustained critique of the role of identity in postmodernism.
“We have a great desire to be supremely American,” Calvin Coolidge wrote in 1924. That desire, Michaels tells us, is at the very heart of American modernism, giving form and substance to a cultural movement that would in turn redefine America’s cultural and collective identity—ultimately along racial lines. A provocative reinterpretation of American modernism, Our America also offers a new way of understanding current debates over the meaning of race, identity, multiculturalism, and pluralism.
Michaels contends that the aesthetic movement of modernism and the social movement of nativism came together in the 1920s in their commitment to resolve the meaning of identity—linguistic, national, cultural, and racial. Just as the Johnson Immigration Act of 1924, which excluded aliens, and the Indian Citizenship Act of the same year, which honored the truly native, reconceptualized national identity, so the major texts of American writers such as Cather, Faulkner, Hurston, and Williams reinvented identity as an object of pathos—something that can be lost or found, defended or betrayed. Our America is both a history and a critique of this invention, tracing its development from the white supremacism of the Progressive period through the cultural pluralism of the Twenties. Michaels’s sustained rereading of the texts of the period—the canonical, the popular, and the less familiar—exposes recurring concerns such as the reconception of the image of the Indian as a symbol of racial purity and national origins, the relation between World War I and race, contradictory appeals to the family as a model for the nation, and anxieties about reproduction that subliminally tie whiteness and national identity to incest, sterility, and impotence.
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Price: $19.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Haunted by scandal and secrets, Lillian Baptiste fled Dominica when she was fourteen after discovering she was the daughter of Iris, the half-crazy woman whose life was told of in chanté mas songs sung during Carnival—songs about a village on a mountaintop littered with secrets, masquerades that supposedly fly and wreak havoc, and a man who suddenly and mysteriously dropped dead.

After twenty years away, Lillian returns to her native island to face the demons of her past—and with the help of Teddy, a man who has loved her for many years, she may yet find a way to heal.

Set in both contemporary Washington, D.C., and post-World War II Dominica, Unburnable weaves together West Indian history, African culture, and American sensibilities. Richly textured and lushly rendered, Unburnable showcases a welcome and assured new voice.

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Price: $5.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Thema Bryant-Davis examines the cultural issues that health-care professionals need to consider in caring for trauma survivors .
Price: $24.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Recent advances in trauma treatment, coupled with ongoing traumatic world events, point to a critical need for global standards in assessment But despite the best intentions of Western psychology, one model does not fit all cultures. Cross-Cultural Assessment of Psychological Trauma and PTSD addresses key issues in the field to help fill this knowledge gap.

Focusing equally on theoretical concepts, culturally valid assessment methods, and cultural adaptation in trauma and resilience, 29 experts present the cutting edge of research and strategies. Extended case examples (including West Africans in Austria, Hmong in the U.S., and Aboriginal people in Australia) illustrate an informative range of symptom profiles, comorbid conditions, and coping skills, as well as secondary traumas that can occur in asylum seekers. Professional concerns are also highlighted, from training and competency issues to the challenges of translating assessment into treatment. The results are a vital set of insights and guidelines that will contribute to more aware and meaningful practice.

Included in the coverage:

• Twenty-one questions central to understanding trauma in cultural context.
• In-depth studies on the effects of trauma over multiple generations, and developmental issues among traumatized youth.
• A review of traditional interventions and current trauma assessment practice from China.
• Reports on the combined use of psycho- and pharmacotherapy in treating refugees.
• Cross-cultural perspectives on the Impact of Events Scale—Revised and other widely used assessment methods.
• Renewed debates over the nature of PTSD as a reaction to mass trauma.

With the world in its current state, Cross-Cultural Assessment of Psychological Trauma and PTSD is necessary reading for practitioners and academics in mental health. It is also highly relevant to those in a range of ethnomedicine, social work, and international aid and advocacy.

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Price: $55.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

ãProfessor Redlich has made a remarkable effort to transcend narrow ethnic perspectives in telling this sad and shocking story. . . . This is a moving and impressive book. . . . Its significance extends far beyond the context of local or regional history.ä --Antony Polonsky

ã. . . by reconstructing the history/experience of Brzezany in Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish memories [Redlich] has produced a beautiful parallel narrative of a world that was lost three times over. . . . a truly wonderful achievement.ä --Jan T. Gross

Noted historian and Holocaust survivor Shimon Redlich tells the tragic story of the multiethnic community of Brzezany, in eastern Galacia, in the years 1919- 1945, based on historical sources and on the memories of its former inhabitants, including those of the author..
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