Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice

Bear Heart

The Wind is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman

With eloquent simplicity, Native American medicine man Bear Heart demonstrates how traditional tribal wisdom can help us maintain spiritual and physical health in today's world. "As a child I was taught, 'Chebon, the way to attain the beauty in life is through harmony. Be in harmony with all things, but most important, be in harmony with yourself first. A lot will go on in your life, some good, some bad--people may argue and some will try to take control of your life--but that one word, harmony, will neutralize any problems and help your life to become beautiful.'"--from The Wind is My Mother "A compelling and important work...Bear Heart is a gifted storyteller--readers of all backgrounds will be inspired by his lessons of how to apply traditional Native American wisdom to maintain balance in today's world...Bear Heart's is a truthful, honest voice which has let us into his world, and our world is better for it." -- Body, Mind, Spirit

Italian Folk: Vernacular Culture in Italian-American Lives

Sunday dinners, basement kitchens, and backyard gardens are everyday cultural entities long associated with Italian Americans, yet the general perception of them remains superficial and stereotypical at best. For many people, these scenarios trigger ingrained assumptions about individuals' beliefs, politics, aesthetics, values, and behaviors that leave little room for nuance and elaboration. This collection of essays explores local knowledge and aesthetic practices, often marked as "folklore," as sources for creativity and meaning in Italian-American lives. As the contributors demonstrate, folklore provides contemporary scholars with occasions for observing and interpreting behaviors and objects as part of lived experiences. Its study provides new ways of understanding how individuals and groups reproduce and contest identities and ideologies through expressive means. Italian Folk offers an opportunity to reexamine and rethink what we know about Italian Americans. The contributors to this unique book discuss historic and contemporary cultural expressions and religious practices from various parts of the United States and Canada to examine how they operate at local, national, and ...

William Still

The Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts

In the winter of 1852, a group of Philadelphia abolitionists dedicated to assisting runaway slaves in their flight to freedom formed a new assistance group to be part of the Underground Railroad--the General Vigilance Committee. William Still, himself a son of slaves, was named its secretary and executive director. Deeply moved by the stories of the fugitive slaves he helped conduct northward, Still took his committee record-keeping to a higher level. He wrote down, in eloquent narrative form, every detail of their stirring, often heartbreaking histories.Second only to the great Harriet Tubman in the number of freedom-seeking "passengers" he conducted through the Underground Railroad, Still let the words of former slaves speak for themselves. In his journals, he painstakingly reproduced vivid accounts he heard from their very lips. And he added excerpts from letters, newspapers, and legal documents to the already arresting biographical sketches, creating unforgettable portraits of the slaves' deadly struggles, brutal hardships, and narrow escapes.When the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished, William Still published his journals as The Underground Railroad. It is considered ...