Day: November 5, 2009

  • It was with joy and fear that I finished Henry Wiencek’s breathtaking saga, “The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White.” Joy, in that I was introduced to such a compelling cast of characters, set within riveting contexts, drawn with insight and erudition, illuminated by vivid, narrative that pulls the reader toward the important…

  • The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White St. Martin’s Press an imprint of Macmillan February 1999 ISBN: 978-0-312-25393-6 ISBN10: 0-312-25393-1 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches 400 pages, Plus 16-page b&w photo insert Henry Wiencek Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award The Hairstons is the extraordinary story of the largest family in America,…

  • In “Pure Beauty,” Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain tackles this question by studying a cultural institution: Japanese American community beauty pageants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Honolulu. King-O’Riain employs rich ethnographic fieldwork to discover how these pageants seek to maintain racial and ethnic purity amid shifting notions of cultural identity.

  • Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture University of Minnesota Press 2006 272 pages 15 halftones; 5 7⁄8 x 9 Paper ISBN: 0-8166-4595-7 Paper ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4595-4 Cloth ISBN: 0-8166-4594-9 Cloth ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-4594-7 Rafael Pérez-Torres, Professor and Chair of English University of California, Los Angeles A major reassessment of how mixed-race identity affects Chicano culture and…