(Name-mce) ListServ Unique National Book Award Honors Books that Celebrate Human Rights and Social Justice

[Bill Howe]

  *Unique National Book Award Honors Books that Celebrate Human Rights and
Social Justice*   Posted on : Sun, 10 Dec 2006 05:03:00 GMT | Author : The
Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights
News Category : PressRelease **
*<http://www.earthtimes.org/rss.php?cat=PressRelease>
*

BOSTON, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- In the only award of its kind, a national
center for the study of bigotry and human rights today (Human Rights Day)
named 10 new books as outstanding in showing the possibility for social
change and resiliency in the face of obstacles.

  "The books honored by the Myers Award uniquely cut through denials of
myriad forms of bigotry in America, and distinctively speak of alternative
possibilities," says Loretta J. Williams, director of the Myers Outstanding
Book Awards. "You can't 'un-educate' the person who learns to read. Books
help convey the exhilaration of challenge and resiliency in history, past
and present."

The independent Myers Center is housed at Simmons College in Boston, in a
partnership that reflects the college's vision for human rights and global
human justice. Simmons College President Susan C. Scrimshaw lauded the Myers
Awards for "inspiring women and men to a reflective and active civic life."

"At every phase of our lives," said Scrimshaw, "we must stop and ask
questions of our assumptions. So many people deny injustices. A reflective
life is one where we do more than 'go with the flow.' Intentional innovative
creativity in dismantling inequities and helping build global human rights
is needed, and these important awards honor and reward that."

The range of topics addressed by the authors includes: how white children
learn, and can un-learn, the "power codes" of racism; how the wealth of the
U.S. is racialized and gendered; how the arts of those in the African
Diaspora have expressed the pain and joy of life; how determined women in
the anti-poverty days took to the streets and to community development
despite the odds; how many women whose histories have been "erased" have
been innovative change agents; how the quest for jobs and justice led to
more inclusive workplaces despite organized resistance; how white Ellis
Island ethnicity came to trump Black power; how pressure not to bring one's
"whole self" to the office or the public limits civil and human rights; how
fear pervades the Arab, Muslim and dark-skinned communities; and how the
value of positive family nurturing trumps who one's parents are.

"There is a remarkable confluence in the themes and messages," said
Williams. "People can -- and must -- resist the power codes placing them in
harm's way."

The 2006 Myers Outstanding Book Award winners are:

-- "What If All The Kids Are White? Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with
Young Children and Families," by Louise Derman-Sparks and Patricia G. Ramsey
with Julie Olsen Edwards, Teachers College Press 2006

-- "Roots, Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights in America," by
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Harvard University Press 2006

-- "The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide," by
Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles, Betsy Leondar Wright, Rose M. Brewer, and
Rebecca Adamson, The New Press 2006

-- "Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace," by Nancy
MacLean, Russell Sage/Harvard University Press 2006

-- "We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after
9/11," Tram Nguyen, Beacon Press 2005

-- "Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on
Poverty," by Annelise Orleck, Beacon Press 2005

-- "Creating Black Americans: African-American History & Its Meaning: 1619
to the Present," by Nell Irvin Painter, Oxford University Press 2006

-- "The Tango Makes Three" (children's book), by Justin Richardson and Peter
Parnell, Simon and Schuster 2005

-- "Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America," by Karenna
Gore Schiff, Miramax 2006

-- "Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights," by Kenji Yoshino,
Random House 2006

The Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights



-- 
Bill Howe
http://www.billhowe.org

Past-President
National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME)
http://www.nameorg.org