Hutchins Library News Blog

Welcome to another edition of "From Our Shelves," where I read a book from our collections and give you a short review to help you decide if you want to read it. This week I read Psalms of My People by lenny duncan. The author takes us on a learning tour of Black History in the United States through hip-hop. In the book, the author selects key works in hip-hop and looks at them as religious texts. The author then writes a psalm on the specific work and looks also at context and broader history.  Initially I was not sure what to make of the book, but once I started reading, it drew me right in. I just kept reading. It is an accessible text, and the psalms format gives the material a bit of rhythm. There is a musicality as you read. Overall, this is a book that packs a lot of wisdom, and I really enjoyed it. Thus I highly recommend it.

Here are the details from the library catalog so you can find it in our library:

Psalms of My People by Lenny Duncan

Call Number: Stacks 782.421 D911p 2024

ISBN: 9781506479026

Publication Date: 2024-01-09

If you want to understand the Black experience in the US, you have to understand hip-hop. James Baldwin, in his famous talk "The Struggle for the Artist's Integrity," suggests that "the poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us." And to understand the truth about the history of Black peoples in America, argues lenny duncan, we must look to the modern Black poet: the hip-hop artist. In Psalms of My People, artist, scholar, and activist lenny duncan treats the work of hip-hop artists from the last several decades--from N.W.A, Tupac, and Biggie to Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z, and Kendrick Lamar--like sacred scripture.  "Who else but the hip-hop artist," asks Duncan, "has embodied the cries, pain, and secret concrete ? Whose art? Our art. Whose story is written in the book of life with crimson lines dipped in a well that is 400+ years deep? Whose story? Our story. For whom does God bring down empires? Us."

 

July is Disability Pride Month. This observance, usually in July, originated in the United States to commemorate the passing of the Americans With Disabilities Act in July of 1990 (link to text of the act). This month is meant to celebrate people with disabilities, their contributions, achievements, identities, and cultures. It is also a time to raise awareness that while progress has been made there are still many challenges ahead.

Here is a small list of books that may be of interest for this month and the rest of the year. Feel free to visit our library website and use the library catalog to search for these and other titles. Need assistance? Contact us at the Reference Desk.

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

Call Number: Stacks 616.852 F686w 2023

ISBN: 9780593238127

Publication Date: 2023-02-21

By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD--a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma--but you can learn to move with it. Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body--and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

 

The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781551528922

Publication Date: 2022

"In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled - and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation? (Note: to access e-book you may need to authenticate and provide your Berea College credentials to gain access).

 

Disability Visibility by Alice Wong

Call Number: Stacks 305.908 D611 2020

ISBN: 9781984899422

Publication Date: 2020-06-30

One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent-but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people,just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. From Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond- this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.

 

Helen Keller: Autobiographies and Other Writings (LOA #378) by Helen Keller

Call Number: Stacks 362.4109 K29h 2023

ISBN: 9781598537727

Publication Date: 2024-03-12

In her own words, the legendary American icon who overcame adversity to become a brilliant writer and powerful advocate for the disabled- The Story of My Life, The World I Live In, plus a dozen revealing personal letters, public speeches, essays, and more. Here, in a deluxe hardcover edition, is the inspiring story of an American icon-"the greatest woman of our age," as Winston Churchill put it-in her own words. The Story of My Life(1903), published just before she became the first deaf-blind college graduate in the United States, brought Helen Keller worldwide fame, and has remained a touchstone for generations. Recounting her astonishing relationship with her teacher, Annie Sullivan, "the Miracle Worker," it offers still-vivid testimony of the transformative power of love and faith in overcoming adversity. Keller's underappreciated literary artistry and philosophical acumen are especially evident in the personal essays that make up The World I Live In(1908)- exploring her own "disability," she reflects profoundly on language, thinking, dreams, belief, and the relations between the senses. Also included are more than a dozen letters, speeches, essays, and other works-most of them from out-of-print, uncollected, or previously unpublished sources-charting more than 50 years of Keller's exemplary life and career. These pieces reveal her commitments to women's rights, workers' rights, racial justice, and peace, as well as her advocacy for the disabled.

 

The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann

Call Number: Young Adult M2811de 2021

ISBN: 9781534419360

Publication Date: 2021-03-16

 In the tradition of Girl, Interrupted, this fiery historical novel follows four young women in the early 20th century whose lives intersect when they are locked up by a world that took the poor, the disabled, the marginalized-and institutionalized them for life. The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don't think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn't bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she's ever had, thanks to one unexpected, life-altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes.

 

Hawking by Jim Ottaviani; Leland Myrick (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 530.092 H392zo

ISBN: 9781626720251

Publication Date: 2019-07-02

Following their New York Times-bestselling graphic novel Feynman, Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick deliver a gripping biography of Stephen Hawking, one of the most important scientists of our time. From his early days at the St Albans School and Oxford, Stephen Hawking's brilliance and good humor were obvious to everyone he met. A lively and popular young man, it's no surprise that he would later rise to celebrity status. At twenty-one he was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Though the disease weakened his muscles and limited his ability to move and speak, it did nothing to limit his mind. He went on to do groundbreaking work in cosmology and theoretical physics for decades after being told he had only a few years to live. He brought his intimate understanding of the universe to the public in his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time. Soon after, he added pop-culture icon to his accomplishments by playing himself on shows like Star Trek, The Simpsons, and The Big Bang Theory, and becoming an outspoken advocate for disability rights. In Hawking, writer Jim Ottaviani and artist Leland Myrick have crafted an intricate portrait of the great thinker, the public figure, and the man behind both identities.

Some resources from the web:

• The Wikipedia entry. Did you know, for example, that the United States overall did not recognize this observance as of 2022? Meanwhile, various cities in the United States did observe and continue to observe it.
• The U.S. Census Bureau offers one of their "Facts for Features" on the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• A look at Disability Pride Month and the Disability Rights Movement via PBS.
• On the Berea College campus, students needing services can contact the Disability and Accessibility Services Office.