New Books have arrived at the ROMC library! The ROMC Resource Library has recently purchased over $1000 worth of books on Multi-culturalism. Most of the books purchased are on topics such as Richard Oakes, Malcolm X, the occupation of Alcatraz, and many more multi-cultural based books. Many of the books purchased were suggested by students and staff from the ROMC Resource Library Sneak Preview event, so please feel free to email us on Facebook if you have any suggestions on what you would like to see at the ROMC Resource Library.
Other multicultural studies that will be housed at our library:
-African American
-Asian American
-Latino/Chicano
-Native American
-Race, Class, & Gender,
-Politics and Society
-Women's studies
Not only are we working on housing various types of multicultural publications at the ROMC library, our staff is also working on a virtual library. Our virtual library will allow greater access to materials about Richard Oakes in particular, and about multiculturalism more broadly.
The ROMC Resource Library will officially open October 1st 2009.
Please check back for updates on when our virtual library will be available.
Here are some of the books recently purchased:
American Indian Activism: Alcatraz to the Longest Walk
Edited by Troy Johnson, Joane Nagel, and Duane Champagne
The American Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island was the catalyst for a more generalized movement in which Native Americans from across the country have sought redress of grievances, attempting to right the many wrongs committed against them. In this volume, some of the dominant scholars in the field chronicle and analyze Native American activism of the 1960s and 1970s. The book also provides extended background and historical analysis of the Alcatraz takeover and discusses its place in contemporary Indian
activism.
Like A Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee
Paul Chaat Smith & Robert Allen Warrior
It's the mid-1960's, and everyone is fighting back. Black Americans are fighting for civil rights, the counterculture is trying to subvert the Vietnam War, and women are fighting for their liberation. Indians were fighting, too, though it's a fight too few have documented, and even fewer remember. At the time, newspapers and television broadcasts were filled with images of Indian activists staging dramatic events such as the seizure of Alcatraz in 1969, the storming of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building on the eve of Nixon's re-election in 1972, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)-supported seizure of Wounded Knee by the Oglala Sioux in 1973. Like a Hurricane puts these events into historical context and provides one of the first narrative accounts of that momentous period. Unlike most other books written about American Indians, this book does not seek to persuade readers that government polices were cruel and misguided. Nor is it told from the perspective of outsiders looking in. Written by two American Indians, Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane is a gripping account of how for a brief, but brilliant, season Indians strategized to change the course and tone of American Indian-U.S. government interaction. Unwaveringly honest, it analyzes not only the period's successes but also its failures.
Heart of the Rock: The Indian Invasion of Alcatraz
Adam Fortunate Eagle
In 1969, Richard Oakes and Adam Fortunate Eagle, then known as Adam Nordwall, instigated an invasion of Alcatraz by American Indians. From the mainland, Fortunate Eagle orchestrated the events, but they assumed an uncontrollable life of their own. Fortunate Eagle provides an intimate memoir of the occupation and the events leading up to it. Accompanied by a variety of photographs capturing the people, places, and actions involved, Heart of the Rock brings these turbulent times vividly to life.
Red Power and Self-Determination: The American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island
Troy Johnson
The occupation of Alcatraz Island by American Indians from November 20, 1969, through June 11, 1971, focused the attention of the world on Native Americans and helped develop pan-Indian activism. In this detailed examination of the takeover, Troy R. Johnson tells the story of those who organized the occupation and those who participated, some by living on the island and others by soliciting donations of money, food, water, clothing, and other necessities.
Johnson documents the unrest in the Bay Area urban Indian population that helped spur the takeover and draws on interviews with those involved to describe everyday life on Alcatraz during the nineteen-month occupation. In describing the federal government’s reactions as Americans rallied in support of the Indians, he turns to federal government archives and Nixon administration files. The book is a must-read for historians and others interested in the civil rights era, Native American history, and contemporary American Indian issues.
Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture
Rafael Pérez-Torres
Focusing on the often unrecognized role race plays in expressions of Chicano culture, Mestizaje is a provocative exploration of the volatility and mutability of racial identities. In this important moment in Chicano studies, Rafael Pérez-Torres reveals how the concepts and realities of race, historical memory, the body, and community have both constrained and opened possibilities for forging new and potentially liberating multiracial identities.
Informed by a broad-ranging theoretical investigation of identity politics and race and incorporating feminist and queer critiques, Pérez-Torres skillfully analyzes Chicano cultural production. Contextualizing the history of mestizaje, he shows how the concept of mixed race has been used to engage issues of hybridity and voice and examines the dynamics that make mestizo and mestiza identities resistant to, as well as affirmative of, dominant forms of power. He also addresses the role that mestizaje has played in expressive culture, including the hip-hop music of Cypress Hill and the vibrancy of Chicano poster art. Turning to issues of mestizaje in literary creation, Pérez-Torres offers critical readings of the works of Emma Pérez, Gil Cuadros, and Sandra Cisneros, among others. This book concludes with a consideration of the role that the mestizo body plays as a site of elusive or displaced knowledge.
Moving beyond the oppositions—nationalism versus assimilation, men versus women, Texans versus Californians—that have characterized much of Chicano studies, Mestizaje synthesizes and assesses twenty-five years of pathbreaking thinking to make a case for the core components, sensibilities, and concerns of the discipline.
Rafael Pérez-Torres is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Movements in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins, coauthor of To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back: Memories of an East LA Outlaw, and coeditor of The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán, 1970–2000.
