Book smart
Brenda Gayle Plummer, professor of Afro-American studies and history, “Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988,” University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
The word “American” usually precedes references to “civil rights movement”; however, Plummer notes that the quest for equality in this country is best understood in an international context. And a highly competitive context at that: The nine authors that Plummer tapped for this book argue that calls for reform in the United States went unheeded until newly independent nations in Africa and Asia publicly exposed American racial hypocrisies to the United Nations.
Although Plummer wrote “Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960” (University of North Carolina Press: 1996) on her own, this volume is her first experience in editing the scholarship of others, she says.
She found the others’ insights valuable in her classroom. “I used the book,” she says, “in my course on civil rights history. Students read articles that documented segregationists’ take on foreign policy, the impact of civil rights insurgency on the U.S. agenda abroad and the impact of World War II on race relations.”
Other topics covered in the book include shifting attitudes in Europe; the “unwelcome mat” unfurled for African diplomats in Washington; the political reverberations of the 1955 Bandung peace conference; and violent racial incidents in Birmingham, Ala., that started in 1957 and continued into the 1960s.
— Barbara Wolff
Raphael Kadushin, humanities editor, UW Press, and editor of and contributor to “Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing,” 2004, published by UW Press.
Wanderlust fuels “Wonderlands.” The collection’s contributors — a mix of established gay writers and the best of the new generation — don’t settle for the obvious. Focusing on the visceral thrill of travel, they set out all over the world and always find something unexpected: love, passion, history, themselves. The result is an anthology of dynamic writing that will motivate readers to book their next flights.
Kadushin’s essay settles into the ethereal sun of a Dutch spring, while others range through the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
Mack Friedman sets off into the deceptively butch wilds of Alaska. Robert Tewdwr Moss tracks through the back roads of Syria and his own version of Arabian nights. Colm Tóibín discovers a Spanish Brigadoon, and Edward Field drinks tea with Paul Bowles. For Wayne Koestenbaum, Vienna is a city of high and low culture. Asia becomes a place of second chances for Philip Gambone. Michael Lowenthal remembers a jarring encounter in the Scottish Highlands, and Tim Miller tallies the 1001 beds he has slept in all over the world.
Kadushin will read from “Wonderlands” at Borders West, 3750 University Ave., on Thursday, March 4, at 7 p.m.
All royalties earned from book’s sales will support UW Press’ other gay-interest titles, including books in the Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiography series that Kadushin co-founded in 1998. See http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/livingout.htm.
To submit a tome for consideration, e-mail wisweek@news.wisc.edu.