front cover of A Year in White
A Year in White
Cultural Newcomers to Lukumi and Santería in the United States
Carr, C. Lynn
Rutgers University Press, 2016
In the Afro-Cuban Lukumi religious tradition—more commonly known in the United States as Santería—entrants into the priesthood undergo an extraordinary fifty-three-week initiation period. During this time, these novices—called iyawo—endure a host of prohibitions, including most notably wearing exclusively white clothing. In A Year in White, sociologist C. Lynn Carr, who underwent this initiation herself, opens a window on this remarkable year-long religious transformation.
 
In her intimate investigation of the “year in white,” Carr draws on fifty-two in-depth interviews with other participants, an online survey of nearly two hundred others, and almost a decade of her own ethnographic fieldwork, gathering stories that allow us to see how cultural newcomers and natives thought, felt, and acted with regard to their initiation. She documents how, during the iyawo year, the ritual slowly transforms the initiate’s identity. For the first three months, for instance, the iyawo may not use a mirror, even to shave, and must eat all meals while seated on a mat on the floor using only a spoon and their own set of dishes. During the entire year, the iyawo loses their name and is simply addressed as “iyawo” by family and friends.
 
Carr also shows that this year-long religious ritual—which is carried out even as the iyawo goes about daily life—offers new insight into religion in general, suggesting that the sacred is not separable from the profane and indeed that religion shares an ongoing dynamic relationship with the realities of everyday life. Religious expression happens at home, on the streets, at work and school.
 
Offering insight not only into Santería but also into religion more generally, A Year in White makes an important contribution to our understanding of complex, dynamic religious landscapes in multicultural, pluralist societies and how they inhabit our daily lives.
 
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'Yellow Woman'
Leslie Marmon Silko
Edited by Melody Graulich
Rutgers University Press, 1993

In the past twenty-five years many Native American writers have retold the traditional stories of powerful mythological women: Corn Woman, Changing Woman, Serpent Woman, and Thought Woman, who with her sisters created all life by thinking it into being.  Within and in response to these evolving traditions, Leslie Marmon Silko takes from her own tradition, the Keres of Laguna, the Yellow Woman.  Yellow Woman stories, always female-centered and always from the Yellow Woman's point of view, portray a figure who is adventurous, strong, and often alienated from her own people.  She is the spirit of woman.  Ambiguous and unsettling, Silko's "Yellow Woman" explores one woman's desires and changes--her need to open herself to a richer sensuality.  Walking away from her everyday identity as daughter, wife and mother, she takes possession of transgressive feelings and desires by recognizing them in the stories she has heard, by blurring the boundaries between herself and the Yellow Woman of myth. 

Silko's decision to tell the story from the narrator's point of view is traditional, but her use of first person narration and the story's much raised ambiguity brilliantly reinforce her themes.  Like traditional yellow women, the narrator is unnamed.  By choosing not to reveal her name, she claims the role of Yellow Woman, and Yellow Woman's story is the one Silko clearly claims as her own. The essays in this collection compare Silko's many retellings of Yellow Woman stories from a variety of angles, looking at crucial themes like storytelling, cultural inheritances, memory, continuity, identity, interconnectedness, ritual, and tradition.

This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology, an authoritative text of the story itself, critical essays, and a bibliography for further reading in both primary and secondary sources.  Contributors include Kim Barnes, A. LaVonne Ruoff, Paula Gunn Allen, Patricia Clark Smith, Bernard A. Hirsch, Arnold Krupat, Linda Danielson, and Patricia Jones.

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Yellowface
Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s
Moon, Krystyn R.
Rutgers University Press, 2004

Music and performance provide a unique window into the ways that cultural information is circulated and perceptions are constructed. Because they both require listening, are inherently ephemeral, and most often involve collaboration between disparate groups, they inform cultural perceptions differently from literary or visual art forms, which tend to be more tangible and stable.

In Yellowface, Krystyn R. Moon explores the contributions of writers, performers, producers, and consumers in order to demonstrate how popular music and performance has played an important role in constructing Chinese and Chinese American stereotypes. The book brings to life the rich musical period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time, Chinese and Chinese American musicians and performers appeared in a variety of venues, including museums, community theaters, and world’s fairs, where they displayed their cultural heritage and contested anti-Chinese attitudes. A smaller number crossed over into vaudeville and performed non-Chinese materials. Moon shows how these performers carefully navigated between racist attitudes and their own artistic desires.

While many scholars have studied both African American music and blackface minstrelsy, little attention has been given to Chinese and Chinese American music. This book provides a rare look at the way that immigrants actively participated in the creation, circulation, and, at times, subversion of Chinese stereotypes through their musical and performance work.

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You and the Law in New Jersey
A Resource Guide
Leighton A. Holness
Rutgers University Press, 1998

What are your rights if you are fired from your job? What should you do if you are a crime victim or witness? How can you fight a child custody battle? What can you do if your landlord refuses to provide you with heat in the winter?

You and the Law in New Jersey, newly updated, is the ideal guidebook to assist readers in understanding the law, their rights, and how to get legal help. In clear, straightforward language, the book describes how law is made, how to do legal research, how the state and federal court systems work, how to get help if you can't afford a lawyer, how to hire a lawyer, and what to do if you are sued. The second edition contains much new information, including a chapter on credit, debt, and banking, and others on the rights of senior citizens, veterans, and people with disabilities. The authors have also expanded their information on the rights of renters, homeowners, and consumers of public utilities, as well as their treatment of employment law. They have rewritten chapters on health and public benefits to address the recent sweeping reforms of federal and state law. Other topics include family matters such as marriage, divorce, adoption, and domestic violence; the landlord-tenant relationship and buying a home; consumer rights; the criminal justice system; and citizen involvement in environmental law.

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You Are the Brand
Adubato, Steve
Rutgers University Press, 2011

Let's face it--it's a tough economic world today and there's cutthroat competition. Dive into Adubato's book and get ready to turn a powerful page in life.

Steve Adubato's entire professional life has been about branding--learning it, living it, making mistakes at it, teaching it at several universities, while discovering how to find the fine line between shameless self-promotion and smart, strategic branding--first for himself, then for others, and now for readers interested in an honest analysis of the good and bad in practiced branding.

So, what's really in this book for you? Adubato profiles the brands of more than thirty people and companies and skillfully analyzes and dissects their strategies. His sage advice and on-target approach will help readers who:

  • Feel they have something of value to offer,
  • Are in a market-driven or aggressive environment in which their name, reputation, and persona hold the keys to their success,
  • Want their customers to buy products and services again and again,
  • Feel unappreciated in their current job,
  • Have recently lost a job or are seeking their first job out of college,
  • Are trying to get back into the workforce after years of being "out of it."

 

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front cover of You Shall Tell Your Children
You Shall Tell Your Children
Holocaust Memory in American Passover Ritual
Gubkin, Liora
Rutgers University Press, 2007

Passover is among the most widely observed holidays for American Jews. During this festival of redemption, Jewish families retell the biblical story of Exodus using a ritual book known as a haggadah, often weaving modern tales of oppression through the biblical narrative. References to the Holocaust are some of the most common additions to contemporary haggadot. However, the parallel between ancient and modern oppression, which seems obvious to some, raises troubling questions for many others. Is it possible to find any redemptive meaning in the Nazi genocide? Are we adding value to this unforgivable moment in history?

            Liora Gubkin critiques commemorations that violate memory by erasing the value of everyday life that was lost and collapse the diversity of responses both during the Shoah and afterward. She recounts oral testimonies from Holocaust survivors, cites references to the holiday in popular American culture, and analyzes examples of actual haggadot. Ultimately, Gubkin concludes that it is possible and important to make a space for Holocaust commemoration, all the time recognizing that haggadot must be constantly revisited and “performed.”

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front cover of 'You Should See Yourself'
'You Should See Yourself'
Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture
Brook, Vincent
Rutgers University Press, 2006

The past few decades have seen a remarkable surge in Jewish influences on American culture. Entertainers and artists such as Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Allegra Goodman, and Tony Kushner have heralded new waves of television, film, literature, and theater; a major klezmer revival is under way; bagels are now as commonplace as pizza; and kabbalah has become as cool as crystals. Does this broad range of cultural expression accurately reflect what it means to be Jewish in America today?

            Bringing together fourteen new essays by leading scholars, You Should See Yourself examines the fluctuating representations of Jewishness in a variety of areas of popular culture and high art, including literature, the media, film, theater, music, dance, painting, photography, and comedy. Contributors explore the evolution that has taken place within these cultural forms and how we can best explain these changes. Are variations in our understanding of Jewishness the result of general phenomena such as multiculturalism, politics, and postmodernism, or are they the product of more specifically Jewish concerns such as the intermarriage/continuity crisis, religious renewal, and relations between the United States and Israel?

            Accessible to students and general readers alike, this volume takes an important step toward advancing the discussion of Jewish cultural influences in this country.

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front cover of Your Pocket Is What Cures You
Your Pocket Is What Cures You
The Politics of Health in Senegal
Foley, Ellen E
Rutgers University Press, 2009
In the wake of structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and health reforms in the 1990s, the majority of sub-Saharan African governments spend less than ten dollars per capita on health annually, and many Africans have limited access to basic medical care. Using a community-level approach, anthropologist Ellen E. Foley analyzes the implementation of global health policies and how they become intertwined with existing social and political inequalities in Senegal. Your Pocket Is What Cures You examines qualitative shifts in health and healing spurred by these reforms, and analyzes the dilemmas they create for health professionals and patients alike. It also explores how cultural frameworks, particularly those stemming from Islam and Wolof ethnomedicine, are central to understanding how people manage vulnerability to ill health.

While offering a critique of neoliberal health policies, Your Pocket Is What Cures You remains grounded in ethnography to highlight the struggles of men and women who are precariously balanced on twin precipices of crumbling health systems and economic decline. Their stories demonstrate what happens when market-based health reforms collide with material, political, and social realities in African societies.

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You're Doing it Wrong!
Mothering, Media, and Medical Expertise
Bethany L. Johnson
Rutgers University Press, 2019
New mothers face a barrage of confounding decisions during the life-cycle of early motherhood which includes... Should they change their diet or mindset to conceive? Exercise while pregnant? Should they opt for a home birth or head for a hospital? Whatever they “choose,” they will be sure to find plenty of medical expertise from health practitioners to social media “influencers” telling them that they’re making a series of mistakes. As intersectional feminists with two small children each, Bethany L. Johnson and Margaret M. Quinlan draw from their own experiences as well as stories from a range of caretakers throughout.
 
You’re Doing it Wrong! investigates the storied history of mothering advice in the media, from the newspapers, magazines, doctors’ records and personal papers of the nineteenth-century to today’s websites, Facebook groups, and Instagram feeds. Johnson and Quinlan find surprising parallels between today’s mothering experts and their Victorian counterparts, but they also explore how social media has placed unprecedented pressures on new mothers, even while it may function as social support for some. They further examine the contentious construction of prenatal and baby care expertise itself, as individuals such as everyone from medical professionals to experienced moms have competed to have their expertise acknowledged in the public sphere.
 
Exploring potential health crises from infertility treatments to “better babies” milestones, You’re Doing it Wrong! provides a provocative look at historical and contemporary medical expertise during conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and infant care stages.
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front cover of 'You're the First One I've Told'
'You're the First One I've Told'
New Faces of HIV in the South
Whetten-Goldstein, Kathryn
Rutgers University Press, 2002

In the second wave of the HIV epidemic, those with the disease are more likely to be female, young, heterosexual, a racial minority, and rural-living than in the past. An understanding of the vastly different lives of this second wave of HIV-infected persons is vital to the development of user-friendly health care systems.

"You're the First One I've Told" offers a view into the lives of men and women infected with HIV. The experiences of twenty-five people living with this disease in rural eastern North Carolina serve as the foundation of this book, which also draws upon unique HIV/AIDS survey data collected by the authors and statistics from the Southeastern United States. This combination of qualitative and quantitative information provides readers with a vivid description of how people live with HIV/AIDS in the midst of their often traumatic lives, and why they manage their illness in ways that seem to contradict mainstream medical and social wisdom. The people interviewed represent a variety of races, genders, professions, family lives, and medical and social service access and utilization.

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front cover of You're the First One I've Told
You're the First One I've Told
The Faces of HIV in the Deep South
Whetten-Goldstein, Kathryn
Rutgers University Press, 2013

The Deep South has seen a 36 percent increase in AIDS cases while the rest of the nation has seen a 2 percent decline. Many of the underlying reasons for the disease’s continued spread in the region—ignorance about HIV, reluctance to get tested, non-adherence to treatment protocols, resistance to behavioral changes—remain unaddressed by policymakers.

In this extensively revised second edition, Kathryn Whetten and Brian Wells Pence present a rich discussion of twenty-five ethnographic life stories of people living with HIV in the South. Most importantly, they incorporate research from their recent quantitative study, “Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast” (CHASE), which includes 611 HIV-positive patients from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. This new edition continues to bring the participants’ voices to life while highlighting how the CHASE study confirmed many of the themes that originally emerged from the life histories. This is the first cohesive compilation of up-to-date evidence on the unique and difficult aspects of living with HIV in the Deep South.

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front cover of Youth, Crime, and Justice
Youth, Crime, and Justice
A Global Inquiry
Hartjen, Clayton A
Rutgers University Press, 2008
Close to half of the world’s population is below the age of criminal jurisdiction in most countries. Many of these young people are living in poverty and under totalitarian regimes. Given their deprived and often abject circumstances, it is not surprising that many of them become involved in crime.

            In Youth, Crime, and Justice, Clayton A. Hartjen provides a broad overview of juvenile delinquency: how it manifests itself around the world and how societies respond to misconduct among their children. Taking a global, rather than country-specific approach, chapters focus on topics that range from juvenile laws and the correction of child offenders to the abuse, exploitation, and victimization of young people. Hartjen includes specific examples from the United States, Australia, Spain, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan, India, Egypt, and elsewhere as he sorts through the various definitions of “delinquent” and explores the differences in behavior that contribute to these classifications. Most importantly, his in-depth and comparative look at judicial systems worldwide raises questions about how young offenders should be “corrected” and how much fault can be laid on misbehaving youths acting out against the very societies that produced them.

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front cover of Youth in Postwar Guatemala
Youth in Postwar Guatemala
Education and Civic Identity in Transition
Michelle J. Bellino
Rutgers University Press, 2017
Winner of the 2018 Comparative & International Education Society's Jackie Kirk Outstanding Book Award and the 2018 Council on Anthropology of Education's Outstanding Book Award

In the aftermath of armed conflict, how do new generations of young people learn about peace, justice, and democracy? Michelle J. Bellino describes how, following Guatemala’s civil war, adolescents at four schools in urban and rural communities learn about their country’s history of authoritarianism and develop civic identities within a fragile postwar democracy.

Through rich ethnographic accounts, Youth in Postwar Guatemala, traces youth experiences in schools, homes, and communities, to examine how knowledge and attitudes toward historical injustice traverse public and private spaces, as well as generations. Bellino documents the ways that young people critically examine injustice while shaping an evolving sense of themselves as civic actors. In a country still marked by the legacies of war and division, young people navigate between the perilous work of critiquing the flawed democracy they inherited, and safely waiting for the one they were promised...
 
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front cover of You've Always Been There for Me
You've Always Been There for Me
Understanding the Lives of Grandchildren Raised by Grandparents
Dunifon, Rachel E
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Today, approximately 1.6 million American children live in what social scientists call “grandfamilies”—households in which children are being raised by their grandparents. In You’ve Always Been There for Me, Rachel Dunifon uses data gathered from grandfamilies in New York to analyze their unique strengths and distinct needs. Though grandfamilies can benefit from the accumulated wisdom of mature adults raising children for a second time, Dunifon notes, such families also face high rates of health problems as well as parenting challenges related to a large generation gap. Grandfamilies are also largely hidden in American society, flying under the radar of social service agencies, policymakers, and family researchers. This book gives family researchers a greater understanding of a unique family form, and also offers service providers, policymakers and the general public important information about the lives of an important group of American families.  
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front cover of You've Been Had!
You've Been Had!
How the Media and Environmentalists Turned America into a Nation of Hypochondriacs
Benarde, Melvin A
Rutgers University Press, 2002

With all of the negative media about environmental threats over the last four decades, is it any wonder that most people believe disaster is just around the corner?  But despite what the media would lead us to believe, annual reports from the Surgeons General show that Americans are the healthiest they have ever been, are becoming healthier and are, in fact, the healthiest people on the planet.

In You’ve Been Had!, Melvin Benarde aims to set the record straight and counteract the culture of complaint and worry with an unbiased account of the scientific facts — facts which suggest we are worried and frightened about the wrong things. Contrary to what the media would have us believe, he argues that the environmental factors that most adversely affect our health are those that are within our power to alter, such as smoking, diet, drugs, stress, guns speed, exercise, and basic safety precautions. Topics covered include: carcinogens and anti- carcinogens; dietary supplements and neutraceuticals; food safety, pasteurization and irradiation; genetically modified foods; microbial threats to health; hazardous and toxic waste; radiation and skin cancer; global warming; risk-taking; obesity, asthma, violence and longevity. Benarde also looks at the ways the media reports science and evidence-based medicine.

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