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A Line Breaking

Renny Golden Naugatuck River Review
On July 27, 1919, the appearance of an African American swimmer near a white beach provoked a citywide pogrom in Chicago. Poet Renny Golden depicts the incident and a wade-in that integrated the shores during the 1960s.

The Moynihan Family Circus

Stephanie Coontz BookForum - June/July/Aug 2015
Looking back after 50 years at the few pros (the real lack of jobs) and the many cons (an over-reliance throughout on allegedly debilitating cultural factors) of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's explanation for high African American poverty rates in his Report on the Black Family and Poverty.

The End of Feminism? Far From It

Rinku Sen Public Books
In this look at three new and “valuable contributions to our cultural thinking and political thinking on today’s feminist movement,” Rinku Sen finds much to praise; however, she criticizes these authors because they “treat these two realms as largely disconnected from each other.” That’s too bad, Sen adds, because the movement is strongest “when cultural and political interventions reinforce each other.”

Film Review 'A Borrowed Identity' Shows Life in Israel from an Arab's View

Marcia Garcia Film Journal International
Directed by the popular Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis and written by Arab-Israeli journalist Sayed Kashua, 'A Borrowed Idenity' chronicles a young Arab-Israeli man’s painful coming of age--detailing Israel’s treatment of its Arab citizens. At its best, 'A Borrowed Identity' concerns itself with the malleability of self, with who we are and how society and culture can force identity choices on us.

Nutrition Gets Personal

Clare Leschin-Hoar Future Food 2050
Dietary guidance that’s targeted to your precise genetic makeup is the wave of the future, says nutrition scientist Jeffrey Blumberg.

Thirty-Two in a Different Country; Invented Mothers

Zeina Hashem Beck http://heartjournalonline.com
A Lebanese poet from Dubai, Zeina Hashem Beck offers two poems, Thirty-Two and in a Different Country and The Invented Mothers, both touching the deep trauma of warfare on civilians.

Where's the Outrage?

Rich Yeselson Dissent Summer 2015 issue
The book under review examines the rise of American capitalism, the visionary attempts by workers to resist and the housebreaking of a long-running anti-capitalist ethos from imaginative, frenzied opposition to diffuse, angry, but ultimate accommodation. While a residual 19th century fight-back culture built the CIO and defended the New Deal into the 1960s, it lacked the same emancipatory charge it had earlier, and unions shifted to cautious monitors of the working class

Between the World and Me

Josie Duffy RH Reality Check
Ta Nehisi Coates is best known for his June, 2014 article in the Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations." Since then, he has emerged as one of today's most important commentators on racism and anti-racism. His new book has garnered both praise and push-back, placing it right at the center of our contemporary debates on the subject. Here, Josie Duffy calls it "an important book—perhaps the most important in a generation—on how race in this country functions."

Rectify Is Still Television’s Quiet Triumph

David Sims The Atlantic
SundanceTV’s Southern Gothic drama is entering its third season of critical acclaim and low ratings, but its against-the-odds existence bodes well for the industry.