Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

This is a compelling, comprehensive, well-researched yet intimate exploration of intersectionality in the lives of African American Muslim women. Readers make an excursion through lives and contexts, from the beginning of the 20th century into the 21st. Chan-Malik (American studies, women and gender studies, Rutgers Univ.) demonstrates skills beyond the ordinary as she leaves little to the imagination regarding women's reasons for choosing Islam as a faith center and its relationship to homemaking, careers, and husbands. These areas are contextualized with the background of stereotypes of black women and men. Chan-Malik brings back to life the little-known biography of Dakota Staton and the sometimes misinterpreted life of Betty Shabazz as well as the first African American Muslim women of the Ahmadiyya Mission. It is clear that Chan-Malik consulted every form of literature available on women engaging Islam. She challenges pervasive notions about who is Muslim and who is not and the wearing of a veil; she also gives readers a glimpse into how black life disrupts prevailing notions of race, ethnicity, gender, and class. Chan-Malik has interrupted the stream of community biographies told through a male lens. An important book.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.

Sociologists Hunter (UCLA) and Robinson (Rhodes College) offer a refreshing, in-depth analysis of how networks among African Americans in cities have created what is known in everyday parlance as "chocolate cities." Arguably, the most famed among them are Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. However, the authors take readers through a labyrinth of history via various personalities, historical figures in music, and the African American experience. The study is from Emancipation to the present day. After reading this book, readers will have a solid comprehension of life within the context of black lives in the cities forged in the crucible of struggle. In other words, Hunter and Robinson offer an insight into the ways black folks have eked out a social world regardless of the racism, segregation, and brutality often concomitant in cities across the North American experience. The irony is that in their pursuit of inner-city happiness, African Americans have actually altered the landscape of mainstream "milky" America. Indeed, as the authors conclude, "... Black is a map. Black is a country. Black is a city. Black is a village. And its future is wrapped in chocolate." For undergraduates, graduates, and any lay reader interested in black life in the US.Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries.

Although many aspects of the black experience have been documented, normally focusing on issues such as racism, discrimination, mass incarceration, executions, police shootings, police surveillance, or the school-to-prison pipeline, much less attention has been paid to the ways inner-city violence and police violence intertwine. In the face of continued efforts to reduce inner-city violence, socially, politically, and ideologically constructed devastation continues to target young black men. In an urgent need to further analyze the social organization of efforts to reduce inner-city violence, Jones (UC Berkeley) provides a powerful reexamination of the social organization of such efforts and masterfully documents the historical, institutional, political, ideological, and economic forces driving the continued battles of manipulation, exclusion, and oppression that erupt into violence. A classic ethnographic account, the author takes readers into the field with sociological lenses, exposing how institutional and interpersonal battles reinforce the social organization and objectives of crime-fighting efforts, which in turn shape the trajectories of black men. The book is vital in the areas of sociology, African American studies, minority studies, and criminal justice. The Chosen Ones is a must-read for all people vested in better understanding police and inner-city violence, transformation, and redemption.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.