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The Price of Ignorance
By
Laura Ivers She has shut me
out,
this black
mother of mine;
closed all her
windows,
locked all her
doors.
Yesterday’s
sun-bathed child
has changed into
sheets of
winter white.
I knock
incessantly at her door.
She is
indifferent.
Cold,
crystallized flakes of
yesterday’s
tears
drift outside
her widow’s pain
This black
mother of mine
has locked me
out,
closed up all
her doors.
I am death to
her,
the winter of all her dreams. |
I used my poetry to handle memories
that were surfacing from my childhood. At this time I
started reading the poetry of Langston Hughes . . . and then
everything just sort of fell into place. The abuse which took
place in my family seemed to mirror our racist society at large
and so I began to play with these themes within my writing.
I wanted to unveil the hidden structures that runs throughout
the three sisters of oppression: Racism, Sexism, and
Classism.
I sought to unveil not out of a sense of
revenge, but rather as a call to action . . . to heal over this
dreadful past. While I was doing my healing work, racism
got hooked up in my mind as the perpetrator. It felt like
it was literally raping my soul. And then there was the
coming to terms with my own Whiteness . . . for what my culture
had done. Writing these poems was the only way that I knew
how to ask for forgiveness; and it was the only way that I knew
how to effectively express my sense of outrage.
Poetry became my balm of salvation, my experience of Amazing
Grace.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
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1965
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____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update
16 March 2012
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