Abstract
Books
Alibi Creek
By Bev Magennis
Torrey House Press, 2016
In this exceptionally well-written novel, a New Mexican ranch woman’s life is turned upside down when her brother returns from prison, the county commissioners she works for order her to facilitate corrupt financial practices, her husband leaves her, and she begins to see her Christian faith in a new light.
And Then We Became
By Devorah Major
City Lights, 2016
Poignant poems by a leading California writer explore her experience as a woman, an African American, and a granddaughter of immigrants.
Cold Blood, Hot Sea
By Charlene D’Avanzo
Torrey House Press, 2016
A plot-driven mystery novel follows a young climate scientist on the Maine coast whose life is in danger because she is investigating big energy companies.
Dirt Work
By Christine Byl
Beacon, 2013
A woman who has spent much of her adult life on national park trail crews in the western states provides an entertaining memoir of her experiences.
Educational Justice
By Howard Ryan
Monthly Review Press, 2016
As the Trump administration prepares to speed up school “reforms” that big corporations and Wall Street are pushing, this book explains their agenda and showcases examples of teachers organizing for alternative ways to improve education.
Environmentalism of the Rich
By Peter Dauvergne
MIT Press, 2016
A professor argues that an environmental movement focused on recycling, energy efficiency, and wilderness preservation is not making change fast enough because it does not challenge the root issues of over-consumption, extreme inequality, destructive growth, and excessive corporate power over decision making.
Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn
Edited by Theodore Hamm
Akashic, 2016
A collection of eight speeches by the abolitionist leader of the 1800s still provides interesting reading more than a century later.
Jimmy’s Carwash Adventure
By Victor Narro and Yana Murashko
Hard Ball Press, 2016
In this bilingual children’s book, a young white boy gets to know a Latino man who works at a carwash, as well as the man’s son. When the boy learns that the carwash workers are striking for fair pay, he decides to take action.
Lab Girl
By Hope Jahren
Knopf, 2016
This honest and entertaining book has many elements that work together to make a unique whole: a memoir of what a girl had to overcome to become a successful scientist, the story of her unusual bond with her eccentric scientific partner, and accessible short insights into the lives of plants.
Pale Harvest
By Braden Hepner
Torrey House Press, 2014
The young men in a western dairy community who are at the center of this touching novel struggle to understand faith, hope, and fate as they cope with poverty, isolation, and lack of power in the face of larger economic forces.
Secrets of a Successful Organizer
By Alexandra Bradbury, Mark Brenner, and Jane Slaughter
Labor Notes, 2016
While designed for use in a workplace context, this guide contains useful tips for any kind of organizing.
The American War in Vietnam
By John Marciano
Monthly Review Press, 2016
The U.S. government has launched a multiyear project to “commemorate” its war in Vietnam, framing that invasion as a patriotic effort to promote democracy around the world. A retired professor reviews the actual history of the war and debunks the myths being created by those who seek to build support for similar military interventions today.
The Cabbage That Came Back
By Stephen Pearl and Rafael Pearl
Hard Ball Press, 2016
A cute bilingual children’s book tells a story that celebrates sharing and generosity.
The Creatures at the Absolute Bottom of the Sea
By Rosemary McGuire
University of Alaska, 2015
A woman who worked for years in commercial fishing gives an inside view of that life in this collection of short stories.
The Drone Eats with Me
By Atef Abu Saif
Beacon, 2016
A Palestinian writer describes how he and his young family and neighbors tried to maintain some normalcy in their lives during a nearly two-month conflict with Israel on the Gaza Strip in 2014.
The Walls of Delhi
By Uday Prakash
Seven Stories, 2016
Three innovative novellas cast a light on class in today’s India. A janitor stumbles on a cache of money. An untouchable has his identity stolen by an upper-caste thief. A slum family faces a crisis when their baby keeps getting smarter by leaps and bounds.
The Year of Needy Girls
By Patricia A. Smith
Akashic, 2016
This well-crafted novel stands out for a number of reasons—the nuanced descriptions of the characters’ complex feelings, the realistic portrayal of how quickly a person’s life and a community can fall into crisis, and the focus on two lesbians and the challenges they face.
Tomlinson Hill
By Chris Tomlinson
St. Martin’s, 2016
A white journalist who is the great-great-grandson of slave owners returns to his roots in a small town in Texas to tell the unvarnished story of the relationship over many generations between his family and black residents, including retired NFL star LaDainian Tomlinson. One striking aspect of the story is the similarity between what the white elite did to maintain political and economic power and cheap labor after the Civil War and the tactics being used today.
Woman Missing
By Linda Nordquist
Hard Ball Press, 2016
In this novel written by a former steelworker, a worker disappeared twenty years ago while challenging a mill closure, and the authorities had no interest in investigating. Now, her daughter returns to her hometown to discover what happened, putting herself in danger.
Writing to Save a Life
By John Edgar Wideman
Simon & Schuster, 2016
Ten years before fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was killed by white terrorists in Mississippi in 1955, his father was hanged by the U.S. Army. Wideman revisits that case, and in the process, brings up memories of his own as an African-American boy growing up in Pittsburgh.
Films
After the Spill
BullfrogFilms.com, 2016
An hour-long documentary interviews commercial fishing operators and others permanently hurt by the BP oil spill in the Gulf and looks at how the oil and gas industry’s practices are rapidly eroding Louisiana’s coastline.
Certain Women
IFCFilms.com, 2016
Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt has made another subtle and absorbing feature film, this one about three women in a small town in Montana.
Eagle Huntress
SonyClassics.com, 2016
This stunning documentary is a must-see not only for adults but for any kid old enough to read subtitles. It shows a thirteen-year-old girl in a remote, barren Mongolian community where for centuries teenage boys have been taught by their fathers to train eagles to do their hunting for foxes or other game. With her parents’ full support, this girl decides to break tradition and become an eagle hunter herself.
Lamb
kimstim.com, 2015
A beautiful Ethiopian feature film tells the story of two characters who do not fit into traditional rural life in that country. One is a young boy more adept at cooking than typically male tasks. The other is an outspoken teenage girl who is being drawn into local radical political debates.
Last Cab to Darwin
Lastcab.com.au, 2015
A seventy-year-old cab driver in Australia learns that he has only three months to live, just as it is becoming legal to get medication from a doctor that would allow him to choose the timing of his death. But what does dying on his own terms mean?
Stray Dog
Bullfrogfilms.com, 2016
A documentary by the director of Winter’s Bone profiles the everyday life of a Vietnam veteran and his new Mexican wife as he tries to cope with the psychological wounds of war and the growing poverty of neighbors and family members at the bottom of the economy.
The Measure of a Man
Kinolorber.com, 2015
This highly unusual French feature film focuses on an unemployed man put through absurd and humiliating “retraining,” “coaching,” and interviews for jobs he will not get, until he finally accepts a position as part of the surveillance staff in a big box store.
The Salesman
International.memento-films.com, 2016
In an intense film from Asghar Farhadi (who also made A Separation and About Elly), a husband and wife are partners in a theater troupe that is currently performing Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, with the two of them in the lead roles. A traumatic event in their personal lives triggers a crisis in their relationship and calls into question Iran’s cultural traditions regarding gender roles and vengeance.
Union Time
UnheardVoicesProject.org, 2016
In telling the story of a sixteen-year struggle to form a union by workers at the Smithfield pork processing plant in North Carolina, this powerful eighty-six-minute documentary provides an excellent overview of what it takes for workers to organize in America today.
When Two Worlds Collide
whentwoworldscollidemovie.com, 2016
Backed by a “free trade” agreement with the United States, the president of Peru launched a plan to turn over indigenous Amazonian land to big corporations for mining and oil and gas extraction. Indigenous communities fought back. The filmmakers immersed themselves in this drama and produced incredible footage showing the courage and sacrifice of the native people, juxtaposed with the familiar invoking of “progress” and “the rule of the law” by the corporations’ allies in government.