Social Identity

In the lead-up to every election cycle, pundits predict that Latino Americans will overwhelmingly vote in favor of the Democratic candidate. And it’s true - Latino voters do tilt Democratic. Hillary Clinton won the Latino vote in a “landslide”, and Barack Obama “crushed” Mitt Romney among Latino voters in his reelection. But those numbers belie a more complicated picture. Here, historian and political commentator Geraldo Cadava illuminates the history of the millions of Hispanic Republicans who, since the 1960s, have had a significant impact on national politics.

Devouring Cultures brings together contributors from a wide range of disciplines including media studies, rhetoric, gender studies, philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism, film criticism, race theory, history, and linguistics to examine the ways food signifies both culture and identity. The essays in Devouring Cultures show how our choices about what we eat, where we eat, and with whom we eat are linked to identity and meaning.

Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating culture. Growing up as an immigrant in America means that one has to make one's way through a confusing tangle of conflicting cultures and expectations. And Porochista is pulled between the glitzy culture of Tehrangeles, an enclave of wealthy Iranians and Persians in LA, her own family's modest life and culture, and becoming an assimilated American.

1963, North London. Nan fosters one-year-old Florence Olajide and calls her "Ann". Florence adores her foster mother more than anything but Nan, and the children around her, all have white skin, and she can’t help but feel different. Then, four years later, after a weekend visit to her birth parents, Florence never returns to Nan. Two months after, sandwiched between her mother and father plus her three siblings, six-year-old Florence steps off a ship in Lagos to the fierce heat of the African sun.

Los jóvenes latinos en los Estados Unidos están redefiniendo su identidad, rompiendo moldes establecidos, y despertando políticamente de maneras sorprendentes y poderosas. Muchos de ellos - afrolatinos, indígenas, musulmanes, queer e indocumentados tanto en zonas urbanas como rurales - representan voces históricamente ignoradas en el modo en que la diversa población de casi seis millones de latinos en los Estados Unidos ha sido representada. Hasta ahora.

LaTonya Summers was only six years old the first time she unconsciously tried to be "more white". Recollecting experiences from her childhood in foster care through to her life today as an Assistant Professor and mother, LaTonya examines how her perception of self was affected by internalized racism and led her to adopt white norms - influencing everything from her music and clothing choices to her speech and values. Join LaTonya in her journey of realization.

There are true things about us and there are truer things. David Lomas invites readers to move beyond what may simply be true to the truest thing, discovering a real identity in Christ. We are all bundles of competing desires and half-true labels. We arry them around like scars; we carry them around like badges. They tell us we are no more than a job description, relationship status, or appearance. But the most important and truest identity of every Christian is that they are loved, accepted, and created in the image of God.

In Mestizos Come Home! author Robert Con Davis-Undiano documents the great awakening of Mexican American and Latino culture since the 1960s that has challenged this omission in collective memory. He maps a new awareness of the United States as intrinsically connected to the broader context of the Americas. At once native and new to the American Southwest, Mexican Americans have “come home” in a profound sense: they have reasserted their right to claim that land and U.S. culture as their own.

Ernesto Nieto has been the chief architect and driving force behind the National Hispanic Institute, the internationally recognized producer of next-generation Latino leaders. In this must-listen for those invested in Latino community leadership, Nieto outlines the personal transformation necessary in crafting and pursuing visions for the future.

Our spiritual enemy is coming after our children, and he doesn’t care who knows it. He wants their minds. He wants their hearts. He wants their beliefs. He wants their lives. Most of all, he wants to stake a claim on their identity. He wants to destroy the foundation of who our children are by letting culture, or even themselves, determine “their truth.” But there is no truth but God’s Word. It is absolute truth that transcends time and cultural advancement.

Our Global Lingua Franca is an essential companion for both native and non-native English instructors navigating the challenges of sub-par language learning. It will validate your frustrations about learning and teaching under the conventional approach to EFL. Intelligent without being overly academic, it offers invaluable outside-the-box advice on reading, writing, listening, speaking, grammar, vocabulary, and pragmatics to help you impart conversational English fluency and beyond.

Since the beginning of humanity, people have recognized the distinct creation of the male and female gender in God's design. But with today's gender revolution, people are increasingly questioning who they are designed to be. In our society, gender identity has been divorced from biology and rerooted in psychology. Do the core teachings of the Bible uphold these modern ideas?

After 1660, English governments aimed to convert scattered overseas dominions into a coordinated territorial power base. Stuart monarchs encouraged schemes for expansion in America, Africa, and Asia, tightened control over existing territories, and endorsed systems of slave labor. But English power was precarious, and colonial designs were subject to regular defeats and failed experimentation. Recovering from recent Civil Wars at home, England was shaken by unrest and upheaval through the later seventeenth century.

Cyber attacks are a growing problem that’s affecting an increasing number of devices and people. The current numbers are staggering. Hackers create and deploy over 300,000 new malware programs every single day on networks, individual computers, and other devices. And there are nearly half a million ransomware attacks every year.

Violent America thus explores the effects of physical and discursive violence on the ways in which ethnoracial groups define themselves. Chebel d'Appollonia argues that the use of ethnoracial violence has been and remains an effective identity strategy by which all ethnoracial groups are able to integrate themselves into the mainstream of American society.

In We Refuse to Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. Thanks to the efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their history back generations—even to Cow Tom himself.

Argentina's coup d'tat in 1976 led to one of the bloodiest dictatorships in its history - 30,000 people were abducted, tortured, and subsequently "disappeared". And hundreds of babies born to pregnant political prisoners were stolen from their doomed mothers and given to families with military ties or who were collaborators of the regime. "Anala" was one of those children, raised without suspecting that she was adopted.

Our truth is greater than the facts presented by the condition, greater than the adversity from the enemy, and greater than self-doubt. The reconnect is for the sake of reconstruction, and ultimately reintroduction of the sons of Adam to their assignments in the Earth.

What does it mean to be Muslim in India? What does it mean to look like one's religion? Does one's faith determine how one is perceived? Is there a secular ideal one is supposed to live up to? Can people of different faiths have a shared culture, a shared identity? But You Don't Look Like a Muslim is a work that every thinking Indian must hear.

What does it mean to be gay and a Christian? Beginning with how the Bible describes the Church, author Nate Collins outlines a vision for community life that challenges Christians to examine obstacles that inhibit spiritual unity. This new vision calls straight and non-straight believers alike to patterns of Christian obedience that respect and honor their similarities and differences.