Just Us

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION Claudia Rankine’s Citizen changed the conversation—Just Us urges all of us into it As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history. Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine’s questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture’s liminal and private spaces—the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth—where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect. This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend’s explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine’s own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Sometimes wry, often vulnerable, and always prescient, Just Us is Rankine’s most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, being together.

From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, in the midst of the Cold War and second-wave feminism, the RCMP security service – prompted by fears of left-wing and communist subversion – monitored and infiltrated the women’s liberation movement in Canada and Quebec. Just Watch Us investigates why and how this movement was targeted, weighing carefully the presumed threat its left-wing ties presented to the Canadian government against the defiant challenge its campaign for gender equality posed to Canadian society. Based on a close reading of thousands of pages of RCMP documents declassified under Canada’s Access to Information Act and the corresponding Privacy Act, Just Watch Us demonstrates that the security service’s longstanding anti-Communist focus distorted its threat assessment of feminist organizing. Combining gender analysis and critical approaches to state surveillance, Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt consider the machinations of the RCMP, including its bureaucratic evolution, intelligence-gathering operations, and impact, as well as the evolution of the women’s liberation movement from its broad transnational influences to its elusive quest for unity among women across lines of ideology and identity. Significantly, the authors also grapple with the historiographical, methodological, and ethical difficulties of working with declassified security documents and sensitive information. A sharp-eyed inquiry into spy policies and tactics in Cold War Canada, Just Watch Us speaks to the serious political implications of state surveillance for social justice activism in liberal democracies.

"No boys and no men-just us women," Aunt Martha tells her niece. And together they plan their trip to North Carolina in Aunt Martha's brand-new car. This is to be a very special outing-with no one to hurry them along, the two travelers can do exactly as they please.

Johnnie wants to celebrate her Papa's birthday, but Papa doesn't know exactly when that special day is. Johnnie doesn't understand how that could be. Then she learns about Papa's childhood--how he built a new life in the all-Black town of Boley, Oklahoma. Inspired by her father's incredible story, Johnnie decides to throw Papa a different kind of party--one to recognize her Father's Day of freedom. Based on a true story about the author's grandfather, Papa's Free Day Party is a powerful celebration of storytelling, strength, and the importance of family. Th book's author, Marilyn Nelson, is the author of the memoir How I Discovered Poetry, written in a series of 50 poems. It is a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and was named on of NPR's Best Books of 2014. She was Poet Laureate of Connecticut from 2001 to 2006.

Notions of justice and community in the United States are increasingly challenged by trends like immigration, multiculturalism, and economic inequality as well as historical legacies like Jim Crow-era racial segregation. These dynamics continually re-shape the communities in which people live, whether by generating new forms of interdependency and inequality, creating new social cleavages or exacerbating existing ones, or generating new spaces in which cross-boundary contact, conflict, or cooperation is possible. Revealing the ways in which notions of justice and community overlap in American politics and public discourse through concrete political questions which emerge when considering dimensions of time, place, and difference, Gregory W. Streich offers a fresh re-examination of the normative ideas of justice and community. He encourages Americans to move from a view of justice that applies only to people who are "like us" to a view of justice that applies to people beyond "just us."

A woman’s friends are the family she picks herself. This collection of 101 touching and amusing stories celebrates all that is special about the bonds that women share with their friends - the unique spirit of female friendship. Whether it’s about something funny or serious, our friends are the first ones we think to call. They are a constant source of support and encouragement. This book is filled with great friendship stories that you’ll love reading and sharing with your friends.

Just Us Girls: The Contemporary African American Young Adult Novel is a welcome addition to the literary criticism in a field that deserves more critical study - African American children's and young adult literature. This book is a close-reading textual study of major issues and themes in contemporary (i.e., post-Civil Rights era) young adult novels written by both well-known and lesser-known African American women writers, written primarily from an African American perspective and primarily, but not exclusively, for an African American female audience. Representative works by Candy Dawson Boyd, Rita Williams-Garcia, Deborah Gregory, Rosa Guy, Virginia Hamilton, Mildred Pitts Walter, and Jacqueline Woodson are analyzed. Each chapter investigates cultural, social, and/or psychological issues examined by the writers that are prevalent in the actual lives of African American girls.

Rejected by God or called to an uncommon path? The eleven apostles cast lots to determine whom the Holy Spirit would pick to replace Judas Iscariot; he must be someone who had been with Jesus the whole time. That left either Joseph bar Sabbas, called Justus, or Matthias. The stones were cast, and the lot fell to Matthias. Even so, Justus wouldn't be denied his dream. He had mingled among the disciples for more than three years. He had been close to Jesus, held private conversations with him, and had laughed with him. He'd slept around the same campfires, visited the same homes, and eaten at the same tables. Now, Justus would chart a new path. He would reveal everything he knew about his Lord from the viewpoint of a privileged witness. Justus began to write. What was it like to be near Jesus in everyday situations or to see him in action in his greatest moments? Did Jesus have a childhood best friend? How did he relate to his fish-breathed disciples? What did he feel when the crowd cried out for his death? Justus logged all of this in a series of scrolls and began a journey to house the treasure at the great library in Alexandria, Egypt. Perhaps, someday they would be seen.