Pale Girl Speaks

Hillary Fogelson led a charmed life: as the young wife of a successful Hollywood executive, her only major concerns were her acting auditions, interior decorating, and unexpected visits from her high-maintenance parents. Then, one day, her doctor told her she had malignant melanoma—a cancer that leads to more deaths for women between the age of 25 and 30 than any other—and her life was forever changed. Pale Girl Speaks is the darkly funny story of Fogelson’s neuroses and struggles after her diagnosis with melanoma. In her witty, wisecracking narrative, Fogelson recounts how her battle with cancer brings up other issues in her life that she’s been ignoring, especially her anxieties about her relationship with her husband, her friends, and her parents. The apprehension she feels soon manifests itself in more concrete ways—panic attacks, heavy reliance on alcohol, and a compulsive need to constantly check in with her doctor—but when her father discovers that he has melanoma as well, Fogelson has to learn to lead by example and let go of her fear. A story that will appeal to anyone who has faced adversity and lived to tell jokes about it, Pale Girl Speaks is about one woman who experienced the worst possible fallout of being fair-skinned—and survived with her sense of humor intact.

Two identities struggle to coexist in Ronnie Gladden’s body, brain, and soul. On the outside, they are Black and male. Inside, a repressed White female identity begs for release and is ready to break the status quo. Grappling with double-binary thinking, an abusive father, and childhood trauma, they imprison their inner self to stay safe from the world. But now the time has finally come to set every part of themselves free. An identity management resource and self-help memoir for teens and young adults, White Girl Within shares award-winning educator Ronnie Gladden’s powerful true story of challenging complex intersectional identity while liberating their collective self from oppressive cultural shackles. Through creative letters, stirring life experiences, enlightening social critique, and an interactive resource section, uncover how to embrace the diversity inside of you and the diversity living outside of us all. Get ready to discover How true identity transcends race, gender, and sexuality—and provides the freedom to live the life you choose. A heartfelt, honest perspective of child and adolescent trauma, relationship issues, and even the racial history that shape nuanced identities. How transgender and transracial (or “transgracial”) identities can coexist within an individual. The power of pop culture and arts immersion to buffer complex interactions involving intersectional identities. How to begin your own letter-writing campaign and foster a more authentic self-expression. You are more than a color, a gender, and an intersection. Free your repressed truth and rebirth your radical, authentic self with White Girl Within.

These text are territories, dark forests, places to dwell. Sheets of language superimpose and recurrent words and images begin to fall upon one another like the bricks or sticks of an imagined palace waiting to be explored Where is this palace? Somewhere on an island between San Francisco, California and Medellin, Columbia. This palace is empty, the builder has left. But one can hear a melody drifting down its halls. If you have a little time, if you are one of the readership's unabashed children, take up your flashlight and enter this attempt to whistle things as they are, simultaneous and spiraling, full of leaves and laughter, women walking doodles in the morning, confusion as fusion considered, and the breeze that lifts us up into the trees.

AN INDIE BESTSELLER Most Anticipated by ELLE • Bustle • Bloomberg • Kirkus • HipLatina • SheReads • BookPage • The Millions • The Mujerista • Ms. Magazine • and more “Unflinching” —Ms. Magazine • “Phenomenal” —BookRiot • "An essential read" —Kirkus, starred review • "Necessary" —Library Journal • "Powerful" —Joaquin Castro • "Illuminating" —Reyna Grande • "A love letter to our people" —José Olivarez • "I have been waiting for this book all my life" —Paul Ortiz Bestselling author Julissa Arce calls for a celebration of our uniqueness, our origins, our heritage, and the beauty of the differences that make us Americans in this powerful polemic against the myth that assimilation leads to happiness and belonging for immigrants. “You sound like a white girl.” These were the words spoken to Julissa by a high school crush as she struggled to find her place in America. As a brown immigrant from Mexico, assimilation had been demanded of her since the moment she set foot in San Antonio, Texas, in 1994. She’d spent so much time getting rid of her accent so no one could tell English was her second language that in that moment she felt those words—you sound like a white girl?—were a compliment. As a child, she didn’t yet understand that assimilating to “American” culture really meant imitating “white” America—that sounding like a white girl was a racist idea meant to tame her, change her, and make her small. She ran the race, completing each stage, but never quite fit in, until she stopped running altogether. In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals. She talks about the Lie of Success, the Lie of Legality, the Lie of Whiteness, and the Lie of English—each promising that if you obtain these things, you will reach acceptance and won’t be an outsider anymore. Julissa deftly argues that these demands leave her and those like her in a purgatory—neither able to secure the power and belonging within whiteness nor find it in the community and cultures whiteness demands immigrants and people of color leave behind. In You Sound Like a White Girl, Julissa offers a bold new promise: Belonging only comes through celebrating yourself, your history, your culture, and everything that makes you uniquely you. Only in turning away from the white gaze can we truly make America beautiful. An America where difference is celebrated, heritage is shared and embraced, and belonging is for everyone. Through unearthing veiled history and reclaiming her own identity, Julissa shows us how to do this.

After the remarriage of her mother to a Black man and moving to South Carolina during the 1960s, Lynn Markovich Bryant comes face to face with the shocking reality of two worlds--a "White World" and a "Black World." She learns rapidly the unwritten, yet understood, rules that govern the separation of these worlds.

A poignant personal history looks at the desegregation movement from a new perspective, namely that of a young Jewish girl in a predominantly black school, who finds herself caught up in the racial turmoil of the time.

The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

In addition to providing specific information about a number of conditions that affect thousands of teens every year—Celiac, Crohns, Down Syndrome, Hemophilia, Melanoma, Multiple Sclerosis, Phenylketonuria, Sickle Cell, and Tourette Syndrome—this book also offers general advice to teens who face medical challenges in general. An invaluable resource for young adults and their families, Chronic Illnesses, Syndromes, and Rare Disorders: The Ultimate Teen Guide offers hope to the many thousands of people looking for answers.