Choosing Democracy: A Practical Guide to Multicultural Education

(Prentice Hall, 2004, 3rd edition, $65.67)

Duane Campbell, professor of bilingual/multicultural education

In this third edition Campbell tackles a series of current education issues, including high stakes testing. As in earlier editions, he also includes tips for teachers in multicultural classrooms and a “big picture” overview of the challenges in multicultural education.

Campbell argues that multicultural education is more important than “just” promoting understanding and acceptance. He says it’s needed to build democracy.

“When all of these schools fail, you get people who grow up to fail,” Campbell says. “They fail economically and they give up on a political system that doesn’t work for them.”

The problem, he says, is that state and local leaders aren’t willing to fund big changes in poor schools. As for the recent glut of school testing, Campbell calls it a “politician-driven reform, one that’s popular with constituents but doesn’t accomplish much.

“What we need to do is reorganize the schools so that everyone gets an equal opportunity,” Campbell says. “The average middle-class school is doing pretty well. It’s the schools serving our poor, many of them minorities, that are failing dramatically. You have to focus effort and resources on those schools, and if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not going to succeed.”

Campbell also says schools need to do more to support teachers. Simple things like enough supplies, phones in the classroom, a safe environment and parental support are key, he says.

“I’ve met hundreds of students here at CSUS who planned to be teachers, and every one of them wanted to do a good job,” Campbell says.
A number of CSUS professors are co-authors of sections in the book: ethnic studies professor Eric Vega; bilingual/multicultural education professors Peter Baird, Forrest Davis, Lisa William-White and Pia Wong; and educational leadership and policy studies professor Ed Lee. Dolores Delgado Campbell of American River College also contributed to the book.

The Politics of Survival in Academia: Narratives of Inequity, Resilience and Success

(Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, $25.95)

Edited by Cecil E. Canton, professor of criminal justice, Lila Jacobs, professor of educational leadership and policy studies, and Jose Cintron, professor of education.

As much as academia is a symbol of open minds and diverse outlooks, some faculty members feel pressured to conform to a university culture, says Cecil Canton. He, along with education professors Lila Jacobs and Jose Cintron, found the struggle to maintain identity is a common experience among young faculty of color.

Their book tells the experiences of 10 ethnically diverse scholars. “It’s about survival, the very real struggle for those coming into the academy in a system where there’s pressure to conform to culture,” Canton says. “The common thread is the struggle in maintaining identity.

“People in higher education seem to change. You need to remember where you came from.”

The writers also knew they couldn’t just talk about the experiences of others. “As researchers that often tell other people’s stories, we felt it was important to also tell our own,” Jacobs says.

There were also debts to repay. “Our stories are the stories of many who came through before us. We got the mentoring, the prodding, the guidance from them,” Canton says.

Though the book is written by academics for academics, Canton notes the ideas could work in any profession where there is pressure to conform.

The Stand In

(Kensington Books, 2003, $6.99)

Mary Mackey, professor of English, written under the pen name Kate Clemens

We’d all like to live someone else’s life, even if just for a little while, wouldn’t we? That’s the premise of Mary Mackey’s new book about two different women who agree to switch lives.

Glamorous movie star Jayne Cooper has always had it easy. The problem is, she has to play the part of an “ordinary” woman. Her problem is solved when she meets Mary Lynn McLellan, her look-alike, and persuades her to trade places for a few weeks to do some research.

Mackey was inspired to write the book after re-reading The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, but she wanted to give it a modern treatment. “I really wanted to do something that was contemporary, and that was set in California,” Mackey says.

Mackey wrote under the pen name Kate Clemens so as not to confuse her loyal readers who may expect a book about Neolithic Europe, the setting for her most recent novels. The name was inspired by her family heritage—she’s related through her father’s family to Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens.

The film rights to the book have been optioned by Renee DePalma, a documentary filmmaker who is making a switch to feature films.

African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000

(University of Oklahoma Press, 2003, $34.95)

Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, professor of history, with co-editor Quintard Taylor

In the history of the American West, African American women have been, at best, shadowy figures. At worst, they have vanished entirely.

“Little has been done on African Americans in the West and certainly African American women in the West tend to be underrepresented,” says Shirley Ann Wilson Moore.

In her second book, Moore seeks to pull those African American women out of the shadows and show their role across 400 years of exploration and settlement. She and co-editor Quintard Taylor have assembled an anthology of essays covering the history of black women in the West from Spanish colonial times through the end of the 20th century.

“We try to look at the experience of African American women as fully as possible,” Moore says. Among the contributions from 16 authors are essays on black women in 19th-century California education; fur trapping; the Mormon Church; homesteading; civil rights; and the Black Panther Party.

“There were black women film pioneers and there were women who were instrumental in getting the Brown case (which struck down the doctrine of separate but equal) to the Supreme Court,” she said. The book also describes ordinary black women, like those who sought jobs in a segregated Las Vegas after World War II.

The contributors are a blend of established scholars—including Glenda Riley and Susan Armitage—and rising names in the field.

To Inherit the Earth: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for a New Brazil

(Food First Books, 2003, $15.95)

Angus Wright, professor of environmental studies, with co-author Wendy Wolford

One key to saving the Amazon rainforest may lie in a 20-year-old drive to increase land ownership among Brazil’s rural poor, says Angus Wright.

Although it has the 10th-largest economy in the world, Brazil has some of its poorest people, in part because of the way land is distributed. A few groups own huge areas of land, creating a society with enormous economic inequalities.

The rural poor have to do whatever they can to survive, Wright says. In the Amazon they are eating away at the forest land in areas not suitable for agriculture, encouraging the wasteful use of land.

Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement is a largely non-violent effort to narrow the gap between the richest and the poorest. Since the late 1970s the group has used Brazil’s legal tradition of “use it or lose it” by occupying lightly used land en masse—up to a thousand in each occupation—until the government agrees to turn it over.

“They’re trying to change what is happening to society as a whole,” Wright says. “Land is the first step.” Brazil is more than 70 percent urban so there is no way the land movement can in and of itself transform Brazil, Wright notes. But it does address the needs of the poorest of the poor who are mostly rural.

“It’s a way to get land and preserve rural life,” Wright says. “And to the extent that it can reduce the pressure on the Amazon, the movement is enormously important environmentally.”