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The inspiring story of a mother who took unimaginable tragedy and used her grief as a force to do good by transforming the lives of others.When Maria Kefalas’s daughter Calliope was diagnosed with a degenerative, uncurable genetic disease, the last thing Maria expected to discover in herself was a superpower. She and her husband, Pat, were head over heels in love with their youngest daughter, whose spirit, dancing eyes, and appetite for life captured the best of each of them.When they learned that Cal had MLD (metachromatic leukodystrophy), their world was shattered. But as she spent time listening to and learning from Cal, Maria developed the superpower of grief. It made her a fearless warrior for her daughter. And it gave her voice a bell-like clarity—poignant and funny all at once.This superpower of grief also revealed a miracle—not the conventional sort that fuels the prayers of friends and strangers but a realization that, in order to save themselves, Maria and Pat would need to find a way to save others. And so, with their two older children, they set out to raise money so that they, in their son PJ’s words, could “find a cure for Cal’s disease.”They had no way of knowing that a research team in Italy was closing in on an effective gene therapy for MLD. Though the therapy came too late to help Cal, this news would be the start of an unexpected journey that would introduce Maria and her family to world-famous scientists, brilliant doctors, biotech CEOs, a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback, and a wise nun, and it would also involve selling 50 thousand cupcakes. They would travel to the FDA, the NIH, and the halls of Congress in search of a cure that would never save their child. And their lives would become inextricably intertwined with the families of 13 children whose lives would be transformed by the biggest medical breakthrough in a generation.A memoir about heartbreak that is also about joy, Harnessing Grief is both unsparing and generous. Steeped in love, it is a story about possibility.

The first biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a trailblazing Black feminist activist whose work made children, race, and welfare rights central to the women’s movement.Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a transformative community organizer in New York City in the 1970s who shared the stage with Gloria Steinem for 5 years, captivating audiences around the country. After leaving rural Georgia in the 1950s, she moved to New York, determined to fight for civil rights and equality. Historian Laura L. Lovett traces Hughes’s journey as she became a powerhouse activist, responding to the needs of her community and building a platform for its empowerment. She created lasting change by revitalizing her West Side neighborhood, which was subjected to racial discrimination, with nonexistent childcare and substandard housing, where poverty, drug use, a lack of job training, and the effects of the Vietnam War were evident. Hughes created a high-quality childcare center that also offered job training, adult education classes, a Youth Action corps, housing assistance, and food resources.Hughes’s realization that her neighborhood could be revitalized by actively engaging and including the community was prescient and is startlingly relevant. As her stature grew to a national level, Hughes spent several years traversing the country with Steinem and educating people about feminism, childcare, and race. She moved to Harlem in the 1970s to counter gentrification and bought the franchise to the Miss Greater New York City pageant to demonstrate that Black was beautiful. She also opened an office supply store and became a powerful voice for Black women entrepreneurs and Black-owned businesses. Throughout every phase of her life, Hughes understood the transformative power of activism for Black communities.With expert research, which includes Hughes’s own accounts of her life, With Her Fist Raised is the necessary biography of a pivotal figure in women’s history and Black feminism whose story will finally be told.

The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activismThrough the unique lens of ';Indigenized environmental justice,' Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.

A noted biblical scholar explores how the claim of divine choice has been used from ancient times to the present to justify territorial expansion and prejudice.The Bible describes many individuals and groups as specially chosen by God. But does God choose at all? Michael Coogan explains the temporally layered and allusive storytelling of biblical texts and describes the world of the ancient Near East from which it emerged, laying bare the power struggles, the acts of vengeance, and persecutions made sacred by claims of chosenness.Jumping forward to more modern contexts, Coogan reminds us how the self-designation of the Puritan colonizers of New England as God's new Israel eventually morphed, in the United States, into the self-justifying doctrines of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism. In contemporary Israel, both fundamentalist Zionists and their evangelical American partners cite the Jews' status as God's chosen people as justification for taking landfor very different ends. Appropriated uncritically, the Bible has thus been used to reinforce exclusivity and superiority, with new myths based on old myths.Finally, in place of the pernicious idea of chosenness, Coogan suggests we might instead focus on another key biblical concept: taking care of the immigrant and the refugee, reminding the reader of the unusual focus on the vulnerable in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.

A groundbreaking new vision for public safety that overturns more than 200 years of fear-based discrimination, othering, and punishmentAs the effects of aggressive policing and mass incarceration harm historically marginalized communities and tear families apart, how do we define safety? In a time when the most powerful institutions in the United States are embracing the repressive and racist systems that keep many communities struggling and in fear, we need to reimagine what safety means. Community leader and lawyer Zach Norris lays out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from fear and punishment and toward growth and support systems for our families and communities. In order to truly be safe, we are going to have to dismantle our mentality of Us vs. Them. By bridging the divides and building relationships with one another, we can dedicate ourselves to strategic, smart investments-meaning resources directed toward our stability and well-being, like healthcare and housing, education and living-wage jobs. This is where real safety begins.We Keep Us Safe is a blueprint of how to hold people accountable while still holding them in community. The result reinstates full humanity and agency for everyone who has been dehumanized and traumatized, so they can participate fully in life, in society, and in the fabric of our democracy.

Examines why it's difficult to form friendships with people of different races, how we can make those connections, and how they will encourage more meaningful conversations about race.Surveys have shown that the majority of people believe cross-racial friendships are essential for improving race relations. However, further polling reveals that most Americans tend to gravitate toward friendships within their own race. Psychologist Deborah L. Plummer examines how factors such as leisure, politics, humor, faith, social media, and education influence the nature and intensity of cross-racial friendships.Inspiring and engaging, Plummer draws from focus groups, statistics, and surveys to provide insight into the fears and discomforts associated with cross-racial friendships. Through personal narratives and social analyses of friendship patterns, this book gives an insightful look at how cross-racial friendships work and fail within American society. Plummer encourages all of us to examine our friendship patterns and to deepen and strengthen our current cross-racial friendships.

A dramatic retelling of the story of the Transcendentalists, revealing them not as isolated authors but as a community of social activists who shaped progressive American values.Conflagration illuminates the connections between key members of the Transcendentalist circle-including James Freeman Clarke, Elizabeth Peabody, Caroline Healey Dall, Elizabeth Stanton, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller-who created a community dedicated to radical social activism. These authors and activists laid the groundwork for democratic and progressive religion in America.In the tumultuous decades before and immediately after the Civil War, the Transcendentalists changed nineteenth-century America, leading what Theodore Parker called "a Second American Revolution." They instigated lasting change in American society, not only through their literary achievements but also through their activism: transcendentalists fought for the abolition of slavery, democratically governed churches, equal rights for women, and against the dehumanizing effects of brutal economic competition and growing social inequality. The Transcendentalists' passion for social equality stemmed from their belief in spiritual friendship-transcending differences in social situation, gender, class, theology, and race. Together, their fight for justice changed the American sociopolitical landscape. They understood that none of us can ever fulfill our own moral and spiritual potential unless we care about the full spiritual and moral flourishing of others.