Beginning with an examination of West African food traditions during the era of the transatlantic slave trade and ending with a discussion of black vegan activism in the twenty-first century, Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food Has Shaped African American Life tells a multi-faceted food story that goes beyond the well-known narrative of southern-derived “soul food” as the predominant form of black food expression. While this book considers the provenance and ongoing cultural resonance of emblematic foods such as greens and cornbread, it also examines the experiences of African Americans who never embraced such foods or who rejected them in search of new tastes and new symbols that were less directly tied to the past of plantation slavery. This book tells the story of generations of cooks and eaters who worked to create food habits that they variously considered sophisticated, economical, distinctly black, all-American, ethical, and healthful in the name of benefiting the black community. Significantly, it also chronicles the enduring struggle of impoverished eaters who worried far more about having enough to eat than about what particular food filled their plates. Finally, it considers the experiences of culinary laborers, whether enslaved, poorly paid domestic servants, tireless entrepreneurs, or food activists and intellectuals who used their knowledge and skills to feed and educate others, making a lasting imprint on American food culture in the process. Throughout African American history, food has both been used as a tool of empowerment and wielded as a weapon. Beginning during the era of slavery, African American food habits have often served as a powerful means of cementing the bonds of community through the creation of celebratory and affirming shared rituals. However, the system of white supremacy has frequently used food, or often the lack of it, as a means to attempt to control or subdue the black community. This study demonstrates that African American eaters who have worked to creative positive representations of black food practices have simultaneously had to confront an elaborate racist mythology about black culinary inferiority and difference. Keeping these tensions in mind, empty plates are as much a part of the history this book sets out to narrate as full ones, and positive characterizations of black foodways are consistently put into dialogue with distorted representations created by outsiders. Together these stories reveal a rich and complicated food history that defies simple stereotypes and generalizations.

“An intriguing amalgam of personal memoir, philosophical speculation, natural lore, cultural history, and art criticism.” —Los Angeles Times From the award-winning author of Orwell's Roses, a stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown Written as a series of autobiographical essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Rebecca Solnit's life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. Solnit is interested in the stories we use to navigate our way through the world, and the places we traverse, from wilderness to cities, in finding ourselves, or losing ourselves. While deeply personal, her own stories link up to larger stories, from captivity narratives of early Americans to the use of the color blue in Renaissance painting, not to mention encounters with tortoises, monks, punk rockers, mountains, deserts, and the movie Vertigo. The result is a distinctive, stimulating voyage of discovery.

At Senegal’s House of Slaves, Barack Obama’s presidential visit renewed debate about authenticity, belonging, and the myth of return—not only for the president, but also for the slave fort itself. At the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York, up to ten thousand slave decedents lie buried beneath the area around Wall Street, which some of them helped to build and maintain. Their likely descendants, whose activism produced the monument located at that burial site, now occupy its margins. The Bench by the Road slave memorial at Sullivan’s Isle near Charleston reflects the region’s centrality in slavery’s legacy, a legacy made explicit when the murder of nine black parishioners by a white supremacist led to the removal of the Confederate flag from the state’s capitol grounds. Helena Woodard considers whether the historical slave sites that have been commemorated in the global community represent significant progress for the black community or are simply an unforgiving mirror of the present. In Slave Sites on Display: Reflecting Slavery’s Legacy through Contemporary “Flash” Moments, Woodard examines how select modern-day slave sites can be understood as contemporary “flash” moments: specific circumstances and/or seminal events that bind the past to the present. Woodard exposes the complex connections between these slave sites and the impact of race and slavery today. Though they differ from one another, all of these sites are displayed as slave memorials or monuments and function as high-profile tourist attractions. They interpret a story about the history of Atlantic slavery relative to the lived experiences of the diaspora slave descendants that organize and visit the sites.

In today’s work environment, the lines between our professional and personal lives are blurred more than ever before. Whatever is happening to us outside of our workplace—whether stressful, painful, or joyful—follows us into work as well. We may think we have to keep these realities under wraps and act as if we “have it all together.” But as Mike Robbins explains, we can work better, lead better, and be more engaged and fulfilled if—instead of trying to hide who we are—we show up fully and authentically. Mike, a sought-after motivational speaker and business consultant, has spent more than 15 years researching, writing, and speaking about essential human experiences and high performance in the workplace. His clients have ranged from Google to Citibank, from the U.S. Department of Labor to the San Francisco Giants. From small start-ups in Silicon Valley to family-owned businesses in the Midwest. From what he’s seen and studied over the years, Mike believes that for us to thrive professionally, we must be willing to bring our whole selves to the work that we do. Bringing our whole selves to work means acknowledging that we’re all vulnerable, imperfect human beings doing the best we can. It means having the courage to take risks, speak up, have compassion, ask for help, connect with others in a genuine way, and allow ourselves to be truly seen. In this book, Mike outlines five principles we can use to approach our own work in this spirit of openness and humanity, and to help the people we work with feel safe enough to do the same, so that the teams and organizations we’re a part of can truly succeed. “This book will offer you insights, ideas, and tools to inspire you to bring all of who you are to the work that you do—regardless of where you work, what kind of work you do, and with whom you do it. And, if you’re an owner, leader, or just someone who wants to have influence on those around you—this book will also give you specific techniques for how to build or enhance your team’s culture in such a way that encourages others to bring all of who they are to work.”

Tackling relationships, career, and family issues, John Kim, LMFT, thinks of himself as a life-styledesigner, not a therapist. His radical new approach, that he sometimes calls “self-help in a shot glass” is easy, real, and to the point. He helps people make changes to their lives so that personal growth happens organically, just by living. Let’s face it, therapy is a luxury. Few of us have the time or money to devote to going to an office every week. With anecdotes illustrating principles in action (in relatable and sometimes irreverent fashion) and stand-alone practices and exercises, Kim gives readers the tools and directions to focus on what's right with them instead of what's wrong. When John Kim was going through the end of a relationship, he began blogging as The Angry Therapist, documenting his personal journey post-divorce. Traditional therapists avoid transparency, but Kim preferred the language of "me too" as opposed to "you should." He blogged about his own shortcomings, revelations, views on relationships, and the world. He spoke a different therapeutic language —open, raw, and at times subversive — and people responded. The Angry Therapist blog, that inspired this book, has been featured in The Atlantic Monthly and on NPR.

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