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.

Improve your writing by adjusting the way you think and approach assignments in the instantly accessible and flexible Habits of the Creative Mind.

This ebook has been updated to provide you with the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021). Grounded in the best practices of effective writing instruction, Joining the Conversation’s rhetorical approach teaches students the key critical thinking skills they will draw on as they begin to explore and respond thoughtfully to the complex conversations around them. From reflective and informative to analytical and persuasive writing, chapters follow real student writers as they find a conversation, develop, revise, and document their writing. Thoroughly revised, the fourth edition includes new student projects and more support for academic reading, critical thinking, and assessing credibility and bias.

Grounded in the best practices of effective writing instruction, Joining the Conversation’s rhetorical approach teaches students the key critical thinking skills they will draw on as they begin to explore and respond thoughtfully to the complex conversations around them. From reflective and informative to analytical and persuasive writing, chapters follow real student writers as they find a conversation, develop, revise, and document their writing. Thoroughly revised, the fourth edition includes new student projects and more support for academic reading, critical thinking, and assessing credibility and bias.

Conversations can be critical and destructive, or they can be generative and productive. This book shows how to guarantee your conversations will help people, organizations, and communities flourish. --

A former Senior Partner and Global Managing Director at the legendary design firm IDEO shows how to design conversations and meetings that are creative and impactful. Conversations are one of the most fundamental means of communicating we have as humans. At their best, conversations are unconstrained, authentic and open—two or more people sharing thoughts and ideas in a way that bridges our individual experiences, achieves a common goal. At their worst, they foster misunderstanding, frustration and obscure our real intentions. How often do you walk away from a conversation feeling really heard? That it moved the people in it forward in some important way? You’re not alone. In his practice as a designer, Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to a way to design the art of conversation itself with intention and purpose, but still artful and playful. Making Conversation codifies what he learned and outlines the seven elements essential to successful exchanges: Commitment, Creative Listening, Clarity, Context, Constraints, Change, and Create. Taken together, these seven elements form a set of resources anyone can use to be more deliberate and purposeful in making conversations work.