From the row houses of Baltimore to the stoops of Brooklyn, the New York Times bestselling author of The Cook Up lays bare the voices of the most vulnerable and allows their stories to uncover the systematic injustice threaded within our society. Honest and eye-opening, the pages of We Speak for Ourselves “are abundant with wisdom and wit; integrity and love, not to mention enough laughs for a stand-up comedy routine” (Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math). Watkins introduces you to Down Bottom, the storied community of East Baltimore that holds a mirror to America’s poor black neighborhoods—“hoods” that could just as easily be in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, or Atlanta. As Watkins sees it, the perspective of people who live in economically disadvantaged black communities is largely absent from the commentary of many top intellectuals who speak and write about race. Unapologetic and sharp-witted, D. Watkins is here to tell the truth as he has seen it. We Speak for Ourselves offers an in-depth analysis of inner-city hurdles and honors the stories therein. We sit in underfunded schools, walk the blocks burdened with police corruption, stand within an audience of Make America Great Again hats, journey from trap house to university lecture, and rally in neglected streets. And we listen. “Watkins has come to remind us, everyone deserves the opportunity to speak for themselves” (Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author) and serves hope to fellow Americans who are too often ignored and calling on others to examine what it means to be a model activist in today’s world. We Speak for Ourselves is a must-read for all who are committed to social change.

The concept of environmental justice has offered a new direction for social movements and public policy in recent decades, and researchers worldwide now position social equity as a prerequisite for sustainability. Yet the relationship between social equity and environmental sustainability has been little studied in Canada. Speaking for Ourselves draws together Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars and activists who bring equity issues to the forefront by considering environmental justice from multiple perspectives and in specifically Canadian contexts.

Learn how to reverse the effects of negative self-talk and embrace a more positive, optimistic outlook on life

Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is a collection of essays written by and for Autistic people. Spanning from the dawn of the Neurodiversity movement to the blog posts of today, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking catalogues the experiences and ethos of the Autistic community and preserves both diverse personal experiences and the community's foundational documents together side by side.

This work is an intervention of self-representation that explores experiences of five Black mothers of the same Chicago elementary school with respect to their relationship with the author – a qualitative researcher – over a period of two years. Black feminist epistemology is the framework that directed this project, fieldwork, and interpretation of the findings. Additionally, this work employs tools of poetry, counternarratives, and critical ethnography. Billye Sankofa Waters reiterates the plaintive lament of the mothers of 1970s Boston when they said, ‘When we fight about education we’re fighting for our lives.’ This story of parents in Chicago is powerful, poignant, and oh so familiar. This is a must read!” – Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison the ways that Black mothers come to know and participate in their children’s education. We Can Speak for Ourselves plumbs Black feminist epistemology and critical theory to create a new model that reimagines the critical terrain of both public and private African American female ‘motherwork.’ It is intersectionally deft in how it attends to both structural issues of inequality and intragroup negotiation of identity. This book is bold, well-researched and an important contribution to the fields of Education, Sociology, Women’s and Gender Studies and Public Policy.” – Michele T. Berger, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; author of Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with HIV/AIDS and co-author of Transforming Scholarship: Why Women’s and Gender Studies Students Are Changing Themselves and the World We Can Speak for Ourselves is a necessary read for everyone, especially Black mothers, who are on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter Movement. After all, the movement at its core is about resisting the anti-Black society in which Black mothers are forced to raise their children. Sankofa Waters beautifully blends personal writings, counternarratives, and the voices of five Black mothers to create a book that gives us new language to address the issues impacting Black families and Black survival. Through this work, Sankofa Waters expertly depicts the struggles of Black mothers as organic intellectuals deconstructing, critiquing, and navigating the power structures that oppress their sons, daughters, and Black communities at large.” – Bettina L. Love, University of Georgia; Board Chair of The Kindezi School in Atlanta, Georgia; 2016 Nasir Jones Fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University; and author of Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South

Reminiscent of the classic Random Family and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, but told by the man who lived it, The Cook Up is a riveting look inside the Baltimore drug trade portrayed in The Wire and an incredible story of redemption. The smartest kid on his block in East Baltimore, D. was certain he would escape the life of drugs, decadence, and violence that had surrounded him since birth. But when his brother Devin is shot-only days after D. receives notice that he's been accepted into Georgetown University-the plans for his life are exploded, and he takes up the mantel of his brother's crack empire. D. succeeds in cultivating the family business, but when he meets a woman unlike any he's known before, his priorities are once more put into question. Equally terrifying and hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking, D.'s story offers a rare glimpse into the mentality of a person who has escaped many hells.

A Boston Globe Most Anticipated Fall Book In this urgently needed guide, the PBS host, award-winning journalist, and author of We Need to Talk teaches us how to have productive conversations about race, offering insights, advice, and support. A self-described “light-skinned Black Jew,” Celeste Headlee has been forced to speak about race—including having to defend or define her own—since childhood. In her career as a journalist for public media, she’s made it a priority to talk about race proactively. She’s discovered, however, that those exchanges have rarely been productive. While many people say they want to talk about race, the reality is, they want to talk about race with people who agree with them. The subject makes us uncomfortable; it’s often not considered polite or appropriate. To avoid these painful discussions, we stay in our bubbles, reinforcing our own sense of righteousness as well as our division. Yet we gain nothing by not engaging with those we disagree with; empathy does not develop in a vacuum and racism won’t just fade away. If we are to effect meaningful change as a society, Headlee argues, we have to be able to talk about what that change looks like without fear of losing friends and jobs, or being ostracized. In Speaking of Race, Headlee draws from her experiences as a journalist, and the latest research on bias, communication, and neuroscience to provide practical advice and insight for talking about race that will facilitate better conversations that can actually bring us closer together. This is the book for people who have tried to debate and educate and argue and got nowhere; it is the book for those who have stopped talking to a neighbor or dread Thanksgiving dinner. It is an essential and timely book for all of us.