Celebrating Independent Bookstore Day!

This week in North Philly Notes, we honor the independent bookstores that support Temple University Press. Please visit them on April 27 for Independent Bookstore Day!

Harriet’s Bookshop, 258 E. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, celebrates women authors, women artists, and women activists.
While you’re there, grab a copy of BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered.

Headhouse Books, 619 South 2nd Street, in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 2005 on the belief that no community is complete without the inspiration and exchange of ideas that only a locally-owned, independent bookstore can provide.
Shop there for Jim Murphy’s Real Philly History, Real Fast.

Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee and Books, 5445 Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, offers Cool People. Dope Books. Great Coffee.
Swing by to get Amy Jane Cohen’s Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape.

Big Blue Marble Bookstore, 551 Carpenter Lane, Mt. Airy Village in Philadelphia, PA, has a full selection of thousands of titles—and take advantage of their booksellers’ decades of experience to discover what your next great read might be.
Stop by and buy Beth Kephart’s My Life in Paper.

The Doylestown Bookshop, 16 South Main Street in Doylestown, PA, is a locally owned and operated bookstore dedicated to preserving the heritage and traditions of independent bookstore ideals. 
Pick up Rebecca Yamin’s Digging in the City of Brotherly Love.

Towne Book Center and Cafe, 220 Plaza Drive, Suite B-3, in Collegeville, PA, has been serving the greater Trappe & Collegeville area for almost 30 years.
Go there to get a Ray Didinger’s One Last Read.

Words Matter Bookstore, 52 South Broadway, in Pitman, NJ, is your local portal to the Universe!
Visit and ask for Bob Angelo’s The NFL Off-Camera.

A Book Celebrating Black History in Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, Amy Jane Cohen, author of Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, writes about Philadelphia’s African American experience.

When Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in 1926, he was not advocating for Black history to be the focus of only seven days of the year. In his view, “Negro History Week is the week set aside by the Association for the Study of Negro Life & History for the purpose of emphasizing what has already been learned about the Negro during the year.” Unfortunately, Woodson’s vision did not come to fruition. Even when expanded to a month in 1976, far too many American educators came to think of February as the one time of year to pay attention to the Black experience.

Fortunately, however, students in Philadelphia’s public high schools have the privilege of spending an entire year studying African American history. In 2005 the School Reform Commission unanimously passed a mandate making African American history a graduation requirement. I had the privilege of teaching that course from its inception until I retired from the school district in 2013. I have continued, however, to read and write about Black history, with an emphasis on the Philadelphia experience.

I’ve been particularly interested in how that history—much of which has received increased attention in recent years—is reflected in the landscape. Whether through the many blue and gold historical markers sprinkled through the city, or as a full-fledged monument such as the Octavius V. Catto memorial at City Hall, Philadelphia is full of information about the long and continuing presence of Black Philadelphians.

When Black History Month 2024 began, my book, Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, had just been published. The book is meant for anyone with an interest in Philadelphia history. For those not familiar with the city’s Black history, the nineteen chapters will provide a solid overview of African Americans in Philadelphia from the late seventeenth century through the end of the twentieth century. People already knowledgeable about this history will be able to view it through a new lens.

Consider, for example, Reverend Richard Allen. Born enslaved to Benjamin Chew, the first Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Allen later bought his freedom and became a Methodist preacher in late 18^th century Philadelphia, the national center of free Black life. Along with Absalom Jones, Allen founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid society that was the first independent Black organization in the United States.

After being part of a group of Black worshippers evicted from St. George’s United Methodist Church (still an active congregation at Fourth and Vine Streets), Allen purchased a lot at Sixth and Lombard Streets that has been home to what became known as Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church since before the turn of the nineteenth century. No other property in the nation has been Black owned for this long a time. The name of the church is a reference to its being the founding home of the AME denomination of Christianity, a sect that has spread throughout the country and the world.

A remarkable leader, Richard Allen has long been honored in the Philadelphia landscape. Philadelphia’s first federally funded public housing project, the Richard Allen Homes, was named in 1941. Historical markers for both Mother Bethel and the Free African Society were installed at Sixth and Lombard in the early 1990s thanks to an effort by the late Charles Blockson. To commemorate the bicentennial of the founding of the AME denomination, in 2016 a statue of Allen was installed at the corner of Sixth and Lombard in the Mother Bethel parking lot, and a large mural of Allen was painted at 38th and Market Streets.

An additional mural depicting Richard Allen was recently unveiled on Washington Avenue in Queen Village. In 1830, the last year of Allen’s life, he organized the first Colored Convention, a meeting of Black leaders to strategize on improvements to the lives of African Americans. Colored Conventions continued to be held until the 1890s, and eight of them took place in Philadelphia. The mural depicts Richard Allen perched atop a triangle-shaped pantheon of Colored Convention leaders and participants.

Most significant to me as a resident of Allens Lane in Mount Airy, one block of Allens Lane (named for William Allen, a Philadelphia mayor and an enslaver) was renamed Richard Allen Lane in February 2022. Eight months later, our SEPTA Regional Rail station was renamed Richard Allen Lane station and two informational panels about Allen and Mother Bethel were installed nearby. There is poetic justice in the fact that this station is situated less than half a mile from Chew Avenue, the street named for Allen’s enslaver.

These alterations to the landscape may seem small and insignificant, but as State Representative Chris Rabb said at the dedication ceremony for Richard Allen Lane, “When we take time to research our history, it gives us a chance to reflect and correct choices made with the inclusion or consideration of a diversity of stakeholders. We must closely examine the history we choose to memorialize and honor, especially versions of the past validated by false narratives that marginalize the value of Black people and other communities of struggle.”

As Black History Month 2024 comes to a close, I hope you’ll join me in seeking out, and perhaps even advocating for, reflections of Philadelphia’s African American experience. Please check my website for upcoming speaking engagements or to inquire about inviting me to speak (amyjanecohen.com).

Presenting Temple University Press’ Spring 2024 Catalog

This week in North Philly Notes, we present Temple University Press’ Spring 2024 catalog.

Below are our forthcoming books, arranged alphabetically by title. You can also view the catalog online here.

Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories, by Marianne Novy

Bringing together birthmothers’, adoptees’, and adoptive parents’ portrayals of their experiences in memoirs

Beyond Left, Right, and Center: The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in Contemporary Germany, by Christina Xydias

Debunks our assumptions about ideology and women’s representation in democracies

Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape: Deep Roots, Continuing Legacy, by Amy Jane Cohen

Philadelphia’s Black history as seen through historical markers, monuments, murals, and more

Carceral Entanglements: Gendered Public Memories of Japanese American World War II Incarceration, by Wendi Yamashita

Critiques how Japanese American public memorializations unintentionally participate in maintaining and justifying a neoliberal racial order

Crossing Great Divides: City and Country in Environmental and Political Disorder, by John D. Fairfield

Forging a path forward toward modes of production and ways of life, less dependent on despoliation and manic consumption, that will be genuinely sustaining

Crossing the Border to India: Youth, Migration, and Masculinities in Nepal, by Jeevan R. Sharma

How the changing political economy of rural Nepal informs the desire and agency of young male migrants who seek work in cities

Death Penalty in Decline?: The Fight against Capital Punishment in the Decades since Furman v. Georgia, Edited by Austin Sarat

Examines how the politics of capital punishment have changed in America since 1972 and the current prospects for abolition

Democracy’s Hidden Heroes: Fitting Policy to People and Place, by David C. Campbell

Turning deeply rooted governance dilemmas into practical policy results

Disability, the Environment, and Colonialism, Edited by Tatiana Konrad

Explores discourses related to gender, race, imperialism, and climate across the colonial era

Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production, by Linh Thủy Nguyễn

How American children of Vietnamese refugees connect and express their experiences of racialization using the tropes of family, war, and grief

Faith and Community: How Engagement Strengthens Members, Places of Worship, and Society, by Rebecca A. Glazier

Showing how community engagement can build stronger congregations and improve democracy

Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture, Edited by Srirupa Chatterjee and Shweta Rao Garg

Initiates a much-neglected and much-needed discussion of the politics of Indian women’s body image and self-identity

From South Central to Southside: Gang Transnationalism, Masculinity, and Disorganized Violence in Belize City, by Adam Baird

How longstanding socio-economic vulnerability in Belize City created fertile grounds for embedding deported Bloods and Crips from Los Angeles

The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Cocreative Worldmaking, Edited by Daniel Fischlin and Mark Lomanno

Exploring improvisation as a fundamental practice for teaching and learning

Play to Submission: Gaming Capitalism in a Tech Firm, by Tongyu Wu

A critical exploration into the gamification in modern workplaces as a means of control

Temple University Press’ Annual Holiday Give and Get

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press close out 2023 by suggesting the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to receive and read this holiday season. 

Will Forrest, Rights and Contracts Coordinator/Editorial Assistant
Give: I’m giving Beth Kephart’s magnificent My Life in Paper to my mother, who has had her eye on this book since she got a copy of our Fall catalog. This is a very special book, exploring the everyday paper items that populate our lives with grace and lucidity. It’s the kind of book that I look at and can’t believe that I worked on. It’s a book I would recommend even if it wasn’t from Temple.

Get: I already have too many books I need to work my way through, so I’m not asking for any more. My reading list includes Isaac Butler’s The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, which traces the history of acting technique from Stanislavsky through to the Group Theatre and Lee Strasberg and Brando. I have always found acting books to be hard to parse, so I’m looking forward to this book giving clarity to an often obfuscated (perhaps intentionally so) world.

Shaun Vigil, Editor
Give: The Press has published so many volumes this year that warrant a place on holiday lists that it’s nearly impossible to choose just one. That said, The Collected Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee will certainly be among those I’m gifting this year. Bringing Mukherjee’s complete short fiction under one cover for the first time, this work is sure to offer something new to readers for many years to come.

Get: This year our fellow university press colleagues at the University of New Mexico released The Official Cookbook of the Chile Pepper Institute. The breadth of recipes and chiles represented from across the world will make this an essential in my kitchen, especially in helping to keep me warm during these cold winter months.

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief
Give: Digging in the City of Brotherly Love: Stories from Philadelphia Archaeology, Second Edition, by Rebecca Yamin. Wherever you go in Philadelphia, there’s a good chance history is sleeping beneath your feet. Rebecca Yamin wakes it up and dusts it off, revealing the remarkable stories behind once-buried bones, bowls, and privy pits. This second edition is beautifully designed with several new chapters and new color illustrations.

Get: Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey, by Mack McCormick. Who doesn’t want to better understand Robert Johnson? I’m curious about this book for that reason, but also because of the questions it raises around storytelling and an author’s responsibility to both the living and the dead. The publisher’s pitch reminds me a little of tales like Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse in which storytellers may be consumed by the same forces they’re exploring in their work. 

Stephen Bassett Gluckman, Graduate Editorial Assistant

Give: Kimberly Kattari’s Psychobilly: Subcultural Survival would be a perfect gift for more than a few people in my circle of friends and family. Kattari’s study is not only a dive into the world of Psychobilly, it’s a fascinating journey into the roots and conditions that shaped this vibrant subculture. It promises to be a thoughtful and intriguing present, one that enlightens as much as it entertains. 

Get: I’m intrigued by Esther Yi’s debut novel Y/N from what I’ve heard about it. With a plot working through the concept of “fanfiction,” Yi’s novel seems to be a unique tragicomic meditation on fandom and the way we center our lives in our globalized and wired world. I hope Yi’s novel proves to be both an absurd yet nuanced reflection on identity, human connection, and their limitations in contemporary culture.

Irene Imperio, Advertising and Promotions Manager

Give: Forklore: Recipes and Tales from an American Bistro, by Ellen Yin.  Celebrate cooking at home with Ellen Yin, winner of the 2023 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur. Great for aspiring chefs and home cooks in your life!

Get: Hoping for this holiday cozy mystery to wind down the year – Blackmail and Bibingka (A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery) by Mia P. Manansala 

Faith Ryan, Production Assistant
Give: I would give Intimate Strangers: Shin Issei Women and Contemporary Japanese American Community, 1980-2020, by Tritia Toyota. I find immigrant stories endlessly fascinating, and this book studies a group of people—young Japanese women—who aren’t commonly showcased in such stories about the United States. Spanning forty years, right up to the modern day, this book offers so much to learn about our society past and present.

Get: I would love to receive Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery by Richard Hollingham. I’ve always been interested in history in general, and I find medical history to be an especially dramatic way to connect with the past. Exploring so many centuries of trial-and-error medical care is both a harrowing and rewarding way to trace just how far we’ve come as a civilization.

Ashley Petrucci, Senior Production Editor

Give: I would give Building a Social Contract, by Michael McCulloch, because I think people I know would be interested in the point of comparison between housing situations in the early twentieth century vs. today.

Get: I need to build up my cooking repertoire, but in a whimsical way, so I’d like to get something like The Redwall Cookbook, since that was a series I enjoyed as a kid.

Ryan Mulligan, Editor

Give: Bob Angelo’s The NFL Off-Camera. Angelo spent a career humanizing the people behind the NFL jerseys and helmets through his work at NFL Films. In his book, he reveals even more about what those players were like when the cameras were off. 

Get: Colson Whitehead’s The Harlem Shuffle. Whitehead’s understated prose and alluring characters combined deftly with his insight into the antebellum context of Underground Railroad. I’m eager to see him tackle the 1960s.

Alicia Pucci, Scholarly Communications Associate

Give: The Battles of Germantown, by David W. Young. One of the many history buffs in my life would greatly enjoy learning about Philly’s historic Germantown and hearing Young’s powerful take on public history.

Get: Baking Yesteryear, by B. Dylan Hollis, would be a great addition to my kitchen’s bookshelf. I love seeing recipes from antique cookbooks. Plus, who wouldn’t want to try new things like a chocolate potato cake from 1910?

Karen Baker,  Associate Director, Financial Manager
Give: I would give Color Me…Cherry & White: A Temple University Coloring Book to my grandson, because he is starting to color, and what better to color in than a Temple University inspired coloring book.

Get: I would like to receive I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart, because I find him really funny, and he’s a Philly guy, so that makes it even better. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director
Give: Over Thanksgiving, and a week before Henry Kissinger’s death, my nephew and I had a scarily prescient conversation about the U.S. bombing of  Cambodia. When talking about the Khmer Rouge, I described the Press book, A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service, by Leth Oun and Joe Samuel Starnes. I’ll follow up on that conversation by giving him the book. 

Get: I want to make time to read a book I already have: The Nix, by Nathan Hill. I bought it after the great New York Times and NPR reviews, and then many more, but have been daunted by its size ever since.  This will be the year I tackle it! 

Gary Kramer, Publicity Manager and Interim Sales Manager
Give: A friend of mine is a history buff so I’m getting him a copy of Real Philly History, Real Fast. I had a chance this year to see author Jim Murphy present his book and he was amazing. I sold out of copies. I’d hoped to see him lead a tour but it rained the day we planned. But hey, that’s a resolution for 2024!
Get: While I am not a history buff, I read about two “history” books in the New York Times that intrigued me. Aaron and I were both fascinated by Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of American Book Publishing and Bookselling in the 20th Century, so if anyone wants to spend the $200.00 to send us a copy, I’d share it with him when I’m done. The other title was the more affordable novel, The Sleeping Soldier, by Aster Glenn Gray, about a union soldier who “wakes up” and befriends a college student in the 1960s.

Only the Paper You Need

This week in North Philly Notes, Beth Kephart, author of My Life in Paper, writes about our relationship with paper.

A sheet of paper is a promise or a dare, a letter, a list, a story, a smudge, a treasure or the evidence that finally proves the crime. It signifies (or can signify) the death of a forest, the corruption of water and air, a coming heap in the trashcan or the dumpsite.

Each office worker consumes, on average, 10,000 sheets of paper a year, claim some who have dared to quantify the situation. And with paper accounting for more than a quarter of the total waste in landfills, TheWorldCounts, an organization that uses live trackers to help the rest of us understand the magnitude of global challenges, presents this fact for our imagination: “With all the paper we waste each year, we can build a 12 foot high wall of paper from New York to California!”

Paper, ubiquitous paper, isn’t even a human invention. Give the patent rights to the paper wasps and yellow jackets who, millions of years ago, heeded some inborn directive and began to saturate chewed-up wood with their own saliva and convert the fibrous material into their thin, architecturally brilliant nests. It would be a long time before anonymous humans would leave traces of the stuff in Central Asia and even longer before Cai Lun, a Chinese official employed by the Eastern Han Court in 105 CE, acquired fame for his understanding that you could beat the heck out of cellulose fibers, set the loose organic material to float in a watery vat, and, using a screen of some sort, dip into the suspension before leaving the material to dry and flatten in a variety of ways. It was in this way that old clothes, for example, became new paper, and that paper, in time, became new clothes.

The technology of paper spread. Various cultures had their paper making secrets, but the mechanics were essentially the same—pound, suspend, dip, dry, let those hydrogen bonds do their thing. In the United States, William Rittenhouse made an early claim as key colonial papermaker when, in 1687, he purchased a 20-acre wedge of land along an active tributary of Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Creek, and constructed, with help, the first paper mill of British North America. Families who had worn their old night clothes or shirts to ruin were paid, by the mill, for their rags. A class of rag pickers emerged.

Paper offered proof of the power of recycling. It also offered proof of Nature’s profound versatility. Consider Dr. Jacob Christian Schaeffer (1718-1790), a German mycologist who, among many other things, made the making of paper one of his lifelong obsessions. Experimenting with cabbage stalks, moss, grapevines, nettles, cat-tails, thistles, mallow, corn husks, potatoes, old roof shingles, reeds, beans, St. John’s wort, aloe, clematis, sawdust, burdock, and asbestos, among other organic materials, Schaeffer ultimately created a six-volume book to showcase his methods and samples. The fibers, always, were the thing—wherever they could be found.

After the Hollander beater was invented by the Dutch in 1860, hand beating gave way to machines. Demand, already on the rise, grew—outpacing, sometimes overwhelmingly, supply. Though the Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert had invented the first paper-making machine in 1799, it wasn’t until the 19th century that papermaking became an industrial force. All those trees. All that water. All those chemicals. All that stink in the air above the factories.

Recycling was—and remains—the answer, or at least an answer to our paper needs. Recycle your paper and you are saving the trees, contributing to lower levels of air and water pollution, reducing the need for chlorine. Being a wise steward of paper helps, too—printing on both sides, widening your margins, writing smaller numbers, maybe, memorizing your grocery-store lists.

But there is also, I have learned in recent years, this: Grab a vat. Acquire or build a deckle and mold. Save your ratty T-shirts or buy actual couch sheets. Hunt about your yard or in your refrigerator or other places where plucking flowers is not the work of thieves for some delicious fibrous stuff (lawn clippings, cattails, dandelions, arugula, wheat straw, the inner flesh of mulberry trees, say). Save your journal scraps, old drafts, last year’s reports, yesterday’s printed news, your abandoned holiday gift list, the books you no longer wish to read. Make, in other words, your very own paper, which perhaps you’ll lace with blanched flower petals, or perhaps you’ll size with okra juice so that you might write, on it, a story.

Stand in the breeze pulping and vatting and dipping and drying, and this is what you’ll see: Every sheet of paper is a miracle of sorts. Use it well. Recycle honorably. Imagine yourself as a paper wasp, making only the paper you need.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of some forty books, a memoir teacher, and a book artist. Find her online at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com.

From the NFL to TUP

This week in North Philly Notes, Bob Angelo, author of The NFL Off-Camera, recounts his long-held passion for football.

The first book I ever bought was the 1963 Official Pro Football Almanac.

I needed it so I could assign names and paint numbers on all of my electric football players. Not satisfied, I then fashioned pedestal cameras out of modeling clay and Play-Doh. I attached some of them to the perimeter of my vibrating playing field. I placed two more in the two towers that I built with my Remco Girder and Panel/Bridge and Turnpike Building set. Finally, I formed a big neighborhood league of like-minded folks so that I would have worthy opponents once my team was ready to play.

I was ten years old at the time.

Yes, my obsession with professional football predated the full maturation of my cerebral cortex. Little wonder that by the time I’d earned my Bachelor’s Degrees in Journalism and Philosophy (Penn State) and a Masters in Broadcast Journalism (Northwestern), NFL Films felt compelled to hire me. By then, I was 22.

For the next 43+ years, I lived my dream, producing segments and full-fledged films about the NFL and its people. I developed new shows that still exist (Hard Knocks on HBO) and modified existing shows to extend their lifespan (Pop Warner Super Bowl, Quarterback Challenge, et.al.). I worked in shorts most of the calendar year. I shot more than 850 professional games, attended 40 Super Bowls, and worked with and alongside thousands of players, coaches, owners, team executives and media types. When it all ended in the late winter of 2018, the University of Delaware recruited me to teach a production course that I created. In 2020, I did the same at Penn State.

I also started writing my second book. My first was called Beings in Time: An Existential Survey of Human Subjectivity. It sold less than two dozen copies worldwide, most of them in Europe. For years, friends and family insisted I should write a book about my career. I resisted. Sorry, but the Memoirs of an NFL Films Producer sounded lame and rather pompous to me. And yet… I had crossed paths with hundreds of Hall of Famers, Super Bowl champions, and just plain interesting people. Why not?

When Covid-19 ended my college teaching career, I dedicated myself full time to The NFL A-to-Z, or whatever I was calling it at the time. I decided to do a collection of short stories, convinced that pro football fans would not want a long narrative. I came up with a working list of NFL persons with whom I’d interacted personally. This was my only pre-requisite for each story and subject. Then I began writing.

At some point, I asked my wife and son to critique some of the completed stories. My son caught numerous factual mistakes, but in general, he liked them. However, my wife Barbara’s response shocked me. She generally does not like my writing. In addition to my philosophical tome, I have written eight 100-page-plus screenplays—two of which came very close to being optioned by Hollywood producers and one of which became raw material for the movie Spies Like Us. She actually did like my NFL stories. That’s when I knew I was onto something.

But doubt muddied the waters. The more I wrote, the less I liked the entire process. And I had nothing worked out with anybody. No advance. No book deal. No agent. And, pretty much, very little hope that a legit publisher would see any value in any of it. By the time I attended a late 2020 Covid Super Spreader, I had contemplated hitting the delete button on my old war horse Lenovo computer several dozen times.

That’s when a close family friend altered my life’s path.

Professor James Mancinelli asked how my book was coming along. I told him I was ready to trash it. He asked me to tell him one of the stories. I walked him through the Lyle Alzado story as best I could remember it. When I finished, he took off his mask so I could take in his entire countenance and said, “Robert, these stories have value!”

Inspired, I vowed to finish the damn thing. Then I started making calls to friends in the business asking for advice on how to market it. ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio hooked me up with a Chicago-based publisher. Ray Didinger gave me names at Temple University Press. Just when I was again about to give up and return to watching TV westerns all day, Ryan Mulligan at Temple contacted me and asked if I was willing to work hard to get my lengthy, undisciplined manuscript into shape for eventual publication.

And we did. Now the book is published and I am talking about it on radio shows and have appearances and newspaper column interviews and live streaming events to promote and publicize The NFL Off-Camera. And people are actually buying it! (Sales have already surpassed my previous book more than tenfold.)

I still think about that 1963 Official Pro Football Almanac. And those clay cameras televising my electric football games to my imaginary audiences. And my obsession with pro football that will be with me until my last day of experiencing Human Subjectivity—which is hopefully a long way off.

An existential maxim states, “To do is to be.” And I still love what I be doin’.

Long live pro football!!!

Announcing Temple University Press’ Fall 2023 catalog

This week in North Philly Notes, we present the titles featured in our Fall 2023 catalog.

My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera, by Beth Kephart
A memoirist’s guide to the role paper plays in our construction of ourselves

In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family, by Sara Docan-Morgan

Details how transnational Korean adoptees who have reunited with their birth families navigate identity, family, and belonging

Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America, by William Gee Wong

An immigrant father-American son story that illustrates that immigration works despite systemic racism and American exceptionalism

Intimate Strangers: Shin Issei Women and Contemporary Japanese American Community, 1980-2020, by Tritia Toyota

Exploring how Japanese women migrants (shin Issei) are making place/space for themselves among generations of Americans of Japanese ancestry

Taking Stock of Homicide: Trends, Emerging Themes, and Research Challenges, edited by Karen F. Parker, Richard Stansfield, and Ashley M. Mancik

Setting the standard for how to study homicide

Work, Fight, or Play Ball: How Bethlehem Steel Helped Baseball’s Stars Avoid World War I, by William Ecenbarger

The fascinating story of top athletes like Babe Ruth dodging military service by playing ball for shipyards and steel mill teams

Digging in the City of Brotherly Love: Stories from Philadelphia Archaeology, Second Edition, by Rebecca Yamin

New archaeological finds in Philadelphia and state-of-the-art analyses bring more of the city’s unknown past and its people to life

The Barnes Then and Now: Dialogues on Education, Installation, and Social Justice, edited by Martha Lucy Distributed by Temple University Press for the Barnes Foundation

As the Barnes enters its second century, how does it honor its founder’s vision while responding to the complexities of contemporary life and museum practice?

Words like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China, by Caterina Fugazzola

Examining grassroots strategies the LGBT movement in China used to achieve social change without protest

Yes Gawd!: How Faith Shapes LGBT Identity and Politics in the United States, by Royal G. Cravens III

A comprehensive study of LGBT religious experiences in the United States that provides important lessons for American democracy and civil society

The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement, by Neil Kraus

Showing how the contemporary education reform movement is a political campaign created to advance the free markets of neoliberalism

Preparing Students to Engage in Equitable Community Partnerships: A Handbook, by Elizabeth A. Tryon, Haley C. Madden, and Cory Sprinkel

A comprehensive handbook for community-engagement professionals to navigate the art of preparing students for humble, respectful, and equitable community partnerships

All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comic Plays of the Federal Theatre Project, by Paul Gagliardi

How comic plays of the Federal Theatre Project challenged work norms promoted by the federal government during the Great Depression

Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit, by Michael McCulloch

Shows that power is negotiated through housing development, which spatializes race and class relations and is central to workers’ security

Inspired Citizens: How Our Political Role Models Shape American Politics, by Jennie Sweet-Cushman

Do Americans have political role models and, if so, what impact do they have on political behavior and attitudes?

The Perversity of Gratitude: An Apartheid Education, by Grant Farred

How a disenfranchised apartheid education prompted thinking

A Critical Synergy: Race, Decoloniality, and World Crises, by Ali Meghji

Shows how decolonial theory and critical race theory can complement each other, applying them in combination to the world’s greatest social challenges

Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations: Revisioning Migrants and Mobilities through the Critique of Antiblackness, edited by Philip Kretsedemas and Jamella N. Gow

Using Black Studies theory to examine the contemporary meanings of migration

Recounting the History of Temple University Japan

This week in North Philly Notes, Richard Joslyn and Bruce Stronach, coauthors of The History of Temple University Japan, reflect on their experiences at TUJ and on writing their book.

Richard Joslyn

Preserving the history of Temple University Japan (TUJ)—which was in danger of being lost as principal participants passed away in the 1980s and 1990s and documentary evidence was forgotten or shredded—was a labor of love. With the support of Temple’s Provost and the Director of the library’s special collections research center, files in many university offices were searched and considerable documentary evidence was found and placed in a newly created TUJ Archive. These materials were supplemented with oral histories and essays by TUJ old-timers on what they considered to be important aspects of TUJ’s development. Without those contributions the historical record on which the book is based would have been much less complete, authentic, and revealing and fewer voices would have been heard.

Looking back, it is remarkable that the infant of 1982 and the young adult of 2002 has become the mature, confident, prosperous, and accomplished TUJ of today. Starting in 1982 with about 200 Japanese students taking an intensive English-language program exported from Temple’s Main Campus, with little knowledge of the students’ educational histories or linguistic abilities and no library or other amenities, classes were taught in a low-rise nondescript office building in the shadow of Tokyo Towe,r  TUJ now boasts a degree-seeking undergraduate enrollment of over 2,000, well-regarded graduate programs, a diverse student body and faculty from around the world, and first-class facilities on the campus of a Japanese university with which innovative partnerships have been created. Along the way, the very existence of TUJ was seriously in doubt three times, initial Japanese government hostility to the venture had to be overcome, University support sometimes (but infrequently) wavered, and the Fukushima earthquake and COVID pandemic seriously tested TUJ’s institutional capabilities and the University’s long-term commitment. 

Forty years later, TUJ has become emblematic of Temple’s slogan, “Perseverance Conquers All,” and is a beacon of hope and opportunity for thousands of students from around the world. It has been a privilege to attempt to tell its story in a way that does justice to its accomplishments and to share that story with others who are interested in the concept and practice of international education.

Bruce Stronach

Other than the pleasure it gave me to review the history of TUJ and its interesting trials and tribulations, failures and successes over the years, I found the  most important things about writing this book to be the partnership between Rich and I over the several years of writing, and the book’s timeliness.

Rich’s and my experiences with and perceptions of TUJ were quite different, given that Rich was first and foremost a Temple person whereas I, a Japan person, parachuted in from the outside. He was able to see the sweep of the years better than I, while I was completely focused on the contemporary context.  This gives the book the right balance of history and contemporary case study.

The other important thing about the book is, to me, its timeliness. As someone who is actively involved in supporting the development of global education, especially in the context of Japanese-American relations, I know that much remains to be accomplished  to create a truly global educational experience for each country’s universities. This book is a great blueprint for how to develop an effective overseas campus and, through that, educate students from around the world in a context that goes beyond the limiting designations of Japanese or American.

The one anecdote of many that sticks in my mind is the student from a Japanese university who “studied abroad” for a semester on the TUJ campus. When she went back to her home university and met one of her professors she said, “Wow, now I know what a real university is like.” I’ve always loved that.

Brotherly Love

This week in North Philly Notes, Nico Slate, author of Brothers, writes about his brother’s death and Philadelphia.

In 1994, my older brother was the victim of a racially-charged attack. A White man smashed a beer bottle into his face, crushing his right eye. I used to call it a hate crime but the truth is more complicated. On July 4, 2003, my brother died in a car crash he might have avoided if he still had both of his eyes. About ten years ago, I began investigating my brother’s death and its relationship to the night he lost his eye. I decided to write a book, Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race,

Neither my brother nor I ever lived in Philadelphia. He was attacked in Los Angeles, the city in which we were born and in which he lived most of his life. In 1960, my brother’s father, a Nigerian man named Chukwudi Osakwe, came to study at the renowned HBCU, Lincoln University, located not far from Philadelphia. In Brothers, I describe how Chukwudi played on the soccer team, was elected president of his freshmen class, and was known as “the new African with the fancy British accent.” I wish my brother and I had visited Lincoln together. He and I were in Philadelphia together only once—during a cross-country trip that occurred just a few years after he lost his eye. In my book, I describe how that trip revealed many of the challenges my brother faced after losing his eye—not just how to cope with his disability, but how to respond to the fact that he was now seen by others as disabled. I also discuss the way we were treated as a mixed-race family as we drove through different regions of the country.

While I chose not to write about our brief time in Philadelphia, I could have described our touristy decision to visit the Liberty Bell. I could have expounded on the cliché of “brotherly love,” a cliché that always meant more to me than it should have given that I spent so little time in the city. Even as kids in LA, my brother and I knew that Philadelphia was not an urban utopia that embodied its moniker. Like the Liberty Bell, that cracked symbol of a deeply-flawed freedom, a freedom that was not extended to the hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans at the time of independence, the idea of a “city of brotherly love” is more a dream than a reality.

But my brother was a dreamer, like his father, and I still find hope in the promise of brotherly love, the promise of the love my brother shared for me. This is one of the reasons I wrote Brothers.

No More Consenting to Corruption in Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, Brett Mandel, author of Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting, offers ideas about how to overcome the perils of public corruption.

Philadelphia is weeks away from an election that will help set a new direction for local government. Change is badly needed, given the unsatisfying state of the city. Candidates for mayor and for other offices are talking a lot about poverty, gun violence, and lack of economic opportunity. They should also be talking about public corruption, which underlies so many of Philadelphia’s problems. Today, corruption is consented to—through action and inaction by so many in our hyper-connected town—and it costs so much to run a city so poorly. To move Philadelphia into a better future, we must change a culture of corruption and implement key anticorruption reforms so we can best address the city’s challenges.

What is public corruption? It is when officials put their own private gain before the public good, abuse their public authority to advance private agendas, and pervert the work of public entities by excluding the public from official decision-making processes in order to favor private interests. Corruption increases the price of government services and reduces resources that could be used to address our many challenges. Corruption also imposes further costs in denying opportunity for those who deserve It, trampling on the values of fairness and equity, and threatening the health and safety of residents. 

Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting details the city’s history of corruption and show how it threatens our future. The book recounts the story of the city’s most important corruption investigation so far this century. It discusses the roots, effects, and reasons for corruption’s persistence, places our current issues into perspective, and offers recommendations to make positive change. Every candidate for office should read the book, review its recommendations, and tell voters what they will do to stop consenting to the corruption that holds Philadelphia back.

To make change for the better, we must understand certain things.

• We need to learn to recognize corruption when we see it. We are on the lookout for overt shakedowns or passing envelopes of cash to bribe seekers, but Philadelphia corruption generally consists of officials doing favors for friends and subverting the work of government to benefit special interests
• Arguing about whether corruption in Philadelphia is worse or better than it previously was is counterproductive; asserting that today’s corruption is different from that of the past does not reduce its cost or blunt its other damaging effects today
• Norms, laws, and accepted standards change; what was once an everyday practice can become stigmatized, even demonized, so we cannot count on the legal system to solve these problems
• We cannot leave the fight against corruption up to a few reform actors or a single reform moment; each of us needs to want our city to function systematically and properly for everyone more than we want to know someone who can get something done for us — and we cannot stop the fight after any small victory is won

We need a mayor and other elected officials who will confront our culture of corruption and embrace an anticorruption honor code for themselves and those they hire—to not only not engage in corruption acts, but to report instances of corruption they see. Ultimately, it is not enough to change rules or laws and we must all stop enabling corruptors with our silent consent. The defining characteristic of Philadelphia corruption is its collegiality. We are all so closely connected to each other, which makes us reluctant to call out bad behavior by anyone who is “one of us.” 

If we cannot stand against those who engage in corrupt activities because too many ties bind us together, then we need to organize a different “us” to oppose corruption. An anticorruption movement or slate of candidates, or even a formal local anticorruption political party could build a movement so we can split from those who do wrong by the city—and those who try to play both sides. If we refuse to consent to more corruption, we can create the thriving city that Philadelphians deserve.

Brett Mandel is a writer, consultant, and former city official active in reform politics in Philadelphia.