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).

Recounting an almost forgotten period of baseball history

This week in North Philly Notes, Bill Ecenbarger, author of Work, Fight, and Play Ball, writes about the safe shelter leagues of WWI.

I’m almost certain there’s a baseball gene that my father passed on to me and I gave to my son and two grandsons. I can’t remember ever not knowing about baseball, and so it was almost inevitable that I ever not knowing about baseball, and so it was almost inevitable that I would write a book it.

Growing up in the New York City area in the 1950s, there were three teams, the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Yankees, and the existence of three competitive Major League teams within 10 miles or so of each other resulted heated rivalries among adults and children. Your affiliation, like your religion, was known by all. You were Protestant, Jewish, or Catholic, and you were a Dodger, Giant, or Yankee fan.

My loyalty  was pre-ordained. I was born in the Bronx, a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, and in my family you either rooted for the Yankees or entered Witness Protection, courtesy of my father, grandfather, and three uncles. True, one of my grandfathers was a Dodgers fan, but we always suspected that not all his gear was stored securely.

Baseball clearly and unquestionably was the top sport in America. Professional football and basketball existed, but they were far, far behind what was then the National Pastime.

Moreover, New York was the epicenter of baseball. How much so? During my boyhood, there were a total of 49 World Series games, and all but four of them were played in New York. That’s amazing, so let me restate it. Fully 45 of the 49 World Series Games between 1949 and 1956 were played in the Big Apple, though no one used that phrase back then. In fact, we didn’t even call it New York. It was simply “The City.” 

Now fast forward to the early 1990s when I lived in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. I regularly walked my dog in an abandoned, turn-of-the-century amusement facility called Penryn Park. Every day Sarah (my dog) found an olfactory extravaganza on a grassy expanse with a sign identifying it as “Babe Ruth Field.” My curiosity finally led me to contact the Lebanon County Historical Society.

            “Why is it called Babe Ruth Field?” I asked. “He never played here, did he?”

            “Yes, he did. In 1918. We have his uniform.”

            I was hooked. I showed up at the Historical Society the next day.

The uniform was gray with blue striping and “Beth Steel” in red letters on the chest. There was no number or name on the back. Players didn’t wear numbers until about 1930, and players’ names didn’t appear on uniform backs until 1960. The Yankees’, by the way, still don’t include names but they have numbers.

The society had a thick “Babe Ruth” file, and among other things, it contained a Bethlehem Steel employee card issued to “Ruth, George ‘Babe.’” It listed his eyesight as merely “good,” and to the question, “Use Intoxicants?” the answer was “no,” a response that would have elicited guffaws from anyone who knew Ruth’s habits. Indeed, behind his back, he was sometimes referred to as the Sultan of Sot. The card showed that Ruth was on the steel mill’s payroll from September 25, 1918, to February 28, 1919. The society also had a grainy photograph of the Lebanon team with Ruth standing third from the left, looking as though he had been weaned on a lemon. That photo is on the cover of Work, Fight, or Play Ball.

These discoveries moved me to write a magazine article for the old Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. It ended with a question:

            “What was Babe Ruth doing at a steel mill in Pennsylvania?”

            And answered it.

            “Staying out of the war. He wasn’t alone.”

The idea that this 5,000-word magazine article could blossom into a book lay somewhere in my subconscious until about 2012, when I decided to look deeper. But after a couple of months of research, other more pressing projects intruded, and my baseball book lay dormant in my computer. Then a few years later, I mentioned it to Ryan Mulligan, an editor at Temple University Press. He was immediately enthusiastic about the idea and asked me about it for several more years while I was engrossed in other matters.

Finally, two years ago, I was having lunch with my wife and she sensed impending boredom on my face. She asked, “Why don’t you just write the baseball book?” So I took the plunge.

It took me back to the year 1918. Mobilization for World War I had begun to alter the fabric of American life.  U-boats were spotted in the Great Lakes, spies lurked in barber shops, and there were saboteurs in cigar factories.  It was considered unpatriotic to eat sauerkraut and schnitzel, and scores of towns named in colonial times for German settlers were rechristened in less Teutonic terms. 

Then on May 23, the War Department issued its famous  “work or fight” order, which set July 1 as the deadline for young men to either get “essential” work or face induction into the armed forces.  Playing baseball was not deemed an essential occupation.

Some Major League players entered military service, but others sought essential work.  It was easy for farm boys—they just went home.  But most of the players chose steel mills or shipyards, since, conveniently, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation had previously set up a six-team league of teams from its mills and shipyards These jobs were in heavy demand, but ballplayers had the inside track because the industry magnates wanted a fast brand of baseball played at their plants.  By mid-year, nearly every mill and shipyard had a powerful squad, and collectively these teams formed what was known contemptuously as the Safe Shelter League. That’s the source of the book title, the credit for which goes to Mulligan. My suggestion was “The Year Babe Ruth Was a Dodger,” but more sensible heads prevailed.

The best circuit was the Bethlehem Steel League, which had teams at three Pennsylvania mills–Lebanon, Steelton, and Bethlehem–at the Sparrows Point, MD mill, and at two subsidiary shipyards–Harlan in Wilmington, DE, and Fore River in Quincy, MA. Major Leaguers Babe Ruth played in Lebanon, Shoeless Joe Jackson in Wilmington, and Rogers Hornsby in Bethlehem.

The league had been formed in 1917 as entertainment for mill hands, with these instructions from Board chairman Charles Schwab:  “I want some good wholesome games that will furnish amusement and entertainment for the Bethlehem Steel Company’s employes, and don’t bother me about details of expense.”  In its first year, the league was strictly a low-key operation, drawing its players from the body of regular plant workers.  But after the work-or-fight order was issued in 1918, individual plants began luring big leaguers by promising them soft jobs and salaries as high as $500 a week, more than most of them were paid by their ballclubs. 

As the draft accelerated through 1918, the American and National Leagues got weaker and the Bethlehem Steel League got stronger. Perhaps the greatest hitter in the league, Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox, who played center field for Harlan, was quoted in a company newsletter as saying, “It is harder to hit in this league than in the American League.”

By the summer of 1918 teams in the new Bethlehem Steel League were drawing larger crowds than many Major League teams. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and no doubt it will ever happen again.

Celebrating the Good America while lamenting the Bad America

This week in North Philly Notes, William Gee Wong, author of Sons of Chinatown, writes about growing up in Oakland’s Chinatown and how that shaped his—and his father’s—worldview

Until I was 13 years old in 1954, I thought the world was, well, Chinatown, where I was born in Oakland, California. It was such a safe, secure place, like a yellow blanket warming me up against the cold, white world nearby. The first words I heard were in my parents’ Chinese dialect, but I quickly acquired English-language skills going to the neighborhood “American” school.

Then I started the 9th grade in a mostly white high school two miles from Chinatown. Uneasy and mostly mute at first, I learned to adapt, got friendly with white students, did well in my classes, and became active in student journalism activities, eventually becoming editor of the school yearbook. This new environment disabused me of my illusion that the world was Chinatown.

My father never had this identity transformation. A mid-teenager from an obscure, isolated rice-growing village, he came to America in 1912 during the height of China’s quake-like governance revolution and the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred most Chinese from entry into America. He managed to get in legally using partially false papers, settled in Chinatown, went to the nearest “American” school to learn English, worked and lived in an herbalist shop, and returned to China several times to marry and have three girls before bringing his young family to settle for good in Oakland’s Chinatown, where he operated small businesses until his death in 1961 at age 65.

I tell our shared and divergent stories in Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America to shed light on a rarely told positive American immigration story that began under negative circumstances. How Chinese migrants, like my father, survived the century-long period of unofficial then official discrimination isn’t widely known. Sons of Chinatown illuminates America’s ongoing complex, solution-defying struggles to address its deeply confounding immigration conundrum.

The positive part is my father’s hard work, resilience, and legacy of four generations of law-abiding, productive wholly or partially ethnic Chinese American citizens. For example, I emerged out of the Chinatown bubble to gradually join the white-dominated mainstream by serving my country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of the Philippines and as one of a small group of Chinese American/Asian American pioneers in newspaper journalism. My commentaries unveiled untold Chinese American and Asian American stories, captured in Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America (Temple University Press, 2001).

The negative part is the continuing racism against us on an individual and systemic basis despite our multiple generations of rock-solid Americanness and adherence to the core constitutional values and principles espoused by the wealthy white men who founded the United States of America. After so many generations as Americans of Asian descent, some of us wonder whether we truly belong in the land of our birth or legalized national adoption.

During my father’s time and early in my life, there were relatively few of us of Chinese and Asian descent in America. Beginning in the mid- to-late 1960s, thanks to a major liberalization of U.S. immigration laws, many more immigrants and refugees from East, Southeast, and South Asia came to America, the vast majority of whom are valuable, if not exemplary, cogs of our powerful multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, freedom-loving society.

I celebrate the Good America while lamenting the Bad America, with more hope than fear that collectively we will resist the bad aspects of who we are to further embrace the good and forge ahead to be even better.

The struggles of Black migrants and refugees are everyone’s problem

This week in North Philly Notes, Philip Krestedemas, coeditor of Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations, writes about the impact of the wet foot/dry foot policy.

The U.S. government’s wet foot/dry foot policy for Cuban and Haitian refugees, which was rolled out in the mid-1990s, is often cited as an example of the racially biased double standards that are baked into U.S. refugee policy. Under this policy, Cuban asylum seekers who touched ground on U.S. soil were eligible to receive asylum. Haitians who did the same thing were detained and returned to Haiti. But on closer inspection, the wet foot/dry foot policy is not just a story about how Haitian refugees were treated differently from Cubans.  It’s also a story about how the exclusionary treatment of Haitians established a precedent that weakened asylum rights for all Caribbean asylum seekers.
            The disparate treatment of Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers is most apparent in the way the “dry foot” criterion was applied (i.e., what happened once refugees reached U.S. soil).  The “wet foot” criterion was applied the same way to Cubans and Haitians. This wasn’t much of a change for Haitian refugees. For Cuban refugees, on the other hand, it marked the end of the more generous “open arms” policy that had been in effect since the early 1960s. Under the “open arms” policy, Cuban refugees were fast-tracked for asylum whether they were apprehended at sea or on the shores of south Florida. Under wet foot/dry foot, this generous asylum policy was limited to Cubans who touched U.S. soil. Cubans who were apprehended at sea were treated no different from Haitians. 
            The saga of wet foot/dry foot is just one example of a story that has repeated itself many times over in U.S. history. Black communities are often the first to be affected by deprivations, coercions, and incursions on personal liberty that, eventually, spread to the wider society. Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations aims to give the reader an insight into the depth of this problem, examining it from several theoretical, historical, and geo-political vantage points.The book’s contributors note that anti-Black racism doesn’t just describe a group-specific experience of race; it is foundational to the structures of thought and feeling that gave rise to the modern world. One implication of this analysis is that the problems that Black people contend with can tell you a lot about problems that pervade our entire society. 
            Think of a house that is built on top of a sinkhole. The people on the bottom floor of the house are more at risk of falling into the sinkhole. The people on the upper floors of the house may not feel the same sense of urgency to address the problem and may feel comforted by the thought that they are in a somewhat better situation. But they are ignoring the fact that when the foundation finally gives way, everyone’s falling into the hole. 
            This may not be a perfect metaphor, but it captures a dynamic that is very common to the Black experience. Haitians, for example, were the first U.S. refugee population to be subjected to mandatory detention. Thirty years later, mandatory detention is not only standard for most asylum seekers in the US., it has become the norm for how governments around the world manage refugee populations.  The same can be said for the interdiction practices initially rolled out to control Haitian asylum seekers in the 1980s. These were expanded throughout the 1980s and 1990s to all refugees trying to enter the U.S. by water, imitated by European governments in the 2000s that were trying to control flows of African and Asian refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean, and were also cited as a precedent by the U.S. government in the 2010s when it rolled out programs to control the growing numbers of asylum seekers (mostly Central American, but also including Haitians and many other nationalities) at the US–Mexico border. These are just some examples from the recent history of U.S. refugee policy.  You can find similar processes at work in the U.S. history of mass incarceration, predatory lending practices in housing markets, unsafe work conditions in low-wage employment sectors, medical neglect in the health care sector, and the list goes on.
            Although Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations is focused on the migrant experience, it engages this experience with an eye to the bigger picture I’ve just described.  Our analysis is premised on the understanding that the Black experience can be used as a starting point for diagnosing problems that affect everyone, and also in a way that elevates the value of Black life. But in order to do this, we have to step outside of the ways of seeing that normalize all of the problems I’ve just described. This sums up  the purpose of the book—to invite the reader to take this step.
 

The issues raised by this blog will be discussed in more depth at a free webinar hosted by the Acacia Center for Justice, to be held on Monday, February 26, 3pm (EST), featuring faculty from Morehouse College, Temple, and Bowdoin Universities and guest speakers from Undocublack, Families for Freedom and the Haitian Bridge Alliance. Click here for more info and to register.  

Do you remember Leslie Jordan?

This week in North Philly Notes, Royal G. Cravens, III, author of Yes Gawd!, writes about the connections between religion, politics, and the late actor Leslie Jordan.

The Tennessee-born actor, comedian, and singer Leslie Jordan was an icon of southern queer culture who left an indelible mark on the world. Perhaps best known for his portrayal of the character Beverley Leslie on Will & Grace, Jordan’s status as a queer hero was cemented (in my opinion) by his portrayal of Brother Boy, the uncle of Ty (Kirk Geiger), the protagonist in Del Shores’ cult classic comedy, Sordid Lives.

I am not a biographer of Jordan’s life, but I have admired his work through the years. Like so many others during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found joy in his viral videos and I grieved with many when I learned of his tragic passing in October 2022. One of my biggest regrets is not asking Jordan for an interview when writing my book, Yes Gawd! How Faith Shapes LGBT Identity and Politics in the United States.

While doing research for the book, I found an interview with Jordan that contained an example   of what I found in my survey and interview data about the religious experiences of LGBT people. It stood out, so much so that I quoted it at the beginning of chapter 2: “I never walked away from the church,” Jordan told country music legend Shania Twain in a 2021 podcast interview, “I just quit going.” Jordan’s quote sums up many of the experiences I document in Yes Gawd!

“He could preach, preach, preach:” growing up a southern Evangelical

In Sordid Lives, Jordan’s character was institutionalized for being gay.  A major subplot involves unpacking the ways conservative Christianity facilitated his involuntary committal and society’s negative views about Brother Boy and his gay nephew. The role of conservative Christian religion in the oppression of LGBT people is especially pronounced in the film’s sequel, A Very Sordid Wedding, and in another of Shores’ productions, Southern Baptist Sisses, which features Jordan as “Peanut” a “backsliding, homosexual, former Baptist.”

Jordan was vocal about his own experiences with organized religion. Literally vocal —he recorded an album of Christian hymns featuring country music royalty like Dolly Parton in 2021. When asked by NPR’s Ari Shapiro why he decided to record a gospel album, Jordan expressed a sentiment that I found to be relatively common in the research I explain in my book.

“I grew up in the church,” Jordan said. “When you grow up in the church, everything that we did — even socially — was around the church. It was just such a big part of our lives. And I loved that music.”

Jordan grew up Southern Baptist, but my work shows that LGBT people who were raised in Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and more faith traditions have a shared experience. Namely, religious socialization (the milieu of institutions, practices, beliefs, and people that teach us about faith and politics) is a powerful force that can have lasting effects on their identities and politics.

Importantly, I conceptualize socialization as positive, negative, or neutral with respect to affirming LGBT people and rights. Some, like Jordan, who experienced negative religious socialization had “an axe to grind with the church” that didn’t “embrace” him after he realized he was gay. Most of the LGBT people I surveyed who identify as religious pointed out that “organized religion” is frequently wielded as a weapon to divide and suppress not just LGBT identity, but also pluralism – the spirit of appreciation for diversity and democracy.

For example, I found that growing up in a non-affirming Protestant denomination is significantly related to coming out (openly identifying as LGBT) later in life,  even though the LGBT people raised Protestant I surveyed thought they might be LGBT at roughly the same age as LGBT people raised in all the other faith traditions. There could be  several reasons, but it is likely that being raised in a non-affirming faith tradition, especially a Protestant tradition, contributes to stigma and internal identity conflict. Experiencing both of those things makes it more likely that an LGBT person will leave the faith tradition in which they were raised.

Even after disaffiliating, negative religious socialization influences LGBT identity and politics. Like Jordan said, he didn’t “walk away from the church,” he just stopped attending. As I show, these negative experiences can inform an activist politic primarily to prevent the consolidation of political power by conservative religious forces. Negative religious socialization can also inspire LGBT people to seek out faith traditions that affirm their LGBT identity or to reimagine their faith and spirituality altogether.

This comes across most in my evaluation of affirming faith traditions and how the efforts to create inclusive, pluralistic religious communities have helped LGBT people – cognitively, by helping resolve spiritual and psychic conflict; physically, by providing resources and tangible benefits; and politically, by inspiring and facilitating political activism – assert agency in matters of faith in politics that have long been foreclosed by hetero- and cisnormative religious institutions.

In detailing the experiences of LGBT people and the intersection of faith and politics, Yes Gawd!, is not only a story about the political weaponization of faith against LGBT people. Neither is it solely a story of religious disaffiliation. Instead, Yes Gawd! is a story about LGBT people drawing on previous experiences with religion – both positive and negative – to inform who they are and how they engage with the political world. What emerges from the book is an understanding of the ways LGBT people democratize both American politics and religious spaces, holding America to its pluralistic ethos.

Adoptees in reunion: Moving beyond happy endings

This week in North Philly Notes, Sara Docan-Morgan, author of In Reunion, writes about the complexity of birth family reunions.

A few weeks ago, my family and I went to see the movie Wonka. The film centers on a young Willy Wonka as he outsmarts villains in his pursuit of opening his own chocolate shop. Along the way, he befriends Noodle, a smart and watchful preteen girl who becomes his assistant. Throughout most of the film, viewers are led to believe that Noodle is an orphan; however, at the end, she learns that her birth mother is alive and heartbroken, having believed her daughter had died many years ago as an infant. Shortly thereafter, the two reunite. After running toward each another, they embrace and cry tears of joy and healing. Their family and individual journeys are both assumed to be complete.

I admit that I groaned a bit at this storyline, not because I can’t appreciate a happy ending but rather, because the media too often portray birth family reunions in ways that elide the complexity of these interactions. I was likely the only one in the theatre thinking, “What’s next? How will Noodle and her mom transition from being strangers to being family? What similarities and differences will they find with one another? How will they navigate challenges in their relationship?” But these are the types of questions I have been exploring for the last 15 years as a family communication scholar and even longer as a Korean adoptee in reunion.

My book, In Reunion, draws attention to the experiences of transnational Korean adoptees who have reunited with their Korean birth families. Longitudinal, qualitative, in-depth interviews with 18 adult Korean adoptees revealed that there is no single reunion story, but one finding was most apparent: the first meeting between an adoptee and their birth family is the beginning of a story.

Reunion is risky. Adoptees risk losing the Hollywood-based fantasy of reunion—instant connection and comfort, unconditional acceptance, and heartfelt emotions. Instead, reunions most often involve moments of discomfort, as adoptees are confronted with family members who they don’t know and who may be very different from what they envisioned. Adoptees also risk their sense of security, as reunion opens up the possibility of being abandoned by their birth parents a second time. Birth families risk coming face to face with adoptees who feel angry or hurt, who pose difficult questions about the past, or who have lived lives marked by alienation and trauma. Additionally, birth mothers may risk being outed by reunion if they haven’t told others about their relinquished child. Adoptive parents may also experience reunion as risky, particularly if they fear that they might somehow lose their child to the parents that society often deems as “real.” These risks put a great deal at stake for families in reunion.

In addition, transnational Korean adoptees assume a great deal of responsibility in reunion. Along with the extensive logistics involved planning overseas travel, they bear communicative responsibility—what I call discursive burden—to build relationships with their birth families while maintaining relationships with their adoptive family, given that some adoptive family members feel threatened by reunion. Some specific discursive burdens include accommodating to Korean culture, expressing forgiveness to the birth family, narrating a positive life story to the birth family to assuage their guilt, learning some Korean language, masking uncomfortable emotions during reunion meetings, asking questions about the birth family’s past, and reassuring their adoptive parents. This list, which is far from exhaustive, suggests that the idealized reunion stories portrayed in the mainstream media may lead to unrealistic expectations and unpreparedness.

In many ways, adoption requires adoptees to release the past—their birth culture and birth family—and live in the present, in their adoptive country with their adoptive families. Reunion, however, asks them to dive into the past—even if it’s painful—and step into a present and future with multiple families, both of which are real in their own way. Through knowledge of the risks, complexities, and responsibilities inherent in reunion, adoptees can be best equipped to meet their birth families with an openness, not just to what could have been but also to what might be.

Getting an Education

This week in North Philly Notes, Grant Farred, author of The Perversity of Gratitude, writes about what his apartheid education taught him.

I write this blog on the 4^th of January, 2024, having just hours ago received my advance copies of The Perversity of Gratitude: An Apartheid Education. It’s CLR James’s birthday today, and James figures, tangentially, in the book. I was introduced to James by one of my teachers, a Trotskyist who held James’s The Black Jacobins in high regard.

Long before it arrived, 2024 had the feel of a tumultuous year. Half of the planet’s population goes to the polls this year: India, just to begin with; South Africa, where the African National Congress seems destined to capture less than 50% of the vote – and not a moment too soon, say I; and, of course, the United States, where God alone can possibly know what will happen.

Fear. Dread. Expecting the worst.

Surely a good moment for revolution, James would have said. If only . . .

If we start with the failure of the post-apartheid regime in South Africa, then today is surely an opportune moment to reflect on what it meant to have lived and been educated, as a member of the disenfranchised, under apartheid.

“Apartheid made me think.” That is the opening line and the resonant sentiment that animates The Perversity of Gratitude. I am grateful to my apartheid education, perverse as that might seem; my anti-apartheid teachers prepared me for this moment. They did so in no small measure because the rise of black petit bourgeoisie nationalism, ethno-nationalism fueled by the fires of religious fundamentalism and the United States’s impulse toward hegemony were always made a matter for thinking by them.

Today I write from an academic position securely located within the United States. But, even after almost 35 years of living in this country, I retain more than a vestige of the tendency toward political skepticism and philosophical critique instilled in me as a high school and college student.

Not one of us is sufficiently ballasted against the political headwinds that are approaching and will shortly reach gale force strength.

Certainly not me.

But I do have a singular advantage: my apartheid education. It prepared me, against the will of the white minority regime, to live in the world. Fully. And it encouraged me to be open to the complexities of the world and its uncertainties. To live in anticipation of the event.

On CLR James’s birthday, I am moved to reflect on the perverse gift made to me by apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s, when the tumultuous was the order of the day in apartheid South Africa.

In this way, it might be that The Perversity of Gratitude is a gift most timely. A gift I am able to make myself.

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.

All Work and No Play—Or the Reverse?

This week in North Philly Notes, Paul Gagliardi, author of All Play and No Work, writes about the contradictory attitudes towards work.

 

Like most people, when I first think of the word “work,” my mind goes to my career as an English professor. I take a great deal of pride in my career and it provides me with a sense of self-worth. But  “work” extends far beyond a 9-to-5 job and can, at times, feel all consuming. Recently I spent a considerable amount of time explaining to my youngest child that my wife, a middle-school teacher, and I often need to spend our weekends trying to catch up on work, doing everything from answering emails to grading to doing research. He couldn’t quite process why people needed to do work on the weekends, a time that he felt “should be for playing.”

Our professional work has become so pervasive that we might not consider how many other types of work—or markers of success—we encounter.  I might be reading an email about my retirement plan while checking out at the grocery store while the person ahead of me purchases a bunch of lottery tickets. I can believe in the value of an honest day’s work, but I cannot help but root for a swindling character on a television show who is able to outwit an unscrupulous businessperson for a small fortune. I might watch that television program—itself full of a range of visible and invisible labor—while attending to everything from laundry to cooking in an endless loop of home labor.  

These views of and contradictory attitudes about work compelled me to write All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comedies of the Federal Theatre Project. Our complicated relationship with work in all its forms is not just of the current moment. People have been wrestling with these ideas for decades, as seen in one of the unlikeliest of places: theater produced by the federal government during the worst economic crisis in American history. 

During the Great Depression, a New Deal program entitled the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was charged with producing plays across the country to provide both entertainment to Americans and jobs to unemployed theater workers. Working under the guiding principle of “free, adult, and uncensored,” the FTP often performed plays that challenged theatrical norms and audiences. Given that most New Deal programs were, at their heart, concerned with working and employment, it should not be a surprise that many plays produced by the FTP addressed those issues, including several s, such as Power or Triple-A Plowed Under, that have been analyzed at length by other scholars.

The discussion of work in the plays I analyze in All Play and No Work is unique. Radically, at a time when seemingly everyone from the Roosevelt administration to everyday Americans were concerned about work, these plays critique the dominant views of working and, at times, question accepted pathways to success. And perhaps even more surprising, these plays were comedies, a mode that is often downplayed by critics and the public as incapable of addressing serious issues. A common refrain was that comedies during the Great Depression simply served to distract audiences from their economic troubles. Yet I have found  that these plays—rather under the radar—connect to larger conversations about work, security, and social status happening in economics, government, and culture at large during the Great Depression. And perhaps more important, these plays pose questions that extend to contemporary experiences with working. They include, how much work should determine our daily lives, what lengths will we go to in order to gain security, and how much are we willing to risk to achieve success. 

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