Books published by Beacon Press

A manifesto from one of America's most influential activists which disrupts political, economic, and social norms by reimagining the Black Radical Tradition.Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.

With stories from the front lines, a legal scholar journeys through distinct legal climates to understand precisely why and how the war over abortion is being fought.Drawing on her years of research in El Salvadorone of the few countries to ban abortion without exceptionlegal scholar Michelle Oberman explores what happens when abortion is a crime. Oberman reveals the practical challenges raised by a thriving black market in abortion drugs, as well as the legal challenges to law enforcement. She describes a system in which doctors and lawyers collaborate in order to identify and prosecute those suspected of abortion-related crimes, and the troubling results of such collaboration: mistaken diagnoses, selective enforcement, and wrongful convictions.Equipped with this understanding, Oberman turns her attention to the United States, where the battle over abortion is fought almost exclusively in legislatures and courtrooms. Beginning in Oklahoma, one of the most pro-life states, and through interviews with current and former legislators and activists, she shows how Americans voice their moral opposition to abortion by supporting laws that would restrict it. In this America, the law is more a symbol than a plan.Oberman challenges this vision of the law by considering the practical impact of legislation and policies governing both motherhood and abortion. Using stories gathered from crisis pregnancy centers and abortion clinics, she unmasks the ways in which the law already shapes women's responses to unplanned pregnancy, generating incentives or penalties, nudging pregnant women in one direction or another.In an era in which every election cycle features a pitched battle over abortion's legality, Oberman uses her research to expose the limited ways in which making abortion a crime matters. Her insight into the practical consequences that will ensue if states are permitted to criminalize abortion calls attention to the nave and misguided nature of contemporary struggles over abortion's legality.A fresh look at the battle over abortion law, Her Body, Our Laws is an invitation to those on all sides of the issue to move beyond the incomplete discourse about legality by understanding how the law actually matters.

Examines why it's difficult to form friendships with people of different races, how we can make those connections, and how they will encourage more meaningful conversations about race.Surveys have shown that the majority of people believe cross-racial friendships are essential for improving race relations. However, further polling reveals that most Americans tend to gravitate toward friendships within their own race. Psychologist Deborah L. Plummer examines how factors such as leisure, politics, humor, faith, social media, and education influence the nature and intensity of cross-racial friendships.Inspiring and engaging, Plummer draws from focus groups, statistics, and surveys to provide insight into the fears and discomforts associated with cross-racial friendships. Through personal narratives and social analyses of friendship patterns, this book gives an insightful look at how cross-racial friendships work and fail within American society. Plummer encourages all of us to examine our friendship patterns and to deepen and strengthen our current cross-racial friendships.

An insider's account of the infamous Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal that scapegoated black employees for problems rooted in the education reform movement.In March of 2013, 35 educators in the Atlanta Public Schools were charged with racketeering and conspiracythe same charges used to bring down the American mafiafor allegedly changing students' answers on standardized tests. All but one was black. The youngest of the accused, Shani Robinson, had taught for only 3 years and was a new mother when she was wrongfully convicted and faced up to 25 years in prison. She and her coauthor, journalist Anna Simonton, look back to show how black children in Atlanta were being deprived long before some teachers allegedly changed the answers on their students' tests. Stretching all the way back to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in public schools, to examining the corporate-led education reform movement, the policing of black and brown citizens, and widening racial and economic disparities in Atlanta, Robinson and Simonton reveal how real estate moguls and financiers were lining their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.

After the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, American flags appeared everywhere. Is patriotism a good response at a time of national crisis? What does it mean for us to think of ourselves as a nation first?With our connections to the world growing stronger and more vital than ever, Martha C. Nussbaum argues that we should distrust conventional patriotism as parochial and instead see ourselves first of all as "citizens of the world." Sixteen prominent writers and thinkers respond, including Benjamin R. Barber, Sissela Bok, Nathan Glazer, Robert Pinsky, Elaine Scarry, Amartya Sen, and Michael Walzer.NEW DEMOCRACY FORUMA series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns. The series editors (for Boston Review), Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, aim to foster politically engaged, intellectually honest, and morally serious debate about fundamental issues-both on and off the agenda of conventional politics.

Sandy Boucher, celebrated author of Opening the Lotus and Turning the Wheel, now offers North American readers their first opportunity to share in Kwan Yin''s illuminating wisdom. Along with providing meditations, chants, and prayers this lovely, illustrated volume recounts the stories of this bodhisattva (one who delays her own full enlightenment to work for the liberation of all beings) and explains Kwan Yin''s role in Buddhism. Discovering Kwan Yin is sure to become an important spiritual touchstone for those who seek to celebrate the goddess in their lives, to give and receive the loving power of her presence.

In Singular Intimacies, which the New England Journal of Medicine said captured the'essence of becoming and being a doctor,' Danielle Ofri led us into the hectic, constantly challenging world of big-city medicine. In Incidental Findings, she's finished her training and is learning through practice to become a more rounded healer. The book opens with a dramatic tale of the tables being turned on Dr. Ofri: She's had to shed the precious white coat and credentials she worked so hard to earn and enter her own hospital as a patient. She experiences the real'slight prick and pressure' of a long needle as well as the very real sense of invasion and panic that routinely visits her patients.These fifteen intertwined tales include 'Living Will,' where Dr. Ofri treats a man who has lost the will to live, and she too comes dangerously close to concluding that he has nothing to live for;'Common Ground,' in which a patient's difficult decision to have an abortion highlights the vulnerabilities of doctor and patient alike;'Acne,' where she is confronted by a patient whose physical and emotional abuse she can't possibly heal, so she must settle on treating the one thing she can, the least of her patient's problems; and finally a stunning concluding chapter,'Tools of the Trade,' where Dr. Ofri's touch is the last in a woman's long life.