Books published by The University of North Carolina Press

This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on. Even if it is smaller than you. Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults?particularly men?fail her again and again, with devastating consequences. Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.

New Southern-Latino Table: Recipes That Bring Together the Bold and Beloved Flavors of Latin America and the American South

The significance of Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927)--as a journalist, activist, and educator--lies in his innovation of radical solutions to grave injustices, especially the staggering luxury for the few alongside the crushing poverty for the many in the first few decades of the twentieth century. White mob violence continually haunted African American communities, while imperial conquest and world wars wrought wanton destruction upon entire nations of people. These conditions sparked a global political awakening to which Harrison gave voice as a leading figure in cutting-edge struggles for socialism, in the free love movement, and in the Harlem Renaissance. He also played a pivotal role in the rise of Marcus Garvey and the establishment of the largest international organization of Black people in modern history. Because of his fierce and fearless radicalism, however, he has been erased from popular memory.Hubert Harrison presents a historical restoration of Harrison's numerous intellectual and political breakthroughs. Offering a fresh interpretation of his contributions to social movements for economic, racial, and sexual liberation, Brian Kwoba's richly textured narrative highlights the startling and continued relevance of Harrison's visionary thinking across generations.

Conventional narratives of the Cold War revolve around high-level diplomats and state leaders in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, but this anthology challenges those narratives by revealing how ordinary people across Asia experienced the era. Heavily rooted in oral history, this study takes readers to the villages of rural Java; the jungles of northern Thailand; the indigenous tribal communities of Kerala, India; and many other places in this vast region.The essays in this collection demonstrate how the world took shape far away from the voluminously analyzed epicenters of the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. Masuda organizes each chapter around the theme of "many Cold Wars," or, more precisely, many local and social wars that were imagined as part of the global Cold War. These histories raise fundamental questions about standard Cold War narratives, encouraging readers to rethink why the Cold War still matters. Contributors are Mary Grace Concepcion, Simon Creak, Cui Feng, David Engerman, Prasit Leepreecha, Luong Thi Hong, Muhammad Kunhi Mahin Udma, Masuda Hajimu, Alan McPherson, Imam Muhtarom, Sim Chi Yin, Kisho Tsuchiva, Odd Arne Westad, Matthew Woolgar, Kinuko Maehara Yamazato, Bin Yang, and Taomo Zhou.

"Georgann Eubanks offers readers a tour of the seasonal joys of ecosystems in the Southeast. The ordinary destinations and events she explores are scattered across seven states and include such wonders as a half-million purple martins roosting on an island in a South Carolina lake, the bloom of thirty acres of dimpled trout lilies in a remote Georgia forest, gnat larvae that glow like stars on the rock walls of an obscure Alabama canyon, and the overnight accumulation of elaborately patterned moths on the side of a North Carolina mountain cabin. These phenomena and others reveal how plants, mammals, amphibians, and insects are managing to persevere despite pressures from human invasion, habitat destruction, and climate change. Their stories also shine a light on the efforts of dedicated scientists, volunteers, and aspiring young naturalists who are working to reverse losses and preserve the fabulous ordinary that's still alive in the fields, forests, rivers, and coastal estuaries of this essential and biodiverse region"--

Born into slavery during the Civil War, Mary Church Terrell would become one of the most prominent activists of her time, with a career bridging the late nineteenth century to the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Unceasing Militant is the first full-length biography of Terrell, bringing her vibrant voice and personality to life.

Este ensayo constituye el primer estudio de la imagen de las joyas en la obra de Miguel de Cervantes. A partir de un enfoque multidisciplinario, en el que se tienen en cuenta factores literarios, filologicos e historicos, asi como conceptos teoricos procedentes de los campos de los estudios de genero y de la cultura material, la autora analiza la multiplicidad de significados adscritos a las imagenes de las joyas y las piedras preciosas en textos poeticos y narrativos de Cervantes, en concreto, Don Quijote, las Novelas ejemplares y Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. En el estudio se investigan fuentes textuales e imagenes visuales, entre las que se incluyen discursos humanistas sobre la mujer, obras historiograficas, descripciones geograficas, normativa juridica, asi como retratos de corte de reinas del Renacimiento y el Barroco. En los textos de Cervantes, gemas y alhajas actuan como signos polisemicos, esenciales no solo para la construccion de la imagen iconografica de las reinas historicas sino como senales de la especial alianza que una gran senora establece con una mujer de estatus inferior a la que promueve. Las joyas constituyen simbolos multifaceticos que denotan la formacion de redes de solidaridad que traspasan las barreras estamentales, asi como subrayan la importancia de dichos limites para afirmar el impacto de la diferencia social en la diversidad de la experiencia de la mujer. Asi mismo, incorporados a la descripcion de damas, cristianas o moras, vestidas a la morisca, los valiosos ornamentos provocan que sus portadoras sean identificadas por la mirada masculina como objetos de deseo erotico y colonial, al tiempo que senalan la dificultad de crear categorias estables de identidad en la peninsula Iberica y en el Mediterraneo. Por ultimo, la apropiacion masculina de las joyas, por razon de su alto precio en el mercado, aun planteada como una demostracion del dominio patriarcal, expresa las ansiedades del varon sometido a la autoridad de una dama poderosa. Mediante las representaciones de hombres portando alhajas, Cervantes expresa la corrupcion de los personajes masculinos y anticipa la denuncia de autores barrocos de la crisis de masculinidad que marca el declive economico y la decadencia politica de la nacion.

In 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the US Army seemed minuscule and ill-equipped for global conflict. Yet over the next fifteen years, its soldiers defeated Spain and pacified nationalist insurgencies in both Cuba and the Philippines. Despite their lack of experience in colonial administration, American troops also ruled and transformed the daily lives of the 8 million people who inhabited these tropical islands.How was this relatively small and inexperienced army able to wage wars in Cuba and the Philippines and occupy them? American soldiers depended on tens of thousands of Cubans and Filipinos, both for military operations and civil government. Whether compelled to labor for free or voluntarily working for wages, Cubans and Filipinos, suspended between civilian and soldier status, enabled the making of a new US overseas empire by interpreting, guiding, building, selling sex, and many other kinds of work for American troops. In The Work of Empire, Justin Jackson reveals how their labor forged the politics, economics, and culture of American colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines and left an enduring imprint on these islands and the US Army itself. Jackson offers new ways to understand the rise of American military might and how it influenced a globalizing imperial world.

"In The Age of the Borderlands, acclaimed historian Andrew C. Isenberg offers a new history of manifest destiny that breaks from triumphalist narratives of US territorial expansion. Isenberg takes readers to the contested borders of Spanish Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Minnesota at critical moments in the early to mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that the architects of American expansion faced significant challenges from the diverse groups of people inhabiting each region. In other words, while the manifest destiny paradigm begins with an assumption of US strength, the government and the agents it dispatched to settle and control the frontier had only a weak presence. Tracing the interconnected histories of Indians, slaves, antislavery reformers, missionaries, federal agents, and physicians, Isenberg shows that the United States was repeatedly forced to accommodate the presence of other colonial empires and powerful Indigenous societies. Anti-expansionists in the borderlands welcomed the precarity of the government's power: The land on which they dwelled was a grand laboratory where they could experiment with their alternative visions for American society. Examining the borderlands offers an understanding not just about frontier spaces but about the nature of the early American state-ambitiously expansionist but challenged by its native and imperial competitors"--

"From beer and kombucha to hot sauce and kimchi, fermented foods and drinks are everywhere. Though it once might have felt like a fleeting trend, fermentation has a long culinary history, especially in the southern United States, where the hotter climate and agricultural tradition of the region helped foster the use of fermentation as a means of preserving foods. With Southern culture on the fizz, Brett Taubman offers an easy-to-use and fun fermentation guide, complete with fermentations that focus on southern ingredients. Each section provides in-depth coverage of the history of these ferments, the science behind the ferments, an overview of the current landscape of fermented products in the South, and a look to their future. Filled with dozens of recipes, expert guidance on the process, and safety considerations, as well as the necessary equipment, this guide ensures readers have the information they need to start fermenting or take their fermentation game to the next level. This book also provides readers-novice and experienced fermenters alike-with the historical context and relevant scientific information lacking in other books and keeps them engaged from beginning to end"--

By challenging the rules of enslavement and, later, pushing the boundaries of free citizenship in North Carolina, Lunsford Lane (1803-79) became a folk hero to many enslaved Southerners, as well as a generation of abolitionists. Author of a unique "slave narrative" and a speaking partner with some of the era's greatest orators, including William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnett, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Lane became a celebrity who watched as the persona he created gradually faltered and failed him and his family. Yet even as his influence waned, it was still powerful enough to cause many to see him in light of their own purposes: as a fugitive from slavery, an entrepreneur, a Christian minister, and even an abolitionist (an identity he rejected). Lane's enemies also continued their efforts to silence him--a white mob determined to tar and feather him, reformers who saw his contributions to abolition as a threat to their causes, and a neighbor who attempted to set fire to the Lane home while Lunsford and his family slept within.In the first biography of Lunsford Lane based on original and extensive research, Craig Thompson Friend portrays a man who dreamed beyond his enslavement, delivered himself and his family from bondage, and spun a story of his life that brought him lasting freedom and fleeting fame. Friend casts light on Lane's family origins as well as his complex relationships with his wife, parents, children, enslavers, fellow abolitionists, and nation. Lane's story is a biography for our times: a man searching to define life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a changing American society scarred by contentious politics, economic challenges, class tensions, loss of political rights, and racial violence.