Books published by Wayne State University Press

The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson is the first collection of newspaper articles and fiction written by Miriam Michelson (1870-1942), best-selling novelist, revolutionary journalist, and early feminist activist. Editor Lori Harrison-Kahan introduces readers to a writer who broke gender barriers in journalism, covering crime and politics for San Francisco's top dailies throughout the 1890s, an era that consigned most female reporters to writing about fashion and society events. In the book's foreword, Joan Michelson-Miriam Michelson's great-great niece, herself a reporter and advocate for women's equality and advancement-explains that in these trying political times, we need the reminder of how a "e;girl reporter"e; leveraged her fame and notoriety to keep the suffrage movement on the front page of the news. In her introduction, Harrison-Kahan draws on a variety of archival sources to tell the remarkable story of a brazen, single woman who grew up as the daughter of Jewish immigrants in a Nevada mining town during the Gold Rush. The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson offers a cross-section of Michelson's eclectic career as a reporter by showcasing a variety of topics she covered, including the treatment of Native Americans, profiles of suffrage leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and police corruption. The book also traces Michelson's evolution from reporter to fiction writer, reprinting stories such as "e;In the Bishop's Carriage"e; (1904), a scandalous picaresque about a female pickpocket; excerpts from the Saturday Evening Post series, "e;A Yellow Journalist"e; (1905), based on Michelson's own experiences as a reporter in the era of Hearst and Pulitzer; and the title novella, The Superwoman, a trailblazing work of feminist utopian fiction that has been unavailable since its publication in The Smart Set in 1912. Readers will see how Michelson's newspaper work fueled her imagination as a fiction writer and how she adapted narrative techniques from fiction to create a body of journalism that informs, provokes, and entertains, even a century after it was written.

Blues Legacy is a collection of poems inspired by and celebrating various genres of African American music. The poet's voice is stark and clear; her lines are uncompromisingly lean and powerful, evoking the deepest, tenacious strains of African American political resistance and endurance. As the poetry moves along in familiar, everyday images, the poet peels back outer layers of experience to reveal the tender, vulnerable, striving energy of a people. Blues Legacy refers, then, to a revered music heritage, yes, but also to a way of life fashioned over centuries, characterized by the rhythms of perseverance, self-determination, and affirmation of beauty that have kept the people and their culture alive and evolving. While the poet honors this ancestral past, she also points to the future, appealing to African American women especially to empower themselves, and step confidently into their roles as community torchbearers.

A companion to Great Girls in Michigan History, this book explores the stories of twenty boys who did some amazing things before they turned twenty years old. Author Patricia Majher presents easy-to-read mini-biographies about both highly acclaimed and lesser- known Michiganders, all of whom have led remarkable lives that will intrigue and inspire.

Marina Colasanti is a Brazilian journalist, visual artist, and author of over sixty volumes of short stories, poetry, essays, and children's literature. Despite Colasanti's literary stature, A True Blue Idea is the first book-length translation of her writing into English.

Analyses the changing construction of race and ethnicity in the United States through the lens of contemporary Jewish immigrants from Latin America. Laura Limonic offers a view into the lives of this designation of Jewish immigrants, highlighting the ways in which they adopt different identities in response to different actors and situations.

Offers a theoretical rumination on the question asked in countless blogs and opinion pieces of the last decade: Why are we so obsessed with true crime? Tanya Horeck examines a range of audiovisual true crime texts, and considers the extent to which the genre has come to epitomize participatory media culture.

In this lively and fascinating analysis of humourists and their work, Will Kaufman breaks new ground with his irony fatigue theory. The Comedian as Confidence Man examines the humorist's internal conflict between the social critic who demands to be taken seriously and the comedian who never can be: the irony fatigue condition.

Identifies the Yiddish historians who created a distinctively Jewish approach to writing Holocaust history in the early years following World War II. Mark Smith explains that these scholars survived the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe, yet they have not previously been recognised as a specific group who were united by a common research agenda.

Explores the rise and fall in popularity of "romances" (qissah) - tales of wonder and magic told by storytellers at princely courts and in public spaces in India from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. Pasha Khan points to the worldviews underlying the popularity of Urdu and Persian romances.

Challenges the notion that there is an unproblematic connection between Holocaust memory and the discourse of anti-racism. Through diverse case studies, this volume historicizes how the Holocaust has shaped engagement with racism from the 1940s until the present, demonstrating that contemporary assumptions are neither obvious nor inevitable.

Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, drunks, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan's memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family's legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society's ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance.

Tells the story of the author's father and grandfather, and the grave legacy that they each passed on to him. This is a story about the Holocaust and its aftermath, about absence and the scars that never heal, and about fathers and sons and what it means to raise young men.