In the face of injustice, one person committed to a holy cause can make a difference. This is the story of how one lawyer, confronted with the martyrdom of a Christian missionary, stands up to injustice despite seemingly insurmountable odds. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, two American missionaries are targeted by the infamous religious police–the Mutta...more
Serafina is an illegal migrant worker living in California when the police catch her and send her back to Mexico–without her three-year old daughter. Twelve years later, with a pair of silver barrettes her only tangible memory of Elvia, Serafina begins a harrowing journey back across the border to find her daughter. At the same time Elvia, now ...more
In this powerful, great-hearted story, Susan Straight takes us back to the multiracial area of southern California that is, in Faulkner's phrase, her "postage stamp of soil." As in her highly acclaimed earlier novels, she has created a world of richly imagined characters struggling to retain their dignity and humanity in an often brutal environment...more
Taking as its starting point the ethnogenesis of this ethnic group during the Mongol period (13th century), this volume traces their history through Islam, the Ottoman and the Russian Empires (15th and 17th century). The author discusses how Islam, Russian colonial policies and indigenous national movements shaped the collective identity of this vi...more
In the final days of World War II, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population, nearly 200,000 people. Beyond Memory offers the first ethnographic exploration of this event, as well as the 50 year movement for repatriation. Many of the Crimean Tatars have returned in a process that involves squatting on vacant land and sel...more
Winner of the 3rd Annual Miguel Mrmol Prize from Curbstone Press, Mary Helen Lagasse's The Fifth Sun is an inspiring story of an immigrant who struggles valiantly for a better life for herself and her family. The young Mexican woman, Mercedes, leaves her village to work as a housemaid in New Orleans. This fast-paced novel takes her through her adve...more