News

New book edited by HRP Visiting Fellow Martha Davis wins an Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America

Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States has just been named one of the Ten Outstanding Books of the year by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. The book is edited by HRP Visiting Fellow Martha Davis, as well as Cynthia Soohoo and Catherine Albisa.

Ten books won accolades for creatively re-linking struggles for civil and human rights. In sundry ways, they dig beneath the surface of struggle, chaos and change, according to a release from the Myers Center. The books were commemorated as part of national anniversary celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The books honored span decades, and include books from the fields of history, fiction, memoir, contemporary non-fiction, public policy implementation and biography.

"The election of President-Elect Obama was sparked by new hopes, revitalized energies, multiplicities," says Loretta J. Williams, director, in announcing this year's winners. Yet, she adds "maybe not so new," recalling the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug (subject of one of the winning books) saying over a decade ago that "if we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about, we can turn the century -- and the economy -- around."

The following books were awarded 2008 Myers Outstanding Book Awards:

Bringing Human Rights Home, Cynthia Soohoo, Catherine Albisa, and Martha Davis, Eds.

Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II., Douglas A. Blackmon

A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, Paula J. Giddings

Someone Knows My Name: A Novel, Lawrence Hill

Asylum Denied: A Refugee's Struggle for Safety in America, David Ngaruri Kenney and Philip G. Schrag

My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan

Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Suzanne Braun Levin and Mary Thorn

Every Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, Mica Pollock

Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, Kai Wright

The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, Kao Kalia Yang

For more information on the Myers Center, visit their Web site at http://www.myerscenter.org.