Waris Dirie leads a double life -- by day, she is an international supermodel and human rights ambassador for the United Nations; by night, she dreams of the simplicity of life in her native Somalia and the family she was forced to leave behind. Desert Flower, her intimate and inspiring memoir, is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered about the beauty of African life, the chaotic existence of a supermodel, or the joys of new motherhood.

Waris was born into a traditional Somali family, desert nomads who engaged in such ancient and antiquated customs as genital mutilation and arranged marriage. At twelve, she fled an arranged marriage to an old man and traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu -- the first leg of an emotional journey that would take her to London as a house servant, around the world as a fashion model, and eventually to America, where she would find peace in motherhood and humanitarian work for the U.N.

Today, as Special Ambassador for the U.N., she travels the world speaking out against the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, promoting women's reproductive rights, and educating people about the Africa she fled -- but still deeply loves.

Desert Flower will be published simultaneously in eleven languages throughout the world and is currently being produced as a feature film by Rocket Pictures UK.

Despite their best intentions, professionals in the helping fields are influenced by a deficit perspective that is pervasive in research, theory, training programs, workforce preparation programs, statistical data, and media portrayals of marginalized groups. They enter their professions ready to fix others and their interactions are grounded in an assumption that there will be a problem to fix. They are rarely taught to approach their work with a positive view that seeks to identify the existing strengths and assets contributed by individuals who are in difficult circumstances. Moreover, these professionals are likely to be entirely unaware of the deficit-based bias that influences the way they speak, act, and behave during those interactions. Reconstructing Perceptions of Systemically Marginalized Groups demonstrates that all individuals in marginalized groups have the potential to be successful when they are in a strengths-based environment that recognizes their value and focuses on what works to promote positive outcomes, rather than on barriers and deficits. Covering key topics such as education practices, adversity, and resilience, this reference work is ideal for industry professionals, administrators, psychologists, policymakers, researchers, academicians, scholars, instructors, and students.

One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, the author of such powerful and influential books as Ain't I a Woman and Black Looks, Bell Hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must be achieved hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays, most of them new works, are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. Hooks defiantly creates positive plans for the future rather than dwell in theories of a crisis beyond repair. The essays here address a spectrum of topics to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; internalized racism in the movies and media. Hooks presents a challenge to the patriarchal family model, explaining how it perpetuates sexism and oppression in black life. She calls out the tendency of much of mainstream America to conflate "black rage" with murderous, pathological impulses, rather than seeing it as a positive state of being. And in the title essay she writes about the "killing rage" - the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism - finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength, and a catalyst for productive change. Her analysis is rigorous and her language unsparingly critical, but Hooks writes with a common touch that has made her a favorite of readers far from universities.Bell Hooks's work contains multitudes; she is a feminist who includes and celebrates men, a critic of racism who is not separatist or Afrocentric, an academic who cares about popular culture.

What stands out about racism is its ability to withstand efforts to legislate or educate it away. In The Racist Fantasy, Todd McGowan argues that its persistence is due to a massive unconscious investment in a fundamental racist fantasy. As long as this fantasy continues to underlie contemporary society, McGowan claims, racism will remain with us, no matter how strenuously we struggle to eliminate it. The racist fantasy, a fantasy in which the racial other is a figure who blocks the enjoyment of the racist, is a shared social structure. No one individual invented it, and no one individual is responsible for its perpetuation. While no one is guilty for the emergence of the racist fantasy, people are nonetheless responsible for keeping it alive and thus responsible for fighting against it. The Racist Fantasy examines how this fantasy provides the psychic basis for the racism that appears so conspicuously throughout modern history. The racist fantasy informs everything from lynching and police shootings to Hollywood blockbusters and musical tastes. This fantasy takes root under capitalism as a way of explaining the failures and disappointments that result from the relationship to the commodity. The struggle against racism involves dislodging the fantasy structure and to change the capitalist relations that require it. This is the project of this book.