Gender and Sexual Agency considers how heterosexual Latino American, Asian American and white youth negotiate sexual encounters. In particular, the book examines sexual agency: exploring the question of why some young people assertively pursue what they want in a sexual encounter, while others go along with sexual activity they do not want. By comparing both young men and young women, Albanesi offers a unique perspective on how an individual's emotional experience of gender informs his or her willingness to exercise sexual agency. Using interviews to support her theoretical argument, Albanesi describes 11 different types of sexual agency, ranging from having strong convictions about their sexual decisions to abdicating responsibility to their partner. As the expressers of sexual agency, the voices of these youth from primarily working-class backgrounds come through to take us into their sexual decisions as they understand and experience them within the context of their lives. Ultimately, regardless of the decision, the book shows that youth are well aware of the decisions that they are making, even if they can't always express those reasons clearly.

During the spring of 2008, one of the media s feeding frenzies involved a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago, pastored by the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. For days and weeks, all one could see on every news channel were a few very short clips, absent of context, of Reverend Wright s sermons preached some time ago. What followed outraged many on both sides of the political fence. The sound bites lent themselves to commentators easy, negative analysis of the sermons. In the traditional media, commentators offered an interpretation, couched in the language of patriotism, that Wright was too angry, that he overstated the problem of racism in America today. While some were extremely frustrated at this nearly universal take on Wright s sermons and felt it served to mask the continuing reality of racial oppression, others saw a positive side, in that racism had resurfaced as a topic of conversation in homes across America. Nearly forty years after the Civil Rights Movement had fixed everything, people started talking, discussing, and even arguing about racism in the United States. Was racism still with us? If so, how could that be after such a long period of time? Or had racism just changed from blatant, in-your-face discrimination to a new, post-affirmative action, color-blind racism. from the introduction to Moving Beyond Racism Meet the twenty-one authors of Moving Beyond Racism who were moved to share their compelling personal memories and the events that inspired their reassessment of the complexities of race relations in 21st century America. You ll nod in recognition, shake your head in disbelief, and bear witness to the courage and self-knowledge that comes from bravely facing the place that racial attitudes play in our everyday lives. Make no mistake, the people you are about to meet are your neighbors, your co-workers, and your friends. Moving Beyond Racism is about all of us.

Fill the year ahead with handcrafted beads that you can make yourself by following tutorials from Bead-Making Lab! Imagine a year in beads. We're talking 52 handmade varieties all handcrafted by you! Bead-Making Lab makes this bounty of bead making possible with instructions for bead designs that run the gamut from sophisticated to playful. Bead-Making Lab is organized by material, and single-spread lab tutorials for each bead design make the book simple to use. The tutorials are brief, accomplishable, and rewarding. Choose from traditional materials like paper mache and polymer clay, or opt for new materials such as resins and shrink plastic. Once you've selected your medium, follow the lab instructions for the bead-making technique of your choice. Try a new technique each week! With how-tos including molding, carving, painting, gluing, drilling beach glass and pebbles, and creating fiber-art beads with felting and embroidery, you'll have a year of unique projects ahead of you. Bead-Making Lab also offers ideas on how to turn your beads into jewelry and gives you a sneak peek at some contemporary bead artisans' best work. Get busy beading, crafters!