Books like For the City Yet to Come

In the ’70s through the early ’90s, Hawaiʻi went through massive social change.

There was a growing consciousness of the manipulation and exploitation that had accompanied Hawaiʻi’s colonization. With that came a collective desire to right the wrongs of history.

Trask describes the institutional racism, discrimination, and closed doors she faced as she attempted to forge a path for Native Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaiʻi while participating in a growing movement against continued occupation. 

While working on my book, some suggested I soften the political thread woven within the story. It was Trask’s essay “Lovely Hula Hands” (a chapter of From a Native Daughter) that encouraged me to stay true to the portrayal of Hawaiʻi that countered the unflawed, pristine playground image sold to tourists.

Written at a time when Hawai’i’s history was still being glossed over, Trask’s interviews and essays provide an unapologetic perspective and… show more.

Monique Roffey takes you on a father-daughter escape trip sailing from Trinidad to the Galapagos in a sketchy boat to leave behind the loss and sorrow they experienced after a major storm. Thanks to Grace Carr, I was shaped into who I am as a writer and researcher in Trinidad, where I carried out my dissertation work. The Trini cadence for life and love is ubiquitous in this book—it also reminds me of the bond between me and my Dad and our mutual appreciation for a little risk and chaos.

This novel is both sexy and chilling. It is the journey of a young woman, about her lovers, the intimacy of friendship, and her alluring social life in Havana, Cuba. With each page you sip the intensity of youth and political drama on the island. After traveling to Cuba to protest the US embargo in the 1990s and living for so many years in Miami with friends in the Cuban diaspora, Cuban's transnational socio-cultural complex frames how I think about islands. I relish how Portela writes, she is the friend who coaxes you out, keeps you up all night, with the promises of thrill, excitement, and a bit of danger. 

Hinds' mesmerizing paintings set the scene for a beautiful graphic rendition of The Odyssey. Anyone who has moved or travelled a lot, or seems to not be able to find a way home, can appreciate the story of Odysseus. I read this book many times with my two (once) young children, hopefully preparing them for a life of travel and living in Greece with their wanderer, researcher mom. For us Greek mythology is not for learning a "western" canon, which was never defined by ethnic Greeks anyway. We read the Odyssey to appreciate our roots in Greek island cultures and the hospitality they offer, which this lovely version makes palpable.

A magisterial review of the role of cities in economic and social change. Superbly written it is packed with information on cities at significant periods in social and economic transformation. The writer’s love of cities and their role in innovative change are crystal clear. He is so optimism about our urban futures that he gives me hope 

With deep research in both French and English sources, Gauvreau offers a convincing explanation for the dramatic flight from traditional Catholicism that occurred in Quebec during the 1960s. He shows that young reforming Catholics, whose number included the future prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, successfully critiqued the stultifying conservatism, unthinking nationalism, and intellectual sterility of the province’s traditional alignment of church and state. Gauvreau also details the reasons why the reformers’ hopes for a reformed, but reinvigorated Catholicism were frustrated by trajectories they themselves had set in motion. The result was to transform Canada’s most actively religious province into its most secular, and to do so in less than a decade.

The Zapatista movement and the series of demonstrations since Seattle are fighting for radical social change in terms that have nothing to do with the taking of state power. This is in clear opposition to the traditional Marxist theory of revolution which centres on taking state power. In this book, John Holloway asks how we can reformulate our understanding of revolution as the struggle against power, not for power. After a century of failed attempts by revolutionary and reformist movements to bring about radical social change, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. John Holloway opens up the theoretical debate, reposing some of the basic concepts of Marxism and grounded in a rethinking of Marx's concept of 'fetishisation'—how doing is transformed into being. 

This is my preferred book on this topic because it offers a pungent story of how pride and shame matter to our understanding of politics. Arlie Russell Hochschild already wrote another terrific book on Louisiana a few years ago, so I was really looking forward to this new one on the Appalachian post-industrial communities.

The way she describes small events of everyday life and how they influence voting patterns struck a chord with me. It tells us how politics at the grassroots level is, in fact, about making sense of the world around us and navigating difficulties, and it’s all about emotions and the way we deal with the question, “What about me?” It’s a superb book for deconstructing “high politics” and shows how far away people may feel from decisions made in Washington, DC.

The title alone intrigued me. Once I learned the premise of this middle-grade novel, I was hooked: a group of students supporting one another through the ups and downs of navigating their periods is shut down by the school administration after receiving complaints. 

As the investigative reporter of her middle school’s newspaper, Riley’s no stranger at going the distance to uncover a story. Using her fact-finding skills, Riley hunts for the truth on who put an end to their club and why. Filled with humor and heart, this book had me up all night to finish in one sitting, cheering Riley and her friends on as they fight to save their club and stand up for their rights. 

Another nonfiction book, Healing Resistance does a splendid job showing the philosophical connections between nonviolence on an interpersonal level and nonviolent social change movements. Drawing on the tradition of Kingian nonviolence, this book is a useful starting place for anyone who wants to understand what nonviolence is and isn’t as well as how it works. It’s also chock full of recommendations for other books and is a great jumping-off point for further reading. Sometimes nonviolence doesn’t look like what we expect.