Social Identity

People research everything online - shopping, school, jobs, travel - and other people. Your online persona is your new front door. It is likely the first thing that new friends and colleagues learn about you. In the years since this book was first published, the Internet profile and reputation have grown more important in the vital human activities of work, school and relationships.

Whether we aspire to become the best lawyer or charity worker, life partner or celebrity influencer, we emulate exemplars that exist in the world – hoping it will bring us happiness. But this often leads to a complex game of envy and pride. In Against Identity, philosopher Alexander Douglas seeks an alternative wisdom. Searching the work of three thinkers – ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, Dutch Enlightenment thinker Benedict de Spinoza, and 20th Century French theorist René Girard – he explores how identity can be a spiritual violence that leads us away from truth.

In We Refuse to Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. Thanks to the efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, the U.S. government recognized Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks, even those who could trace their history back generations—even to Cow Tom himself.

An eye-opening account of what the left and right get wrong about sex and gender, On Sex and Gender focuses on three sequential and consequential questions: What is sex as opposed to gender? How does sex matter in our everyday lives? And how should it be reflected in law and policy? All three have been front-and-center in American life and politics since the rise of the trans rights movement: They are included in both major parties’ political platforms. They are the subject of ongoing litigation in the federal courts and of highly contentious legislation on Capitol Hill.

One of the first studies of the organization, life, and meaning of the Nation of Islam and, by extension, all Black Nationalist movements, this classic work dispels the still-common conception that the movement functioned primarily for political purposes. By observing the daily life of its members, Essien-Udom demonstrates that the Nation of Islam served primarily as a means for poor urban Blacks to attain a national identity, a sense of ethnic consciousness, and empowerment in a society that denied them these privileges.

Radical Belonging is not a simple self-love treatise. Focusing only on self-love ignores the important fact that we have negative experiences because our culture has targeted certain bodies and people for abuse or alienation. For marginalized people, a focus on self-love can be a spoonful of sugar that makes the oppression go down. This groundbreaking book goes further, helping us to manage the challenges that stem from oppression and moving beyond self-love and into belonging.

As gender identity, transgender experiences, and emerging gender identities continue to be normalized and celebrated, many parents are left struggling with what to think about these issues—let alone how to talk to their children about them. The leading Christian expert on LGBTQ+ concerns, Dr. Mark Yarhouse has spent years counseling and teaching on these issues. In this biblical, practical guide, he offers parents wisdom and answers to their biggest questions about gender, equipping you to critically engage gender theory from a Christian view.

A journalist and author of The Influence of Soros examines the history of Jewish people in America and explores their ever-evolving relationship to the nation’s culture and identity—and each other. What does it mean to be a Bad Jew? Many Jews use the term “Bad Jew” as a weapon against other members of the community or even against themselves. You can be called a Bad Jew if you don’t keep kosher; if you only go to temple on Yom Kippur; if you don’t attend or send your children to Hebrew school; if you enjoy Christmas music; if your partner isn’t Jewish; if you don’t call your mother often enough. The list is endless.

Collecting deeply personal conversations with inspirational LGBTQ+ trailblazers (from Troye Sivan to Margaret Cho) about how they leveraged the challenges and insights they had as relative outsiders to succeed in the worlds of business, tech, politics, Hollywood, sports and beyond, Andrew Gelwick’s The Queer Advantage celebrates the unique power of queer identity. Their stories brim with the hard-won lessons gained over their careers.

Happiness has become a serious business. Where 20th-century psychology focused on depression and illness, in the new millennium scientists have begun focusing on "positive psychology" - the study of happiness. Ariel Gore first became intrigued by this subject when she discovered that a class on positive psychology was the most popular course on the Harvard campus.

Deni Todorović never meant to become a poster child for self-love. On their popular Instagram page, Style by Deni, they show their followers what it means to lead a joyous, open-hearted life–but this wisdom has been hard-won, and in this book Deni shares how they’ve learned to live on their own terms. As a queer, non-binary person and as a child of migrants, Deni knows firsthand what it means to exist between worlds and to step into one’s truth.

Talking to key modern influences and thinkers, and drawing inspiration from the Bible and the historical experience of the Jewish people, Sacks argues that there are eight key factors in establishing, maintaining and passing on resilient moral values within a broad group, among them attitudes of lifelong learning and of thanksgiving, the importance of family life and community, and a culture of positive argument in place of destructive conflict.

The ‘culture wars' have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race' in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today's heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.

From rediscovering an ancestral village in China to experiencing the realities of American life as a Nigerian, the search for belonging crosses borders and generations. Selected from the archives of Catapult magazine, the essays in A Map Is Only One Story highlight the human side of immigration policies and polarized rhetoric, as 20 writers share provocative personal stories of existing between languages and cultures.

Publicado originalmente em 1983, Tornar-se negro foi pioneiro ao conectar a psicanálise com a questão racial. De forma inovadora e potente, a psiquiatra e psicanalista Neusa Santos Souza dedicou um estudo acadêmico à vida emocional de negros e negras, justificado pela absoluta ausência de um discurso nesse nível elaborado pelo negro acerca de si mesmo. Partindo da própria experiência de ser negra numa sociedade de hegemonia branca, Neusa analisa uma série de depoimentos dados a ela, assinalando neles as consequências brutais do racismo.

Ten linked essays from public intellectual and professor Robert Boyers that elegantly and fiercely address the most relevant and controversial ideas of the day - from identity and privilege to appropriation and diversity - and advocates for loosening the straightjacket of the new liberal orthodoxy.

Say good-bye to the crippling stress and anxiety that come with dating in the 2020s with the dating advice all single people need.

Lachi is an award-winning musician and leader who awakens the world to this truth: Disability has long shaped our culture and is an identity worth brazenly celebrating. In this book, Lachi welcomes listeners into the vibrant world of Disability Culture, centering identity, innovation, and unapologetic pride.

Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were White; her friends were White; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to Black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.

After graduating high school in Scarborough, Morris spent four years in the U.S. on multiple football scholarships and, having spent that time in the States experiencing “the Mecca of hip hop and Black culture,” returned home with a newfound perspective. Now an elementary school teacher himself in Toronto, Morris explores the tension between his consumption of Black culture as a child, his teenage performances of the ideas and values of the culture that often betrayed his identity, and the ways society and the people guiding him received those performances.