National Network for Equitable Library Service

Aboriginal people want an education that reflects their cultural values and linguistic heritages, an education that will foster their children’s engagement and identity and not marginalize them as learners. This book turns the spotlight on a rare success story – one Ontario high school’s attempt to recognize Aboriginal students’ cultural and academic needs while helping them build relationships with non-Aboriginal students. Aboriginal students constitute one of the fastest-growing groups in public schools.

This book explores the complicated relationship between Hamilton Harbour and the people who came to reside on its shores. From the time of European settlement through to Hamilton’s rise as an industrial city, townsfolk struggled with nature, and with one another, to champion their vision of “the bay” as a place to live, work, and play. The authors bring to life the personalities and power struggles, drawing on a rich collection of archival materials.

Disabling Barriers analyzes issues relating to disability at different moments in Canadian and American history. In this volume, legal scholars, historians, and disability-rights activists explore how disabled people have been portrayed and treated in a variety of contexts, including within the labour market, the workers’ compensation system, the immigration process, and the legal system (both as litigants and as lawyers).

Canada has a 100-year history of using the criminal justice system to address social problems of youth in society. Has this approach worked? Not according to clinical psychologist Mary Vandergoot. In fact, this approach has ignored the reality that many youth who come into contact with the law may have developmental disabilities, mental health disorders, suffer from a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, or be victims of violence or neglect. Our current approach to youth justice can actually harm such young persons and their families by ignoring their needs.

Does our current system for dealing with young offenders -- which focuses on punishment -- work? Not according to the authors of this compelling and thought-provoking book. It simply ensures that we jail more youth than any other country, including the United States. Green and Healy argue that a new approach is needed and offer ample evidence from around the world, and our own back yard, to make the case for a shift to restorative justice. The voices of their young clients illustrate the very real human costs of doing nothing.

This vibrant biography of Griffintown, an inner-city Montreal neighbourhood, brings to life the history of Irish identity in the legendary enclave. As Irish immigration dwindled by the late nineteenth century, Irish culture in the city became diasporic, reflecting an imagined homeland. Focusing on the power of memory to shape community, Matthew Barlow finds that, despite sociopolitical pressures and a declining population, the spirit of this ethnic quarter was nurtured by the men and women who grew up there.

In 1887, Nellie Bly had herself committed to the notorious Blackwell's Island insane asylum in New York City with the goal of discovering what life was like for its patients. While there, Bly experienced firsthand the shocking abuse and neglect of its inmates, from inedible food to horrifyingly unsanitary conditions. Ten Days in a Mad-House is Bly's expose of the asylum.

A cornerstone of African-American literary history, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work by W. E. B. Du Bois. Originally published in 1903, it contains many essays on race and equality, but is also a piece of seminal history as laying the groundwork for the field of sociology. Some of the essays in the novel were even previously published by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. When writing, Du Bois drew from his personal experiences as an African-American in America to highlight the issues of prejudice that were still going on into the 20th century.

What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their lives--to see that feminism is for everybody.

In Teaching to Transgress, Bell Hooks–writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual–writes about a new kind of education, educations as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to “transgress” against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for Hooks, the teacher’s most important goal. Bell Hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn?