“We are one people, one family, the human family, and what affects one of us affects us all.” ― John Lewis Ready for some Necessary Trouble? In anticipation and in honor of the dedication of John R. Lewis College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Division of Social Sciences, Colleges Nine and Ten, […]

Craig Haney is a social psychologist and criminologist whose work leverages interdisciplinary approaches to policy theory and practice in the pursuit of justice and equity within institutions of policing and corrections. Drawing on social histories of crime and punishment, as well as the environments of public media and representation in which opinions and beliefs and […]

Meena Kandasamy (b. 1984) is an anti-caste activist, poet, novelist and translator. Her writing aims to deconstruct trauma and violence, while spotlighting the militant resistance against caste, gender, and ethnic oppressions. She explores this in her poetry and prose, most notably in her books of poems such as Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010), as […]

The 2022 season of Our Community Reads from the Friends of the Aptos Library is featuring a series of special events related to themes in Red Letter Days by Sarah-Jane Stratford. All events aim to create a shared experience that will increase appreciation for our community libraries and for our local bookstores; foster pride in […]

Yuri Herrera’s first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, received great critical acclaim in 2015 and was included in many Best-of-Year lists. Yuri is a political scientist, editor and contemporary Mexican writer who teaches at Tulane University in New Orleans. His prose was described as “stunning” and his novel as […]

During the American slave trade, more than 12 million enslaved African people endured the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic. For many, the forced migration didn’t end when they reached an American port. Demand for enslaved labor was so rampant in the Americas that speculators purchased many arriving people only to ship them from colony […]