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History and Current Events January 2020
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| Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for... by Jessica McDiarmidWhat it is: a heart-wrenching exposé on British Columbia's Highway 16, known as the "Highway of Tears" because of the disappearances or murders of many Indigenous girls and women in the area.
Why it matters: Journalist Jessica McDiarmid's "powerful must-read" (Booklist) illuminates how these unsolved and underreported crimes are a microcosm of the systemic forces that continue to fail vulnerable Indigenous populations throughout Canada. |
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The Third Rainbow Girl : The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia
by Emma Copley Eisenberg
In the evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. With the passage of time, as the truth seemed to slip away, the investigation itself caused its own traumas--turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming a fear of the violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries.
Emma Copley Eisenberg spent years living in Pocahontas and re-investigating these brutal acts. Using the past and the present, she shows how this mysterious act of violence has loomed over all those affected for generations, shaping their fears, fates, and the stories they tell about themselves.
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| This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled... by David J. SilvermanWhat it's about: the complex 50-year alliance between the Wampanoag tribe and European colonizers that ended with King Philip's War, a three-year conflict that almost completely annihilated the Wampanoag.
Why you might like it: This impassioned narrative centers the Wampanoag people's experiences, offering insights into why the alliance was brokered and how the tribe persisted in the face of devastation.
Don't miss: profiles of Wampanoag activists, including Frank James (1923-2001), who established the National Day of Mourning in 1970. |
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A House in the Mountains : The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism
by Caroline Moorehead
In the summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian Resistance was born. Four young women―Ada, Frida, Silvia and Bianca―living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked their lives to overthrow Italy’s authoritarian government. They were among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more extraordinary was the number of women―like this brave quartet―who swelled its ranks.
Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources, prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins around them.
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