Published in July 2012, Rebels and Runaways analyzes the various degrees of slave resistance—from the perspectives of both slave and master—and how they differed in various regions of antebellum Florida. In particular, the book demonstrates how the Atlantic world view of some enslaved blacks successfully aided their escape to freedom, a path that did not always lead North but sometimes farther South to the Bahama Islands and Caribbean.

A banquet was held for all Florida Book Awards winners on March 19^th at the Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, FL.

Congratulations Dr. Rivers!

The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America by Linda Gordon
Gordon’s classic study is the most complete history of birth control ever written. It covers the entire history of the intense controversies about reproductive rights that have raged in the United States for more than 150 years, from the earliest attempts of women to organize for the legal control of their bodies to the effects of second-wave feminism. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention by Judith Wellman
Feminists from 1848 to the present have rightly viewed the Seneca Falls convention as the birth of the women’s rights movement in the United States and beyond. The convention succeeded by uniting powerful elements of the antislavery movement, radical Quakers, and the campaign for legal reform under a common cause. Wellman shows that these three strands converged not only in Seneca Falls, but also in the life of women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China by Danke Li
This collection of annotated oral histories records the personal stories of twenty Chinese women who lived in the wartime capital of Chongqing during China’s War of Resistance against Japan during World War II. Their stories demonstrate that the War of Resistance had two faces: one presented by official propaganda and characterized by an upbeat unified front against Japan, the other a record of invisible private stories and a sobering national experience of death and suffering. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women’s Music by Eileen M. Hayes
Drawing on fieldwork conducted at eight women’s music festivals, Eileen M. Hayes shows how studying these festivals—attended by predominately white lesbians—provides critical insight into the role of music and lesbian community formation. She argues that the women’s music festival is a significant institutional site for the emergence of black feminist consciousness in the contemporary period. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

Kaija Saariaho by Pirkko Moisala
This book is the first comprehensive study of the music and career of contemporary composer Kaija Saariaho. Born in Finland in 1952, Saariaho received her early musical training at the Sibelius Academy, where her close circle included composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. She has since become internationally known and recognized for her operas L’amour de loin and Adriana Mater and other works that involve electronic music. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens by Hazel Dickens and Bill C. Malone
Growing up in a West Virginia coal mining community, Hazel Dickens drew on the mountain music and repertoire of her family and neighbors when establishing her own vibrant and powerful vocal style that is a trademark in old-time, bluegrass, and traditional country circles. Working Girl Blues presents forty original songs that Hazel Dickens wrote about coal mining, labor issues, personal relationships, and her life and family in Appalachia. Conveying sensitivity, determination, and feistiness, Dickens comments on each of her songs, explaining how she came to write them and what they meant to her. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the NOOK version here.

The award will be presented formally at the Business Meeting of the RSAP, May 23-26, 2013, in Boston at the annual conference of the American Literature Association.

Congratulations, Professor Gardner!

Q: What is the “renegade union” of the book’s title?

Phillips: Local then District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union AND of the Distributing Processing and Office Workers AND of the United Automobile Workers AND of the Distributive Workers of America. It changed its affiliation several times throughout its history.

Q: What was the biggest problem the union faced in organizing its workers?

Phillips: Fitting in within the larger labor movement. It always held great appeal to the workers it organized but had to organize so differently from other labor unions that an
almost constant tension existed between it and the larger labor organizations with which it attempted to affiliate.

Q: Is there something about New York City–vs. other large cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, etc.–that made the creation of this union possible? 

Phillips: New York, especially Manhattan where the union’s organizers started, wasn’t a manufacturing or meatpacking center like Detroit or Chicago. New York’s businesses and shops were relatively small and diverse compared to big auto or steel plants more typically associated with union organizing in the mid 20th century. That meant that District 65′s organizers had to develop different strategies to pull in the people it organized.  Not only were they incredibly low paid, they worked in small 10-15 person shops and warehouses.  Some packed merchandise, everything from clothes to toys to costume jewelry. Others worked in wholesale shops stocking merchandise and doing other odd jobs. Few worked for the same “boss,” in the same warehouse, or in the same industry but they all faced similarly degrading work conditions and within a few blocks of one another and that’s what the union’s organizers were able to tap into.

Q: How many people were in the union at its peak? 

Phillips: 40,000 people working in 1000s of different shops and establishments under 1000s of different contracts.

Q: Did it eventually join forces with a larger union organization?

Phillips: Yes, it was affiliated through most of its history with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) which was an AFL-CIO union.

Q: Was there anything unique about District 65 that still makes an impact today? 

Phillips: Its history is key to understanding how labor organizers work today in a service and distribution-oriented economy. There are more and more people working in small retail and wholesale establishments and in warehouses in the service and distribution industries than there are people working in large manufacturing-based settings so the union’s strategies are incredibly instructive for what’s happening today with American workers.

Q: What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the book? 

Phillips: It was fascinating to learn about how people from such different backgrounds (men, women, black, white, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Italian) and working for different people could create a sense of camaraderie and come together to try and pressure their bosses to improve their working conditions. They didn’t have strength in numbers the way auto workers did to shut the plant down and walk out. They didn’t have a common “boss” to despise. None of that but a collective sense of pushing their “collective” employers to improve conditions in the whole of segment of the industry in which they worked. What an undertaking!

Q: What is John Brunner known for?

Smith: Brunner is best known for three near-future novels, all of which now seem eerily prescient. His Hugo Award-winning Stand on Zanzibar (1968) is set in 2010 and feels very contemporary in its handling of media saturation, urban overcrowding, terrorism, and genetic modification. The Sheep Look Up (1972) paints a grim picture of unfolding ecological crisis that takes in everything from the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria to the collapse of bee populations and fish stocks. The Shockwave Rider (1975) is a forerunner of cyberpunk. It finds Brunner imagining a “data net” resembling the Internet, coining the term “worm” to describe self-replicating malware, and broadly engaging with the idea of information society.

Q: How did you first become acquainted with Brunner’s writing?

Smith: I first read his Ace books—novels such as The 100^th Millennium (1959), The Atlantic Abomination (1960), and Meeting at Infinity (1961)—long after their original publication. I also remember reading two story collections, No Future in It (1962) and Now Then (1965), early on. I mostly worked forward from there. I probably differ from other Brunner fans of my generation, who seem more likely to have read Stand on Zanzibar or The Shockwave Rider first, or to have worked their way back to the better-known novels from The Crucible of Time (1983) or 1980s reprints of The Traveler in Black.

Q: Do you think this circumstance influenced your understanding of Brunner?

Smith: Definitely. His early fiction is often dismissed as little more than the work of a competent journeyman, while Stand on Zanzibar is praised as a masterstroke of unforeseen brilliance. I don’t think that’s the case at all. Brunner’s early stories and
novels are uncommonly good for their day and strongly anticipate his later work. In fact, Meeting at Infinity, with its use of multiple viewpoints, intersecting plot lines, and a false
protagonist, is arguably a trial run for Stand on Zanzibar.

Q: What else is new or different about your account of Brunner’s career?

Smith: I examine Brunner’s troubled relationship with the British New Wave, a loosely-defined SF vanguard of the late sixties. Stand on Zanzibar was received in some quarters as a quintessentially New Wave novel, but it met with a cold reception from some New Wave writers. To an extent, Brunner’s distinctive approach—which combined the best elements of the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance—got caught up in and obscured by crosstalk about the New Wave. Also, Brunner’s best-known novels from the late sixties and early seventies cast a long shadow on his later career. My account gives due attention to Brunner’s significant but neglected later works, The Crucible of Time, “The First since Ancient Persia” (1990), and A Maze of Stars (1991), among others.

Q: What is an unusual or interesting fact that you learned about Brunner while researching the book?

Smith: In late 1955, Brunner submitted his proto-cyberpunk story “Fair” to legendary British editor Ted Carnell. Carnell didn’t like it, accepted it only to fill out an issue of New
Worlds, and forced Brunner to publish it under a pseudonym reportedly plucked from the phonebook–Keith Woodcott, specifically. After “Fair” appeared, Carnell received a deluge of positive letters about it and accidently listed Brunner’s real name next to the story in the magazine’s next reader poll, unmasking Woodcott in the process. Brunner found the situation highly amusing and savored the recognition that followed. Later in his career, when he needed to publish some of his Ace books under a pseudonym to avoid overexposure, Brunner revived the Keith Woodcott name, perhaps as something of a private joke.

Q: Has Brunner’s work been influential in the SF field?

Smith: I think so. In Brunner’s day, his body of work was often considered
difficult to categorize. Now, it looks ahead of its time—like a precursor to cyberpunk,
slipstream, and biopunk. I’m not suggesting Brunner invented these subgenres, but his penchant for working across genres and for blurring the boundaries between hard and soft SF certainly helped open up avenues for their emergence.

From the Smithsonian Folkways site:
Innovative and often surprising, Banjo Diary: Lessons from Tradition explores knowledge older musicians have bequeathed to younger players. Inspired by past banjo masters of frailing and of two- and three-finger styles, Stephen Wade, accompanied by Mike Craver, Russ Hooper, Danny Knicely, James Leva, and Zan McLeod, mines new creative possibilities with pump organ, piano, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, Dobro, rhumba box, washboard, and bass.

(Photo by: MaryE Yeomans)

1. What makes college basketball and college football vulnerable to game fixing scandals?

Figone: Spectator sports in the United States have involved gambling on their outcomes from their inception. Boxing and baseball were almost destroyed by individuals who took a dive and fixed games; professional wrestling turned into an exhibition because of gambling; and pedestrianism (i.e. today’s marathons) were at times rigged as they were bet on.

During football’s early history in the late 19^th century, the lack of organized supervision allowed college athletes to play on professional teams for money. Gamblers and bookies made money on these leagues as gambling and rigging final scores were prevalent. Undoubtedly, player and gambler connections from these leagues carried over to college
competition. Opposing college players gambled on the games’ outcomes, among
themselves and bookies, and gamblers attended practices and games to proposition players, and obtain inside information. Virtually every meeting of college authorities in the first 40 years of college football included a discussion on how to rid the parasite of gambling from the sport.

The annual Army-Navy game at Yankee Stadium was cancelled because over one million was bet on the game in 1947—the last year of the series.  Gamblers were spotted in hotels looking for players to do business was one of the reasons for suspending the game. Intersectional games played in off campus sites commanded the attention of big-time sports gamblers.

During college basketball’s early history, its players were not paid to play. They earned extra money playing professionally and often walked among the spectators before games to solicit wagers. As the sport gained popularity in colleges, betting on the sport and the point spread emerged as early as the 1920’s.  Betting on college sports significantly increased during the 1930’s as many bookies funded their trade with profits from the illicit sex and liquor businesses that emerged during Prohibition.  Many bookies remained in the trade when Prohibition was repealed in 1931.

During World War Two, the fixing of games increased in college basketball and college football.  Law enforcement’s attention was focused on the war effort, college authorities dismissed the rumored or actual game fixing primarily because of small team sizes, and more bookies switched to college sports as the government shut down horse racing. The point spread’s reported invention about 1939 (some authorities contend it was earlier) exacerbated betting in each sport. During the post-war period from 1945 to 1951 and thereafter, betting on college sports continued to grow and was ignored by the NCAA and law enforcement at the local level.

In many jurisdictions such as New York City, the police departments were paid by bookies allowing them to conduct business as they pleased.  Other cities such as: Lexington, Toledo, OH, and Portland, OR also winked an eye at the activity. The 1951 Basketball Scandal was exposed by a newspaper editor—not the New York County DA’s office. The DA began wiretapping in February 1951 and two years of investigations by the New York Herald’s crime reporters produced tons of evidence showing many college players in New York and Philadelphia were doing business with gamblers. Sports reporters in the 1940’s and 1950’s shielded the problem from the public by treating sports fans like mushrooms about widespread fixing in basketball and covering them with manure. The 1961 Basketball Scandal was twice the size as the one 10 years earlier. Bookies had quickly learned how to avoid detection while the college establishment demonstrated a remarkable learning dysfunction regarding gambling corruption in college sports.

From the early 1940’s until the 1980’s, the most common reasons for fixing games were: making extra money (i.e. everybody is doing it), fixing of games in specific regions of the U.S. were part of college basketball’s culture (i.e., New York, Lexington, KY, Portland, OR Louisville, Kansas City, Chicago, and Detroit), lack of institutional, conference, or NCAA attention to the problem, civil statutes that made sports bribing illegal were not enacted, and many police departments and politicians were receiving payoffs from bookies (i.e. Kefauver Commission in 1951 revealed the extent of the corruption). Many coaches ignored their players’ rigging games even as bookies smelled a fix and reported their suspicions to them. Everett Case of North Carolina State is the only coach on record to report his suspicions that three of his basketball players in 1961 were manipulating final scores. He contacted the North Carolina Bureau of Investigations and his suspicions were confirmed.

1980′s to 2000: Football and basketball players increasingly gambled on sports with campus bookies, college and professional sports gambling increasingly became socially popular, some players had become addicted to gambling while incurring gambling debts (i.e. from many types of wagering) which made them vulnerable to fixing offers, and some athletes have been risk takers like a Sociopath (i.e. I’ll beat the system). Many players observed their friends betting sports and did not know betting on sports for a college athlete was illegal.

Include factors such as players: with no money, bad grades,  see no future
as potential draftees,  know their efforts produce big profits for others, observing rules and laws not enforced uniformly (i.e. athletes are protected after committing criminal acts), and some coaches gamble themselves and strategize during the game according to the spread—a perfect storm for a scandal.

Recent gambling trends in the 21^st century have also contributed to the problem: many athletes have been sports gambling since elementary school, feel alienated from teammates because of race, jealousies, and other reasons, and many have been softened with money, booze, and women from gamblers. Increased payoffs to players for recruiting and playing render the gambling menace more dangerous than ever in 2013.

Keep in mind, the problem involves 1% of all college athletes out of the estimated 430, 000.  Some critics believe this number may be as high as 5%. The biggest issue is that fixing a game and not playing honestly undermines our core beliefs about sports, society, and ourselves. Game Fixing is the Mother of All Scandals.  We don’t accept payoffs
from boosters, coaches violating NCAA rules, athletes not belonging in college, etc. But, we are led to believe these transgressions can be fixed by the colleges and archaic NCAA rules.

2. Is it always about the money?

Figone: No! other reasons include: hatred for a coach for varied reasons: broke recruiting promises, picks on certain players (i.e. at times has been a racial or other issues),  makes athletes feel powerless, is abusive emotionally and physically, and arranges for boosters to pay big money to a team’s high profile players such as: quarterbacks, running backs, or high scorers.  Thus, ignores paying players extra money that are instrumental to a team’s success and  see the system as exploitive.  High performing athletes have trained for over 10 years, now work for about $8.00 an hour, and keenly aware and reminded by fixers millions are made because of their efforts.  In a few instances, athletes will rig games for the thrill of the scam.

3. Do the players involved in point shaving scandals typically show remorse
when they are implicated?

Figone: Yes, because 90% of them believe they can beat the human sports betting system. The illusion: If 52.4% of money bet on human sports is won, a person will be slightly ahead. Win 60% of bets placed on sports and one wins big money. The remorse is for getting caught because the commercialized system has immunized the 1% from any loyalty to the program or institution. The media including the NCAA has “spun” to the public that Alan Athlete is highly committed to Tech U for mythical reasons. Unfortunately; most athletes don’t look at long-term consequences when they agree to play illegally. Many who threw away a future in which they could have a made a lot of money or have been labeled fixers have experienced emotional and physical problems in their lifetimes.

4. Who is the highest profile college coach to be involved in a college gambling scandal?

Figone: Take your pick: Nat Holman, Lou Rossini, Clair Bee, Adolph Rupp (most wins in this group), Everett Case, Gerry Bush, Joe Lapchick, Tom Davis, Norm Ellenberger, Fordy Anderson, Frank Ramsey, Bill Frieder (Steve Fisher’s predecessor), Buck Freeman, and many lesser profile people like assistant coaches, directors of athletics, trainers, team doctors, etc.

5. What is the most unusual case of game fixing that you encountered?

Figone: St. Joseph-Bradley game in Philadelphia in January, 1951. One of the Englisis brothers Nick, worked for one group of fixers and his job was too line up Bradley’s players to fix games in 1950 and 1951.

Nick arranged for the Bradley players to not cover the spread or win by less
than the spread as the group he represented bet big money St. Joseph’s. Bradley
was a heavy favorite. Meanwhile, in New York City, his brother Tony was working
for a group of fixers headed by Jack “Zip” West, a notorious mobster who believed he was double-crossed by Nick’s group who informed him the money was on Bradley to beat the spread. Furious about the double-cross he seized Tony at gun-point and told him to call Nick in Philadelphia to call off the rigged game. West undoubtedly would kill Tony if Bradley’s players covered the spread as the gangster would have lost a lot of money. He could not change his bet and held Tony hostage in his apartment.

Contacting his brother just before game time, Tony explained the circumstances and told Nick to call off the fix. Nick didn’t tell his backers, or they would have bought him a burial site in the East River. But, to make his backers think the game was a lock for them,
the Bradley players performed so badly that at the first quarter break; they were behind, 17-5. St. Joseph’s record was one the worst in college basketball while Bradley was ranked number one in the country. They did everything but shoot the ball for St. Joseph. At the break, Fordy Anderson asked the team: “Is everything okay? Is something wrong?” Obviously, he didn’t want to hear the players were rigging the game. But to save Tony’s life, Bradley stormed back and won the game by a big margin.

6. Is the current NCAA rulebook an impediment to ending these scandals?

Figone: Yes and No. No because the NCAA rule in 2013 states: An athlete is ineligible
for life if caught gambling on any sport, conspires to fix a game, or gambles on his own team, etc. But, what occurs is that the NCAA along with a few money hungry schools make rigging a game inevitable. How? Because hypocrisy of the system is most evident
to athletes as the NCAA has passed rules to label athletes sham amateurs.

How many people treated grossly unfair in the workplace, have busted their tails for over 10 years, and are theoretically slaves, but classified as amateurs, would not listen to offers to fix games? Especially when approached by a slick emissary representing a group loosely defined as organized crime. How many individuals will say no, not withstanding that they will not report the offer if they refuse it because they don’t want to be fitted for a pair of cement shoes?

A scholarship for athletics is worth more than $200,000 if one values a degree. What if the athlete has no intention of obtaining a degree and does not understand what an education means? The high level athlete has learned that recruiting is similar to negotiating as a free agent. He is represented usually by a loosely defined Talent Scout and looking at who has the most money?  If the athlete cares less about education and looks at million dollar contracts, where will he turn when his dreams turn to cruel reality before his eligibility expires? Maybe to rigging a game or two.

And, the schools really don’t make a profit from athletics. In any one year about 10% of the 325 Division One institutions that sponsor commercialized football and basketball end up in the black financially. At least 50% end up in the red as they are competing in sum-zero games. The same to eight or ten football programs who play in the BCS and the rare basketball programs that end up in the final eight are profit earners. About 10 in each sport.

7. How did your experience as a college coach inform your writing of Cheating the Spread?

Figone: I coached baseball. And, I was very knowledgeable about my players’ behaviors and technical executions on the field. If one played below his usual level, not his best, or simply looked like he was zoned out, etc., he was removed from the game and received running medicine at 3:00 a.m. around the library carrying a bat over his head. This
scenario occurred infrequently, but not for gambling reasons; maybe, the player violated a team rule. The point: In my opinion, every one of the coaches whose players worked with gamblers knew it when it was occurring. Some were even told by their players it was happening.

During the 1957-1958 season, St. John’s Joe Lapchick was told by his players two starters were doing business with a gambler. Even the sportswriters told him the two players, Billy Chrystal and Michael Parenti, had been rigging games for three years. He felt and acted powerless and was unable to coach the team during games and had a player make all the strategic moves. He could have informed the New York DA’s office who could have wiretapped the two players. And, possibly prevented the massive 1961 gambling scandal in basketball.

8. What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the
book?

Figone: Most of the material Judy Karren, of factfinderresearcher.com, an excellent and very thorough   researcher, and I uncovered was not too surprising. The book allowed us to see the gambling problem from a perspective of looking at college football’s and basketball’s gambling history from the late 19^th century until today. No one event defined the scandals. It was a combination of: corruption in the two sports in question, social, economic, and political factors in higher education, and gambling vulnerabilities in many individuals that could influence a final score.

In my opinion, 98% of college sport historians have not written a comprehensive accounting of the gambling problem to the delight of: illegal bookies, NCAA, boosters who gamble on the team they fund, the college establishment that earns billions, television, and attendant industries. Why?  The events surrounding the scandals are not contextualized and placed in the realm as isolated incidents (i.e. “It’s a few bad apples”). People don’t create notable historical events. People emerge from historical events as victims, a few as extraordinary leaders rising above their peers, and the events change people’s behaviors very slowly over time.

The colleges in 2013 have not solved the gambling issue. Questions that lead to solutions have not been crafted as gambling only goes away if it destroys a sport or an institution stops competing for entertainment dollars.  I’m not sure we know how to successfully stop the 150 billion plus illegal gambling problem with the present system in commercialized college sports.

Previously unknown issues about this problem: The openness of bookie operations, especially in big cities, how coaches winked their eye, ignored, and denied their players were rigging games; even as spectators spotted the funny play, and the naiveté of the NCAA and college establishment about the problem. Fixing has not stopped. It’s simply more covert and sophisticated in 2013.

Our next book: The Underground Economy in College Football and Basketball: Playing For Illegal Gambling and Hypocrisy will selectively examine the entire history of the gambling problem in college sports. We’re attempting to link widespread and specific instances of corruption in the two sports with the fixing of games.

For example, how can the FBI, Las Vegas, and other law enforcement agencies today track the large number of college games wagered?  The University of Toledo scandal involved two Detroit gamblers who bet over $400,000 on the university’s basketball games from December 2005 to January 2006. There were assisted by four football and four basketball players. The FBI uncovered the two gamblers in the course of investigating their connection to organized crime. This was a mid-level Division One basketball program that escaped the attention of the legal books and the FBI. The mid-level programs may become the next targets of fixers.

College programs play for gamblers to the tune of at least 150 billion a year. And, only 10% are profitable. Sadly, this is higher education’s legacy in 2013.

Sojourner Truth’s America by Margaret Washington
Winner of the inaugural 2010 OAH Darlene Clark Hine Award and co-winner of the 2009 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award, this fascinating biography unravels Sojourner Truth’s world within the broader panorama of African American slavery and the nation’s most significant reform era. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here.

Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War by Scott Christianson
Freeing Charles recounts the life and epic rescue of captured fugitive slave Charles Nalle of Culpeper, Virginia, who was forcibly liberated by Harriet Tubman and others in Troy, New York, on April 27, 1860. Author Scott Christianson follows Nalle from his enslavement by the Hansborough family in Virginia through his escape by the Underground Railroad and his experiences in the North on the eve of the Civil War. Buy the Kindle version here.  Buy the Kobo version here.

A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights by Cornelius L. Bynum
A. Philip Randolph’s career as a trade unionist and civil rights activist fundamentally shaped the course of black protest in the mid-twentieth century. Examining Randolph’s work in lobbying for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatening to lead a march on Washington in 1941, and establishing the Fair Employment Practice Committee, Cornelius L. Bynum shows that Randolph’s push for African American equality took place within a broader progressive program of industrial reform. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here.

Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 by Tim Brooks
This groundbreaking in-depth history of the involvement of African Americans in the early recording industry examines the first three decades of sound recording in the United States, charting the surprising roles black artists played in the period leading up to the Jazz Age and the remarkably wide range of black music and culture they preserved.  Lost Sounds won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, ARSC Award for Best Research in General History of Recorded Sound, and the Irving Lowens Award, given by the Society for American Music for the best work published (2004) in the field of American music. Buy the Kobo version here.

Q: In March 2013 the Press will publish Shilpa Davé’s book Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film.  It will be the first book that you acquired for the series to be released.  How did you discover this manuscript?

Vijay: I discovered Indian Accents with the help of our then senior editor Kendra Boileau (now Editor-in-Chief at Penn State University Press). We collaborated with our new series’ editor Jigna Desai, who knew the author and thus sought out the project. I believe this first book in the series will turn out as a breakthrough in media and ethnic studies!

Q: What is different about Davé’s approach?

Vijay: Davé introduces the new concept of “brown voice,” as analogous to blackface, to describe racial impersonations of accents in mainstream film and television. Apu from The Simpsons seems a prime example, since the immigrant character’s voice is performed by a non-South Asian. Beyond racialization based on visual appearance, Davé suggests the profound implications of voice on ethnicity, national identity, and belonging in America.

Q: Are we at a time when Asian American voices are staking out a new place in American culture?

Vijay: To some extent, I believe so. Amid the increasing diversity of the United States, Asian Americans are asserting their voices. For instance, Mindy Kaling has begun her own t.v. show, the very first for a South Asian actor. So Asian Americans are beginning to represent themselves in American culture at large.

Q: Following Indian Accents in April 2013 are Yellow Power, Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho and Fighting from a Distance: How Filipino Exiles Helped Topple a Dictator.  How do these three books together signal a new direction for the series?

Vijay: The series aspires to publish cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research in Asian-American studies. Drawing upon the board’s knowledge of anthropology, sociology, and gender studies, the new concept takes a keen interest in cultural expression, cultural studies, and cultural performance. For instance, Yellow Power, Yellow Soul, an intimate appreciation of Chinese-American saxophonist Fred Ho, amplifies his bodacious combination of art and politics.

Q: What are some of the barriers that Fred Ho crosses with his work? 

Vijay: Fred Ho stands out as the first artist to combine Chinese opera and African-American music, creativity that simply amazes me! How does someone even think of such a rare combination? As an activist, Ho fuses many of his compositions with melodies from Asian and African music, bringing these various peoples together.

Q: Does the interdisciplinary direction take the series in unexpected places?

Vijay: In some respects, it does, crossing over into television, film, music, art, and activism. I also take an interest in Asian Americans in the Midwest, a little unexplored region in the field.

Q: How do you collaborate with the series’ editorial board to attract, evaluate, and acquire new books?

Vijay: As with Indian Accents, sometimes the series’ editors bring projects to my attention. Otherwise, I meet authors at conferences or receive proposals through the post, such as Fighting from a Distance, a first-hand account of Filipino-American resistance to Marcos’ dictatorship. In these cases, I consult the expertise of the series’ board in Asian-American studies. I really enjoy collaborating with such dynamic movers and shakers in their field!

Q: So Fighting from a Distance came unsolicited?  Is that rare?

Vijay: Yes, it came in through the post unsolicited, which happens now and then with books. I just became so captivated with the dramatic account of a bunch of Filipino
immigrants who land in the United States and then discover that their homeland is on fire! An activist in the opposition himself, the author Jose Fuentecilla gives us a ringside seat to the overseas arm of the resistance that helped overthrow a dictator half way around the world.

Q:  What are the next books coming in the series?

Vijay: In the autumn, we are publishing a groundbreaking collection on Asian Americans in the South, opening up another region outside of the usual Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In addition, we are bringing forth Undercover Asian, LeiLani Nishime’s perceptive study of multiracial Asian Americans in visual culture, which interprets certain images of Keanu Reeves and Kimora Lee Simmons. Both autumnal books will really build upon the debuts in the spring.