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Joshunda Sanders

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An Old Little Girl

by Joshunda Sanders on April 24, 2013

Try traveling light, or cheaply for that matter, in a post Sept. 11 era. None of us can bring everything we need, or think we do, on any trip. But in cultural anthropologist, poet and writer Ruth Behar's latest memoir, Traveling Heavy: A Memoir In Between Journeys, she notes the irony of even attempting to bring it all.

A self-described well-heeled orphan who grew up to be a professional traveler, Behar yearns and searches for home in Traveling Heavy while also tracing her Cuban/Jewish identity. Though it is a topic her other books and creative writing has tackled ...

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‘Bird of Paradise’: Raquel Cepeda’s Memoir & DNA Expedition

by Joshunda Sanders on March 11, 2013

We know by now that the myth of post-racial America was more an articulation of a dream than reality, but it still sounds nice. At the center of that mythical milieu was President Barack Obama, the perfect symbol of racial pride for some and anxiety for others. When our nation's leader, both African and American, does not cling to one racial category above all else, what else could that say about the state of racial identity in our country?

Fortunately, for journalist and filmmaker Raquel Cepeda, it means that we are still grappling with how our cultures shape us ...

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Life after Banishment

by Joshunda Sanders on March 7, 2013

The Westboro Baptist Church may be the most vilified group in America: over 338,000 people have signed a White House petition to have it classified as an official hate group. But Former Westboro member Lauren Drain, author of the revelatory Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church, says "They're beyond a hate group. They're cruel."

After coming of age within Westboro, even though she was ostracized by Westboro members for several years, Drain was cut off from her three siblings by her parents when she was 21. She writes in Banished about her father's ...

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‘The Double V’: A Slow, Violent Victory for African American Soldiers

by Joshunda Sanders on Jan. 23, 2013

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln has revived discussion of the Great Emancipator's unique empathy for the freedoms of African Americans, but for blacks in the armed forces, at least, President Harry Truman may be deserving of a similar title. In his encyclopedic and compact history, The Double V: How Wars, Protest and Harry Truman Desegregated America's Military, Rawn James Jr. writes that Truman desegregated the military by making the case for "the brotherhood of men before the law."

In The Double V (which stands for victory abroad and victory over racism at home), James writes about how tenuously white ...

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