This week in North Philly Notes, Marianne Novy, author of Adoption Memoirs, writes about how a new documentary series depicts an adoption case. The Tribeca Festival is currently premiering a three-part documentary series, An Update on our Family, about Myka and James Stauffer, who adopted a boy from China, discovered he had severe autism, and nearly three years after the adoption, with the help of an agency, had him placed in another home. The Stauffers had posted much of the adoption process and their other family life on their YouTube channel. The series is named after the casual title they ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate Pride Month with a sampling of our LGBTQ books. . Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk, by James T. Sears  Sears draws upon extensive oral history accounts, archival material, and personal narratives to chronicle “the Battle for Rehoboth,” which unfolded in the late 20th century, as conservative town leaders and homeowners opposed progressive entrepreneurs and gay activists. He recounts not just the emergence of the gay and lesbian bars, dance clubs, and organizations that drew the queer community to the region, but also the efforts o ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase our recent Asian American studies titles to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America, by William Gee Wong  Sons of Chinatown poignantly weaves father and son stories together with admiration and righteous anger. Through the mirrored lens of his father, Wong reflects on the hardships Asian Americans endured—and continue to face—with American exceptionalism. Wong’s inspiring memoir provides a personal history that also raises the question of whether America welcomes or ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, the second half of our Q&A with James Sears about his new book, Queering Rehoboth Beach. What surprised you in your research of Rehoboth? First, I was astonished at the parallels between the struggles during the early years of Rehoboth as a Methodist meeting camp and those a century later when the town struggled with its “homosexual problem.” Also, I was not prepared for the degree of animosity and vitriol that accompanied the queering of Rehoboth. These ranged from college-age men masking themselves when guarding Poodle Beach and gay men “riotin ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, Austin Sarat, editor of Death Penalty in Decline?, considers how attitudes about capital punishment have changed over the decades since Furman v. Georgia. I have been studying America’s death penalty for almost 50 years. When I started doing so it seemed almost unimaginable that this country could, or would, ever give up its apparent love affair with capital punishment. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court brought a temporary halt to capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia. Four years later, however, the Court approved new procedures for deciding on d ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, Srirupa Chatterjee and Shweta Rao Garg, coeditors of Female Body Image and Beauty Politics in Contemporary Indian Literature and Culture, write about their awareness that the beauty ideal is a societal construct. “I have read that Indian women bleach their skin to appear lighter. Is that true?”  “You should reduce a bit, else no one will marry you!” When asked, we invoke colonialism, colorism, and a caste bias to explain the light-skin preference in India. But we may not confess that perhaps some of us bleached our skin as teenagers or had even used the h ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we honor the independent bookstores that support Temple University Press. Please visit them on April 27 for Independent Bookstore Day! Harriet’s Bookshop, 258 E. Girard Avenue in Philadelphia, PA, celebrates women authors, women artists, and women activists. While you’re there, grab a copy of BLAM! Black Lives Always Mattered. Headhouse Books, 619 South 2nd Street, in Philadelphia, PA, was founded in 2005 on the belief that no community is complete without the inspiration and exchange of ideas that only a locally-owned, independent bookstore can provide. Shop ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, David Campbell, author of Democracy’s Hidden Heroes, writes about the cultures of the bureaucratic and communal worlds. It’s a little intimidating to have your book published on the same day that Taylor Swift’s new album drops. Even if everyone reading this blog rushes out to buy my book, Democracy’s Hidden Heroes, it will be hard to keep up in the sales competition! But Taylor and I share something in common. We both use small, everyday stories to tell a larger story worth hearing. While the particular stories can stand on their own, it is their accumulation ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, William Gee Wong, author of Sons of Chinatown, writes about his father’s immigration. My father used partially fraudulent papers to legally enter the United States more than a century ago. In Oakland, California, where he landed in its cozy, tight-knit Chinatown, he operated an illegal business, selling lottery tickets, to survive the Great Depression. Because he broke some laws, was he “vermin” who “poisoned the blood” of America? Or was he more an innocent, naïve outsider who wanted to be an insider in the fabled American Dream and who left a legacy of four ..read more

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey, our latest title published by North Broad Press, a joint open access imprint of Temple University Libraries and Temple University Press.   North Broad Press,has published a new textbook. Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey. Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood explores the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas, that of the zombie and that of the apocalypse. The former is a modern i ..read more