Survival by Any Means: Race and Gender, Passing and Performance in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

Author(s):  
Micah Moreno
Author(s):  
Wakoh Shannon Hickey

Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom and reveals how religion, race, and gender have shaped events. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, this book reveals what got lost in the process.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-205
Author(s):  
Emine Fişek

The 2011 French blockbuster film Intouchables is based on a true story and depicts the friendship between Parisian Philippe, a white millionaire who is quadriplegic, and his carer Driss, a black man from the city’s banlieues. Whereas the film’s American reception focused on race and criticised the stereotypes imposed on the performing black body, French critics focused on class, and discussed the film’s easy depiction of economic domination. This article approaches this critical disparity through the lens of performance, and argues that the film’s contrasting receptions demonstrate the distinct legacies of American slavery and French colonialism in understanding contemporary iconographies of black performance. A further focus on the film’s source material, as well as the filmmakers’ adaptation of an Algerian character into a Senegalese one, reveals the continued role that the legacy of French colonialism plays in aesthetic representations of race and gender in contemporary France.


Crisis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Rodi ◽  
Lucas Godoy Garraza ◽  
Christine Walrath ◽  
Robert L. Stephens ◽  
D. Susanne Condron ◽  
...  

Background: In order to better understand the posttraining suicide prevention behavior of gatekeeper trainees, the present article examines the referral and service receipt patterns among gatekeeper-identified youths. Methods: Data for this study were drawn from 26 Garrett Lee Smith grantees funded between October 2005 and October 2009 who submitted data about the number, characteristics, and service access of identified youths. Results: The demographic characteristics of identified youths are not related to referral type or receipt. Furthermore, referral setting does not seem to be predictive of the type of referral. Demographic as well as other (nonrisk) characteristics of the youths are not key variables in determining identification or service receipt. Limitations: These data are not necessarily representative of all youths identified by gatekeepers represented in the dataset. The prevalence of risk among all members of the communities from which these data are drawn is unknown. Furthermore, these data likely disproportionately represent gatekeepers associated with systems that effectively track gatekeepers and youths. Conclusions: Gatekeepers appear to be identifying youth across settings, and those youths are being referred for services without regard for race and gender or the settings in which they are identified. Furthermore, youths that may be at highest risk may be more likely to receive those services.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana J. Ferradas ◽  
G. Nicole Rider ◽  
Johanna D. Williams ◽  
Brittany J. Dancy ◽  
Lauren R. Mcghee

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document