Student Resources for Inclusive Research

Also available in print.
Based on personal experience and grounded in journalism, this story begins with the repatriation of ancestral remains to the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico. The 1999 return to Pecos of the skeletal remains of two thousand bodies excavated during an archaeological expedition nearly a century earlier was the largest repatriation in American history. In a united, purposeful, and energizing quest, the Pecos and Jemez Indians brought their ancestors home. This event, along with subsequent repatriations, has accelerated similar momentum across much of Native America...Through dozens of interviews, Robbins draws out the voices of Indian people, some well-known and many at the grassroots level, working quietly to advance their communities.

Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. She was told her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But Nicole grew up facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn't see, and wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth. Here Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, and chronicles the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets.

Concerned about aspects of her romantic relationships, Donna McDonald consulted with a psychologist who asked, "Your hearing loss must have had a big impact on you?" At age 45, with a successful career in social work policy, McDonald took umbrage at the question. Then, she realized that she never had addressed the personal barrier she had constructed between her deaf-self and her hearing persona. In The Art of Being Deaf, she describes her long, arduous pursuit of finding out exactly who she was.

Autism in Heels, an intimate memoir, reveals the woman inside one of autism's most prominent figures, Jennifer O'Toole. At the age of thirty-five, Jennifer was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and for the first time in her life, things made sense. Now, Jennifer exposes the constant struggle between carefully crafted persona and authentic existence, editing the autism script with wit, candor, passion, and power. Her journey is one of reverse-self-discovery not only as an Aspie but—more importantly—as a thoroughly modern woman.

A leading scientist describes his life, his gender transition, his scientific work, and his advocacy for gender equality in science. Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in December 2017, Barres (born Barbara Barres in 1954) describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments--from his childhood as a precocious math and science whiz to his experiences as a female student at MIT in the 1970s to his female-to-male transition in his forties, to his scientific work and role as teacher and mentor at Stanford.

How is it that the internet connects us to a world of people, yet so many of us feel more isolated than ever? That we have hundreds, even thousands of friends on social media, but not a single person to truly confide in? Radha Agrawal calls this "community confusion," and in Belong she offers every reader a blueprint to find their people and build and nurture community, because connectedness--as more and more studies show--is our key to happiness, fulfillment, and success.

Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Ta-Nehisi Coates attempts to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.

A groundbreaking work of LGBTQ+ literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens. Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken.

In this rich and diverse collection, 28 writers describe what positive experiences they have had as an autistic person, and show how the most unexpected subject areas can be a source of the positive. They demonstrate that individuals can, and do, experience life in positive ways, sometimes in the face of adversity. Sharing both dark and joyful moments with unreserved honesty, their insights are moving, often hilarious, creative, and highly intelligent, and usually surprising.

Using 61 short vignettes, the author describes growing up in a southern town as an African American rebel in a large family, and how she became the writer she is today.

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to "cure" him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life...At times heart-breaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love that survives despite all odds.

This book is also available in print.
Heartbreaking, poetic, and intensely personal, Butterfly Boy is a unique coming out and coming-of-age story of a first-generation Chicano who trades one life for another, only to discover that history and memory are not exchangeable or forgettable. Growing up among poor migrant Mexican farmworkers, Rigoberto González also faces the pressure of coming-of-age as a gay man in a culture that prizes machismo...The result is a leap of faith that every reader who ever felt like an outsider will immediately recognize.

From the New York Times bestselling author who inspired the hit Netflix series about a struggling mother barely making ends meet as a housecleaner, a "raw and inspiring" (People) memoir about college, motherhood, poverty, and life after Maid...Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, food insecurity, the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn't understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line--Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties.

In relating their experiences and aspirations, these student perspectives mount a powerful challenge to assumptions that intellectual disability is best met with protection or segregation. Taken together, the essays expose and contradict the inherently ableist claim that individuals with intellectual disability cannot be reliable storytellers. Instead, their deeply informative stories serve as a corrective narrative.

From sixteen-year-old Dara McAnulty, a globally renowned figure in the youth climate activist movement, comes a memoir about loving the natural world and fighting to save it...As well as Dara's intense connection to the natural world, Diary of a Young Naturalist captures his perspective as a teenager juggling exams, friendships, and a life of campaigning. We see his close-knit family, the disruptions of moving and changing schools, and the complexities of living with autism.

Naoki Higashida was only thirteen when he wrote The Reason I Jump, a revelatory account of autism from the inside by a nonverbal Japanese child, which became an international success. Now, in Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8, he shares his thoughts and experiences as a young man living each day with severe autism. In short, powerful chapters, Higashida explores school memories, family relationships, the exhilaration of travel, and the difficulties of speech.

Wendy Shanker is a fat, healthy, beautiful girl who has simply had enough. Enough of family, friends, co-workers, women's magazines, even strangers on the street, all trying (and failing) to make her thin. She finally decided, "If I can't take it off, I'm going to take it on." With a mandate to change the world—and the energy to do it—Wendy shows how media madness, corporate greed, and even the most well-intentioned loved ones prey on our shrink-to-fit minds, if not our shrink-to-fit bodies. She invites people of all sizes, shapes, and dissatisfactions to trade self-loathing for self-tolerance, celebrity worship for reality reverence, and a carb-free life for a guilt-free Krispy Kreme.

Also available as an eBook.
Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

In Growing Up Muslim, Andrew Garrod and Robert Kilkenny present fourteen personal essays by college students of the Muslim faith who are themselves immigrants or are the children of immigrants to the United States. In their essays, the students grapple with matters of ethnicity, religious prejudice and misunderstanding, and what is termed Islamophobia.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling.

In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

What is feminism? Why does it still matter? What exactly does intersectionality mean? In order to answer these (and many other) questions, I Am a Feminist first examines the history of feminism and then addresses the issues girls and women continue to face today. The book also looks at the ways in which people, especially young people, are working together to create a world where gender equality is a reality, not a dream.

Also available in print.
I Am Where I Come From presents the autobiographies of 13 Native American undergraduates and graduates of Dartmouth College, 10 of them current and recent students.

In this anthology, sixty-three award-winning authors such as Michael Cunningham, Amy Bloom, Jacqueline Woodson, Gregory Maguire, David Levithan, and Armistead Maupin make imaginative journeys into their pasts, telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender people. Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love and understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead.

Amid the flurry of debates about immigration, poverty, and education in the United States, the stories in Mi Voz, Mi Vida allow us to reflect on how young people who might be most affected by the results of these debates actually navigate through American society. The fifteen Latino college students who tell their stories in this book come from a variety of socioeconomic, regional, and family backgrounds--they are young men and women of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central American, and South American descent. Their insights are both balanced and frank, blending personal, anecdotal, political, and cultural viewpoints.

A Shot Story: From Juvie to Ph.D. is a riveting account of how being shot saved his life and helped a juvenile delinquent become an esteemed English professor...Borderline illiterate at the time of the shooting, David took his future into his own hands and found salvation in books. But his attempts to improve his life were stymied by lack of familial support. Bound on all sides by adults who had no faith in his ability to learn or to succeed, David persevered and earned his Ph.D.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he came here legally with his family. Their visas lapsed, and Dan-el's father returned home. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city's homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el's only refuge was the meager library. Dan-el was accepted on scholarship to Collegiate, the oldest private school in the country. Throughout his youth, Dan-el navigated these two worlds: the rough streets of East Harlem, where he lived with his brother and his mother and tried to make friends, and the ultra-elite halls of a Manhattan private school, where he could immerse himself in a world of books and where he soon rose to the top of his class.