Directed and Written by Elegance Bratton, Pier Kids zooms  in on the lives of homeless queer and trans young adults who convene at Christoper Street Pier in New York City. By creating their own chosen families they found themselves, their community, safety and a level of acknowledgement that they have been lacking. The film follows the survival strategies, bursts of joy, and the complex family lives of Krystal, DeSean, and Jusheem as they are pushed to the margins of New York City while being simultaneously hypervisible and invisibilized. This lesson is just one part in a longer journey for students to work through and explore the relationship between: 1) power 2) identity 3) storytelling 4) naming your identity on your own terms and 5) exploring the bounds and limitations of labels and limited visions of identities.

For many, like we see in the film there are feelings of not belonging, seeking community and the desire to walk towards the identity you create for yourself...the version of “you” you feel in your body, mind, and heart. Unfortunately for some individuals, their identities continue to be ignored, marginalized, and/or not acknowledged on their terms. Speculative fiction has allowed people who have been othered to dream and imagine something more. In this lesson plan, students will have the opportunity to deviate from the heteronormative and dominant narratives of people and their trajectory by exploring a different story of what could be and what is possible.

“Make space for joy until we get freedom and independence.” Mayor Musa tells the crowd gathered in the city of Ramallah to watch the lighting of the Christmas tree.

These words standout amidst the backdrop of resistance and violence as Palestinians from Ramallah push back against the occupation of their land and the annexation of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Thus the crux of David Osit’s film highlights and decimates a variety of juxtapositions created by Western media. Palestinians are shown as multifaceted full beings within a modern city. Yet, the occupation still looms large and soon enough, though we think we’re watching a film about how difficult it is to be a civil servant, what we get is so much more. The film maker beautifully captures how hard it is for Mayor Musa to run a city while under occupation. More importantly, the viewer comes to understand that though Palestinians must and do resist, there’s also a place for joy and hope. And perhaps, it’s actually that joy and hope that keeps them going another day. This lesson will help students develop an understanding of the history of Palestine, its culture, and religions through critical analysis of the occupation from the view of the Mayor of Ramallah and its people.

In these series of lessons, students learn new vocabulary terms relating to Israeli occupation of Palestine. They’re asked to build upon prior knowledge of the occupation of Palestine utilizing a K-W-L chart. In addition, they will engage in various methods of learning like Venn Diagrams as they compare and contrast Christmas lighting events in Palestine and the U.S. as well as Palesitinian and Black Lives Matter protests. Throughout the lessons, there is robust space for student voice as they grapple with in-text and higher order thinking questions. Students will also participate in a debate around the issue of resistance and what it looks like. Learning will be tracked with the use of pre and post knowledge checks utilizing google forms. The lessons can be easily modified and adapted depending on your student needs. However, the use of multimodal activities within these lessons addresses some of the learning challenges that some students may face.  Students should walk away from this lesson with a more nuanced view of the occupation of Palestine while building analysis, comprehension, and debate skills.

“And I refuse to feel like A foreigner in my own country.” Juan Teofilo Murat

How would you feel if the nation where you were born and raised stripped you of your citizenship? Stripped you of the political identity you had known since your birth? What would you do? That is the premise of the moving observational documentary Stateless by the renown filmmaker Michèle Stephenson that follows Rosa Iris and Juan Teofilo, two black Dominicans of Haitian descent who struggle to reclaim Dominican citizenship, and a non-Haitian light-skinned Dominican xenophobic nationalist female who protests Haitian immigration to her country. This lesson provides a humanistic framework in understanding the role and impact of the 168-13 Constitutional Tribunal ruling/policy in the Dominican Republic which deprived thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent of their nationality essentially rendering them stateless.

KEYWORDS: humanization, bureaucracy, borders, foreigners, walls, racism

Mirroring the underside of a unique moment in history, LANDFALL Film asks us to remember the long-standing legacies of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. Through a series of intimate interviews and slow-moving, haunting shots that reveal major differences in everyday life, LANDFALL carefully calls into question the complexity of competing narratives regarding the recovery and future of post-disaster Puerto Rico. Directed by Cecilia Aldaronado, this film intentionally holds space for the people of Puerto Rico to uplift their community-led mutual aid efforts and amplify their voices and visions for self-determination and sovereignty.

Using the framework of disaster colonialism, this lesson will provide a historical context of LANDFALL film to allow students to critically examine the ongoing crises in Puerto Rico. It will offer an opportunity for students to consider the competing narratives of characters in the film, and how these personal narratives underlie and influence rebuilding policies and approaches to recovery. Students will also have an opportunity to reflect on their own knowledge and understanding of colonialism and coloniality, and how their own personal narratives may be informed by these concepts.

The Neutral Ground documents New Orleans’ fight over monuments and America’s troubled romance with the Lost Cause. In 2015, director CJ Hunt was filming the New Orleans City Council’s vote to remove four confederate monuments. But when that removal is halted by death threats, CJ sets out to understand why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America.

This lesson plan is designed to help students gain a more critical understanding of the controversies surrounding contemporary movements to remove confederate monuments. The goal is to foster healthy conversations and cultivate a deeper understanding of the subject matter while also promoting compassion and advocacy.

In this lesson, students will be presented with a choice board by which they may find the truth within the different narratives referenced in the film.

Mayor

Musa Hadid is the Christian mayor of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority. As he tries to keep his city running while paving sidewalks, planning holidays and building a new fountain, his job is made increasingly difficult by the Israeli occupation of his home. Mayor asks with humor and quiet outrage: how do you run a city if you don’t have a country?

View the trailer here and sign up to receive updates here.

This list of resources, compiled by Matt Pettit and the staff of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, provides a range of perspectives on the issues raised by the POV documentary Mayor.

Musa Hadid is the Christian mayor of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority. As he tries to keep his city running while paving sidewalks, planning holidays and building a new fountain, his job is made increasingly difficult by the Israeli occupation of his home. Mayor asks with humor and quiet outrage: how do you run a city if you don’t have a country?

ADULT NON-FICTION

Chomsky, Noam & Pappé, Ilan. Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the US-Israeli War Against the Palestinians. Chicago IL: Haymarket Books, 2003.
Israel's Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the
debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict. In this updated and expanded edition, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé survey the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza, including their latest incursions, and place it in historical context.

Barghouti, Murid. I Saw Ramallah. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
Barred from his homeland after 1967’s Six-Day War, poet Mourid Barghouti spent thirty years in exile—shuttling among the world’s cities, yet secure in none of them; separated from his family for years at a time; never certain whether he was a visitor, a refugee, a citizen, or a guest. As he returns home for the first time since the Israeli occupation [he] is unable to recognize the city of his youth. Sifting through memories… he discovers what it means to be deprived not only of a homeland but of “the habitual place and status of a person.” Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

Bregman, Ahron. Cursed Victory: Israel and the Occupied Territories: A History. New York: Pegasus Books, 2015.
In a move that would forever alter the map of the Middle East, Israel captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula in 1967's brief but pivotal Six Day War. Cursed Victory is the first complete history of the war's troubled aftermath—a military occupation of the Palestinian territories that is now well into its fifth decade. Drawing on unprecedented access to high-level sources, top-secret memos and never-before-published letters, the book provides a gripping chronicle of how what Israel promised would be an 'enlightened occupation' quickly turned sour, and the anguished diplomatic attempts to bring it to an end.

Davis, Angela. Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2015.
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.

Feldman, Keith P. A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
This book brings a transnational perspective to the cultural forces that have shaped sharply differing ideas of Israel’s standing with the United States—right up to the violent divisions of today. Focusing on the period from 1960 to 1985, author Keith P. Feldman reveals the centrality of Israel and Palestine in postwar U.S. imperial culture.

Halper, Jeff. Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State.Pluto Press, 2021.
This book explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer understanding of the Zionist movement's project to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab population and marginalizing its cultural presence. Jeff Halper argues that the only way out of a colonial situation is decolonization: the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a shared political community.

Hill, Marc Lamont & Plitnick, Mitchell. Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. New York, NY: 2021.
In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States. Except for Palestine deftly argues that progressives and liberals who oppose regressive policies on immigration, racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and other issues must extend these core principles to the oppression of Palestinians. In doing so, the authors take seriously the political concerns and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians, demonstrating the extent to which U.S. policy has made peace harder to attain. They also unravel the conflation of advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel.

Khatib, Sulaiman and Eilberg-Schwartz, Penina. In This Place Together: A Palestinian's Journey to Collective Liberation. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 2021.
In language that is poetic and unflinchingly honest, Eilberg-Schwartz and Khatib chronicle what led him to dedicate his life to joint nonviolence. In his journey, he encountered the deep injustice of torture, witnessed the power of hunger strikes, and studied Jewish history. Ultimately, he came to realize mutual recognition, alongside a transformation of the systems that governed their lives, was necessary for both Palestinians and Israelis to move forward

Klein Halevi, Yossi. Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. New York: HarperCollins, 2018.
Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes. And now, in a brand-new Epilogue, Palestinian readers have been given a chance to respond through their own powerful letters. Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of "the enemy."

Oren Michael B. Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
Historian Michael B. Oren reconstructs both the lightning-fast action on the battlefields and the political shocks that electrified the world. Extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—rose and toppled from power as a result of this war; borders were redrawn; daring strategies brilliantly succeeded or disastrously failed in a matter of hours. And the balance of power changed—in the Middle East and in the world. A towering work of history and an enthralling human narrative, Six Days of War is the most important book on the Middle East conflict to appear in a generation.

Regan, Bernard. The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books, 2018.
The true history of the imperial deal that transformed the Middle East and sealed the fate of Palestine. On 2 November 1917, the British government, represented by Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, declared it was in favour of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This short note would become one of the most controversial documents of modern history. Offering new insights into the imperial rivalries between Britain, Germany and the Ottomans, Regan exposes British policy in the region as part of a larger geopolitical game. He charts the debates within the British government, the Zionist movement, and the Palestinian groups struggling for selfdetermination. The after-effects of these events are still felt today.

Robinson, Daniel, et al. Israel & the Palestinian Territories. Dublin: Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd, 2018.
Israel & the Palestinian Territories is a Lonely Planet guidebook to the area, useful for the non-traveler as it immerses readers in the history, people, music, landscapes, wildlife, cuisine and politics of the region from a non-political tourist perspective. The volume is replete with color maps and vivid photography for readers to get a sense of the region beyond media depictions of unceasing conflict and strife.

Shehadeh Rajeh. Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation. London: Profile Books, 2020.
Orwell Prize-winning author of Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, Raja Shehadeh travels to Ramallah and records the changing face of the city. Walking along the streets he grew up in, he tells the stories of the people, the relationships, the houses, and the businesses that were and now are cornerstones of the city and his community. Green spaces - gardens and hills crowned with olive trees - have been replaced by tower blocks and concrete lots; the occupation and the settlements have further entrenched themselves in every aspect of movement-from the roads that can and cannot be used to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent people leaving the West Bank. The culture of the city has also shifted with Islam taking a more prominent role in people's everyday and political lives and the geography of the city.

Landfall

When Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico in 2017 the US territory was already 72 billion dollars in debt. Two years later, record numbers of Puerto Ricans took to the streets to demand the resignation of Gov Ricardo Rossell. This is a portrait of what happened in between.

Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of protests that toppled the US colony’s governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance. While the devastation of María attracted a great deal of media coverage, the world has paid far less attention to the storm that preceded it: a 72-billion-dollar debt crisis crippling Puerto Rico well before the winds and waters hit. Landfall examines the kinship of these two storms—one environmental, the other economic—juxtaposing competing utopian visions of recovery. Featuring intimate encounters with Puerto Ricans as well as the newcomers flooding the island, Landfall reflects on a question of contemporary global relevance: when the world falls apart, who do we become?

Director Michèle Stephenson brings to light the crisis of those of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, many of whom have been left stateless by the Dominic Republic’s 2013 decision to deprive/deny/take away citizenship from Haitian immigrants and their descendants.

View the trailer hereand sign up to receive updates here.

This list of fiction and nonfiction books, compiled by kYmberly Keeton the African American Community Archivist and Librarian at the Austin Public Library in Austin, Texas. These suggested readings provide a range of perspectives on issues raised by the POV documentary Stateless and allow for deeper engagement.

Director Michèle Stephenson’s new documentary follows families of those affected by the 2013 legislation stripping citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent, uncovering the complex history and present-day politics of Haiti and the Dominican Republic through the grassroots electoral campaign of a young attorney named Rosa Iris.

Adult Non-Fiction

Belton, K.A. (2017). Stateless in the Caribbean: The Paradox of Belonging in a Postnational World.
Without citizenship from any country, more than 10 million people worldwide are unable to enjoy the rights, freedoms, and protections that citizens of a state take for granted. They are stateless and formally belong nowhere. The stateless typically face insurmountable obstacles in their ability to be self-determining agents and are vulnerable to a variety of harms, including neglect and exploitation. Through an analysis of statelessness in the Caribbean, Kristy A. Belton argues for the reconceptualization of statelessness as a form of forced displacement.

Belton argues that the stateless—those who are displaced in place—suffer similarly to those who are forcibly displaced, but unlike the latter, they are born and reside within the country that denies or deprives them of citizenship. She explains how the peculiar form of displacement experienced by the stateless often occurs under nonconflict and noncrisis conditions and within democratic regimes, all of which serve to make such people's plight less visible and consequently heightens their vulnerability. Statelessness in the Caribbean addresses a number of current issues including belonging, migration and forced displacement, the treatment and inclusion of the ethnic and racial "other," the application of international human rights law and doctrine to local contexts, and the ability of individuals to be self-determining agents who create the conditions of their own making. Belton concludes that statelessness needs to be addressed as a matter of global distributive justice. Citizenship is not only a necessary good for an individual in a world carved into states but is also a human right and a status that should not be determined by states alone. In order to resolve their predicament, the stateless must have the right to choose to belong to the communities of their birth.

Bloom, T; Tonkiss; K; and Cole P. (eds.). (2017). Understanding Statelessness.
Understanding Statelessness offers a comprehensive, in-depth examination of statelessness. The volume presents the theoretical, legal and political concept of statelessness through the work of leading critical thinkers in this area. They offer a critique of the existing framework through detailed and theoretically-based scrutiny of challenging contexts of statelessness in the real world and suggest ways forward.
The volume is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Defining Statelessness’, features chapters exploring conceptual issues in the definition of statelessness. The second, ‘Living Statelessness’, uses case studies of statelessness contexts from States across global regions to explore the diversity of contemporary lived realities of statelessness and to interrogate standard theoretical presentations. ‘Theorising Statelessness’, the final part, approaches the theorisation of statelessness from a variety of theoretical perspectives, building upon the earlier sections. All the chapters come together to suggest a rethinking of how we approach statelessness. They raise questions and seek answers with a view to contributing to the development of a theoretical approach which can support more just policy development.

Candelario, Ginetta B. E. (2007). Black behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops.
Black behind the Ears is an innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States. For much of the Dominican Republic’s history, the national body has been defined as “not black,” even as black ancestry has been grudgingly acknowledged. Rejecting simplistic explanations, Ginetta E. B. Candelario suggests that it is not a desire for whiteness that guides Dominican identity discourses and displays. Instead, it is an ideal norm of what it means to be both indigenous to the Republic (indios) and “Hispanic.” Both indigeneity and Hispanicity have operated as vehicles for asserting Dominican sovereignty in the context of the historically triangulated dynamics of Spanish colonialism, Haitian unification efforts, and U.S. imperialism. Candelario shows how the legacy of that history is manifest in contemporary Dominican identity discourses and displays, whether in the national historiography, the national museum’s exhibits, or ideas about women’s beauty. Dominican beauty culture is crucial to efforts to identify as “indios” because, as an easily altered bodily feature, hair texture trumps skin color, facial features, and ancestry in defining Dominicans as indios.
Candelario draws on her participant observation in a Dominican beauty shop in Washington Heights, a New York City neighborhood with the oldest and largest Dominican community outside the Republic, and on interviews with Dominicans in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Santo Domingo. She also analyzes museum archives and displays in the Museo del Hombre Dominicano and the Smithsonian Institution as well as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European and American travel narratives.

Césaire, Aimé. (1955). Discourses on Colonialism.
This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, Discourse on Colonialism inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements and has sold more than 75,000 copies to date. Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of 'progress' and 'civilization' upon encountering the 'savage, ''uncultured,' or 'primitive.'
Here, Césaire reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and their relevance, reminding us that 'the relationship between consciousness and reality are extremely complex ... It is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society.”

Childers, Trenita Brookshire. (2021) In Someone Else’s Country: Anti-Haitian Racism and Citizenship in the Dominican Republic.
In this groundbreaking work, Trenita Childers explores the enduring system of racial profiling in the Dominican Republic, where Dominicans of Haitian descent are denied full citizenship in the only country they have ever known. As birthright citizens, they now wonder why they are treated like they are “in someone else’s country.” Childers describes how nations like the Dominican Republic create “stateless” second-class citizens through targeted documentation policies. She also carefully discusses the critical gaps between policy and practice while excavating the complex connections between racism and labor systems. Her vivid ethnography profiles dozens of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent and connects their compelling individual experiences with broader global and contemporary discussions about race, immigration, citizenship, and statelessness while highlighting examples of collective resistance.

Danticat Edwidge. (2010). Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work.
Create Dangerously is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat’s belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.

Garcia-Pena, Lorgia. (2016). The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction.
Lorgia García-Peña constructs the genealogy of Dominicanidad, using it as a category to understand how official narratives have racialized Dominican bodies as a way to sustain the nation's borders. Examining artistic and literary representations of Dominican history, she examines how marginalized Dominicans have contested official narratives to avoid exclusion

Gregory, Steven. (2014). The Devil Behind the Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic.
In The Devil behind the Mirror, Steven Gregory provides a compelling and intimate account of the impact that transnational processes associated with globalization are having on the lives and livelihoods of people in the Dominican Republic. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the adjacent towns of Boca Chica and Andrés, Gregory's study deftly demonstrates how transnational flows of capital, culture, and people are mediated by contextually specific power relations, politics, and history. He explores such topics as the informal economy, the making of a telenova, sex tourism, and racism and discrimination against Haitians, who occupy the lowest rung on the Dominican economic ladder.

Hannah-Jones, Nicole. (2021). The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.

The New York Times Magazine's award-winning "1619 Project" issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation's founding and construction--and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

James, C. L. R. (1938). Black Jacobins.
This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.

Johnson, K. R. (2009). Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Laws (Critical America, 80). NYU Press.
Seeking to re-imagine the meaning and significance of the international border, Opening the Floodgates makes a case for eliminating the border as a legal construct that impedes the movement of people into this country. Open migration policies deserve fuller analysis, as evidenced by President Barack Obama’s pledge to make immigration reform a priority. Kevin R. Johnson offers an alternative vision of how U.S. borders might be reconfigured, grounded in moral, economic, and policy arguments for open borders. Importantly, liberalizing migration through an open borders policy would recognize that the enforcement of closed borders cannot stifle the strong, perhaps irresistible, economic, social, and political pressures that fuel international migration. Controversially, Johnson suggests that open borders are entirely consistent with efforts to prevent terrorism that have dominated immigration enforcement since the events of September 11, 2001. More liberal migration, he suggests, would allow for full attention to be paid to the true dangers to public safety and national security.

Mayes, April J. (2014). The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race and Dominican National Identity.
This book examines how the Dominican Republic came to value being white over being black, especially given how many Dominicans are of African descent. Mayes looks at a seminal period of Dominican history, from the War of Restoration to the early decades of Trujillo's rule.

Paulino, Edward. (2016). Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic’s Border Campaign Against Haiti, 1930-1961.
The island of Hispaniola is split by a border that divides the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This border has been historically contested and largely porous. Dividing Hispaniola is a study of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's scheme, during the mid-twentieth century, to create and reinforce a buffer zone on this border through the establishment of state institutions and an ideological campaign against what was considered an encroaching black, inferior, and bellicose Haitian state. The success of this program relied on convincing Dominicans that regardless of their actual color, whiteness was synonymous with Dominican cultural identity. Paulino examines the campaign against Haiti as the construct of a fractured urban intellectual minority, bolstered by international politics and U.S. imperialism. This minority included a diverse set of individuals and institutions that employed anti-Haitian rhetoric for their own benefit (i.e., sugar manufacturers and border officials.) Yet, in reality, these same actors had no interest in establishing an impermeable border. Paulino further demonstrates that Dominican attitudes of admiration and solidarity toward Haitians as well as extensive intermixture around the border region were commonplace. In sum his study argues against the notion that anti-Haitianism was part of a persistent and innate Dominican ethos.

Ricourt, Milagros. (2016). Dominican Racial Imaginary: Surveying the Landscape of Race and Nation in Hispaniola.
This book begins with a simple question: why do so many Dominicans deny the African components of their DNA, culture, and history? Seeking answers, Milagros Ricourt uncovers a complex and often contradictory Dominican racial imaginary. In doing so, she also delivers an inspiring message on how multicultural communities might cooperate to disrupt the enduring power of white supremacy

Siegelberg, M. L. (2020). Statelessness: A Modern History.
The story of how a much-contested legal category—statelessness—transformed the international legal order and redefined the relationship between states and their citizens. Two world wars left millions stranded in Europe. The collapse of empires and the rise of independent states in the twentieth century produced an unprecedented number of people without national belonging and with nowhere to go. This book of innovative history weaves together ideas about law and politics, rights and citizenship, with the intimate plight of stateless persons, to explore how and why the problem of statelessness compelled a new understanding of the international order in the twentieth century and beyond.

In the years following the First World War, the legal category of statelessness generated novel visions of cosmopolitan political and legal organization and challenged efforts to limit the boundaries of national membership and international authority. Yet, as Siegelberg shows, the emergence of mass statelessness ultimately gave rise to the rights regime created after World War II, which empowered the territorial state as the fundamental source of protection and rights, against alternative political configurations.Today we live with the results: more than twelve million people are stateless and millions more belong to categories of recent invention, including refugees and asylum seekers. By uncovering the ideological origins of the international agreements that define categories of citizenship and non-citizenship, Statelessness better equips us to confront current dilemmas of political organization and authority at the global level.

The Neutral Ground documents New Orleans’ fight over monuments and America’s troubled romance with the Lost Cause. In 2015, director CJ Hunt was filming the New Orleans City Council’s vote to remove four confederate monuments. But when that removal is halted by death threats, CJ sets out to understand why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America.

This list of fiction and nonfiction material, compiled by Matt Pettit at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, provides a range of perspectives on the issues raised by the POV documentary Landfall. Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall is a cautionary tale for our times. Set against the backdrop of the protests that toppled the governor in 2019, the film offers a prismatic portrait of collective trauma and resistance as Puerto Ricans navigate dismantled social services and newcomers eager to profit.

Adult Non-Fiction

“Blackout in Puerto Rico.” Frontline, written, produced and directed by Rick Young, Public Broadcasting Service, PBS Distribution, 2018.
An investigation into FEMA's failure to provide adequate relief in Puerto Rico following Hurricane María in 2017. Looks at the role Wall Street and a debt crisis fueled by the U.S. government have played in Puerto Rico's ongoing humanitarian and economic crisis.

Bonilla, Yarimar and LeBrón, Marisol. Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2019.
An in-depth look at Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the preexisting crisis that conditioned this historic disaster.
Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere.
The concept of "aftershocks" is used in the context of earthquakes to describe the jolts felt after the initial quake, but no disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of hurricane Maria, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response.

Gil, Guillermo Rebollo. Writing Puerto Rico: Our Decolonial Moment. Palgrave Pivot, 2018.
This text, an autoethnography and practice in intersectionality, discusses new ways to engender radical political thought and activism that challenge PROMESA and austerity measures in Puerto Rico. The author analyzes art, literature, and activism to show their innovative epistemologies, which emerge even in precarious circumstances.

Klein, Naomi. The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2018.
In the rubble of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans and ultrarich “Puertopians” are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. In this vital and startling investigation, bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein uncovers how the forces of shock politics and disaster capitalism seek to undermine the nation's radical, resilient vision for a “just recovery.”

Klein, Naomi. Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador, 2008.
In this book Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

La Brega: Stories of the Puerto Rican Experience.(Podcast). A co-production from WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/la-brega/about
A seven-part podcast series that uses narrative storytelling and investigative journalism to reflect and reveal how la brega has defined so many aspects of life in Puerto Rico. Available in English and Spanish. Created by a team of Puerto Rican journalists, producers, musicians, and artists from the island and diaspora; hosted by On the Media's Alana Casanova-Burgess.

Morales, Ed. Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico. Bold Type Books, 2019.
Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew impossible to ignore in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane María, as the physical destruction compounded the infrastructure collapse and trauma inflicted by the debt crisis. The author emphasizes that the only way to stop Puerto Rico from being bled is to let Puerto Ricans take control of their own destiny, going beyond the statehood-commonwealth-independence debate to complete decolonization.

Pasch Richard J., et al. National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane María. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL152017_María.pdf. Accessed 28 May 2020.
Official United States government meteorological analysis of Hurricane María that includes charts, graphs, illustrations and images.

The Puerto Rico Syllabus. Critical Thinking about the Puerto Rican Debt Crisis. https://puertoricosyllabus.com/
The goals of this collaborative and interactive project - #PRSyllabus - are to support people in their journeys to: To understand how the contemporary Puerto Rican debt crisis has its roots in the colonial and capitalist relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States; (2.)To show how the debt crisis is affecting the lives of millions of Puerto Ricans in the territory and the diaspora; and (3.) To provide examples of Puerto Rican groups organizing against the austerity measures being imposed upon them by Washington and Wall Street.

“Rise of the Superstorms.” Nova, written, produced and directed by Liesl Clark. Public Broadcasting Service, PBS Distribution, 2018.
In summer 2017, three monster hurricanes swept in from the Atlantic one after another, shattering storm records and killing hundreds of people. Dive into the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and María. How can scientists better predict these storms, and what does the 2017 season tell us about the likelihood of similar storms in the future?

Vita Ayala, Puerto Rico Strong: A Comics Anthology Supporting Puerto Rico DisasterDiamond, 2018.
This comics anthology includes art and writing by many Puerto Rican authors. In both realistic and fantastical ways, the stories in this text explore different forms of being Puerto Rican, either on the Island or in the Diaspora. All its proceeds go towards disaster relief.

Zambrana, Rocío. Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.
With the largest municipal debt in US history and a major hurricane that destroyed much of the archipelago's infrastructure, Puerto Rico has emerged as a key site for the exploration of neoliberalism and disaster capitalism. In Colonial Debts Rocío Zambrana develops the concept of neoliberal coloniality in light of Puerto Rico's debt crisis. Drawing on decolonial thought and praxis, Zambrana shows how debt functions as an apparatus of predation that transforms how neoliberalism operates. Debt functions as a form of coloniality, intensifying race, gender, and class hierarchies in ways that strengthen the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Zambrana also examines the transformation of protest in Puerto Rico. From La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción's actions, long-standing land rescue/occupation in the territory, to the July 2019 protests that ousted former governor Ricardo “Ricky” Rosselló, protests pursue variations of decolonial praxis that subvert the positions of power that debt installs. As Zambrana demonstrates, debt reinstalls the colonial condition and adapts the racial/gender order essential to it, thereby emerging as a key site for political-economic subversion and social rearticulation.