<![CDATA[Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights]]>

false <![CDATA[Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173192408m/255301.jpg 255301 4 In this remarkable and elegant work, acclaimed Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino fuses legal manifesto and poetic memoir to call for a redefinition of civil rights in our law and culture. Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life. Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates that American civil rights law has generally ignored the threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity. At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like an endless parade of groups asking for state and social solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of the covering demand provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity–a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart. Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences as a gay Asian American. He follows the Romantics in his belief that if a human life is described with enough particularity, the universal will speak through it. The result is a work that combines one of the most moving memoirs written in years with a landmark manifesto on the civil rights of the future. “This brilliantly argued and engaging book does two things at once, and it does them both astonishingly well. First, it's a finely grained memoir of young man’s struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, and second, it's a powerful argument for a whole new way of thinking about civil rights and how our society deals with difference. This book challenges us all to confront our own unacknowledged biases, and it demands that we take seriously the idea that there are many different ways to be human. Kenji Yoshino is the face and the voice of the new civil rights.” -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed “Kenji Yoshino has not only given us an important, compelling new way to understand civil rights law, a major accomplishment in itself, but with great bravery and honesty, he has forged his argument from the cauldron of his own experience. In clear, lyrical prose, Covering quite literally brings the law to life. The result is a book about our public and private selves as convincing to the spirit as it is to the mind.” -Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not A Stranger Here “Kenji Yoshino's work is often moving and always clarifying. Covering elaborates an original, arresting account of identity and authenticity in American culture.” -Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Of Philosophy at Princeton University “This stunning book introduces three faces of the remarkable Kenji Yoshino: a writer of poetic beauty; a soul of rare reflectivity and decency; and a brilliant lawyer and scholar, passionately committed to uncovering human rights. Like W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, this book fearlessly blends gripping narrative with insightful analysis to further the cause of human emancipation. And like those classics, it should explode into America's consciousness.” -Harold Hongju Koh Dean, Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights “Covering is a magnificent work - so eloquently and powerfully written I literally could not put it down. Sweeping in breadth, brilliantly argued, and filled with insight, humor, and erudition, it offers a fundamentally new perspective on civil rights and discrimination law. This extraordinary book is many things at once: an intensely moving personal memoir; a breathtaking historical and cultural synthesis of assimilation and American equality law; an explosive new paradigm for transcending the morass of identity politics; and in parts, pure poetry. No one interested in civil rights, sexuality, discrimination - or simply human flourishing - can afford to miss it.” -Amy Chua, author of World on Fire “In this stunning, original book, Kenji Yoshino demonstrates that the struggle for gay rights is not only a struggle to liberate gays---it is a struggle to free all of us, straight and gay, male and female, white and black, from the pressures and temptations to cover vital aspects of ourselves and deprive ourselves and others of our full humanity. Yoshino is both poet and lawyer, and by joining an exquisitely observed personal memoir with a historical analysis of civil rights, he shows why gay rights is so controversial at present, why “covering” is the issue of contention, and why the “covering demand,” universal in application, is the civil rights issue of our time. This is a beautifully written, brilliant and hopeful book, offering a new understanding of what is at stake in our fight for human rights.” -Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice From the Hardcover edition. 2573958 2006 Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights total:208|5:77|4:81|3:39|2:10|1:1| 208 847 369 45 4 2 false false Sun Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 12 12:45:39 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 23 22:15:17 -0700 2009 Stigma Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Even if someon...more...]]> 2 1 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Nov 09 13:18:50 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 28 12:49:57 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Feb 22 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Apr 03 14:42:18 -0700 2008 Thu Apr 03 14:45:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Feb 18 17:23:05 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 17:23:05 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 21 07:45:15 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 24 08:25:17 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Sep 18 13:29:15 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 30 05:21:36 -0800 2009
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"The aspiration of civil rights has always been to permit people to pursue their hum...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun Apr 15 09:53:35 -0700 2007 Sun Apr 15 09:53:47 -0700 2007 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:45:23 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:45:23 -0800 2009 Kenji Yoshino, as a professor of law and deputy dean at Yale Law School, fills critics with faith in his scholarship and intellectual rigor. It is his personal story, however, that reaches out from the legal decisions to grab reviewers' attention and provides the soul of his polemic. Though some cri...

more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 09 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun Jun 01 21:24:04 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 01 21:24:23 -0700 2008 I finished this sucker quite awhile ago, and so I don't have much to say. It's extremely well-written; the author is versed in both literature and the law, and the evidence for his argument comes from both realms of knowledge, and I love that about the book. His point, too, is quite interestin...more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat May 31 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat May 31 11:15:51 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 29 16:44:21 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 08 05:26:59 -0800 2007 Wed Apr 23 11:57:24 -0700 2008
Rarely have I read a contemporary author with such mastery of the English language, discerning intellect, and heartfelt spirit of advocacy. ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Aug 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 05 15:04:25 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 13 07:02:18 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Feb 22 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 22 19:31:26 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 22 19:35:20 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jun 03 20:02:59 -0700 2007 Mon Mar 17 08:35:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Oct 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 02 20:25:14 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 02 20:27:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Apr 22 05:59:34 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 14:21:25 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Sep 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 12 19:07:31 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 27 19:09:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Nov 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 05 15:26:44 -0800 2008 Wed Nov 05 15:29:44 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jul 11 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 02 18:26:22 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 04:57:48 -0700 2008
The author begins with his coming out of the closet story and his experiences with assimilation or what he ca...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Aug 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 12:27:30 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 12:32:20 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=255301