Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
by Kenji Yoshino
List Price:
Our Price: $4.09
You Save: $11.86 (74%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.36 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Kenji YoshinoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-20
ISBN: 0375760210
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Book Reviews of Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
Book Review: "Covering," a term used for the coerced hiding of crucial aspects of one's self--in his case his homosexuality
Summary: 5 Stars
There have been several struggles in civil rights in the USA. Women suffrage, African American civil rights, and finally the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Bisexual cause.
Yoshino, a law professor at Yale and a gay, Asian-American man, masterfully melds autobiography and legal scholarship in this book, marking a move from more traditional pleas for civil equality to a case for individual autonomy in identity politics. Seldom has a work of such careful intellectual rigor and fairness been so deeply touching.
In questioning the phenomenon of "covering," a term used for the coerced hiding of crucial aspects of one's self--in his case his homosexuality--Yoshino thrusts the reader into a battlefield of shifting gray areas. Yet, at every step, he anticipates the reader's questions and rebuttals, answering them not only with acute reasoning, but also with disarming humility.
What emerges is an eloquent, poetic protest against the hidden prejudices embedded in American civil rights legislation--legislation that tacitly apologizes for "immutable" human difference from the white, male, straight norm, rather than defending one's "right to say what one is." Though Yoshino recognizes the law's potential to further (and hinder) liberty's cause, he admits that his "education in law has been an education in its limitations." Hence, by way of his unsparing accounts of self-realization, he reveals that the struggle against oppression lies not solely in fighting an imagined, monolithic state but as much in intimate discourse with the mother, the father, and the colleague who constitute that state. It deals with the ability to "blend" with the society who is yet to give the GLBT community the rights and respect it deserves.
As healing as it is polemical, this book has tremendous potential as a touchstone in the struggle for universal human dignity.
Political Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Political Books
Peter the Greatby Robert K. Massie
Ballantine Books; Published: 1986-01-12; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $45.31
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritanceby Barack Obama
Crown; Published: 2007-01-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Cianoby Mr. Ray Moseley
Yale University Press; Published: 2000-02-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $30.00
Price in other shops:
Theodore Roosevelt: A Biographyby Henry F. Pringle
Mariner Books; Published: 1956-02-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.20
Price in other shops:
Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalismby Paul Klebnikov
Mariner Books; Published: 2001-09-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.16
Price in other shops:
Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the Worldby Samantha Power
Penguin Books; Published: 2008-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.44
Price in other shops:
Autobiography (Penguin Classics)by John Stuart Mill
Penguin Classics; Published: 1990-04-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.88
Price in other shops:
Going Rogueby Sarah Palin
HarperAudio; Published: 2009-11-24; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $3.83
Price in other shops:
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)by Loung Ung
Harper Perennial; Published: 2006-04-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.50
Price in other shops:
Trusted Moleby Milos Stankovic
Harpercollins Pub Ltd; Published: 2001-03; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
They Say/ I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writingby Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2006-01-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $29.75
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Lifeby Erving Goffman
Anchor; Published: 1959-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.91
Price in other shops:
Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law (Queer Ideas)by Nancy D. Polikoff, Michael Bronski
Beacon Press; Published: 2009-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation (Quer Action / Queer Ideas)by Carlos A. Ball, Michael Bronski
Beacon Press; Published: 2011-05-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch MagazineFarrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2006-08-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender and Cultureby Julia T. Wood
Wadsworth Publishing; Published: 2010-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $40.00
Price in other shops:
Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New Yorkby Marge Piercy
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2006-11-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.73
Price in other shops:
The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Lifeby Michael Warner
Harvard University Press; Published: 1999-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identityby Beverly Daniel Tatum
Basic Books; Published: 2003-01-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.44
Price in other shops:
She's Not There: A Life in Two Gendersby Jennifer Finney Boylan
Broadway; Published: 2004-08-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.44
Price in other shops: