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A life-changing book that uses new research to challenge old beliefs about belonging.

"Oddbird has always been on his own. And he's managed pretty well. But that's changing--now, he wishes for a family. When Oddbird's friends plan a big surprise for him, he realizes he's surrounded by those who accept and care for him. All families don't look the same, and sometimes the families we choose are where we belong" -- publisher marketing.

""So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth this provides!"-Aimee Bender. Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and...

Initially, super-snazzy Christmas tree ornament, Otto, thinks he should be placed at the top of tree to be admired, but then he realizes where he really wants to be.

Eleven-year-old Mira meets a mysterious girl who grants her three wishes, but when none bring Mira the sense of belonging she is looking for, she ventures into another world to find her true family.

"A provocative, virtuosic inquiry that reveals how the valorization of times and migrations past are intimately linked to our exclusion and demonization of migrants in the present When and how did migration become a crime? Why did "Greek ideals" become foundational to the West's idea of itself? How have our personal migration myths -and our nostalgia for a lost world of clear borders and values - shaped our troubling new realities? In 2020, Lauren...

After learning that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan, Izumi travels to Tokyo, where she discovers that Japanese imperial life--complete with designer clothes, court intrigue, paparazzi scandals, and a forbidden romance with her handsome but stoic bodyguard--is a tough fit for the outspoken and irreverent eighteen-year-old from northern California. It isn't easy being Japanese American in a small, mostly white, northern California town, being...

"An LGBTQ-inclusive story about understanding your peers, your feelings, and yourself ... a love letter to longing, belonging, and longing to belong. Birdie finds comfort in nature and books, but more than anything she longs for connection, to be understood. At school, Birdie feels like an outsider. Quiet and shy, she prefers to read by herself, rather than jump rope or swing with the other kids. That all changes when Sunny, the new girl, comes along....

"You belong, just the way you are! This sweet rhyming book shares the comforting message that we're all important and we all matter, despite our differences. With peek-through pages and a squishy, shiny rainbow"--

In this capstone work, Lamont unpacks the power of recognition--rendering others as visible and valued--by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults, and with cultural icons and change agents who intentionally practice recognition--from Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornel West to Michael Schur and Roxane Gay. She shows how new narratives are essential for everyone to feel respect and assert their dignity s of neoliberalism...