MRC FALL 2020

This photograph depicts two children playing. One child has multiple disabilities and the other child does not.

In this video, photojournalist Ben DeSoto discusses "Understanding Poverty," an exhibit featuring images of people and communities affected by poverty and homelessness.

In this excerpt from his memoir, Rodriguez provides a stirring recollection from his adolescence: the first time he experienced racism as a result of being an immigrant in America. As he says, the experience "stays with [him] like a foul odor."

This picture book explains the Muslim holiday Ramadan by answering the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when and why.

With only one wing, the little bird cannot fly to the raspberry patch with her brothers. As luck would have it, she meets a little dog, a chipmunk, and a frog who work together to get them all across the street to the raspberry patch.

Which are you more likely to notice: a person’s character or his or her clothing? Hoca has a witty response when the latter is true at a dinner he attends after a day of hard work.

You can see, hear, feel, and taste the injustice, frustration, and naiveté experienced at this ladies' get together.

In this poem, the speaker addresses his father, recalling for him the lush Puerto Rican landscape that he grew up in. Now, this green can be seen only in his father's dreams.

In this poem, the speaker explores how our culture would be lacking—in people, in music, in movements, in contributions—without contributions of African Americans.

This story introduces the Talmud, an important book in the Jewish faith that contains the ideas and teachings from hundreds of rabbis. A father reads a story from the Talmud to his daughter and they talk about its meaning.

This story speaks of the importance of giving. When hard times fall on his land, Buddha reaches out to the wealthy, asking them to help feed the poor. The rich people grumble and refuse until a young, well-to-do girl steps forward and offers to take her bowl from house-to-house to be filled for those less fortunate than herself. Supriya succeeds and many in the land fill her bowl and their own to give to the poor.

In this poem, the speaker--who is Native American--responds to a series of unspoken discriminatory questions. The reader can deduce the missing questions based on the speaker's responses.

Katherine Scholes begins this informative piece by describing the multi-facted nature of the word "peace" and what it can mean to different people at different times. Then she provides concrete ways that each of us can be a peacemaker.

Maleeka gets made fun of at school about her clothes, her grades, even the color of her skin. In this chapter, she talks about getting teased on a school trip and how even her friend Char was ashamed to be seen with her because of her clothes.

Maleeka gets made fun of at school about her clothes, her grades, even the color of her skin. In this chapter, one of her teachers, with white blotches on her face, shows how she's been able to accept the skin she's in.

The American Psychological Association (APA) published “Facing the School Dropout Dilemma: The interaction of sexual orientation with school dropout rates” on its website in 2012. The APA is widely regarded as the most prominent professional organization for psychologists in the United States.

It may seem like an empty stomach is the worst thing about being poor, but for Junior it’s not being able to save his best friend.

Toby and Clemmie love each other very much. Sometimes Clemmie has to go to the hospital though, and it can be scary. Luckily, Toby and Clemmie know how to make the best out of every situation—even ones that involve a trip to the hospital.

In this video, young people reflect on society's rules for what males and females can and cannot do.

This poem's speaker describes being bullied and feeling depressed and skipping school to avoid the harassment. Spiraling downhill emotionally, the speaker ultimately comes to accept and appreciate his/her unique identities.

This graphic from Mother Jones magazine depicts income inequality in the United States.

This cartoon challenges assumptions that all men who wear turbans are affiliated with terrorist organizations.

This story, illustrated by Don Kilpatrick, describes a group of people who immigrated from Germany to the United States in order to seek religious asylum and practice their way of life in peace, but were met by continued persecution, which only escalated when World War I broke out.

In her poem, Kelly Norman Ellis brings to life a vivid picture of the kind of women she was surrounded and brought up by during her childhood in Mississippi. The poem's speaker takes you down south and makes you feel like a guest at the kitchen table by way of her descriptions.

This excerpt focuses on the lives of African-American students during the civil rights movement. After reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in class in 1963, students in main character C.J.'s school are asked to share their dreams at a school assembly.

This poem, told by a third-person omniscient narrator, paints a picture of José, an immigrant student who carries the burden of being from the “borderlands.”

Rosie Molinary describes how she felt as a Latina teenager in the United States, caught between disparate and unrealistic beauty standards.

Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years before he was freed. This excerpt from his memoir of those years, Twelve Years A Slave, details a New Orleans slave auction.

In this essay, the author draws parallels between the "witch hunts" experienced in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts and in 1950 in the U.S. government at U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's urgings.

The distrust between the Jewish community and African-American community in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in the 1990s reached an all-time high when a runaway car struck two children.

In this essay, the author identifies vague terminology used by the United States government during World War II to describe their actions toward Japanese Americans and outlines terms that would more appropriately describe the government's actions.