Carolyn Holbrook – författare

Who advises politicians about the issues that impact our daily lives, and how has their advice changed over time?In Australia Fair? authors James Walter and Carolyn Holbrook explore the world of departmental officials and political advisers who wield significant influence in shaping our society and assess how policy advice has changed since World War II. How has the relationship between our elected representatives and bureaucrats evolved? Have they delivered what the people want? What has been learned, and what forgotten?Focusing on three foundational policy domains - immigration, Indigenous affairs and housing - Australia Fair? reveals how social change, ideological differences and power dynamics have transformed Australia's political landscape and society.Provocative and important, Australia Fair? challenges us to reckon with a new era of policy innovation, to debate how we want to be governed and to choose what kind of society we want to be.

How a Black woman from Texas became one of the most well-known civil rights activists in Minnesota, detailing seven remarkable decades of fighting for fairness in voting, housing, education, and employment  Why do you continue to work on issues of justice? young Black people ask Josie Johnson today, then, perhaps in the same breath, How do you maintain hope? This book, a lifetime in the making, is Josie’s answer. A memoir about shouldering the cause of social justice during the darkest hours and brightest moments for civil rights in America-and, specifically, in Minnesota-Hope in the Struggle shines light on the difference one person can make. For Josie Johnson, this has meant making a difference as a Black woman in one of the nation’s whitest states.Josie’s story begins in a tight-knit community in Texas, where the unfairness of the segregated South, so antithetical to the values she learned at home, sharpened a sense of justice that guides her to this day. From the age of fourteen, when she went door to door with her father in Houston to campaign against the Poll Tax, to the moment in 2008 when, as a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, she cast her vote for Barack Obama for president, she has been at the forefront of the politics of civil rights. Her memoir offers a close-up picture of what that struggle has entailed, whether working as a community organizer for the Minneapolis Urban League or lobbying for fair housing and employment laws, investigating civil rights abuses or co-chairing the Minnesota delegation to the March on Washington, becoming the first African American to serve on the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents or creating the university’s Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs with a focus on minority affairs and diversity. An intimate view of civil rights history in the making, Hope in the Struggle is a uniquely inspiring life story for these current dark and divisive times, a testament to how one determined soul can make the world a better place.

The compassionate and redemptive story of a prominent Black woman in the Twin Cities literary communityCarolyn Holbrook’s life is peopled with ghosts-of the girl she was, the selves she shed and those who have caught up to her, the wounded and kind and malevolent spirits she’s encountered, and also the beloved souls she’s lost and those she never knew who beg to have their stories told. “Now don’t you go stirring things up,” one ghostly aunt counsels. Another smiles encouragingly: “Don’t hold back, child. Someone out there needs to hear what you have to say.” Once a pregnant sixteen-year-old incarcerated in the Minnesota juvenile justice system, now a celebrated writer, arts activist, and teacher who helps others unlock their creative power, Holbrook has heeded the call to tell the story of her life, and to find among its chapters-the horrific and the holy, the wild and the charmed-the lessons and necessary truths of those who have come before. In a memoir woven of moments of reckoning, she summons stories born of silence, stories held inside, untold stories stifled by pain or prejudice or ignorance. A child’s trauma recalls her own. An abusive marriage returns to haunt her family. She builds a career while raising five children as a single mother; she struggles with depression and grapples with crises immediate and historical, all while countenancing the subtle racism lurking under “Minnesota nice.” Here Holbrook poignantly traces the path from her troubled childhood to her leadership positions in the Twin Cities literary community, showing how creative writing can be a powerful tool for challenging racism and the healing ways of the storyteller’s art.

A brilliant and rich gathering of voices on the American experience of this past year and beyond, from Indigenous writers and writers of color from Minnesota  In this significant collection, Indigenous writers and writers of color bear witness to one of the most unsettling years in the history of the United States. Essays and poems vividly reflect and comment on the traumas we endured in 2020, beginning with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, deepened by the blatant murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the uprisings that immersed our city into the epicenter of passionate, worldwide demands for justice. In inspired and incisive writing these contributors speak unvarnished truths not only to the original and pernicious racism threaded through the American experience but also to the deeply personal, in essays about family, loss, food culture, economic security, and mental health. Their call and response is united here to rise and be heard. We Are Meant to Rise lifts up the astonishing variety of BIPOC writers in Minnesota. From authors with international reputations to newly emerging voices, it features people from many cultures, including Indigenous Dakota and Anishinaabe, African American, Hmong, Somali, Afghani, Lebanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Mexican, transracial adoptees, mixed race, and LGBTQ+ perspectives. Most of the contributors have participated in More Than a Single Story, a popular and insightful conversation series in Minneapolis that features Indigenous and people of color speaking on what most concerns their communities. We Are Meant to Rise meets the events of the day, the year, the centuries before, again and again, with powerful testament to the intrinsic and unique value of the human voice.Contributors: Suleiman Adan, Mary Moore Easter, Louise Erdrich, Anika Fajardo, Safy-Hallan Farah, Said Farah, Sherrie Fernandez-Williams, Pamela R. Fletcher Bush, Shannon Gibney, Kathryn Haddad, Tish Jones, Ezekiel Joubert III, Douglas Kearney, Ed Bok Lee, Ricardo Levins Morales, Arleta Little, Resmaa Menakem, Tess Montgomery, Ahmad Qais Munhazim, Melissa Olson, Alexs Pate, Bao Phi, Mona Susan Power, Samantha Sencer-Mura, Said Shaiye, Erin Sharkey, Sun Yung Shin, Michael Torres, Diane Wilson, Kao Kalia Yang, and Kevin Yang.

For 100 years, Australians have sought their reflection in the Great War. This book tells the story of what we saw.Raise a glass for an Anzac. Run for an Anzac. Camp under the stars for an Anzac. Is there anything Australians won’t do to keep the Anzac legend at the centre of our national story?Standing firm on the other side of the enthusiasts is a chorus of critics claiming that the appetite for Anzac is militarising our history and indoctrinating our children. So how are we to make sense of this struggle over how we remember the Great War?Anzac, the Unauthorised Biography cuts through the clamour and traces how, since 1915, Australia’s memory of the Great War has declined and surged, reflecting the varied and complex history of the Australian nation itself. Most importantly, it asks why so many Australians persist with the fiction that the nation was born on 25 April 1915.

The legacy of war is complex. From the late twentieth century as we moved closer to the centenary of the start of World War I, Australia was swept by an ‘Anzac revival’ and a feverish sense of commemoration. In this book, leading historians reflect on the commemorative splurge, which involved large amounts of public spending, and also re-examine what happened in the immediate aftermath of the war itself.At the end of 1918, Australia faced the enormous challenge of repatriating hundreds of thousands of soldiers and settling them back into society. Were returning soldiers as traumatised as we think? What did the war mean for Indigenous veterans and for relations between Catholics and Protestants? Did war unify or divide us? The country also faced major questions about its role in the world order that emerged after Versailles. How has the way we commemorate the war skewed our view of what really happened?The Great War reflects on the aftermath of World War I and the commemoration of its centenary. Provocative and engaging essays from a diverse group of leading historians discuss the profound ways in which World War I not only affected our political system and informed decades of national security policy but shaped – and continues to shape - our sense of who we are, for better or worse. This book reminds us that we live with the legacies of war still, in ways we may not see.

In Lessons from History, leading historians tackle the biggest challenges that face Australia and the world and show how the past provides context and knowledge that can guide us in the present.Does history repeat itself in meaningful ways, or is each problem unique? Does a knowledge of Australian history enhance our understanding of the present and prepare us for the future?Lessons from History is written with the conviction that we must see the world, and confront its many challenges, with an understanding of what has gone before. Leading historians including Yves Rees, Michelle Arrow, Mahsheed Ansari, Joan Beaumont, Claire Wright and Frank Bongiorno tackle the biggest challenges that face Australia and the world – climate change, social cohesion, migration, our relationship with China, tensions in the federation, economic crisis, trade relations — and show how the past provides context and knowledge that can guide us in the present and future.

Was the Hawke government ‘the gold standard’ for federal government in Australia? A stellar line-up of historians, social scientists, politicians and journalists sheds valuable new light on the policies, politics and personalities of the Hawke government and asks: What lessons can it offer in the art of reformist government? How do its legacies continue to shape Australian society?Troy Bramston and Andrew Podger explain how Hawke masterfully managed the work of government and administration; Michelle Grattan and Meghan Hopper analyse how the government and prime minister dealt with the media; Frank Bongiorno shows how the Labor Party won four elections on the trot; while Marija Taflaga looks at how unprepared Hawke’s opponents were for their period in the wilderness. Bruce Chapman and Liam Byrne discuss the competing legacies of the Labor–Union Accords of the 1980s; Meredith Edwards and Carolyn Holbrook demonstrate that social justice and health reform were still possible in the context of fiscal restraint; Marian Sawer shows how women’s policy mattered; while Peter Yu recalls the major disappointments of the era for First Nations Australians. Gareth Evans and Ian Macphee offer their perspectives on the Hawke government’s legacies and impact; Barrie Cassidy and Craig Emerson share their recollections of the Hawke office; and Joshua Black shows that memories of the Hawke era were not so rosy in its immediate aftermath.