Practicing Kwanzaa Year Round
Gwynelle Dismukes '73
Global Cultures Ink (2000)
If you're one of the millions of Kwanzaa celebrants worldwide, it's likely that you've already put away your table, candleholder and other holiday symbols until next December. Dismukes sees the potential for social change in the seven principles of the African-American holiday–if they were followed in daily lives. Based on her experience conducting Kwanzaa and African culture workshops for more than a decade, Dismukes has written a Kwanzaa primer, including cultural background, affirmations and activities that highlight the holiday's seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Dismukes maintains that if celebrants honored Kwanzaa's family and social values year round, the living principles would instill cultural self-esteem, encourage spiritual growth and strengthen communities.

If It Wasn't for the Women: Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes (sociology)
Orbis Books (2000)
In this collection of essays Gilkes, a sociology professor at Colby and an ordained minister of the Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, Mass., examines the complex interrelationships between gender, race and class that make up the experience of black women. If It Wasn't for the Women is primarily concerned with the roles of women in their churches and communities and the implications of those roles for African-American culture, as well as the tensions and stereotypes that shape societal responses. In her essays Gilkes focuses on the ways black women and their experiences shape the culture and consciousness of the black religious experience, and she reflects on some of the crises and conflicts that come along with this experience.

Getting Real: Helping Teens Find Their Future
Kenneth Gray '65
Corwin Press (2000)
As a professor of education in the Workforce Education and Development Program at Penn State, Gray takes a broad view of high school graduates and their options and is an advocate for students from the academic middle and for technical education. He argues that "virtually all barriers to higher education . . . including ability to do college-level academics" were down by the mid-1990s and that there are far more college-educated Americans than jobs that require a bachelor's degree. The first fact sets many students up for failure in college and the second precipitates disappointment afterward for others. Getting Real suggests strategies for teens and their parents to "find their futures" more deliberately, considering alternatives to the four-year bachelor's programs. Backed up with research data, the book recommends early career planning and consideration of different routes to prepare for a career in the 21st century.

Potshot
Robert B. Parker '54
G. P. Putnam's Sons (2001)
Spenser heads west to the rich man's haven of Potshot, Ariz., to shut down a local gang in the latest addition to Parker's series on the Boston-based P.I. Potshot, once a rough and tumble mining town, has been reborn as a refuge for millionaires needing to escape the pressures of their luxurious Los Angeles lifestyles. When this western idyll is threatened by a 21st-century posse of desert rats, misfits, drunks and scavengers who rob the residents blind, Spenser is brought in to restore order. Calling on his own cadre of cohorts, including Bobby Horse, Vinnie Morris and Hawk, Spenser must find a way to put the gang 's leader, a charismatic individual known only as "The Preacher," out of business.

The Wonder
F. B. White (2000)
Among The Wonder's nine instrumental songs with F. B. White are a few gems from Colby's wealth of music talent. The contributions by Director of Band Activities Eric Thomas on soprano and alto saxophones, Music Associate Mary Jo Carlsen on the viola and retired music professor Peter Ré on the Hammond Porta B organ and the Korg T3 synthesizer might be expected. Hearing Director of Safety Bruce McDougal on the flute, though, hints at how deep Colby's pool of talent really is. The songs, all composed by White, a Waterville musician, ranges from the haunting "Jewelry Box" to the bright and lively "Playful." As White writes in the liner notes thanking the musicians, "They did it because they love to play."

The CD is available through the Colby Bookstore or through www.cavernrecording.com.