Zinzi Clemmons (Department of English)

In a deft mix of memoir, family history, criticism and reportage, drawing on a vast range of material from Joan Didion to James Baldwin, political analysis and history to Clemmons’s own experiences across the globe, Freedom: Essays is an incendiary exploration of race, sex, class and inheritance within American institutions.

Inés Hernández-Ávila (Department of Native American Studies) and Molly McGlennen (Ph.D. '05)

Indigenous Poetics is a collection of essays by contemporary Native American poets in the U.S. who explore how the genre helps to radically understand, contemplate and realize something deeper about ourselves, our communities and our worlds. The collection illuminates the creative process, identity, language and the making of poetry.

Maceo Montoya (Department Chicana/o/x Studies) and Javier O. Huerta

A 2025 American Book Award Winner, Imaginative Possibilities: Conversations with Twenty-First-Century Latinx Writers collects interviews with contemporary Latinx authors to explores the writers’ processes, aesthetics, creative trajectories and places within the larger body of Latinx literature. The interviews address artistic, professional and cultural issues including the building of intellectual communities, the writing and publication process, and the practical economics of making a living.

Erin R. Hamilton (Department of Sociology) with Claudia Masferrer and Nicole Denier 

Drawing on interviews with former U.S. migrants living in Mexico City, The Returned: Former U.S. Migrants' Lives in Mexico City is an illuminating account of the experience of migration to the U.S. followed by return to Mexico City. The book reveals how those two experiences of migration are indelibly intertwined, with lasting consequences for migrants and their families. 

Natalia Deeb-Sossam, Yvette G. Flores, and Angie Chabram (Department of Chicana/o/x Studies) 

Testimonios of Care is the first English-language collection of Latina/x caregiving testimonios. It gives voice to those who often are voiceless in histories of caregiving and is guided by Chicana and Latina feminist principles, which include solidarity between women of color, empathy, willingness to challenge the patriarchal medical health-care systems, questioning traditional gender roles and idealization of familia, and caring for self while caring for loved ones and community. 

Melissa M. Bender (University Writing Program)

As the movement to remove monuments to slaveholders and imperialists from public spaces gains traction, Contested Commemoration in U.S. History: Diverging Public Interpretations is a timely collection of essays co-edited by University Writing Program continuing lecturer Melissa M. Bender. The essays raise questions about how well the U.S. has come to terms with the more controversial episodes of its history through commemorative acts.

Pam Houston (Department of English)

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country is English professor Pam Houston's collection of essays about living and learning on the Colorado ranch she purchased in 1993. There she learns to care for the land and the creatures living on it and discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her.

Karma Waltonen (University Writing Program) 

Karma Waltonen, University Writing Program continuing lecturer, and Denise Du Vernay explore the many ways in which The Simpsons reflects everyday life through its exploration of gender roles, music, death, food politics, science and religion, anxiety, friendship and more.

Historian Gregory Downs explains the complicated history of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, including subsequent laws that undermined equal protections it guaranteed, as well as the court case affirming the definition of birthright citizenship we take for granted today.

The American Dream as both idea and ideal, for all its complications, has had an undeniably powerful role in shaping values and aspirations in the U.S. and far beyond its borders. We spoke with faculty and students in the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis who represent a wealth of knowledge and perspectives that help us think about American society’s past, present and continuing potential.