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by Angel R. Ackerman (Editor)
The American people of the 2020s face a variety of challenges-- a pandemic, social unrest after the death of George Floyd, racial violence toward Asians, growing dialogue about gender, and shifts in employment among them. Our forefathers were primarily White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, but the demographics have expanded in the last 250 years. What Americans have historically called a "Melting Pot" has created a twenty-first century collection of specific communities: BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, people with neurodivergence, neighborhoods with ethnic connections, the working poor... These communities have unique identities and unique experiences.
We are not able-bodied white men with money. This anthology targets a specific geographic region of Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, and shares the voices of people within that region as they discuss what makes their experience difference from the mainstream. These pieces of art, essays, photos, and poems explore their internal and external struggles with their sexuality, their disability, their body image, their brain, their race, their birth order, their job, or their neighborhood.
Everyone has a niche. Everyone has something that doesn't fit in the traditional American dynamic. How does society treat citizens differently? How do we see each other? How are we seen? How are we judged?
