2025/05/04 by Kayla Harris, David L. Brunsma, Alex L Thomas +3 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.1093/sf/soaf054
openalex publication_date 2025/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Moving from the Margins: Life Histories on Transforming the Study of Racism is a compelling anthology of academic memoir that brings together autobiographical essays by leading sociologists who reflect on their experiences navigating academia, racial identity, and systemic oppression. Edited by Margaret L. Andersen and Maxine Baca Zinn with contributions from fifteen (15) esteemed scholars who have devoted their careers to the sociological study of race and racism, the volume offers a deeply personal, yet analytically rigorous exploration of how race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, religion, and other positionalities in overlapping systems of oppression shape personal pathways, academic and professional trajectories, and the very ideas developed in their scholarship. This review evaluates the book’s key themes, contributions, and potential impact on contemporary discussions of race, racism, and social justice. This labor of love is structured around first-person narrative reflections from a diverse group of sociologists, each detailing their unique experiences of racialization, discrimination, and perseverance within academic and professional settings as they carved careers that critically contributed to our understanding of the social logics of race and racism while feeling and experiencing the realities of race and racism. In addition to an introduction and individual chapters from the editors, the other contributors, including Aldon Morris, Enobong Hannah Branch, Michael Omi, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Denise A. Segura, Mary Romero, C. Matthew Snipp, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Rogelio Saenz, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Elijah Anderson, and Evelyn Nakano Glenn provide firsthand narratives of how structural barriers shaped their personal and scholarly journeys.