Autobiography: general Books

Book SynopsisAn autodidact explores issues of education itself through essays and personal portraits of the key minds who influenced her What does it mean to be educated? Through her evocative paintings and narrative, author Arlene Goldbard has portrayed eleven people whose work most influenced her—what she calls a camp of angels. She sees each as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.” Goldbard describes how the learning from each changed the course of her life in essays that offer generative moments of a life in art and social change. She also reveals ways a dominant society tried to put a first-generation American from a socially marginal family in her place—and failed. Readers will learn about the author’s own self education, issues of formal higher education and its discontents, and the damage done by a society that prizes profits over people. Goldbard asks readers to consider the impact of credentialism on U.S. society and what we can do to set it right.Trade ReviewOrganizer, advocate, and artist Arlene Goldbard’s innovative autobiography is a dazzling chronicle of a life taking down elitism. Goldbard chartered her own autonomous course towards becoming the influential figure that she is in the world of community-based cultural advocacy; she encourages us to do the same, both in how we live and read and learn in our lives, and even in how we engage with her book. -- L.M. Bogad * The Progressive Magazine *"A deeply personal, passionate and hopeful account of Goldbard’s educational experience." -- Addison Key * The Daily Lobo *

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Book SynopsisAn autodidact explores issues of education itself through essays and personal portraits of the key minds who influenced her What does it mean to be educated? Through her evocative paintings and narrative, author Arlene Goldbard has portrayed eleven people whose work most influenced her—what she calls a camp of angels. She sees each as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.” Goldbard describes how the learning from each changed the course of her life in essays that offer generative moments of a life in art and social change. She also reveals ways a dominant society tried to put a first-generation American from a socially marginal family in her place—and failed. Readers will learn about the author’s own self education, issues of formal higher education and its discontents, and the damage done by a society that prizes profits over people. Goldbard asks readers to consider the impact of credentialism on U.S. society and what we can do to set it right.Trade Review"Organizer, advocate, and artist Arlene Goldbard’s innovative autobiography is a dazzling chronicle of a life taking down elitism. Goldbard chartered her own autonomous course towards becoming the influential figure that she is in the world of community-based cultural advocacy; she encourages us to do the same, both in how we live and read and learn in our lives, and even in how we engage with her book." -- L.M. Bogad * The Progressive Magazine *""A deeply personal, passionate and hopeful account of Goldbard’s educational experience."" -- Addison Key * The Daily Lobo *

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Book SynopsisJeremiah Gridley (1702-1767) is considered ""the greatest New England lawyer of his generation,"" yet we know little about him. Most of his renown is a product of the fame of his students, most notably John Adams. Gridley deserves more. He was an active participant in the Writs of Assistance trial and the Stamp Act controversy, and as a leader of the Boston bar, an editor, speculator, legislator, and politician, his life touched and was touched by much that was integral to eighteenth-century Massachusetts.The Last Great Colonial Lawyer presents a portrait of Gridley against the background of his times. Religious controversies enter into this narrative, as do colonial wars and the increasing strains with Great Britain, but Charles R. McKirdy also rescues from the footnotes of time subjects such as the smallpox epidemic of 1721 and the currency crisis of the 1740s. Because Gridley was above all a lawyer, the primary focus is on his cases, which illuminate in a unique and very human way attitudes regarding race, status, commerce, property, and power.

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Book SynopsisLewis M. Steel, born a Warner Brothers' grandson, inherited a life of privilege, access, and opportunity. With every option available, he chose a life of purpose, spending more than fifty years as a no-holds-barred civil rights lawyer whose victories set legal precedents still relevant today. In The Butler's Child, Steel explores the important role race played in his upbringing, anchored by his relationship with the family's African American butler, and why this attorney has devoted his life to pursuing racial justice.This insightful life story chronicles his close relationship with Robert L. Carter, his mentor and extraordinary NAACP general counsel. Steel was there during the Attica uprising, represented innocent African Americans in front-page murder cases, and played a central role in the evolution of civil rights law from the height of the movement to landmark cases in the decades that followed. The Butler's Child provides an insider's look at some of these emotion-packed, hard-fought trials and decisions from the 1960s to the present by an attorney still working to advance rights that should be available to all.

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Book SynopsisWar has a way of annihilating not just individual combatants and civilians caught in the maelstrom, but also the cultural memories of the defeated. Forgotten are what cities and provinces were like after being ravaged and occupied by new regimes. Saigon of the 1960s and early 1970s is one such place. After the Republic of Vietnam was defeated in 1975, many of the city's accomplished and notable citizens fled, were imprisoned, or, necessarily but reluctantly, adapted to entirely different social and political circumstances.Among those who departed their country of birth, few were as recognizable as the actress and singer Kim Vui, fondly referred to as "the Sophia Loren of Vietnam". From her early work with a government civic action cadre to subsequent nightclub singing engagements and film roles, perhaps no other is so well positioned to tell the story of Saigon's nightlife and burgeoning film scene as the famous actress from Purple Horizon. Kim Vui was a pioneering performer and spokesmodel, the first to appear in a bikini and first to do a nude cinema scene. From contested rural hamlets to stage and on camera, Kim Vui took considerable personal risk throughout her life while blazing a trail in South Vietnam, later helping refugees on Guam, observing violence in Iran, working for change in Africa, and making America her new home.Love Found and Lost is Kim Vui's story, told in her own words. From her challenging childhood and rise to prominence, to her torrid romance and bitter separation from an American committed to war in her country, Kim Vui candidly describes a place now lost to history and a love that spans continents and lifetimes.Trade ReviewIn the current Vietnam, decades after the war, little memory remains of what was once the Republic of South Vietnam, its history, its cultural life, its society during the war. Of particular interest is the lost world of South Vietnam's entertainment industry duringthe war: Kim Vui was a larger-than-life figure within that industry." —Andrew Lam, former commentator, NPR's All Things Considered, and author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora

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Book SynopsisDead Woman Pickney chronicles Yvonne Shorter Brown's life growing up in Jamaica between 1943 and 1965 and teaching in Canada from 1969. Told with stridency and humour, the stories include both personal experience and history.Taking up the haunting memories of childhood, along with persistent racial marginalization of Black people, both globally and in Canada, the author sets out to construct a narrative that at once explains her own origins in the former slave society of Jamaica and traces the outsider status of Africa and its peoples. The author's quest to understand the absence of her mother and her mother's people from her life is at the heart of the narrative. The author struggles through life to discover the identity of her mother in the face of silence from her father's brutal family. In this updated edition she adds a coda, 'finding mother', constructed from archives, genealogy, letters, and journals.Initially published in 2010, this second edition includes expanded text and a foreword by Sonja Boon, author of What the Oceans Remember.Table of Contents Foreword by Sonja Boon Preface to the updated edition Chapter 1 Early childhood memories Chapter 2 Louisiana Blues, circa 1950-54 Chapter 3 Life and schooling in May Pen, circa 1955-62 Chapter 4 Clarendon College, Chapelton, January 1960-July 1961 Chapter 5 Becoming a Teacher, Mico College, 1962-65 Epilogue Coda Finding Mother 1990-2020 Notes Archival References Bibliography

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Book SynopsisAutobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition critiques ways of approaching Indigenous texts that are informed by the Western academic tradition and offers instead a new way of theorizing Indigenous literature based on the Indigenous practice of life writing. Since the 1970s non-Indigenous scholars have perpetrated the notion that Indigenous people were disinclined to talk about their lives and underscored the assumption that autobiography is a European invention. Deanna Reder challenges such long held assumptions by calling attention to longstanding autobiographical practices that are engrained in Cree and Métis, or nêhiyawak, culture and examining a series of examples of Indigenous life writing. Blended with family stories and drawing on original historical research, Reder examines censored and suppressed writing by nêhiyawak intellectuals such as Maria Campbell, Edward Ahenakew, and James Brady. Grounded in nêhiyawak ontologies and epistemologies that consider life stories to be an intergenerational conduit to pass on knowledge about a shared world, this study encourages a widespread re-evaluation of past and present engagement with Indigenous storytelling forms across scholarly disciplines.Trade Review“This fierce, timely, visionary book lives up to the ‘obligations of stories’ to which Reder commits. Reder is one of the most generous, brilliant scholars in her field, whose kindness and sharp wit radiate from each page. Bringing together essential texts in nêhiyaw intellectual tradition over a span of two hundred years, Reder doesn’t forget to place her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother within this constellation of storymakers. These writers and tellers of âcimisowina, or personal stories, have motivated Reder’s own lifelong work of words and inspired practice of ‘autobiography as methodology.’” —Sophie McCall, Simon Fraser University, co-editor, Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island “By contextualizing these nuanced acts of interpretation within the rich storytelling traditions of her own Cree-Métis relations, Deanna Reder presents a mode of reading that is vitally important: reading through wâkôhtiwin. The result is a grounded, relational, and ethically engaged form of criticism that provides a new path toward understanding classic works of Cree and Métis autobiography. With its attention to critical responsibilities and to the connectedness that stories generate, this work provides an important model for all students and scholars of Indigenous literature.” —Warren Cariou, University of Manitoba, editor, mahikan ka onot: The Poetry of Duncan MercrediTable of Contents Glossary: Cree terms Introduction: She Told Us Stories Constantly: Autobiography as Theoretical Practice 1. âcimisowina: Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition 2. kiskêyihtamowin: Seekers of Knowledge, Cree Intergenerational Inquiry 3. Interrelatedness and Obligation: wâhkowtowin in Maria Campbell’s âcimisowin 4. Edward Ahenakew’s Intertwined Unpublished Life-Inspired Stories: aniskwâcimopicikêwin in Black Hawk and Old Keyam 5. Contradiction and kisteanemétowin in Edward Ahenakew’s “Old Keyam” 6. Traces of âcimisowina left behind: James Brady and Absolom Halkett Epilogue Bibliography

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Book SynopsisEvolving from a conversation between Joshua Whitehead and Angie Abdou, Indigiqueerness is part dialogue, part collage, and part memoir. Beginning with memories of his childhood poetry and prose and travelling through the library of his life, Whitehead contemplates the role of theory, Indigenous language, queerness, and fantastical worlds in all his artistic pursuits. This volume is imbued with Whitehead’s energy and celebrates Indigenous writers and creators who defy expectations and transcend genres.

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Book SynopsisWhen Phil Jourdan's mother died suddenly in 2009, she left behind a legacy of kindness and charity - but she also left unanswered some troubling questions. Was she, as she once claimed, a spy? Had she suffered more profoundly as a woman and parent than she'd let on? Jourdan's recollections of his struggles with psychosis, and his reconstructions of conversations with his enigmatic mother, form the core of this memoir. Psychoanalysis, poetry and confession all merge to tell the story of an ordinary woman whose death turned her into a symbol for extraordinary motherhood.Trade ReviewThis is a beautiful meditation, simultaneously subtle and powerfully direct, on the depth of emotion between a mother and son. Jourdans words come back to me long after Ive finished the book. Moments of this memoir leave me haunted, and in that way renew my devotion to fragile lives, which is to say all of us, all so human, and to life as wild and fleeting. (Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl) Praise for Motherhood is a brutally honest, touching, and gut-wrenching story about love, loss, family and, possibly, forgiveness. (Richard Thomas, author of Transubstantiate)

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Book SynopsisEleanor Nesbitt's introduction contextualises the life of Kailash Puri, Punjabi author and agony aunt, providing the story of the book itself and connecting the narrative to the history of the Punjabi diaspora and themes in Sikh Studies. She suggests that representation of the stereotypical South Asian woman as victim needs to give way to a nuanced recognition of agency, multiple voices and a differentiated experience. The narrative presents sixty years of Kailash's life. Her memories of childhood in West Punjab evoke rural customs and religious practices consistent with recent scholarship on 'Punjabi religion' rather than with the currently dominant Sikh discourse of a religion sharply distinguished from Hindu society. Her marriage, as a shy 15-year-old, with no knowledge of English, to a scientist, Gopal Puri, brought ever-widening horizons as husband and wife moved from India to London, and later to West Africa, before returning to the UK in 1966. This life experience, and Gopal's constant encouragement, brought confidence to write and publish numerous stories and articles. Kailash writes of the contrasting experiences of life as an Indian in the UK of the 1940s and the 1960s. She points up differences between her own outlook and the life-world of the post-war community of Sikhs from East Punjab now living in the West. In their distress and dilemmas many people consulted Kailash for assistance, and the descriptive narrative of her responses and advice and increasingly public profile provides insight into Sikhs' experience in their adopted country. In later years, as grandparents and established citizens of Liverpool, Kailash and Gopal revisited their ancestral home, now in Pakistan a reflective and moving experience. An Afterword by Eleanor contextualises the current UK Sikh scene. The book includes a glossary of Punjabi words and suggestions for further reading.Trade Review"This narrative offers a fascinating and thought-provoking glimpse into the long, diverse and well-lived life of a Sikh woman, a perspective sorely lacking given that much of Sikh history and experience has accumulated through male lenses. In her later role of an agony aunt, Kailash Puri was attuned to the deepest hurts and peak moments of members of the South Asian community." - Dr. Doris Jakobsh, University of Waterloo, Canada"Her individual biography intersects evocatively and movingly with the shifting realities of Partition, transnationalism, diaspora, race, gender, sexuality, and religion... As early as the 1950s the Sikh feminist began to address issues of marriage, sex, and relationships in magazines that no Punjabi had dared to discuss... A vital contribution to autobiography and multicultural literature." Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, Colby College, Waterville, USA"Pool of Life reflects the wisdom of a woman who naturally engaged with the people around her whatever the context: in village life and the academic world, in pre-and post-partition India, in Great Britain, Nigeria and Ghana, always with an observant eye and a sympathetic ear. It is a book from which one can learn intellectually and emotionally about culture, life and change." Hugh Johnston, Professor Emeritus in History, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada"Through Kailashs eyes the reader can understand, from a new position, changing British attitudes to immigrants, changing gender roles, women in the workplace, and other topics relevant to twentieth-century social and cultural history. Her experiences will complicate any simplistic assumptions about gender relations, womens empowerment and self-expression, and attitudes towards immigrants. This book is a valuable primary source of autobiographical narrative helpfully coupled with a guide for further reading. It should be useful for those interested in Punjabi culture, understanding Sikhism as a living tradition, the Sikh diaspora, and twentieth-century British social history." - Suzanne Newcombe, Inform and the Open University, Religions of South Asia 9.1 (2015) 104105

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Book SynopsisThirteen of Reaksa Himm's immediate family, including both his parents, were executed by the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot. The young killers marched them from the remote northern village to which they had been exiled, out into the jungle. One by one the machetes fell. Severely wounded, Reaksa was covered by the bodies of his family. His remarkable story of survival is told in 'The Tears of My Soul'. In this second book he describes how he tracked down his family's killers, one by one, embraced them, gave them a scarf of friendship and presented each with a Bible. He has also funded and had built a clinic, school and five churches in the area. This is an astonishing tale of the consequences of spiritual rebirth.Table of ContentsCONTENTSDedication 4Glossary 5A Word of Appreciation 6Foreword 8Preface 12Introduction 171. Searching for My Family’s Killers 402. Marched to a Grave 573. Living with Anger and Denial 774. The Shadow of Darkness 925. Forgiveness 1076. Reconciliation 1267. Blessings 170Contact the Author 192

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Book SynopsisIn this eloquent and thought-provoking "autohistory," John Lukacs, distinguished historian and writer, describes the history of his own convictions and beliefs. The journey takes us from the Hungary of the 1930s and the ravaged Budapest of World War II to Lukacs’s discovery of the New World, his forays into the intellectual life of New York City, and finally his settling in Philadelphia. Along the way, Lukacs examines many of the major currents of our period, including fascism, communism, democracy, anti-Semitism, and the Christian realism from which springs the book’s title. What emerges is a mind that brings to bear on the conflicts of the twentieth century the erudition of the European heritage and the independence of the American. In prose as elegant as it is supple, Confessions of an Original Sinner is at once the vivid account of one man’s voyage and an important contribution to that small library that brings into sharp focus the major intellectual developments of our time. Trade Review"... beautifully written, full of trenchant observations, and - once you break through the solemn wrappings of the introduction - exceedingly funny.... His 'confessions' give the reader an experience rather akin to gazing at a brilliant stained-glass window only to discover a small hilarious cartoons worked out in the corners. Do not neglect the footnotes. They are as entertaining as the main text." - 'New York Times Book Review "He is an often witty and always fascinating - even entertaining writer." - 'Washington Post' "....a superb guidebook to a rich intellect." - 'Wall Street Journal'

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Book SynopsisBorn to an African American father and Japanese mother, Frederick D. Kakinami Cloyd, the narrator of Dream of the Water Children, finds himself not only to be a marginalized person by virtue of his heritage, but often a cultural drifter, as well. Indeed, both his family and his society treat him as if he doesn’t entirely belong to any world. Tautly written in spare, clear poetic prose, this memoir explores the specific contours of Japanese and African American cultures, as well as the broader experience of biracial and multicultural identity. To tell his story, Cloyd incorporates photographs and Japanese writing, history, and memory to convey both rich personal experience and significant historical detail. Bringing together vivid memories with a perceptive cultural eye, Dream of the Water Children brings readers closer to a biracial experience, opening up our understanding of the cultural richness and social challenges people from diverse backgrounds face.

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Book SynopsisPaul W. Ogden has dedicated his life to educating young deaf and hard of hearing people and raising awareness of what it means to be deaf in a hearing world. He has taught and mentored a generation of teachers, and his classic volume, The Silent Garden, has served as a guide for parents and educators for over thirty years. Now he tells his personal story of challenges faced and lessons learned, revealing that the critical, guiding factors for him have always been language and successful communication. Born in a time when many deaf children had no access to language, Paul learned spoken and written language skills at a young age through the painstaking efforts of his mother. His tight-knit family, which included one deaf and two hearing older brothers, facilitated open and constant communication using a variety of methods. His father was a pastor who was involved in the civil rights movement. Despite the family's closeness, his father struggled with depression, an illness that would take the life of one of Paul's brothers. As a student at a residential deaf school where the use of American Sign Language (ASL) was suppressed, Paul continued to build on the speech and lipreading skills he had learned at home. He returned home for high school and graduated as co-valedictorian unaware of the standing ovation he received as he walked to the podium. Following a rewarding experience as an undergraduate at Antioch College, Paul went on to earn a PhD from the University of Illinois, a rare accomplishment for a deaf person at that time. During his graduate studies, he finally had the opportunity to learn ASL. As an award-winning professor of Deaf Studies at California State University, Fresno, he successfully petitioned for the university to recognize ASL as a language, and he established the Silent Garden program, which has grown into a flourishing provider of training and resources to support the Deaf community. In My Life of Language, Paul offers eloquent reflections on both the joyful and difficult periods of his life as he navigated relationships, faced discrimination, questioned his faith, and found great happiness in his marriage.

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Book SynopsisGet Your Elbow Off the Horn is a collection of interactions and observations written by Jack R. Gannon, a lifelong advocate for the Deaf community. Warm and amusing, Gannon’s stories begin with his rural childhood in the Ozarks and continue through his experiences as a student, educator, coach, husband, parent, and community leader. These vignettes reveal a down-to-earth family man who believed in making a difference one person at a time. Many of his recollections are brief sketches that reveal much about being Deaf—and about being human. From reflecting on the difficult choices parents must make for their children, to recounting awkward communication exchanges, Gannon marries good humor with a poignant advocacy for sign language rights. His stories preserve and share Deaf American life and culture as he experienced it.Trade Review"Get Your Elbow Off the Horn is full of rich, humorous, and heartfelt anecdotes with chapters easily standing strong on their own, bringing any reader deep nostalgia for the heart of the Deaf culture." -- Kristina Willicheva, Senior Lecturer, University of Tennessee Knoxville * Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education *

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Book SynopsisThe biracial coming-of-age journey of a boy from Black and Jewish families—a “brilliant, devastating book.”The In-Betweens tells the story of a biracial boy becoming a man, all the while trying to find himself, trying to come to terms with his white family, and trying to find his place in American society. A rich narrative in the tradition of Justin Torres’s We the Animals and Bryan Washington’s Memorial, Davon Loeb’s memoir is relevant to the country’s current climate and is part of the necessary rewrite of the nation’s narrative and identity. The son of a Black mother with deep family roots in Alabama and a white Jewish man from Long Island, Loeb grows up in a Black family in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey as one of the few nonwhite children in their suburban neighborhood. Despite his many and ongoing efforts to fit in, Loeb acutely feels his difference—he is singled out in class during Black History Month; his hair doesn’t conform to the latest fad; coaches and peers assume he is a talented athlete and dancer; and on the field trip to the Holocaust Museum, he is the Black Jew. But all is not struggle. In lyrical vignettes, Loeb vibrantly depicts the freedom, joys, and wonder of childhood; the awkwardness of teen years, first jobs, first passions. Loeb tells an individual story universally, and readers, regardless of subjectivity and relation, will see themselves throughout The In-Betweens.Trade ReviewUtterly captivating and resonant, The In-Betweens deserves a top spot on your bookshelf."—Chicago Review of Books"This gorgeously told 'lyrical memoir' recounts Loeb's curious, difficult, joyous journey to find a place in the world in light of his Southern Black and Long Island-Jewish heritage."—Philadelphia Inquirer"Resonant. . . .Engagingly delivered, candid reflections on heritage and identity."—Kirkus Reviews"[Loeb] dances to a slow, beautiful ballad on every page. His story will move any reader, but it's the craft of his work that truly shines."—Debutiful"Rich, evocative, and surprising."—Marissa Higgins, Daily Kos"While the memoir is masterfully told—Loeb employs a variety of craft techniques that have a powerful effect—what makes The In-Betweens so special is the thoughtfulness Loeb brings to his work."—The Rumpus"Loeb's debut memoir crackles with light, breaking open each superb chapter to uncover a memorable and gripping origin story."—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders"Sentence to sentence, The In-Betweens is awake to the awe of being in a body and the danger of negotiating a culture that wants to drive space between us, inside us. Davon Loeb is writing to stay alive under the harshest conditions, and he has given us a brilliant, devastating book."—Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World"Confession, manifesto, bildungsroman, and prayer, The In-Betweens is a meditation on bruise and healing. Loeb's struggles become snapshots of how transformation occurs even where shards have been piled, where one waits 'for something to happen, like flashes of red and blue and sirens pulsing.' A truly extraordinary new voice."—Roy G. Guzmán, author of Catrachos"Loeb's debut memoir crackles with light, breaking open each superb chapter to uncover a memorable and gripping origin story."—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders"Sentence to sentence, The In-Betweens is awake to the awe of being in a body and the danger of negotiating a culture that wants to drive space between us, inside us. Davon Loeb is writing to stay alive under the harshest conditions, and he has given us a brilliant, devastating book."—Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World"Confession, manifesto, bildungsroman, and prayer, The In-Betweens is a meditation on bruise and healing. Loeb's struggles become snapshots of how transformation occurs even where shards have been piled, where one waits 'for something to happen, like flashes of red and blue and sirens pulsing.' A truly extraordinary new voice."—Roy G. Guzmán, author of Catrachos"Rich, evocative, and surprising."—Marissa Higgins, Daily KosTable of Contents A Love Story On I-85 South My Mother’s Mother Bath Time The Reconstruction of a Slave At Church Like Gladiators Drinking a Colt 45 Throw the Football A Roll of Duct Tape Summer Thunderstorms Aunt Sammy Alabama Fire Ants Don’t Open the Door The Settlers Inn To Be a Man Patricide and Boot Shines With My Dad Fighting for the Tree Weekend Weather O. J. and the Wax Museum Steve Urkel, Kick the Ball Before Cell Phones Between Walls at a Friend’s House But I Am Not Toby Thoughts on Hair The Angels of the Paint Suicide on the Triples Shopping with Kris The Jumps Not the Worst of Boys 5-Series BMW A Back Seat and a Fire Pit Morning Noise Quitting Meant Back to Babysitting After-School Basketball Game The Best Dancer The Black Jew Something about Love Visitations with My Father For My Brother Living in a Studio Apartment The Makings of a Gym Rat In-Between Sirens A Small Lesson on Loitering On the Confederate Flag Retirement Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisGrowing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, Shirin Ramzanali Fazel was immersed in the language and culture of Italy, Somalia’s former colonizer. Yet when she moved to Italy as a young mother in the 1970s, she discovered a country where immigrants and Muslims were viewed with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion­–where, even today, she and her children must seemingly prove they are Italian. In Islam and Me, Fazel tells her story and shares the experiences of other Muslim women living in Italy, revealing the wide variety of Muslim identities and the common prejudices they encounter. Looking at Italian school textbooks, newspapers, and TV programs, she invites us to change the way Muslim immigrants, and especially women, are depicted in both news reports and scholarly research. Islam and Me is a meditation on our multireligious, multiethnic, and multilingual reality, as well as an exploration of how we might reimagine national culture and identity so that they become more diverse, inclusive, and anti-racist. Trade Review“In this thought-provoking reflection on belonging, Fazel and Brioni make a powerful argument against damaging Eurocentric representations while demonstrating the generative anti-racist capacity of collaborative knowledge.” -- Heather Merrill * author of Black Spaces: African Diaspora in Italy *"Shirin Ramzanali Fazel narrates the daily life of diasporic Islam in Europe with deep lucidity and courage. This book shows that Islam has become the religion of European citizens, not just immigrants, and that diasporic Islam is a major test for European constitutional democracy." -- Amara Lakhous * author of Divorce Islamic Style *“Deftly blending self-reflection with critical analysis, Fazel and Brioni convincingly challenge the distorted representation of Islam in Europe by offering complex, unapologetic insights into Fazel’s lived experiences as a Somali-Italian Muslim woman.” -- Maya Angela Smith * author of Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Racial Formations, and Diasporic Imaginaries *“Poetic and autobiographical, Islam and Me examines the intersection of media, memory, and language while questioning traditional models of knowledge. As a Muslim woman in one of the world’s most distinctively Catholic countries, Fazel advocates for transnational belonging, and her witness is for everyone working towards more equitable societies today.” -- Marie Orton * coeditor of Contemporary Italian Diversity in Critical and Fictional Narratives *Table of Contents Foreword Charles Burdett An Introduction to a Meticcio Text Simone Brioni Note on Translation and Alphabetization Shirin Ramzanali Fazel and Simone Brioni Dear Italy My Daily Islam Birmingham Islamophobia Contradictions A Dialogue on Memory, Perspectives, Belonging, Language, and the Cultural Market Simone Brioni and Shirin Ramzanali Fazel Coda: A Note about This Collaborative Project Acknowledgments Notes References Notes on Contributors

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Book SynopsisIt all began with a dream. A young woman saw a white tiger leap into her lap. It was both auspicious and unlucky - her son, the fortune-teller said, would grow up with no brothers, and his father's health would be endangered by his birth. That son, however, would have a distinguished career, after going through many misfortunes and dangers.The dream was prophetic. The child was his mother's only male child and his father died of illness when the boy was only five. He grew up during the wartime and period of political turmoil in China, passing through many troubles, and he has had a very distinguished career. He is Yang Xianyi, renowned scholar, translator and interpreter of Chinese and Western literature.This delightful memoir of Yang Xianyi gives a candid and entertaining account of himself as a lighthearted and mischievous young man who immersed himself in the learning of European culture, ancient and modern, when he studied at Oxford in the 1930s. But it is also the illuminating self-portrait of a deeply patriotic intellectual living in a China under the throes of change, giving rare insight into the survival of a courageous, witty and principled individual during the harsh century of Chinese liberation.

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Book Synopsis"In the springtime of the year that I was twenty-one, I found myself stuck at the border between two familiar countries, unable to enter either. I had never felt my statelessness so keenly."Japan's 1972 termination of diplomatic ties with the Republic of China left 9,200 Chinese residents stateless. Tienshi "Lara" Chen was one of them, born to Chinese parents in Yokohama's Chinatown. What does it mean to be stateless? What does it feel like?In a lively blend of life writing, auto-ethnography, and study of stateless communities around Asia, this book unpacks the idea of citizenship by showing the hidden everyday narratives and lived experiences of stateless persons who have no legal ties to any nation state. Originally published in Japanese, this adapted and updated English edition critically engages with questions of borders, mobility, belonging, and identity.We follow Chen's engaging autobiographical account of her bi-cultural upbringing and Japanese education, and how her experience of statelessness eventually led her into a career spanning academia and activism. Across different levels of analysis, the author points out the contradictions inherent in the concepts of nationality, nation-state and citizenship, in a world where individual nationality, identity and experience are increasingly complex. She concludes that the current system of regulating individuals with citizenship is unworkable in the long run. Stateless is a fascinating read on borders, states and identities.

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Book SynopsisWhen a country experiences a civil war, media reports are mainly brought to the attention of the outside world by those who can only report on the surface impressions obtained during a short visit or from the comfort of a studio thousands of miles away. My experiences, living and working at the grass roots level, during and after the crisis in Nigeria in the 1960s has a different perspective. As a young Scotswoman married to a Nigerian from the breakaway republic of Biafra we lived as refugees with our young family, forced to leave our home seven times in the 30 months of the civil war as the war raged around us. Cut off from the outside world, in a situation the British High Commissioner in Nigeria had predicted at the onset, would be over in two weeks, we lived a life full of experiences which gave me a `qualification in survival' no university could have imparted. Without electricity, gas, petrol or phones, and often without money, medicine or safe drinking water we learned to appreciate the basic necessities of life. I was 18 years old, living in Dunfermline, Scotland when the man I was to marry asked me for a dance at the Kinema Ballroom. Two years later my career plan to qualify as a nurse was over and I was married to Len Ofoegbu, with a baby daughter and we were on our way to a new and very different life. Our first home was in the capital, Lagos, and was a big culture shock to Len and I. The newly independent West African country was already experiencing political and civil unrest, leading to violence, massacres, coups, and the inability of the central government to control the situation. Hundreds of thousands of Easterners who had settled throughout the whole of the country now `went home' as they had become the targets of slaughtering mobs. The secession of the Eastern Region, calling itself Biafra, followed and a David and Goliath bitter conflict ensued. The word `kwashiorkor' and pictures of starving children and adults appeared in the Western press for the first time. I was one of around a dozen, mainly British, foreign wives of Biafrans who remained with their husband throughout the civil war. I worked voluntarily with relief agencies in feeding centres, clinics, an orphanage and, after Biafra surrendered in January 1970, in a children's hospital in return for food for my growing family. In May 1970 we moved back to live in Lagos where we went through more crises as a family. I became an early member of Nigerwives, an organisation for foreign wives and partners of Nigerians which became like an extended family as we gave mutual support and strove to resolve anomalies in Nigerian laws which put unnecessary restrictions affecting our particular circumstances. By the 1980s I accepted that my husband and I had grown so far apart that I could no longer remain with him. My legal reason to remain in Nigeria was `to accompany him' and he could withdraw his immigration responsibility for me at any time. I needed a security which he could not give me and I left him and Nigeria to begin a new life and career in Britain in 1985. I was advised when I completed the original manuscript in the 1970s not have it published as Nigeria was extremely sensitive about any account which was sympathetic to the Biafran side of the civil war. In 1986 a much shorter version of Together in Biafra, titled Blow The Fire, telling the story up to 1970 was printed by Tana Press in Nigeria. I retain the copyright. It was published under my married name Leslie Jean Ofoegbu. It has been cited in academic papers. An example is A Lingering Nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra, Francoise Ugochukwu 2011.

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Book Synopsis`ames D. Watson looks back on his extraordinary and varied career -- from its beginnings as a schoolboy in Chicago''s South Side to the day he left Harvard almost 50 years later, world-renowned as the co-discoverer of DNA -- and considers the lessons he has learnt along the way. The result is both an engagingly eccentric memoir and an insightful compendium of lessons in life for aspiring scientists. Watson''s ''manners'' range from those he learnt bird-watching with his father during the Great Depression (''Avoid fighting bigger boys and dogs'' and ''Find a young hero to emulate'') to the manners appropriate for a Nobel Prize (''Have friends close to those who rule''). He evokes his time as a graduate student in the 1940s (''Hire spunky lab helpers''); the excitement of working in DNA for the first time as well as having his first dates; his time working as a White House advisor; and at Harvard in the ''70s. Avoid Boring People is a quirky, original, wise, and infuriatingly un-put-downTrade ReviewIt's never dull. * The Herald (Glasgow) *A lively and provocative book. * Financial Times, Books of the Year *Scientists will find the book most interesting. * Irish Times *The story is frank, personal, revealing and sometimes entertaining. * Peter Lawrence, Literary Review *...a deliciously detailed account of his life...Watson remains one of the most fascinating scientists of our time, as iconic in some respects as his double helix. * Nature *Table of Contents1. Manners acquired as a child (Chicago's South Side) ; 2. Manners learned while an undergraduate ; 3. Manners picked up in graduate school ; 4. Manners followed by the Phage Group ; 5. Manners passed on to an apprentice scientist ; 6. Manners needed for important science ; 7. Manners practiced as an untenured professor ; 8. Manners deployed for academic zing ; 9. Manners noticed as a dispensable White House advisor ; 10. Manners appropriate for a Nobel Prize ; 11. Manners demanded by academic ineptitude ; 12. Manners behind for readable books ; 13. Manners required for academic civility ; 14. Manners displayed to hold two jobs ; 15. Manners felt reluctantly leaving Harvard ; Epilogue

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Book SynopsisBefore his death from leukemia at the age of 36, Allon White had become known as one of the most important literary and cultural critics of his generation. Carnival, Hysteria, and Writing represents a summation of the work which, as Stuart Hall explains in an extended introduction, transformed cultural studies in the 1980s. Allon White''s central concerns - with writing, carnival, the body, hysteria, and memory - recur with differing inflections in the pieces collected here. Wide-ranging in scope, the essays move with fluency from an analysis of the work of Julia Kristeva to a discussion of language and location in Dicken''s Bleak House, and from a Thomas Pynchon short story to the ''seriousness'' of academic language. Other pieces deal with Gilles Deleuze and Francis Bacon, and with Mikhail Bakhtin, a major influence on Allon White''s thinking. Included too is the poignant autobiographical fragment, ''Too Close to the Bone''. An Afterword by Jacqueline Rose deals with the links between theory and autobiography and between the academic and personal writings in the book. A memorial to Allon White''s life and work, Carnival, Hysteria, and Writing will be essential reading for all working within literary and cultural studies.Trade Review`Here is everything that was already so fully achieved in Allon White's writing; the thrilled, dissective passion of the analysis, the metaphorical ebullience, the cool hold of the argument. At a time when intellectual work is being systematically milled down into institutionalized drudgery, his example reminds us of the vitality and ardour owed to thought.' Times Literary Supplement`this slim collected essays volume gives a special glimpse of Britain's great hope in the cult studs league' The Modern Review`gives a special glimpse of Britain's great hope in the cult studs league' Modern Review

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book Synopsis “Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” -- The New York Times Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked.Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity.Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world.At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak

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