Download or read book Besaydoo written by Yalie Saweda Kamara and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Amaud Jamaul Johnson for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Yalie Saweda Kamara’s Besaydoo is an elegantly wrought love song to home—as place, as people, as body, and as language. A griot is a historian, a living repository of communal legacies with “a story pulsing in every blood cell.” In Besaydoo, Kamara serves as griot for the Freeborn in Oakland, the Sierra Leonean in California, the girl straddling womanhood, the woman re-discovering herself. “I am made from the obsession of detail,” she writes, setting scenes from her own multifaceted legacy in sharp relief: the memory of her mother’s singing, savory stacks of lumpia, a church where “everyone is broken, but trying.” A multitudinous witness. Kamara psalms from the nexus of many languages—Krio, English, French, poetry’s many dialects—to highlight mechanisms not just for survival, but for abundance. “I make myth for peace,” she writes, as well as for loss, for delight, for kinship, and most of all for a country where Black means “steadfast and opulent,” and “dangerous and infinite.” She writes for a new America, where praise is plentiful and Black lives flourish. But in Besaydoo, there is no partition between the living and the dead. There is no past nor present. There is, instead, a joyful simultaneity—a liberating togetherness sustained by song.
Download or read book A Flame Called Indiana written by Doug Paul Case and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2023-08 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Kurt Vonnegut, Indiana's most famous writer, once remarked, "Wherever you go, there is always a Hoosier doing something important there." A Flame Called Indiana features 65 writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry who have all had the pleasure of being Hoosiers at one time or another. Curated by the Indiana University Bloomington creative writing department, this diverse anthology features everything from the immigrant experience to the Indianapolis 500 to science fiction. Altogether, the work stands testament to the vibrancy and creativity of this Midwest state. An excellent gift for your favorite reader and an important resource for creative writers, A Flame Called Indiana serves as both a chronicle of where Indiana's writing is today and a beacon to those who'll take it where it's going next.
Download or read book The Abundant Community written by John McKnight and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2010-06-14 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " We need our neighbors and community to stay healthy, produce jobs, raise our children, and care for those on the margin. Institutions and professional services have reached their limit of their ability to help us. The consumer society tells us that we are insufficient and that we must purchase what we need from specialists and systems outside the community. We have become consumers and clients, not citizens and neighbors. John McKnight and Peter Block show that we have the capacity to find real and sustainable satisfaction right in our neighborhood and community. This book reports on voluntary, self-organizing structures that focus on gifts and value hospitality, the welcoming of strangers. It shows how to reweave our social fabric, especially in our neighborhoods. In this way we collectively have enough to create a future that works for all. "
Download or read book Forward written by Megan Giddings and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A print anthology of flash fiction and craft essays by writers of color.
Download or read book Nonsense written by Jamie Holmes and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating look at the surprising upside of ambiguity—and how, properly harnessed, it can inspire learning, creativity, even empathy Life today feels more overwhelming and chaotic than ever. Whether it’s a confounding work problem or a faltering relationship or an unclear medical diagnosis, we face constant uncertainty. And we’re continually bombarded with information, much of it contradictory. Managing ambiguity—in our jobs, our relationships, and daily lives—is quickly becoming an essential skill. Yet most of us don’t know where to begin. As Jamie Holmes shows in Nonsense, being confused is unpleasant, so we tend to shutter our minds as we grasp for meaning and stability, especially in stressful circumstances. We’re hard-wired to resolve contradictions quickly and extinguish anomalies. This can be useful, of course. When a tiger is chasing you, you can’t be indecisive. But as Nonsense reveals, our need for closure has its own dangers. It makes us stick to our first answer, which is not always the best, and it makes us search for meaning in the wrong places. When we latch onto fast and easy truths, we lose a vital opportunity to learn something new, solve a hard problem, or see the world from another perspective. In other words, confusion—that uncomfortable mental place—has a hidden upside. We just need to know how to use it. This lively and original book points the way. Over the last few years, new insights from social psychology and cognitive science have deepened our understanding of the role of ambiguity in our lives and Holmes brings this research together for the first time, showing how we can use uncertainty to our advantage. Filled with illuminating stories—from spy games and doomsday cults to Absolut Vodka’s ad campaign and the creation of Mad Libs—Nonsense promises to transform the way we conduct business, educate our children, and make decisions. In an increasingly unpredictable, complex world, it turns out that what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.
Download or read book The Five Stages of Grief written by Linda Pastan and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1978 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that are part of the experiencing of grief are shown to be stages that must also be passed through to come to terms with life in this poetry collection
Download or read book Shake and Tremor written by Deborah Bacharach and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deborah Bacharach's very contemporary book of poetry uses references to biblical stories in order to illuminate the relationships between men and women, their difficulties and complications. It's a bold book of loss and survival, betrayal and love, a book about work and about humanity. Abraham and Sarah are here, as well as Lot and his wife, Hagar, Potiphar, and others. Modern-day lovers are here too, along with struggles and satisfactions that are universal.
Download or read book In Accelerated Silence written by Brooke Matson and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Anguished and unblinking . . . Accomplished poetry that will move those who have sorrowed—that is, everyone.” —Library Journal “The thin knife that severed your tumor,” writes Brooke Matson in these poems, “it cleaves me still.” What to do when a world is split—terribly, wholly—by grief? When the loss of the beloved undermines the most stable foundations, the most sacred spaces, of that world? What else but to interrogate the very fundamental principles themselves, all the knowns previously relied on: light, religion, physical matter, time? Often borrowing voices and perspectives from its scientific subjects, In Accelerated Silence investigates the multidimensional nature of grief and its blurring of boundaries—between what is present and what is absent, between what is real and imagined, between the promises of science and the mysteries of human knowing, and between the pain that never ends and the world that refuses to. The grieving and the seeking go on, Matson suggests, but there comes a day when we emerge, “now strong enough / to venture out of doors, thin // and swathed in a robe,” only to find it has continued “full and flourishing and larger than before.” Sensual and devastating, In Accelerated Silence—selected by Mark Doty as winner of the Jake Adam York Prize—creates an unforgettable portrait of loss full of urgency and heartache and philosophical daring. “Blends chemistry, astrophysics, light, and time with grief, mystery, resilience, and love into some truly gorgeous poems that you don’t have to be a scientist (or a poetry nerd) to love.” —Electric Literature
Download or read book Community written by Peter Block and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of our communities are fragmented and at odds within themselves. Businesses, social services, education, and health care each live within their own worlds. The same is true of individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. What keeps this from changing is that we are trapped in an old and tired conversation about who we are. If this narrative does not shift, we will never truly create a common future and work toward it together. What Peter Block provides in this inspiring new book is an exploration of the exact way community can emerge from fragmentation. How is community built? How does the transformation occur? What fundamental shifts are involved? What can individuals and formal leaders do to create a place they want to inhabit? We know what healthy communities look like—there are many success stories out there. The challenge is how to create one in our own place. Block helps us see how we can change the existing context of community from one of deficiencies, interests, and entitlement to one of possibility, generosity, and gifts. Questions are more important than answers in this effort, which means leadership is not a matter of style or vision but is about getting the right people together in the right way: convening is a more critical skill than commanding. As he explores the nature of community and the dynamics of transformation, Block outlines six kinds of conversation that will create communal accountability and commitment and describes how we can design physical spaces and structures that will themselves foster a sense of belonging. In Community, Peter Block explores a way of thinking about our places that creates an opening for authentic communities to exist and details what each of us can do to make that happen.
Download or read book Leadbelly written by Tyehimba Jess and published by Wave Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Poetry Series winner makes compelling poetry from the tumultuous life of blues singer Leadbelly.
Download or read book How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired written by Dany LaFerrière and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant and tense, Dany Laferrière's first novel, How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, is as fresh and relevant today as when it was first published in Canada in 1985. With ribald humor and a working-class intellectualism on par with Charles Bukowski's or Henry Miller's, Laferrière's narrator wanders the streets and slums of Montreal, has sex with white women, and writes a book to save his life. With this novel, Laferrière began a series of internationally acclaimed social and political novels about the love of the world, and the world of sex, including Heading South and I Am a Japanese Writer. It launched Laferrière as one of the literary world's finest provocateurs and continues to draw strong comparisons to the writings of James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, and Jack Kerouac. The book was made into a feature film and translated into several languages — this is the first U.S. edition.
Download or read book Mark Mothersbaugh written by Adam Lerner and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2014-11-11 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Mothersbaugh is a legendary figure for fans of both street art and music culture. Cofounder of the seminal New Wave band DEVO, he was a prolific visual artist before the band's inception moving seamlessly between multiple mediums creating bold, cartoonish, strangely disturbed works of pop surrealism that playfully explore the relationship between technology and individuality. In the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date, Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia features a lifetime of his creative inventions from the beginning of his artistic career in the 1970s to his most recent work, including early postcards, screen prints, decals, and DEVO ephemera as well as later paintings, photographs (such as the celebrated Beautiful Mutants series), sculpture, and rugs. Accompanied by a major six city traveling exhibition, this richly illustrated catalog positions Mothersbaugh as a pivitol figure in the history of both contemporary art and indie culture.
Download or read book My Emily Dickinson written by Susan Howe and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-15 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Starts off as a manifesto but becomes richer and more suggestive as it develops."—The New York Sun For Wallace Stevens, "Poetry is the scholar's art." Susan Howe—taking the poet-scholar-critics Charles Olson, H.D., and William Carlos Williams (among others) as her guides—embodies that art in her 1985 My Emily Dickinson (winner of the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award). Howe shows ways in which earlier scholarship had shortened Dickinson's intellectual reach by ignoring the use to which she put her wide reading. Giving close attention to the well-known poem, "My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun," Howe tracks Dickens, Browning, Emily Brontë, Shakespeare, and Spenser, as well as local Connecticut River Valley histories, Puritan sermons, captivity narratives, and the popular culture of the day. "Dickinson's life was language and a lexicon her landscape. Forcing, abbreviating, pushing, padding, subtracting, riddling, interrogating, re-writing, she pulled text from text...."
Download or read book Out of Order written by Alexis Sears and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-31 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A debut collection featuring formally diverse poems that address topics from misogyny and mental health to race and identity. Alexis Sears's debut collection, Out of Order, is a collage of unapologetic intimacy, risk-taking vulnerability, and unwavering candor. A biracial millennial woman, Sears navigates the challenges of growing out of girlhood and into womanhood with its potential dangers, interrogating the male gaze, beauty standards, and confidence and identity. Pop culture references run through the collection, with rock icons David Bowie and Prince and poets like Kenneth Koch offering windows into desire and adaptation. In these poems, Sears works through heavy topics, such as loneliness, mental illness, chronic pain, the legacies of race and racism, and the aftermath of a father's suicide. As she writes, "I'm learning something every ravishing day / and none of it is easy." This young poet demonstrates an uncommon mastery of craft, writing in forms including the sonnet redoublé, sestina, canzone, and villanelle. With all her linguistic skills, Sears's work remains approachable, offering readers a striking blend of honesty, humor, anguish, joy, and surprise. Drawing influence from contemporary poets like Mark Jarman, Erica Dawson, and Tiana Clark, Sears cuts a path of her own. Out of Order was the 2021 winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize.
Download or read book Heading South written by Dany LaFerrière and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2010-08-24 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the sun-drenched island of Haiti in the 1970s, under the shadow of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s notorious regime, locals eke out an existence as servants, bartenders and panderers to the white elite. Fanfan, Charlie, and Legba, aware of the draw of their adolescent, black bodies, seduce rich, middle-aged white tourists looking for respite from their colourless jobs and marriages. These “relationships” mirror the power struggle inherent in all transactions in Port-au-Prince’s seedy back streets. Heading South takes us into the world of artists, rappers, Voodoo priests, hotel owners, uptight Parisian journalists and partner-swapping Haitian lovers, all desperately trying to balance happiness with survival. Made into an award-winning film starring Charlotte Rampling, this provocative novel, translated for the first time into English, explores the lines between sexual liberation and exploitation, artistic freedom and appropriation, independence and colonialism.
Download or read book The Running Trees written by Amber McMillan and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking original, deftly humorous collection of stories that considers the quest for truth: how we come to it or alternatively avoid it. A fervently comic debut, The Running Treesleads readers into a series of conversations -- through phonelines, acts in a play, and a rewound recording of a police interrogation -- to reveal characters in fumbling bouts of brutality, reflection, isolation, and love. The relationship between two siblings disintegrates after one asks the other for thepen; a professor and his former student get drinks years after a "romantic" encounter; a book club meets only to find that they have wildly different opinions about a new memoir about their town; and a long-haired feline contemplates existence and consciousness while his cohabitant licks his butthole. Whimsical, unconventional, humorous, and always pitch-perfect, The Running Treesexplores how we desperately try to communicate with each other amid the gaps in meaning we create.
Download or read book Heartbreak Tree written by Pauletta Hansel and published by Madville Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poetic exploration of the intersection of gender and place in Appalachia that does the work of that remembering, honoring the responsibility of the poet to speak the forbidden stories of her own life.
