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Book In the Belly of a Laughing God

Download or read book In the Belly of a Laughing God written by Jennifer Andrews and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Belly of a Laughing God examines how eight contemporary Native women poets in Canada and the United States employ humour and irony to address the intricacies of race, gender, and nationality.

Book The Laughing God

    Book Details:
  • Author : J Anvari
  • Publisher : J Anvari
  • Release : 2024-05-19
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 291 pages

Download or read book The Laughing God written by J Anvari and published by J Anvari. This book was released on 2024-05-19 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From post-colonial India to New York City, from the land of the Navajo in the Southwest to unforgiving orbital space, The Laughing God tells the astonishing story of Doctor Joseph RamuPandu, a half American - half Indian, brilliant psychiatrist turned holistic guru who follows an unlikely and often comical path in his frantic search for spiritual enlightenment. In the milieu of the newly born nation's conflicting religious traditions, the infant Joseph is raised concurrently as a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian, and becomes preoccupied by “Gods, demons, and spirits”. The collision of these powerful elements leads the grown-up Joseph to devote himself to a life of austerity and service. His attempts to minister to the sick provoke disaster when a simple act is interpreted as a miracle and an avid, unwanted adoration follows. Wherever he goes, people flock to the swami psychiatrist with the saintly face. Joseph seems either destined or doomed to attract followers. When he fails to find peace or enlightenment in India, he continues his quest in New York City at the invitation of an American Dean of Holistic Medicine who sees the Indian doctor as a guru for unhappy Westerners looking to the east for spiritual wisdom. Before long Joseph finds himself caring for a set of psychotic patients at M’Naghten Psychiatric Hospital: a deranged Senator in permanent campaign mode; a homicidal federal judge; a furious Rabbi who sometime believes he is God; a gypsy woman with a Jesus fixation; a senile old storyteller and Zamba, a hip schizophrenic with a bizarre world view. The lively bunch is quickly drawn to Joseph, basking in the peace of his presence. Into this circus of madmen comes Hastiin Nayachai, a Native American professor of astronomy who suffers psychotic breakdowns and predicts an apocalypse of stars in a galactic cluster. Touched by insanity, haunted by ancestral drums, and obsessed with the death of stars, he hears the voice of the Great Spirit calling him home to regain the balance and peace of mind that eludes him. In Nayachai, Joseph sees a disturbing reflection of his own quest and finds himself drawn ever deeper into his patient's enthralling delusions. It is this eccentric scientist Nayachai who by drawing Joseph along his own path of delusion and soul seeking, ultimately brings our protagonist to the place and the godly answers he seeks reside. The powerful relationship that grips the two goes beyond the boundaries of sanity and leaves the crusading psychiatrist wondering whether he’s achieved spiritual enlightenment or himself succumbed to madness.

Book Laughing Gods  Weeping Virgins

Download or read book Laughing Gods Weeping Virgins written by Ingvild Saelid Gilhus and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins analyses how laughter has been used as a symbol in myths, rituals and festivals of Western religions, and has thus been inscribed in religious discourse. The Mesopotamian Anu, the Israelite Jahweh, the Greek Dionysos, the Gnostic Christ and the late modern Jesus were all laughing gods. Through their laughter, gods prove both their superiority and their proximity to humans. In this comprehensive study, Professor Gilhus examines the relationship between corporeal human laughter and spiritual divine laughter from c`ussical antiquity, to the Christian West and the modern era. She combines the study of the history of religion with social-scientific approaches, to provide an original and pertinent exploration of a universal human phenomenon, and its significance for the development of religions.

Book And Still She Laughs

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kate Merrick
  • Publisher : Thomas Nelson
  • Release : 2017-03-07
  • ISBN : 0718093097
  • Pages : 225 pages

Download or read book And Still She Laughs written by Kate Merrick and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kate Merrick examines the Bible’s gritty stories of resilient women as well as her own experience losing a child—a journey followed by more than a million on prayfordaisy.com—to reveal the reality of surprising joy and deep hope even in the midst of heartache. Is it possible live fully—even joyfully—in the middle of overwhelming pain? In the excruciating aftermath of her young daughter’s death from cancer, Kate Merrick struggled to find a way to live. Not just to survive or go through the motions, but to live fully. Faithfully. With real joy amid inevitable tears. To discover how, Kate delved into the stories in the Bible of real women who suffered deeply and emerged somehow joyful. How did Sarah, after twenty-five years of achingly empty arms, learn to laugh without bitterness? How did Bathsheba, defiled by the king who then had her husband killed, come to walk in strength and dignity, to smile without fear of the future? In her encounters with these heroines of the faith, Kate discovered how to have contentment—and even joy—whatever the circumstances. By turns heartbreaking and humorous, And Still She Laughs reveals the secret to finding hope in the midst of devastation. In the end, no matter what hardships we face, we can smile, cry, and come away full—laughing without fear and eagerly looking for what is to come. “And Still She Laughs is the terrifying, tearful, heartbreaking, heart healing and humorous, definitive true story of survival and triumph.” —Kathy Ireland, chair of Kathy Ireland Worldwide “Kate Merrick is one of those women that I always wish I had more time with—her honesty, sincerity, and messy straightforwardness are different, in the very best way. Her book, And Still She Laughs, is the same way. It’s one of those books I will keep coming back to it for truth and inspiration.” —Lindsey Nobles, COO of the IF:Gathering

Book What Laughing God

    Book Details:
  • Author : Whitelaw Saunders
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1936
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 90 pages

Download or read book What Laughing God written by Whitelaw Saunders and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book I Heard God Laughing

    Book Details:
  • Author : Hafiz
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2006-09-26
  • ISBN : 144062853X
  • Pages : 113 pages

Download or read book I Heard God Laughing written by Hafiz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-09-26 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From bestselling poet Daniel Ladinsky, a rich collection that brings the great Sufi poet Hafiz to Western readers To Persians, the poems of Hafiz are not “classical literature” from a remote past but cherished wisdom from a dear and intimate friend that continues to be quoted in daily life. With uncanny insight, Hafiz captures the many forms and stages of love. His poetry outlines the stages of the mystic's “path of love”—a journey in which love dissolves personal boundaries and limitations to join larger processes of growth and transformation. With this stunning collection, Ladinsky has succeeded brilliantly in capturing the essence of one of Islam’s greatest poetic and spiritual voices. “If you haven’t yet had the delight of dining with Daniel Ladinsky’s sweet, playful renderings of the musings of the great saints, I Heard God Laughing is a perfect appetizer. . . . This newly released edition of his first playful foray into Hafiz’s divinely inspired poetry is essential reading. . . . Ladinsky is a master who will be remembered for finally bringing Hafiz alive in the West.” —Alexandra Marks, The Christian Science Monitor

Book The Laughing Classroom

Download or read book The Laughing Classroom written by Diana Loomans and published by H J Kramer. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Loomans, creator of The Laughing Classroom programs, and Kolberg, founder of the Comedy Sportz improvisation theater company, describe how to build education on a foundation of silliness. They do not provide an index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Book Indigenous Poetics in Canada

Download or read book Indigenous Poetics in Canada written by Neal McLeod and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2014-05-28 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indigenous Poetics in Canada broadens the way in which Indigenous poetry is examined, studied, and discussed in Canada. Breaking from the parameters of traditional English literature studies, this volume embraces a wider sense of poetics, including Indigenous oralities, languages, and understandings of place. Featuring work by academics and poets, the book examines four elements of Indigenous poetics. First, it explores the poetics of memory: collective memory, the persistence of Indigenous poetic consciousness, and the relationships that enable the Indigenous storytelling process. The book then explores the poetics of performance: Indigenous poetics exist both in written form and in relation to an audience. Third, in an examination of the poetics of place and space, the book considers contemporary Indigenous poetry and classical Indigenous narratives. Finally, in a section on the poetics of medicine, contributors articulate the healing and restorative power of Indigenous poetry and narratives.

Book Truthtellers of the Times

Download or read book Truthtellers of the Times written by Janet Palmer Mullaney and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank and lively conversations with some of our finest contemporary women poets. These interviews have been culled from the pages of BELLES LETTRES REVIEW OF BOOKS BY WOMEN, a pioneering journal that for 12 years has brought to light the best of women's writing. Subjects covered are consistently engaging and as varied as the poets themselves.

Book Moonglow

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Chabon
  • Publisher : HarperCollins
  • Release : 2016-11-22
  • ISBN : 006222557X
  • Pages : 414 pages

Download or read book Moonglow written by Michael Chabon and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal • An NBCC Finalist for 2016 Award for Fiction • ALA Carnegie Medal Finalist for Excellence in Fiction • Wall Street Journal’s Best Novel of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Washington Post Best Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Slate Best Book of the Year • A Christian Science Monitor Top 15 Fiction Book of the Year • A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year • A Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year • A New York Post Best Book of the Year iBooks Novel of the Year • An Amazon Editors' Top 20 Book of the Year • #1 Indie Next Pick • #1 Amazon Spotlight Pick • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BookPage Top Fiction Pick of the Month • An Indie Next Bestseller "This book is beautiful.” — A.O. Scott, New York Times Book Review, cover review Following on the heels of his New York Times bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us. In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.

Book In the Belly of the Laughing God

Download or read book In the Belly of the Laughing God written by Jennifer Courtney Elizabeth Andrews and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the Belly of a Laughing God examines how eight contemporary Native women poets in Canada and the United States, Joy Harjo, Louise Halfe, Kimberly Blaeser, Marilyn Dumont, Diane Glancy, Jeannette Armstrong, Wendy Rose, and Marie Annharte Baker, employ humour and irony to address the intricacies of race, gender, and nationality. While recognizing that humour and irony are often employed as methods of resistance, this ... analysis also acknowledges the ways in which they can be used to assert or restore order. Using the framework of humour and irony, five themes emerge from the words of these poets: spiritual transformations; generic transformations; history, memory, and the nation; photography and representational visibility; and land and the significance of 'home.' Through the double-voice discourse of irony and the textual surprises of humour, these poets challenge hegemonic renderings of themselves and their cultures, even as they enforce their own cultural norms."--BOOK JACKET.

Book Mad Jones  Heretic

    Book Details:
  • Author : Quin Hillyer
  • Publisher : Liberty Island
  • Release : 2017-12-05
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 188 pages

Download or read book Mad Jones Heretic written by Quin Hillyer and published by Liberty Island. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Mad Jones, a high school history teacher who, in the midst of unspeakable tragedy, literally nails religious theses to church doors. He does so with no expectation that they will be taken seriously, or even widely read – but, in this age of modern electronic communications and instant celebrity, young Madison Jones very quickly develops a large following and engenders significant levels of controversy. The media, quite typically, misunderstand and misrepresent his ultimate message; religious leaders debate his theses, at times with ulterior motives; and soon politicians are jumping in to comment from whichever standpoint best fits their partisan purposes. Mad Jones, Heretic delivers sharp satire on modern religion, politics, and media, all at the same time, along with insightful representations of the vagaries of today’s celebrity culture and the lunacy of Internet comment threads. Controversies surrounding race and sexual morality enter in as well. Additionally, its setting at the end of the 20th Century, in the midst of the Y2K computer scare, provides the perfect vehicle to dissect millennialist themes as well. Underlying all of this are some very serious theological reflections, woven naturally through a plot filled with sympathetic and memorable characters. Ultimately, true character – both good and bad – reveals itself, and both faith and human decency are tested once again. Grace and redemption, though, are always possible.

Book Humor  Empathy  and Community in Twentieth Century American Poetry

Download or read book Humor Empathy and Community in Twentieth Century American Poetry written by Rachel Trousdale and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humor, Empathy, and Community in Twentieth-Century American Poetry explores how American poets of the last hundred years have used laughter to create communities of readers and writers. For poets slightly outside of the literary or social mainstream, humor encourages mutual understanding and empathic insight among artist, audience, and subject. As a result, laughter helps poets reframe and reject literary, political, and discursive hierarchies—whether to overturn those hierarchies, or to place themselves at the top. While theorists like Freud and Bergson argue that laughter patrols and maintains the boundary between in-group and out-group, this volume shows how laughter helps us cross or re-draw those boundaries. Poets who practice such constructive humor promote a more democratic approach to laughter. Humor reveals their beliefs about their audiences and their attitudes toward the Romantic notion that poets are exceptional figures. When poets use humor to promote empathy, they suggest that poetry's ethical function is tied to its structure: empathy, humor, and poetry identify shared patterns among apparently disparate objects. This book explores a broad range of serious approaches to laughter: the inclusive, community-building humor of W. H. Auden and Marianne Moore; the self-aggrandizing humor of Ezra Pound; the self-critical humor of T. S. Eliot; Sterling Brown's antihierarchical comedy; Elizabeth Bishop's attempts to balance mockery with sympathy; and the comic epistemologies of Lucille Clifton, Stephanie Burt, Cathy Park Hong, and other contemporary poets. It charts a developing poetics of laughter in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, showing how humor can be deployed to embrace, to exclude, and to transform.

Book Writing Between Cultures

Download or read book Writing Between Cultures written by Holly E. Martin and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hybrid narrative forms are used frequently by authors exploring or living in multicultural societies as a method of reflecting multicultural lives. This timely book examines this rhetorical strategy, which permits an author to bridge cultures via literary technique. Strategies covered include multilingualism, magical realism, ironic humor, the use of mythological figures from the characters' heritage cultures, and the presentation of different perspectives on landscapes and other spaces as related to ethnicity. By investigating elements of ethnic literature comparatively, this book reaches beyond the boundaries of any one ethnic group, a vital quality in today's world.

Book Teaching Comedy

Download or read book Teaching Comedy written by Bev Hogue and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2023-08-03 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Shakespeare to The Simpsons, comedy has long provided both entertainment and social commentary. It may critique cultural values, undermine authority, satirize sacred beliefs, and make room for the marginalized to approach the center. Comedy can be challenging to teach, but in the classroom it can help students connect with one another, develop critical thinking skills, and engage with important issues. The essays in this volume address a rich variety of texts spanning film, television, stand-up, cartoons, and memes as well as conventional literary works from different places and times. Contributors offer theoretical foundations and practical methods for a broad range of courses, including guidance on contextualizing the humor of historical works and on navigating the ways that comedy can both subvert and reinforce stereotypes. Finally, the volume argues for the value of comedy in difficult times, as a way to create community and meaning. This volume contains discussion of fiction, poetry, plays, and essays by Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Aphra Behn, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Frances Burney, Charles W. Chesnutt, Roddy Doyle, Maria Edgeworth, Ben Jonson, Anita Loos, Emtithal Mahmoud, Thomas Middleton, Okot p'Bitek, William Shakespeare, Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift, Alma Villanueva, Paula Vogel, Oscar Wilde, John Wilmot, and William Wycherley; TV shows and films including Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Gold Rush, Life Is Beautiful, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Office, Office Space, Rick and Morty, and South Park; works and stand-up performances by Aziz Ansari, Samantha Bee, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Tina Fey, Moms Mabley, Hasan Minhaj, Eddie Murphy, Trevor Noah, Richard Pryor, Issa Rae, and Wanda Sykes; and visual works and other media including Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, Nick Sousanis's Unflattening, Marvel's Hawkeye, The Onion, YouTube videos, advertisements, and memes.

Book Humor in Contemporary Native North American Literature

Download or read book Humor in Contemporary Native North American Literature written by Eva Gruber and published by Camden House. This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encompassing view of humor in recent Native North American literature, with particular focus on Native self-image and identity. In contrast to the popular cliché of the "stoic Indian," humor has always been important in Native North American cultures. Recent Native literature testifies to the centrality of this tradition. Yet literary criticism has so farlargely neglected these humorous aspects, instead frequently choosing to concentrate on representations of trauma and cultural disruption, at the risk of reducing Native characters and Native cultures to the position of the tragicvictim. This first comprehensive study explores the use of humor in today's Native writing, focusing on a wide variety of texts spanning all genres. It combines concepts from cultural studies and humor studies with approaches byNative thinkers and critics, analyzing the possible effects of humorous forms of representation on the self-image and identity formation of Native individuals and Native cultures. Humor emerges as an indispensable tool for engaging with existing stereotypes: Native writers subvert degrading clichés of "the Indian" from within, reimagining Nativeness in a celebration of laughing survivors, "decolonizing" the minds of both Native and non-native readers, andcontributing to a renewal of Native cultural identity. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Native Studies both literary and cultural. Due to its encompassing approach, it will also provide a point of entry for the wider readership interested in contemporary Native writing. Eva Gruber is Assistant Professor in the American Studies section of the Department of Literature at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

Book Daily Comfort for Caregivers

Download or read book Daily Comfort for Caregivers written by Barbour Publishing and published by Barbour Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caregivers, here’s the encouragement you need—for an entire year! Daily Comfort for Caregivers is a spiritual boost for those who need it most. This brand-new devotional provides practical encouragement for caregivers “in the trenches” of life. Written by those who’ve “been there,” Daily Comfort for Caregivers addresses your challenges, joys, fears, and hopes—always reminding you of the God who provides strength, encouragement, peace, and sanity. Brief, easy-to-read meditations are ideal for time-starved caregivers and feature encouraging scriptures and prayers.