Download or read book Scoot Over Skinny written by Donna Jarrell and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this surprising collection, lively, provocative writers explore the many folds of fat that make up reality. Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, often illuminating and always engaging, these stories make a new and compelling case for why more room should be made for bigger behinds.
Download or read book Talk Thai written by Ira Sukrungruang and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On one side of the door, the rich smell of sweet, spicy food and the calm of Buddhist devotion; on the other, the strangeness of a new land. When Ira Sukrungruang was born to Thai parents newly arrived in the U.S., they picked his Jewish moniker out of a book of “American” names. In this lively, entertaining, and often hilarious memoir, he relates the early life of a first-generation Thai-American and his constant, often bumbling attempts to reconcile cultural and familial expectations with the trials of growing up in 1980s America. Young Ira may have lived in Oak Lawn, Illinois, but inside the family’s bi-level home was “Thailand with American conveniences.” They ate Thai food, spoke the Thai language, and observed Thai customs. His bedtime stories were tales of Buddha and monkey-faced demons. On the first day of school his mother reminded him that he had a Siamese warrior’s eyes—despite his thick glasses—as Aunty Sue packed his Muppets lunch box with fried rice. But when his schoolmates played tag he was always It, and as he grew, he faced the constant challenge of reconciling American life with a cardinal family rule: “Remember, you are Thai.” Inside the Thai Buddhist temple of Chicago, another “simulated Thailand,” are more rules, rules different from those of the Southside streets, and we see mainstream Western religion—“god people”—through the Sukrungruang family’s eyes. Within the family circle, we meet a mother who started packing for her return to Thailand the moment she arrived; her best friend, Aunty Sue, Ira’s second mother, who lives with and cooks for the family; and a wayward father whose dreams never quite pan out. Talk Thai is a richly told account that takes us into an immigrant’s world. Here is a story imbued with Thai spices and the sensibilities of an American upbringing, a story in which Ira practices English by reciting lines from TV sitcoms and struggles with the feeling of not belonging in either of his two worlds. For readers who delight in the writings of Amy Tan, Gish Jen, and other Asian-Americans, Talk Thai provides generous portions of a still-mysterious culture while telling the story of an American boyhood with humor, playfulness, and uncompromising honesty.
Download or read book Skinny Women Are Evil written by Mo'Nique and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-04-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging America's confusing standard of beauty, a humorous look at life from the perspective of a large woman shares her own experiences as well as her thoughts on eating, sex, dating, exercise, and other topics.
Download or read book The Best Buddhist Writing 2011 written by Melvin McLeod and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking mix of the most notable and insightful Buddhism-inspired writing published in the last year. The Best Buddhist Writing 2011 includes: • Karen Miller's story of love, marriage, and dishes • Joanna Macy on the First Noble Truth and healing from the legacy of Chernobyl • Brian Haycock's taxi ride on the Dharma Road • His Holiness the Dalai Lama's manifesto on tolerance • Dzogchen Ponlop on the rebel buddha inside you • An adoption love story by Leza Lowitz • Ira Sukrungruang's humorous meditation on death • Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel on finding the courage to live in reality as it is • Susan Piver on the wisdom of a broken heart • Thich Nhat Hanh on healing the wounded child within • Matthieu Ricard's answer to the question: why meditate? • Rick Bass on the lessons of the Gulf oil spill • Pico Iyer's insider's look at the heart of the Dalai Lama • And much more
Download or read book Racing in Place written by Michael Martone and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it truth or fiction? Memoir or essay? Narrative or associative? To a writer like Michael Martone, questions like these are high praise. Martone’s studied disregard of form and his unruffled embrace of the prospect that nothing--no story, no life--is ever quite finished have yielded some of today’s most splendidly unconventional writing. Add to that an utter weakness for pop Americana and what Louise Erdrich has called a “deep affection for the ordinary,” and you have one of the few writers who could pull off something like Racing in Place. Up the steps of the Washington Monument, down the home stretch at the Indy Speedway, and across the parking lot of the Moon Winx Lodge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Martone chases, and is chased by, memories--and memories of memories. He writes about his grandfather’s job as a meter reader, those seventies-era hotels with atrium lobbies and open glass elevators, and the legendary temper of basketball coach Bob Knight. Martone, as Peter Turchi has said, looks “under stones the rest of us leave unturned.” So, what is he really up to when he dwells on the make of Malcolm X’s eyeglasses or the runner-up names for Snow White’s seven dwarfs? In “My Mother Invents a Tradition,” Martone tells how his mom, as the dean of girls at a brand-new high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, “constructed a nostalgic past out of nothing.” Sitting at their dining room table, she came up with everything from the school colors (orange and brown) to the yearbook title (Bear Tracks). Look, and then look again, Martone is saying. “You never know. I never know.”
Download or read book The Modern Jewish Girl s Guide to Guilt written by Ruth Andrew Ellenson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-07-25 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-eight of today’s top Jewish women writers tell the truth about all the things their rabbis warned them never to discuss in public in this hilarious and provocative collection. Includes original essays on: • Finding (and Divorcing) the Perfect Jewish Man • Not Calling Your Mother • Marrying a German • Failing to Supply Enough Grandchildren • Learning to RSVP No • And many other guilty pleasures... Includes pieces by: Elisa Albert, Aimee Bender, Jennifer Bleyer, Kera Bolonik, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Baz Dreisinger, Pearl Gluck, Rebecca Goldstein, Lori Gottlieb, Lauren Grodstein, Dara Horn, Molly Jong-Fast, Rachel Kadish, Jenna Kalinsky, Cynthia Kaplan, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Amy Klein, Daphne Merkin, Tova Mirvis, Gina Nahai, Katie Rophie, Francesca Segré, Wendy Shanker, Laurie Gwen Shapiro, Susan Shapiro, Ayelet Waldman, Rebecca Walker, Sheryl Zohn
Download or read book The Time Of My Life written by Rob Spillman and published by Broadway Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays, reminiscences, and reflections by such authors as Sam Lipsyte, Cintra Wilson, and Steve Almond captures a full range of experiences surrounding prom night.
Download or read book Asian American Literature written by Keith Lawrence and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-08-25 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asian American Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students is an invaluable resource for students curious to know more about Asian North American writers, texts, and the issues and drives that motivate their writing. This volume collects, in one place, a breadth of information about Asian American literary and cultural history as well as the authors and texts that best define it. A dozen contextual essays introduce fundamental elements or subcategories of Asian American literature, expanding on social and literary concerns or tensions that are familiar and relevant. Essays include the origins and development of the term "Asian American"; overviews of Asian American and Asian Canadian social and literary histories; essays on Asian American identity, gender issues, and sexuality; and discussions of Asian American rhetoric and children's literature. More than 120 alphabetical entries round out the volume and cover important Asian North American authors. Historical information is presented in clear and engaging ways, and author entries emphasize biographical or textual details that are significant to contemporary young adults. Special attention has been given to pioneering authors from the late 19th century through the early 1970s and to influential or well-known contemporary authors, especially those likely to be studied in high school or university classrooms.
Download or read book Now Write Nonfiction written by Sherry Ellis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-12-24 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential handbook for nonfiction writers, featuring the trusted personal writing exercises of today's masters of creative non-fiction, including Gay Talese, Reza Aslan, John Matteson, Tilar Mazzeo, and many more! Beginners and seasoned writers alike will relish the opportunity to use the top-notch writing exercises collected in Now Write! Nonfiction culled from the personal stashes of bestselling and critically-acclaimed nonfiction authors like legendary essayist Gay Talese (Thy Neighbor's Wife), New York Times-bestselling authors Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam), and Tilar Mazzeo (The Widow Clicquot), 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner John Matteson (Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father), creative nonfiction icon Lee Gutkind (Creative Nonfiction magazine), and many other top memoirists, journalists, and teachers of creative nonfiction, these exercises offer fresh ideas for every facet of creative nonfiction writing, from pushing through writers block to organizing a story, capturing character to fine-tuning dialogue, injecting new life into a finished piece to starting a new work from scratch. Now Write! Nonfiction will take you out into the field with creative nonfiction's master practitioners: *Peek inside Gay Talese's mind, as he shares the "writer's road map" he used to organize information for his classic book Thy Neighbor's Wife and his seminal essay "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." *Learn from Reza Aslan why what you remember isn't as important as why you remember it the way you do *Explore the importance of cultural nuance in language with Ishmael Beah *Discover Lee Gutkind's simple trick, performed with a highlighter, that can help any writer identify whether their piece is truly showing action, or just telling An essential resource that will help writers of any level to hone their craft and get writing, Now WRite! Nonfiction offers over 80 quick, simple excersises trusted by top nonfiction writers to get their pen moving!
Download or read book Eavesdropping A Memoir of Blindness and Listening written by Stephen Kuusisto and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2006-09-17 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of blindness and listening rendered with a poet's delight by the author of the acclaimed Planet of the Blind. Blind people are not casual listeners. Blind since birth, Stephen Kuusisto recounts with a poet's sense of detail the surprise that comes when we are actively listening to our surroundings. There is an art to eavesdropping. Like Annie Dillard's An American Childhood or Dorothy Allison's One or Two Things I Know for Sure, Kuusisto's memoir highlights periods of childhood when a writer first becomes aware of his curiosity and imagination. As a boy he listened to Caruso records in his grandmother's attic and spent hours in the New Hampshire woods learning the calls of birds. As a grown man the writer visits cities around the world in order to discover the art of sightseeing by ear. Whether the reader is interested in disability, American poetry, music, travel, or the art of eavesdropping, he or she will find much to hear and even "see" in this unique celebration of a hearing life.
Download or read book Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography written by Sarah Brophy and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions by both artists and scholars, Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography is a unique examination of visual autobiography's involvement in the global cultural politics of health, disability, and the body.
Download or read book The Fat Female Body written by S. Murray and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-09-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the current interest in obesity and fatness, this book explores the problems and ambiguities that form the lived experience of 'fat' women in contemporary Western society. Engaging with dominant ideas about 'fatness', and analysing the assumptions that inform anti-fat attitudes in the West, The 'Fat' Female Body explores the moral panic over the 'obesity epidemic', and the intersection of medicine and morality in pathologising 'fat' bodies. It contributes to the emerging field of fat studies by offering not only alternative understandings of subjectivity, the (re)production of public knowledge(s) of 'fatness', and politics of embodiment, but also the possibility of (re)reading 'fat' bodies to foster more productive social relations.
Download or read book Good Eats written by Jennifer Cognard-Black and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of insightful and personal essays on the role of food in our lives In an age of mass factory farming, processed and pre-packaged meals, and unprecedented food waste, how does one eat ethically? Featuring a highly diverse ensemble of award-winning writers, chefs, farmers, activists, educators, and journalists, Good Eats invites readers to think about what it means to eat according to our values. These essays are not lectures about what you should eat, nor an advertisement for the latest diet. Instead, the contributors tell the stories of real people—real bellies, real bodies—including the writers themselves, who seek to understand the experiences, families, cultures, histories, and systems that have shaped their eating and their ethics. From gardening as an alternative to factory farming, to the indigenous cultures surrounding salmon and the corporate cultures surrounding chocolate, the topics featured in this collection expand our understanding of what ethical eating can be. Poets like Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil muse lyrically on the role of sustenance in their lives. Other contributors describe efforts to change how our food is sourced. In her compelling piece, farmer and food sovereignty activist Leah Penniman celebrates both ancestral seeds and wisdom when discussing her Afro-Indigenous farming and forestry practices. Across the country in the high desert, Michael P. Branch details his frustrating-yet-humorous attempts to grow a garden with his young daughters. Professional chef Thérèse Nelson shows how hot sauce represents joy, expression, and magic for many Black people. Each contributor tugs at the imagination with insightful discussions of the role food plays in our lives. Good Eats will inspire you to find more mindfulness and joy in your diet. These essays turn mundane meals into remarkable symbols of how we live, encouraging each of us to find food that is both sustaining and sustainable. Contributors include Ross Gay, DeLyssa Begay, Lynn Z. Bloom, Michael P. Branch, Nikky Finney, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Barbara J. King, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Leah Penniman, Adrienne Su, Ira Sukrungruang, Tina Vasquez, Nicole Walker, Thérèse Nelson, Lisa Knopp, Jane Brox, Maureen Stanton, Taté Walker, and many others.
Download or read book Fat written by Sander L. Gilman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern world is faced with a terrifying new ‘disease’, that of ‘obesity’. As people get fatter, we have come to see excess weight as unhealthy, morally repugnant and socially damaging. Fat it seems has long been a national problem and each age, culture and tradition have all defined a point beyond which excess weight is unacceptable, ugly or corrupting. This fascinating new book by Sander Gilman looks at the interweaving of fact and fiction about obesity, tracing public concern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. He looks critically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as childhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the subject and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a cultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the cultural meanings that have been attached to obesity over time and to explore the implications of these meanings for wider society. The history of these debates is the history of fat in culture, from nineteenth-century opera to our global dieting obsession. Fat, A Cultural History of Obesity is a vivid and absorbing cultural guide to one of the most important topics in modern society.
Download or read book Two Countries written by Tina Schumann and published by Red Hen Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The IPPY Award–winning anthology of poetry, memoir, and essays—“accounts of assimilation and nostalgia, celebration and resistance” (Rick Barot, author of The Galleons). This collection contains contributions from sixty-five writers who were either born and/or raised in the United States by one or more immigrant parent. Their work describes the many contradictions, discoveries and life lessons one experiences when one is neither seen as fully American nor fully foreign. Contributors include Richard Blanco, Tina Chang, Joseph Lagaspi, Li-Young Lee, Timothy Liu, Naomi Shihab Nye, Oliver de la Paz, Ira Sukrungruang, Ocean Vuong, and many other talented writers from throughout the United States. Winner of a Bronze Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Multicultural Nonfiction “When you hold in your DNA two countries—the cultures, the languages, the delicious foods and stories—you embody richness. These writers know on the cellular level many-layered ways to live, to struggle, to love. Here are voices we need to hear, writers we need to read. This is a brilliant, timely book, an antidote to divisiveness.” —Peggy Shumaker, former Alaska State Writer Laureate “The poets and writers in Two-Countries show that one result of our ongoing national experiment is a rich deepening in our literature. We may be in perilous times as a country, but our writers have never been in more ferocious health.” —Rick Barot, author of The Galleons
Download or read book The Politics of Size written by Ragen Chastain and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-11-25 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an unprecedented opportunity for people to hear from a simultaneously ostracized, ridiculed, and ignored group: fat Americans. Find out how the members of this very diverse group of people describe their actual lived experiences, quality of life, hopes and dreams, and demands. Our society is body-size obsessed. The result? An environment where "fat people" are consistently shunned and discussed disparagingly behind their backs. Although fat people typically bear the brunt of the institutionalized oppression around being oversized, pervasive closeminded attitudes about body size in America affect everyone of all sizes—from people who are shamed for being too thin to those whose lives revolve around the fear of becoming fat. This book talks about a topic that is important to all readers, regardless of their physical size, providing an anthology of first-person accounts of what it's like to be part of the fat-acceptance movement and on the front lines of activism in the "war on obesity." The Politics of Size: Perspectives from the Fat Acceptance Movement supplies a frank discussion of the issues surrounding being fat and the associated health concerns—both physical and mental—and reframes the discussion about obesity from a medical issue to a social one. The essays serve to correct misinformation about obesity and fat people that is commonly accepted by the general public, such as the idea that "fat" and "healthy" are mutually exclusive. Subject matter covered includes fat-friendly workplace policies; fat dating experiences; and the intersections of being fat and also a person of color, a person with disabilities, a transgender person, or a member of another sub-group of society.
Download or read book Taking Up Space written by Pattie Thomas, Ph.D. and published by Pearlsong Press. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking Up Space is a sociological memoir about being fat and the physical, emotional and economic costs of trying to pass for thin in a culture that stigmatizes fat people. Making her own life a case study, medical sociologist Pattie Thomas, Ph.D., with the help of her co-author and husband Carl Wilkerson, M.B.A., outlines how stigma limit and shape the life chances of all people and are supported within culture. Through narrative text, poetry, essays, photos and drawings, Dr. Thomas shares her own process and demonstrates how a sociologically examined life can be a source for personal growth. An extensive resource section challenges both the popular reader and the academic to further exploration. Kathleen LeBesco, author of Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity, has called Taking Up Space "a road map through the minefield of the 'war on obesity.'" Foreword by Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth (published in paperback as The Diet Myth). The original trade paperback edition of Taking Up Space was published in 2005. The ebook edition was published in 2012 and contains an additional, updated preface.
