Download or read book Where the Line Bleeds written by Jesmyn Ward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel from National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward, a timeless Southern fable of brotherly love and familial conflict—“a lyrical yet clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African American reality that are rarely depicted” (The Boston Globe). Where the Line Bleeds is Jesmyn Ward’s gorgeous first novel and the first of three novels set in Bois Sauvage—followed by Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing—comprising a loose trilogy about small town sourthern family life. Described as “starkly beautiful” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), “fearless” (Essence), and “emotionally honest” (The Dallas Morning News), it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in rural Bois Sauvage, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. They’ve just finished high school and need to find jobs, but after Katrina, it’s not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe’s not so lucky and starts to sell drugs. Christophe’s downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins’ parents: Cille, who left for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins. Where the Line Bleeds takes place over the course of a single, life-changing summer. It is a delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife, of the relentless grind of poverty, of the toll of addiction on a family, and of the bonds that can sustain or torment us. Bois Sauvage, based on Ward’s own hometown, is a character in its own right, as stiflingly hot and as rich with history as it is bereft of opportunity. Ward’s “lushly descriptive prose…and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked” (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.

Download or read book Salvage the Bones written by Jesmyn Ward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. He's a hard drinker, largely absent, and it isn't often he worries about the family. Esch and her three brothers are stocking up on food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; at fifteen, she has just realized that she's pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pit bull's new litter, dying one by one. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting. As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to a dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family - motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce - pulls itself up to face another day.

Download or read book Navigate Your Stars written by Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory, uplifting, and gorgeously illustrated meditation on dedication, hard work, and the power of perseverance from the beloved, New York Times bestselling, and two-time National Book Award–winning Jesmyn Ward. For Tulane University’s 2018 commencement, Jesmyn Ward delivered a stirring speech about the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. Speaking about the challenges she and her family overcame, Ward inspired everyone in the audience with her meditation on tenacity in the face of hardship. Ward’s moving words will inspire readers as they prepare for the next chapter in their lives, whether, like Ward, they are the first in their families to graduate from college or are preceded by generations, or whether they are embarking on a different kind of journey later in life. Beautifully illustrated in full color by Gina Triplett, this gorgeous and profound book will charm a generation of students—and their parents. Ward’s inimitable voice shines through as she shares her experience as a Southern black woman and addresses the themes of grit, adversity, and the importance of family bonds. Navigate Your Stars is a perfect gift for anyone in need of inspiration from the author of Salvage the Bones, Men We Reaped, and Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Download or read book Men We Reaped written by Jesmyn Ward and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '...And then we heard the rain falling, and that was the drops of blood falling; and when we came to get the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.' Harriet TubmanIn five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five men in her life, to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth--and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own. Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue high education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity.

Download or read book The Fire This Time written by Jesmyn Ward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this ... collection of essays and poems about race from ... voices of her generation and our time"--

Download or read book Bleed Into Me written by Stephen Graham Jones and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, an Indian himself, profiles the lives of many Native Americans and how people treat them just because of their race. Even in today's society the uneasy relations between Indians and white's is still fueled by mistrust, stereo-types and casual violence.

Download or read book A Father s Law written by Richard Wright and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2008 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never before published, the final work of one of America's greatest writers A Father's Law is the novel Richard Wright, acclaimed author of Black Boy and Native Son, never completed. Written during a six-week period near the end of his life, it appears in print for the first time, an important addition to this American master's body of work, submitted by his daughter and literary executor, Julia, who writes: It comes from his guts and ends at the hero's "breaking point." It explores many themes favored by my father like guilt and innocence, the difficult relationship between the generations, the difficulty of being a black policeman and father, the difficulty of being both those things and suspecting that your own son is the murderer. It intertwines astonishingly modern themes for a novel written in 1960. Prescient, raw, powerful, and fascinating, A Father's Law is the final gift from a literary giant.

Download or read book The Best American Short Stories 2021 written by Jesmyn Ward and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of the year's best stories selected by celebrated two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward In her introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2021, guest editor JesmynWard says that the best fiction offers the reader a "sense of repair."The stories in this year's collection accomplish just that, immersing the reader in powerfully imagined worlds and allowing them to bring some of that power into their own lives. From a stirring portrait of Rodney King's final days to a surreal video game set in the Middle East, with real consequences, to an indigenous boy's gripping escape from his captors, this collection renders profoundly empathetic depictions of the variety of human experience. These stories are poignant reminders of the possibilities of fiction: as you sink into world after world, become character after character, as Ward writes, you"forget yourself, and then, upon surfacing, know yourself and others anew. The Best American Short Stories 2021 includes GABRIEL BUMP - BRANDON HOBSON - DAVID MEANS- JANE PEK - TRACEY ROSE PEYTON - GEORGE SAUNDERS - BRYAN WASHINGTON - KEVIN WILSON - C PAM ZHANG and others

Download or read book Long Division written by Kiese Laymon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Fiction From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi. Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan. City’s two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance. Brilliantly “skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism” (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike “smart, funny, and sharp” (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history “that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves” (The Wall Street Journal).

Download or read book Memphis written by Tara M. Stringfellow and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2023-03-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY • A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy. “A rhapsodic hymn to Black women.”—The New York Times Book Review “I fell in love with this family, from Joan’s fierce heart to her grandmother Hazel’s determined resilience. Tara Stringfellow will be an author to watch for years to come.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR, BuzzFeed, Glamour, PopSugar Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected. As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush. Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.

Download or read book Why We Write About Ourselves written by Meredith Maran and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the voices of twenty landmark memoirists—including New York Times bestselling authors Cheryl Strayed, Sue Monk Kidd, and Pat Conroy—a definitive text on the craft of autobiographical writing, indispensable for amateur and professional writers alike. For readers of Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir and Judith Barrington’s Writing the Memoir, this follow-up to editor Meredith Maran’s acclaimed writers’ handbook, Why We Write, offers inspiration, encouragement, and pithy, practical advice for bloggers, journal-keepers, aspiring essayists, and memoirists. Curated and edited by Maran, herself an acclaimed author and book critic, these memoirists share the lessons they’ve learned through years of honing their craft. They reveal what drives them to tell their personal stories and examine the nuts and bolts of how they do it. Speaking frankly about issues ranging from turning oneself into an authentic, compelling character to exposing hard truths, these outstanding authors disclose what keeps them going, what gets in their way, and what they love most—and least—about writing about themselves. “It's possible that Why We Write About Ourselves is the first compilation of memoirists at the top of their game seriously and thoughtfully considering the genre.” – LA Times

Download or read book Deluge written by Leila Chatti and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “To write a series of poems out of extreme illness is a bracing accomplishment indeed. In Deluge... Leila Chatti, born of a Catholic mother and a Muslim father, brilliantly explores the trauma." —Naomi Shihab Nye, The New York Times In her early twenties, Leila Chatti started bleeding and did not stop. Physicians referred to this bleeding as flooding. In the Qur’an, as in the Bible, the Flood was sent as punishment. The idea of disease as punishment drives this collection’s themes of shame, illness, grief, and gender, transmuting religious narratives through the lens of a young Arab-American woman suffering a taboo female affliction. Deluge investigates the childhood roots of faith and desire alongside their present day enactments. Chatti’s remarkably direct voice makes use of innovative poetic form to gaze unflinchingly at what she was taught to keep hidden. This powerful piece of life-writing depicts Chatti’s journey from diagnosis to surgery and remission in meticulous chronology that binds body to spirit and advocates for the salvation of both. Chatti blends personal narrative, religious imagery, and medical terminology in a chronicle of illness, womanhood, and faith.

Download or read book The Marsh King s Daughter written by Karen Dionne and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! “Brilliant....About as good as a thriller can be.”—The New York Times Book Review The Marsh King’s Daughter is the mesmerizing tale of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future: her own father. Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too...until she learned precisely how savage he could be. More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King—because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter. “[A] nail-biter perfect for Room fans.”—Cosmopolitan “Sensationally good psychological suspense.”—Lee Child A Michigan Notable Book!

Download or read book Only Killers and Thieves written by Paul Howarth and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An epic tale of revenge and survival, Only Killers and Thieves is a gripping and utterly transporting debut, bringing to life a colonial Australia that bears a striking resemblance to the American Wild West in its early years. It is 1885, and a crippling drought threatens to ruin the McBride family. Their land is parched; their cattle are starving. When the rain miraculously comes, it renews their hope for survival. But, returning home one afternoon after swimming in a remote water hole that had been replenished by the downpour, fourteen-year-old Tommy and sixteen-year-old Billy encounter a shocking tragedy. Thirsty for vengeance against the man who they believe has wronged them—their former Aboriginal stockman—the distraught brothers turn to the ruthless, cunning John Sullivan, their father’s former employer and the wealthiest landowner in the region. Sullivan gathers a posse, under the leadership of the dangerous, fascinating Inspector Edmund Noone, comprising members of the Queensland Native Police, an infamous arm of British colonial power charged with the “dispersal” of indigenous Australians to “protect” the rights of white settlers. As they journey across the barren outback in pursuit, their harsh and horrifying experiences will have a devastating impact on Tommy, one that will torment him for the rest of his life—and will hold enduring consequences for a young country struggling to come into its own. Re-creating a period of Australian and British history evocative of the violence of the American frontier era, Only Killers and Thieves is an unforgettable story of family, guilt, empire, race, manhood, and faith.

Download or read book Hell on Mars Reality Bleed Book 1 written by Justin M. Woodward and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-12 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Sci-fi Space Horror Something went wrong in the Mars Felicity Station. A gate to another reality was opened, and a mysterious alien plague threatens humanity. After communications with the station are cut, the crew of the Perihelion is sent to find out what happened. Outmatched and unprepared, they're forced to make war on this new enemy and rescue what remains of the survivors. Fans of Doom and Aliens will love this! Enter the world of Reality Bleed, a sci-fi / survival horror series by best selling authors J.Z. Foster and Justin M. Woodward. Reality Bleed: Hell on Mars eBook categories: Science Fiction: Military Science Fiction: Action and Adventure Galactic Empire Space Fleet Colonization Alien Invasion Space Marine Genetic Engineering Cyber Punk Horror Stories YA New Adult & College Survival Horror Mystery Thriller Click BUY NOW to start your journey into this Sci-Fi epic!

Download or read book The Earth Bleeds Red written by Jackson Paul Baer and published by . This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scott Miller has everything he's ever hoped for. He has a successful marriage to Jessie, a stunningly beautiful, creative woman. His seventeen-year-old daughter, Ashley, is both gorgeous and intelligent, and has just been accepted to the University of Notre Dame, where Scott received his PhD. He has a comforting home in the woods, and a fulfilling career as a college professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He's blissful, and at peace, until it all comes shattering down. Ashley is kidnapped. The scene of the abduction is horrific and bloody, and the police are convinced she couldn't have survived. They accuse her boyfriend, Brandon, of Ashley's murder. He declares his innocence, and claims that a masked man who entered his house and overwhelmed them both took Ashley. No one believes Brandon. Then the bodies of three other missing girls are discovered, all bearing the mark of a known serial killer the FBI has been hunting for years. Evidence mounts. As Special Agent James Duncan tracks the Hail Mary Killer, Scott and Jessie try to move on with their lives. But they can't shake the feeling that Ashley may still be alive, and that the time for saving their only daughter is quickly running out. In the best tradition of literature and suspense, Jackson Paul Baer has weaved a heartfelt tale of one family's struggle to survive after a despicable evil wrenches them apart.

Download or read book A Constellation of Vital Phenomena written by Anthony Marra and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *** Granta Best of Young American Novelists 2017 *** In a snow-covered village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa watches from the woods as her father is abducted in the middle of the night by Russian soldiers. Their life-long friend and neighbour, Akhmed, has also been watching, and when he finds Havaa he knows of only one person who might be able to help. For tough-minded doctor Sonja Rabina, it’s just another day of trying to keep her bombed-out, abandoned hospital going. When Akhmed arrives with Havaa, asking Sonja for shelter, she has no idea who the pair are. But over the course of five extraordinary days, Sonja’s world will shift on its axis, revealing the intricate pattern of connections that binds these three unlikely companions together and unexpectedly decides their fate. 'A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is simply spectacular' Ann Patchett