Download or read book Family Gumbo the Story of Dysfunctional Love written by Lashonda Johnson and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2010-03-14 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essence of time produced a spiritual connection between Justin and Shakira. This spiritual bond lead to a happy marriage in the year 2001, the month of September and yes, the day the nation came to a standstill, "the 11th!"

Download or read book Gumbo for the Soul written by Donna Y. Ford and published by IAP. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rejection. Loss. Confusion. Pain. Our past and our future are intertwined. Each distinct memory becomes one life. What once hurt, eventually heals, and the lesson (or lessons) to be learned becomes one with our soul and our spirit. Our experiences provide strength instead of destruction. Our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers -- all women of power who came before us -- were great descendants of the coastal lands of West Africa. They arrived in strange lands with their Gumbo - -their memories, rhythms, ingenuity, creativity, strength, and compassion. Their lived stories and conversation were recipes mixed with unique combinations of ingredients, dropped into the cast iron pot -- stirred, dropped in, seasoned, dropped in, stirred again, and again, and again, until done. This Gumbo is savory like the soul, carefully prepared, recipes rich with what our foremothers brought with them from their homeland. They brought the best of what they had to offer. Gumbo or Gombo is a Bantu word meaning ‘okra’. Okra is a rich vegetable that serves as the base (or gravy) for a delicately prepared stew. (Today’s Gumbo cooks use a ‘roux’ as the base- see the recipe on page 3). Gumbo’s West African origins have been modified over the past two centuries by people of varied ancestry: Native American, German, Spanish, and French (Moss, 2014). It is essential to understand the manner in which Gumbo is prepared: each ingredient must be placed into the stew at its specified time so that it can cook in and savor its own flavor. When completed, Gumbo is usually served over grits or rice. Gumbo has become a cornerstone of life in African-descended communities across the south and southwest spanning from South Carolina to Louisiana and Texas. Gumbo is a treasure… a reminder of the greatness that lived in the village in a time of strength and abundance…a reminder of the resilience and richness of our people over generations. This book -- a collection of memoirs written by Women of Color is shared to inspire and motivate readers. The authors of these precious, soulful stories are from across the globe and represent various backgrounds and professions. What these women have in common, though, is their drive to tell their story. Stories of pain, discovery, strength, and stories of beginnings. Many of the experiences, as difficult as they may have been, made the women who they are today. Telling these stories to a new generation will empower and encourage them in their experiences no matter how troubling or challenging (Harris, 2015). These stories, like our foremothers offering their Gumbo, present the best these women have to offer. These authors want the world to know that deep inside of each of us is a rich, vibrant, purposeful beginning. As our lives develop and we are “stirred and stirred again”, like Gumbo, our experiences begin to shape who we are and who we become. When the stirring is complete, a comforting meal -- one that says no matter what has gone into the dish, it’s going to be amazingly magnificent!! The authors hope these stories will inspire and motivate girls and Women of Color to trust their experiences -- whether good or bad -- to help them become. Our becoming means that after all that life has thrown our way, we are strong, purposeful, and powerful people who are a great treasure to a world that sometimes rejects and ignores our existence. Embedded in this book are stories of abuse and triumph, sadness and victory, disappointment and resilience, discovery and victory. We are very proud to be the keepers of these rich recipes. They represent the first in what we hope will become a collection or series of inspirational memoirs that will be shared to help others live out their destiny and become the women they were born to be.

Download or read book The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak written by Randy Fertel and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak is the story of two larger-than-life characters and the son whom their lives helped to shape. Ruth Fertel was a petite, smart, tough-as-nails blonde with a weakness for rogues, who founded the Ruth's Chris Steak House empire almost by accident. Rodney Fertel was a gold-plated, one-of-a-kind personality, a railbird-heir to wealth from a pawnshop of dubious repute just around the corner from where the teenage Louis Armstrong and his trumpet were discovered. When Fertel ran for mayor of New Orleans on a single campaign promise-buying a pair of gorillas for the zoo-he garnered a paltry 308 votes. Then he purchased the gorillas anyway! These colorful figures yoked together two worlds not often connected-lazy rice farms in the bayous and swinging urban streets where ethnicities jazzily collided. A trip downriver to the hamlet of Happy Jack focuses on its French-Alsatian roots, bountiful tables, and self-reliant lifestyle that inspired a restaurant legend. The story also offers a close-up of life in the Old Jewish Quarter on Rampart Street-and how it intersected with the denizens of “Back a' Town,” just a few blocks away, who brought jazz from New Orleans to the world. The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak is a New Orleans story, featuring the distinctive characters, color, food, and history of that city-before Hurricane Katrina and after. But it also is the universal story of family and the full magnitude of outsize follies leavened with equal measures of humor, rage, and rue.

Download or read book A Second Helping of Gumbo for the Soul written by Michelle Trotman Scott and published by IAP. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Second Helping of Gumbo for the Soul is a collection of essays, stories, and narratives designed to inspire and empower women of color through the use of storytelling and narratives. This second edition is a sequel to the first Gumbo for the Soul and includes more...

Download or read book Stiltsville written by Susanna Daniel and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the love story between Frances Ellerby and Dennis DuVal against the backdrop of the Biscayne Bay, as they struggle with Florida's weather, infidelity, parenthood, friendship, and debilitating illness over the span of thirty years.

Download or read book The Welcome Home Diner written by Peggy Lampman and published by Lake Union Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Betting on the city of Detroit's eventual comeback, cousins Addie and Samantha decide to risk it all on an affordable new house and a culinary career that starts with renovating a vintage diner in a depressed area of town. There's just one little snag in their vision. Angus, a weary, beloved local, is strongly opposed to his neighborhood's gentrification--and his concerns reflect the suspicion of the community. Shocked by their reception, Addie and Samantha begin to have second thoughts. As the long hours, problematic love interests, and underhanded pressures mount, the two women find themselves increasingly at odds, and soon their problems threaten everything they've worked for. If they are going to realize their dreams, Addie and Samantha must focus on rebuilding their relationship. But will the neighborhood open their hearts to welcome them home?

Download or read book Variable Onset written by Layla Reyne and published by Carina Press. This book was released on 2020-05-04 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To catch a killer, a special agent and his former student will need to get close—to their target, and each other. Layla Reyne returns with a stand-alone romantic mystery. When the serial killer known as Dr. Fear seemingly reemerges after a cooling-off period, Special Agent Lincoln Monroe wants on the case. He knows his research on the calculating criminal, who targets couples and uses their worst fears to kill them, could prove invaluable. But nothing can prepare Lincoln for the agent waiting for him in Apex, Virginia: a brash and cocky former student. Carter Warren is everything Lincoln is not, and somehow everything he wants. And they’ll be going undercover. As newlyweds. For Carter, seeing Lincoln again—and flustered to boot—pokes his raging bear of a crush something fierce. He thinks posing as lovers will provide the perfect bait for Dr. Fear. But pretending to be married forces them to confront fears of their own...like giving in to the very real chemistry between them. With evidence pointing to the possibility of a copycat killer, Lincoln and Carter will have to race to separate truth from fiction. But when another couple goes missing, finding the killer will test every ounce of their training, skills and the strength of their bond like never before. This book is approximately 72,000 words One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise! And don’t miss any of these books from Layla Reyne and Carina Press: Dine with Me Single Malt (Agents Irish & Whiskey #1) Cask Strength (Agents Irish & Whiskey #2) Barrel Proof (Agents Irish & Whiskey #3) Tequila Sunrise (An Agents Irish & Whiskey novella)

Download or read book Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bayou Baby written by Lexi Blake and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartwarming contemporary romance set in Louisiana's Butterfly Bayou from New York Times bestselling author Lexi Blake. Seraphina Guidry loves Butterfly Bayou. A young, single mom, she’s trying to find a place for herself in the town she cherishes, but past mistakes have made her wary. She adores her son but has sworn off men. She's dedicated herself to restoring an historic house and building her own business. A quiet life is all she wants. Harrison Jefferys never expected to find himself in small-town Louisiana, but he has a job to do and a family to reconnect with. After years in the Army, he’s happy to spend time with his Aunt Celeste and his cousins in such an idyllic spot. When he meets Seraphina, he starts to think Papillion might be a great place to call home. But a secret from Sera’s past rears its head and threatens to tear the community apart. Caught between the woman he’s coming to love and the only family he has left, Harry knows he has to follow his heart and with the help of the crazy, loving, meddling locals find a way to keep them both.

Download or read book Swamp Songs written by Sheryl St. Germain and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poet, now an English professor in Iowa, reminisces about her youth and family in Louisiana.

Download or read book World Authors 1995 2000 written by Mari Rich and published by H. W. Wilson. This book was released on 2003 with total page 906 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing a broad range of ethnic diversity, these in-depth profiles present fascinating accounts of lives and careers, the circumstances under which works were produced, and their literary significance. Each profile also includes critical evaluation,

Download or read book In The End It Was All About Love written by Musa Okwonga and published by Rough Trade Books. This book was released on 2021-03-03 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The narrator arrives in Berlin, a place famed for its hedonism, to find peace and maybe love; only to discover that the problems which have long haunted him have arrived there too, and are more present than ever. As he approaches his fortieth birthday, nearing the age where his father was killed in a brutal revolution, he drifts through this endlessly addictive and sometimes mystical city, through its slow days and bottomless nights, wondering whether he will ever escape the damage left by his father's death. With the world as a whole more uncertain, as both the far-right and global temperatures rise at frightening speed, he finds himself fighting a fierce inner battle against his turbulent past, for a future free of his fear of failure, of persecution, and of intimacy. In The End, It Was All About Love is a journey of loss and self-acceptance that takes its nameless narrator all the way through bustling Berlin to his roots, a quiet village on the Uganda-Sudan border. It is a bracingly honest story of love, sexuality and spirituality, of racism, dating, and alienation; of fleeing the greatest possible pain, and of the hopeful road home.

Download or read book Son of a Gun written by Justin St. Germain and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY In the tradition of Tobias Wolff, James Ellroy, and Mary Karr, a stunning memoir of a mother-son relationship that is also the searing, unflinching account of a murder and its aftermath Tombstone, Arizona, September 2001. Debbie St. Germain’s death, apparently at the hands of her fifth husband, is a passing curiosity. “A real-life old West murder mystery,” the local TV announcers intone, while barroom gossips snicker cruelly. But for her twenty-year-old son, Justin St. Germain, the tragedy marks the line that separates his world into before and after. Distancing himself from the legendary town of his childhood, Justin makes another life a world away in San Francisco and achieves all the surface successes that would have filled his mother with pride. Yet years later he’s still sleeping with a loaded rifle under his bed. Ultimately, he is pulled back to the desert landscape of his childhood on a search to make sense of the unfathomable. What made his mother, a onetime army paratrooper, the type of woman who would stand up to any man except the men she was in love with? What led her to move from place to place, man to man, job to job, until finally she found herself in a desperate and deteriorating situation, living on an isolated patch of desert with an unstable ex-cop? Justin’s journey takes him back to the ghost town of Wyatt Earp, to the trailers he and Debbie shared, to the string of stepfathers who were a constant, sometimes threatening presence in his life, to a harsh world on the margins full of men and women all struggling to define what family means. He decides to confront people from his past and delve into the police records in an attempt to make sense of his mother’s life and death. All the while he tries to be the type of man she would have wanted him to be. Praise for Son of a Gun “[A] spectacular memoir . . . calls to mind two others of the past decade: J. R. Moehringer’s Tender Bar and Nick Flynn’s Another Bull____ Night in Suck City. All three are about boys becoming men in a broken world. . . . [What] might have been . . . in the hands of a lesser writer, the book’s main point . . . [is] amplified from a tale of personal loss and grief into a parable for our time and our nation. . . . If the brilliance of Son of a Gun lies in its restraint, its importance lies in the generosity of the author’s insights.”—Alexandra Fuller, The New York Times Book Review “[A] gritty, enthralling new memoir . . . St. Germain has created a work of austere, luminous beauty. . . . In his understated, eloquent way, St. Germain makes you feel the heat, taste the dust, see those shimmering streets. By the end of the book, you know his mother, even though you never met her. And like the author, you will mourn her forever.”—NPR “If St. Germain had stopped at examining his mother’s psycho-social risk factors and how her murder affected him, this would still be a fine, moving memoir. But it’s his further probing—into the culture of guns, violence, and manhood that informed their lives in his hometown, Tombstone, Ariz.—that transforms the book, elevating the stakes from personal pain to larger, important questions of what ails our society.”—The Boston Globe “A visceral, compelling portrait of [St. Germain’s] mother and the violent culture that claimed her.”—Entertainment Weekly

Download or read book Words on Cassette 1999 written by Bowker Editorial Staff and published by R. R. Bowker. This book was released on 1999-02 with total page 1526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Holy Mark written by Gregory Alexander and published by Hillcrest Publishing Group. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Father Tony should have never been a priest. With the family money, he could have pursued his interest in literature or worked with young boys-only free of all those Church strictures. But there was no priest in the family, so when his immigrant grandmother beheld a peculiar mark on his newborn head and declared it a sign from God, his destiny was set. But those marked by God are often marked by men as well: Tony's jealous uncle will never forgive him for finding favor with the old woman. And with his ties to the city's Catholic hierarchy, he'll plot to destroy his nephew if it takes forever.

Download or read book Love Like the Movies written by Victoria Van Tiem and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this irresistible romantic romp, movie fanatic Kensington Shaw is thrown into love—Hollywood-style—when her gorgeous ex presents a series of big screen challenges to win back her heart. What girl wouldn’t want to experience the Pretty Woman shopping scene? It’s number two on the list. Or, try the lift from Dirty Dancing? It’s number five. One list, ten romantic movie moments, and a handful of shenanigans later, Kenzi has to wonder…should she marry the man her family loves, or risk everything for a love like the movies?

Download or read book The Last Best Place written by William Kittredge and published by Falcon PressPub Company. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 1164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guided tour of Montana's literature, including Native American stories, autobiographies, journals, fiction, and poetry.