Ivory, Apes And Peacocks
A daring celebration of beauty, wit, and fierce taste Ivory, Apes and Peacocks invites you into the electric mind of James Huneker. This vivid collection of art criticism essays and literary essays collection surveys the triumphs and follies of early 20th century culture with sparkle, authority, and irresistible voice. Huneker ranges from music and art analysis to trenchant cultural commentary, offering historical art insights and essays on aesthetics that remain uncannily modern: portraits of composers, painters, performers, and the social scenes that shaped them, written in intellectual prose that entertains as it enlightens. More than a period piece, Ivory, Apes and Peacocks book is a work of enduring insight part manifesto, part salon conversation capturing the passions and paradoxes of an age when art remade daily life. Its keen, sometimes acerbic reviews teach readers how to listen, look, and think about beauty in any era. This edition restores Huneker s voice for today s readers and collectors alike, balancing readable critique with profound historical perspective. Out of print for decades and now republished by Alpha Editions, this restored edition is not merely a reprint it s a collector s item and a cultural treasure, carefully prepared for today s and future generations. Essential for fans of James Huneker literature, art and music critique, and anyone seeking a spirited guide through the aesthetic currents of a transformative era.
The Erotic Motive In Literature
A provocative rediscovery that changes how we read desire: The Erotic Motive in Literature unlocks the hidden currents of longing that drive great works of art. Albert Mordell s classic study maps the subtle architecture of eroticism across centuries of fiction and poetry. With keen psychological insight and rigorous literary criticism, Mordell traces how erotic themes in literature shape character, plot, symbol, and moral imagination from veiled allusions in the canon to explicit treatments that scandalized earlier readers. This book explores literature and sexuality not as sensationalism but as a vital engine of narrative and aesthetic power, offering readers a lucid historical literary analysis and a nuanced psychology of literature. Long unavailable and quietly influential, this Albert Mordell book resurfaces in a finely restored Alpha Editions volume. This edition has been revived from decades out of print, carefully restored for today s and future generations, and presented as more than a reprint a collector s item and cultural treasure for classic literature collectors and curious newcomers alike. Whether you re drawn to erotic literature analysis, literary theory, or the intersections of literature and desire, this edited and annotated release illuminates erotic motive study, eroticism in art, and classic literary critique with clarity and passion. Essential for students, scholars, and readers eager to confront how desire shapes stories, thought, and history.
White
When Sylvain Tesson left the colourful yellow houses of the French Riviera for a ski trek across the Alps with his friend, a high-altitude mountain guide, he didn't know what exactly awaited him. The trek would turn into an extraordinary adventure. Over the course of four years they ascended high into the Alps in winter, following the curve of the mountains from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, immersing themselves in a strange white world made entirely of snow. In the bitter cold and overlooked by an empty sky, only the effort of moving forward, one difficult stride at a time, separated the days from one another. And as they trudged onwards, the never-ending white of the high Alps cancelled out all feelings - hope, fear, memory and regret. What did he stand to gain by inflicting this ordeal on himself? This was no ordinary mountain trek: it was a search for communion with the magic substance of the White.Over the course of four years they ascended high into the Alps in winter, following the curve of the mountains from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, immersing themselves in a strange white world made entirely of snow. In the bitter cold and overlooked by an empty sky, only the effort of moving forward, one difficult stride at a time, separated the days from one another. And as they trudged onwards, the never-ending white of the high Alps cancelled out all feelings - hope, fear, memory and regret. What did he stand to gain by inflicting this ordeal on himself? This was no ordinary mountain trek: it was a search for communion with the magic substance of the White.
Every Moment Is a Life
Compiled by bestselling author susan abulhawa, an Arabic-English bilingual anthology of essays from eighteen young Palestinian writers trying to survive the genocide in Gaza. In early 2024, writer and activist susan abulhawa managed to enter Gaza twice through the Rafah crossing. There, at the Culture and Free Thought Association, susan held a series of workshops for young people who had been displaced to tent encampments. The lives of all participants were marked by unrelenting Israeli violence and extraordinary loss--of home, family, safety, education, electricity, and all the structures of life. They'd fled from place to place as Israel's colonial violence swirled around them, complete with food and water insecurity and constant threat. Still, despite the bitterness of life in tents and the dangers of travel, they came together to share in the refuge of writing and community. Samya recounts a tender moment with an old man mending shoes in the street, while her cousin Saja hides books in her closet, hoping they and her home will still be there when she returns. Ghassan is haunted by the baby he rescued from the rubble, who for a time became his son. Fatima risks it all retrieve her clothes from a danger zone buzzing with drones and warplanes. Maram's loving aunt is gone, and chaos inhabits Amr's mind. Samah, Lubna, Rizq, and Nebal take us by the hand through raining death, trails of tears, classroom shelters, and shared clothes in crowded tents. Every Moment Is a Life delivers rare, unfiltered portraits of life under genocide, platforming the emerging voices struggling to survive in Gaza today. These essays are raw and real, capturing human moments--buying bread, going to the bathroom, sharing a meal, drinking coffee--all set against the backdrop of history's first livestreamed ethnic cleansing. With courage, anger, love, agony, and--impossibly--hope, these achingly tender voices from Gaza will stay with us, captured in these pages, forever. *All proceeds go to the contributors in Gaza and to Palestine Writes Literature Festival
We Are Nature Defending Itself
In the words of series editor Steven L. Davis, We Are Nature Defending Itself: An Anthology of Women on Bodies, Borders, and Place is "a revelation, a multicultural blend of well-known and emerging writers who come together to give nature a voice in our literature and our lives." Not least of the many benefits to readers are its contributions from prominent Latina writers, presented here as advocates for the environment. Though this theme has long existed in Chicana literature, it has never been positioned as front and center as it is in this anthology. Volume editor Cordelia E. Barrera also includes notable Anglo, African American, and Indigenous contributors, crafting a true cultural blend of distinctive writing that will appeal to older generations while inspiring new ones. By incorporating these border voices, this collection effectively challenges long-dominant mythologies of the American West and offers a prominent place for literatures of social justice and the environment. The mix of poems, stories, and essays are divided into three sections: Bodies, Landscape, and Practices. Part I begins with the idea of experiencing and feeling a history of the body's contact with landscapes and places as repositories of knowledge. Part II extends beyond particulars of private or public life to consider issues of place as sites and locations of radical action. Part III features ruminations and traditions of remembering, highlighting reciprocal relationships to the natural world that extend outward to the ways "women's work" in and around the home shapes communal processes that reinforce continuity across time and space. We Are Nature Defending Itself adds important new work to the growing canon of nature and borderlands writing by women of color. In turn, these new voices deepen and broaden our understanding of humanity and its relationship to the natural environment.
Wild Fictions
From the 2025 recipient of the Pak Kyongni Prize, often referred to as Korea's Nobel Prize in Literature. A collection of essays on themes central to Ghosh's work: imperialism and decolonization, climate change, and the stories of ordinary people making lives amid these historical forces. Wild Fictions brings together Amitav Ghosh's extraordinary writings on subjects that have obsessed him over the last twenty-five years: literature and language; climate change and the environment; and human lives, travel, and discoveries. Threaded throughout the collection are his reflections on the spaces that we inhabit and how we occupy them. From the significance of the commodification of the clove to the diversity of the mangrove forests in Bengal and the radical fluidity of multilingualism, Wild Fictions is a powerful refutation of imperial violence, a fascinating exploration of the fictions we weave to absorb history, and a reminder of the importance of sensitivity and empathy. With the combination of moral passion, intellectual curiosity, and literary elegance that defines his writing, Ghosh makes readers understand the world in new and urgent ways. Together, the pieces in Wild Fictions chart a course that allows us to heal our relationships and restore the delicate balance with the volatile landscapes to which we all belong.
Finding the Right Words
"John Moss has been a major force in shaping Canadian literary criticism and in advancing the understanding of Canada's literary culture."- Citation when elected to the Royal Society of Canada, 2006"Finding the right words is a challenge. Over five decades I've tried to illuminate our struggle as Canadians to find ourselves in words we could feel were our own, from colonial doggerel to postmodern discourse. Many of the essays here were originally published from lectures abroad and are difficult to access. Taken together they trace the evolution of English Canadian language, literature, and culture to the beginnings of the present century. An ongoing fascination with structural differences between writing by men and by women vies with my interest in language throughout, centred on such radically engaged writers as Robert Kroetsch, George Bowering, and, inevitably, Margaret Atwood. Critical analyses give way to what may be described as critical fiction, which in turn leads to fiction as fiction, before veering back to the personal. I have concluded with two pieces which examine aspects of my writing from other perspectives, before a few last words of my own." JM
A Domain of Her Own
A Domain of Her Own, An Anthology of Art, Poetry, and Prose by Members of the NLAPW Central New York Branch in Our 100th Year, is an eclectic collection of the finest work of professional women writers and visual artists who are members of the Central New York (CNY) Branch of the National League of American Pen Women (NLAPW). Written and compiled as a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the CNY Branch, this anthology is designed to provoke thought on a variety of topics and evoke emotional responses to the poetry, prose, and various visual art forms created by a diverse group of American women to express their unique voices. Woman empowering in design and content, the works in the anthology also reflect how women cope with loss, aging, and change. Much of the art, as well as the poetry, is centered around the natural world and how we react to and observe ourselves in nature. The collection and the creative women whose work is in this anthology never shy away from controversy if it causes readers to question, think, and want to make our world a better place.
Mrs. Dalloway
Explore The Struggle Between Expression and Suppression with Virginia WoolfPart of the Contested Classics series, this special edition of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway offers readers a unique opportunity to explore one of the 20th century's most captivating and contested novels. Published in 1925, Woolf's masterful narrative takes us through a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high-society woman in post-World War I England, weaving a tapestry of thoughts, memories, and encounters.With in-text annotations this edition identifies and explores which sections are reasons for this book being banned: Exploration of Mental Health: Mrs. Dalloway boldly delves into the complexities of mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder, especially in its portrayal of the character Septimus Warren Smith, a war veteran. This frank treatment of mental illness was pioneering for its time but has led to challenges in more conservative settings.Feminist Undertones: The novel is celebrated for its early feminist undertones, examining the roles and expectations of women in society. However, these themes have also sparked debate, particularly in more traditional communities.Suicidal Ideation: The depiction of suicidal thoughts and the eventual suicide of a character has been a point of controversy, raising concerns about its appropriateness for young readers.Stream-of-Consciousness Style: Woolf's innovative narrative technique, while acclaimed, has also been critiqued for its complexity and perceived difficulty, leading some to challenge its inclusion in educational curricula.In this edition of Mrs. Dalloway readers are invited not only to experience Woolf's groundbreaking work but also to understand the controversies and discussions it has inspired over the years. This book is a must-read for those interested in literature that continues to challenge and provoke thought long after its publication.
Porque Estamos Aqu穩
A future classic collection of Puerto Rican feminist writing that spans time, terrain, and phases, invokes voices across generations and fields, and bridges island and diaspora.In her years of scholarship and activism with fellow Puerto Rican feminists, editor Jessica N. Pab籀n-Col籀n reached for a feminism to ground her work and validate the women who paved her way--but in her search for a specific tradition of Puerto Rican feminism, what she found were gaps, disappearances, and unanswered questions. Despite the presence of Puerto Ricans in US pop culture and the long history of Boricua resistance to US subjugation, both on the archipelago and in the diaspora, she did not find a feminist lens to link the myriad identities and geographies of Ricanness or to focus critique on Puerto Rico's status as an American neo-colony.Counteracting such erasure, Porque Estamos Aqu穩 maps Boricua feminisms of the past, the present, and the future, defining what it means to be a "bad subject" of US empire. Engaging in radical collectivity, Pab籀n-Col籀n joins forces with Puerto Rican scholars, memoirists, artists, and activists--including feminist legends like Aurora Levins Morales and political trailblazers like Rosa Clemente--to ground this anthology in a tradition of resistance to empire at home. Through essays, roundtables, historiographies, poems, and other cross-genre writing, Porque Estamos Aqu穩 asserts that Puerto Rican feminists are undeniably, irreducibly here and will guide generations of our shared movement for years to come.
Chinese Through Scripture
Chinese through Scripture and the accompanying Workbook integrate the Bible into the teaching of Chinese, filling a void in Chinese language materials. The books are designed for intermediate students, independent learners who wish to experience reading the Bible in Chinese, and those who desire to use Chinese for ministry and Christian outreach.A rich variety of Scripture passages, relevant readings, and challenging exercises teach terms and statements about God, Jesus, worship, and prayer, the basics of Christian beliefs, and Chinese cultural topics from a Christian perspective.Features include: Simplified and traditional character versionsMore than 600 scripture passages (Chinese Union Version)Pinyin support for unfamiliar wordsEnglish translationsFlexible units to be used consecutively or independentlyInnovative and aesthetic layout with relevant visualsLink to online supplemental materials including vocabulary flashcards Endorsement: Elegantly illustrated and highly accessible, this rich compendium includes luminous scripture verses, class devotionals, songs of praise, and a wide range of thoughtful discussion questions. Students will also enjoy the daily memory verses, prayer translations, and meditative writing exercises aimed at developing their vocabulary and overall Chinese language skills. Chinese through Scripture, a Christ-centered textbook with an accompanying workbook, is both edifying for the mind and nourishing for the soul. - Karen An-hwei Lee, Provost of Wheaton College Chinese Through Scripture is the perfect book to allow intermediate-level students of Chinese to learn to express their Christian faith in the Chinese language, to prepare them for Christian ministry and outreach to Chinese speakers across the globe. Its rich variety of content includes many Bible passages in Chinese with vocabulary notes, and the creative workbook helps the student master the material. Professor Wang's book fills a gap in the field of Chinese language teaching for Christian students of the language. - Larry Herzberg, Professor Emeritus of Chinese, Calvin University; Author of Basic Patterns of Chinese Grammar (Stone Bridge Press) and Writing Guide for Learners of Chinese (Yale U. Press). Professor Wang offers a timely contribution for Chinese language learners through her textbook Chinese through Scripture. As an increasing number of individuals in the Chinese-speaking world proclaim the Christian faith, students of Chinese language and culture will need to understand the vocabulary and prose of the Bible. Professor Wang fills a critical gap in the literature by making such learning possible, memorable, and enjoyable through her published textbook of Chinese through Scripture. I cannot recommend this resource enough! - Robert M. Lyons, Jr., Director of Academic Affairs, Georgetown University, SFS Asian Studies Program About the Author: Shuguang (Rose) Wang (M.A. in Missions and Intercultural Studies, Wheaton College, Illinois; Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, Middlebury College, Vermont) is an Associate Lecturer, Section Coordinator of the Chinese program, and Assistant Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at Wheaton College. Rose has undertaken new experiments in pedagogy and faith and learning integration within the context of Chinese language teaching in Wheaton's liberal arts educational environment.
Irish Witchcraft and Demonology
In this work the history of Irish witchcraft is lined up with the trials that followed and the convictions that followed. Also included are the basic beliefs in demonology and the occult that the locals believed in and held to in the day.Please note that this is an 8 pt font size version of this book.
Bird of Paradox and Other Tales
Bird of Paradox and Other Tales gathers vivid, true-to-life stories from John Devlin's years drifting between Ireland, London, China, and Vietnam. Classrooms, bars, backstreets, lakeside promenades, and long bus rides become stages where the ridiculous rubs shoulders with the tragic. The author teaches English abroad, falls in and out of love, and collects characters you could not invent: managers with whiskey noses, beggars on trolleys, songbird clubs at dawn, and a saxophonist whose music drifts across Luhu Lake. Some pieces will make you laugh, others will sting, and many sit in that murky in-between where life actually happens. Arranged as a loose journey from London to China and on to Vietnam with detours home to Ireland, the book reads like a box of ticket stubs and scribbled notes that finally grew into polished stories. It is creative non-fiction told with a journalist's eye and a traveler's appetite for chance encounters. Whether it is an online romance arranged between shifts, a lockdown walk to the supermarket, or a night out that turns into a minor epic, Devlin captures the texture of place and the voices of people you will not forget. For readers of travel writing, memoir, and literary essays who like their truth messy, human, and full of heart.
If I Can Be Honest
Before there was Autofocus Books, there was Autofocus Lit, an online journal dedicated to artful autobiographical writing in its various genres and forms. The online journal began in October 2020 and published 318 original pieces from established and emerging writers before it closed in October 2024 to continue building the press that grew out of it. This anthology collects over forty works of short-form prose (400 - 3,000 words), selected by the journal's founder and editor-in-chief, Michael Wheaton. These works are arranged into the seven big thematic containers that developed over the publication's four years: friends, family, heartbreak, the body, violence, death, and life. If I Can Be Honest provides an instructive, engrossing, and polyvocal survey of artful autobiographical prose two decades into 21st century literature.
Sa'iba
'Let us go on, then! And I will tell you the story of my sister and her daughter, from beginning to end.' Alis al-Bustani's Sa'iba (1891) is one of the earliest known novels authored in Arabic by a female writer. Written when the Arabic novel was only in its third or fourth decade, it takes up the leading fictional theme of the era: the question of young people's choices in marriage in a society where their elders traditionally made these decisions. In Sa'iba, the focus is on what happens after the wedding, as the eponymous heroine has to fend off a jealous cousin who believes he has a right to her. Drawing on motifs of Victorian Gothic writing, brought into an Arab-Turkish fictional context, the novel powerfully shows the continuing hold of old ideas about women's sexual susceptibility and moral 'weakness', as such ideas were slowly giving way among educated Arab and other Ottoman middle classes to new ideals of companionship in marriage. Marilyn Booth's translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing the themes and social context of the novel, a time of modernizing efforts and pushback against European and American power and culture in the Arabic and Ottman worlds. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Good Bones
The heyday of reading is probably behind us, but in these shrewd and witty essays Brooke Allen examines the relics of the saints (and sinners) who made it what it was. Focused as much on literary lives as oeuvres, she excavates the glories of August Strindberg, George Sand, Patricia Highsmith, Anthony Powell, Truman Capote and even the late great diarist Richard Burton (who also did some acting). There are 22 essays in all, drawn from the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Criterion and elsewhere, and Allen offers delight and surprise on every page. If the age of reading isn't yet behind you, get this book in front of you."Her prose swaggers with an authority drawn from true learning, and she cracks her snobbery like a whip." - John Freeman, The Wall Street Journal
Troubled Lands
A landmark book--the first complete publication of Langston Hughes's translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore "the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists," and are "mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days." But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled Troubled Lands, his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes's translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers. Troubled Lands features thirty-three stories by eighteen writers, including Rafael Felipe Mu簽oz, Nellie Campobello, Lino Nov獺s Calvo, Luis Felipe Rodr穩guez, Germ獺n List Arzubide, Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, and Juan de la Cabada. The collection depicts Mexico in the wake of its revolution and Cuba in the years between the brutal regimes of Machado and Batista. Hughes was a noted translator of poetry, but his commitment to translating fiction is less well known. Troubled Lands provides a window into this important dimension of his work and illuminates his deep interest in Mexico and Cuba.
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick Map
This map depicts Captain Ahab's voyage aboard the whaling ship Pequod in his obsessive pursuit of the white sperm whale, Moby Dick. It is inspired by the beautiful wind and current charts that began to be produced during the period. Although Moby-Dick is a book about the sea, it is just as much about life on land, and a large number of places are mentioned in the story--many of which are shown on the map. The whaling ship Pequod itself also appears, rendered with many details.
Women of a Certain Courage
Women of a Certain Courage is an uplifting read that follows the long tradition of women supporting and guiding other women. These 18 stories of courage will have you weeping, laughing and celebrating moments of bravery. With tales of activism, of finding a voice, escaping domestic violence, battling and much more, Women of a Certain Courage will inspire awe with the myriad ways women prevail and demonstrate courage.
Charismatic Nations
At the core of nationalism, the nation has always been defined and celebrated as a fundamentally cultural community. This pioneering cultural history shows how artists and intellectuals since the days of Napoleon have celebrated and taken inspiration from an idealized nationality, and how this in turn has informed and influenced social and political nationalism. The book brings together tell-tale examples from across the entire European continent, from Dublin and Barcelona to Istanbul and Helsinki, and from cultural fields that include literature, painting, music, sports, world fairs and cinema as well as intellectual history. Charismatic Nations offers unique insights into how the unobtrusive soft power of nationally-inspired culture interacts with nationalism as a hard-edged political agenda. It demonstrates how, thanks to its pervasive cultural and 'unpolitical' presence, nationalism can shape-shift between romantic insurgency and nativist populism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Anywhere Else
A memoir of growing up in Florida interwoven with cultural reflections of the state from The X-Files to Emerson--revealing the complex truths of life as a FloridianFlorida and pop culture are a magnetic, viral match. From true crimes on social media to spring break movies to Miami Vice, the state has been served up for the rest of the world as a place of swamp things, serial killers, beach bums, teen girls, and dead poets. In Anywhere Else, Rachel Knox weaves her own story around the media caricatures, digging deeper into what it's like to be from a "wild" place--and who gets to decide what that means.Knox writes from her own experiences of Florida as a child in Sunday school, a student on field trips to Everglades National Park, and a bartender making drinks for both out-of-state partiers and locals. She blends these memories with critical looks at touchstones from different cultural moments, such as Aileen Wuornos, America's most famous female serial killer; Florida's Highwaymen artists and Thomas Kinkade, the much-beloved religious "Painter of Light"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the transcendentalist writer who spent time in St. Augustine; the gloriously trashy 90s neo-noir Wild Things; and the "Monster of the Week" episodes of The X-Files.Writing with clarity and searing honesty about real issues refracted through this prism of pop culture, Knox is both witty and vulnerable. In these essays, whether she's bobbing in the warm waters of the Gulf or running through the trailer parks of her childhood, Knox portrays a Floridian struggling with a deep, complicated love of her home state. Anywhere Else is a book for anyone who resonates with the message that home may not be a perfect place, but that it is worth fighting for.
Bargain Witch
An occult history that grounds the sacred yearning for magic in real life. In these essays by scholar and self-initiated witch Brooke Palmieri, occult history, the eternal now, and our magickal queer futures align, connecting us to an enchantment both contemporary and classic. Drawing upon the knowledge and influence of practitioners from Rachel Pollack to Tituba, Palmieri grounds the sacred yearning for magic in real life, whether exploring the gossip of feuding Salem witches, paying the rent by playing "wizard" for news cameras, or detailing the psychic ups and downs of working in an occult bookshop. Written in a voice electrified with love for the craft and its lineage of eccentrics, Bargain Witch shows us witch life in all its quotidian humor and splendor, taking its place amongst the magickal classics that inspired it, a literary ouroboros.
Quotable Austen
Celebrating Jane Austen's 250th birthday, this book is a charming collection of notable quotes from her most celebrated nineteenth-century novels. A fine collection of the wisest and wittiest quotes from one of the most beloved and prominent British writers of all time, this book is sure to win you over with Jane Austen's ability for turning typical people and mundane events into charming and relatable stories. With over 140 quotes from her completed novels - Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion - this book is the perfect opportunity for readers to immerse themselves in the refinement of the Regency era. Austen was well known for her astute social observation and keen insight into the lives of women in the early nineteenth century. This collection will urge you to: - Ardently admire and love - Feel the pangs of disappointed love - Find comfort in words of wisdom - Acquaint yourself with the refinements of polished society - Learn witty comebacks to leave your friends speechless After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged that this would be the ultimate gift for Janeites and Austenites.
Daughters in their Mothers' Gardens
The book explores the thematics of the mother-daughter relationships in selected texts by contemporary Chinese American women writers Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Fae Myenne Ng and Gish Jen. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife, Bone and Mona in the Promised Land altogether reflect an array of matrilineal traditions highly receptive to the conventional wisdom that daughters must separate from their mothers to become strong individuals. I argue that the considered narratives problematize the Western domestic storylines by hinging back to a complex mesh of racial histories, misogyny, rape, displacement, and enforced separation. The book emphasizes a universal impulse for perfection which dovetails with an endeavour to point out the diversity and complementarity of their challenging reactions to the dominant myths of female connection and disconnection. The selected texts relocate the universal romance of symbiosis-individuation at the intersection of a fluid but, nurturing positioning across different worlds and cultures. They demonstrate the crucial significance of storytelling in undercutting the unconscious essence of the mother-daughter rift. Hence, the purely psychological universal friction between every mother and daughter significantly shapes the examined matrilineal stories just as the characters᾽ positioning amid liminal hyphenated spaces do. The discussion contributes to reorienting the homophobic dimension in the mother-daughter attachment toward multicultural issues of consent and descent. The concerned plots create a tour de force in the mainstream matrilineal tradition, through narrative scenarios wherein the mothers and daughters foreground the impossibility of separation.
Light Falls on Everything
My father's heart, and my mother's, can still break. In this most essential way, they are still themselves. They are still here.To stay together until the end was the deepest wish of Rebecca McClanahan's elderly, frail parents. So when the two of them could no longer care for themselves, Rebecca and her siblings moved them from Indiana to North Carolina, where she and her husband assumed the roles of "first responders" with support from the extended family. Over the course of her parents' final years, Rebecca discovers that the landscape of dementia isn't entirely bleak if we can hold on long enough to rediscover in our loved ones the essential selves we feared were lost.Light Falls on Everything takes us inside the intimate rooms of long-term caregiving, where exhaustion, confusion, heartbreak, and grief can shadow the most ordinary days. Still, light flickers in even the darkest corners, revealing moments of tenderness, laughter, absurdity, surprise, and unrelenting love. Emotionally gripping and unstintingly honest, this memoir invites us to reflect on the timeless nature of love and loss and, with it, the unexpected lessons of caregiving: how to move forward into our own uncertain futures, accept grief as a longtime companion, and approach death with some measure of grace.
Modernism
An engaging, approachable introduction to literary modernism Modernism represented an astonishing outbreak of cultural innovation, spanning artforms and nations. It was centred around feelings of growing alienation in an industrial world, and a desire to change how people live together in society. Art, architecture, literature, and music all underwent a radical revolution. Although it was confined to small coteries of artists and lasted no more than thirty years, its techniques were appropriated by mass culture and became familiar to millions of citizens who have never heard of Paul Klee or Gertrude Stein. It represents one of the most productive moments in art since the Renaissance, which in its scope, originality, and imaginative audacity has never been equalled. Terry Eagleton presents a compelling and entertaining guide to modernism. From Ezra Pound to Virginia Woolf, James Joyce to H.D., Eagleton explores the literature and ideas of prominent modernists, emphasising the profound impact they had on subsequent generations.
The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration
This book tells the story of mass Incarceration in America through the writers who experienced it first-hand. It begins at mid-century with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, whose insights about racism and the criminal justice system warned of what was to come. It takes off in the 1960s and 1970s with revolutionary writers like George Jackson, Assata Shakur, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, seeking liberation not just from prison but the oppressive structure of society that sustains it. It evolves in the post-revolutionary era with witnesses like Wilbert Rideau, Jack Henry Abbott, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, seeking self-determination and justice from these increasingly cavernous prison warehouses. And it ends with the stories of survivors like Shaka Senghor, Jarvis Masters, and Susan Burton in the 21st century seeking healing from the psychological trauma that led to prison as well as the trauma of prison.
The Weight of Tender Things
​"You have changed at least one life- mine- with your thoughts conceptualized into this phenomenally articulated book. This is a once-in-a-lifetime read... Poetry exposing the brutal core of humanity that the world desperately needs."- Elyse Haslam on Goodreads--------For readers of Sylvia Plath and lovers of raw and defiant inner truths, Sadia Hakim offers a visual poetry book that feels like a soul remembering itself - wounded, watchful, and unapologetically human.This debut collection blends confessional and journal-style reflections with psychological depth, exploring themes of rage, trauma, tender things that make life worth living, and the sacred discomfort of self-confrontation. The Weight of Tender Things is for those who feel everything, who read between the lines, who sense the unspoken, and who have learned to stand firm in a world that often demands their softness without offering safety. It is not just visual poetry. It is a confession. A mirror to the parts of you that have been silenced, mishandled, or seen as too much.​​​​​​​This is a fully colored special edition paperback thoughtfully designed as both a visual and emotional experience.
The First 649 Days
A stirring collection from one of the form's most widely praised innovators How do we wrestle with unimaginable loss? How does love open us to new worlds and even new versions of ourselves? In The First 649 Days, Eric LeMay explores the everyday moments and momentous events that make and unmake our lives, from the birth of a child to mass death in a global pandemic to finding a home and comfort among the fields and forests of Appalachian Ohio. Using forms as diverse as journal entries, cell phone texts, children's picture books, and erasure poems, LeMay wrestles with questions of illness, isolation, identity, grief, family, and love because, like so many us, he's had to live them. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 when his first child was a little over a year old. He learned during the worst month of the COVID-19 pandemic that his 80-year-old father, unable to breathe, had been admitted to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Would he live? And if not? In these richly varied essays, LeMay helps us make our way, personally and collectively, through experiences that may be our last, all the while honoring those "firsts"--the first cry, the first word, the first day of school. With remarkable humor and candor, LeMay explores how we grieve, how we grow, and how the gardens we plant, the children we raise, and the words we share lead us more deeply into our own lives.
The Prophet
THE MOST IMPACTFUL LESSONS OF KAHLIL GIBRAN PAIRED WITH THOUGHTFUL ANALYSIS AND MODERN APPLICATIONS IN AN ELEGANT AND ACCESSIBLE FORMAT Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet is a poetic meditation on life's deepest questions, offering timeless reflections on love, work, freedom, and the human spirit. Beloved around the world, this lyrical masterpiece has captivated generations with its profound simplicity and universal truths, presenting a vision of life that is as inspiring as it is comforting. Its brilliance lies in its ability to speak directly to the heart, transcending culture and time. This edition will invite you to explore life's beauty and challenges with new clarity and depth. With engaging double-page spreads, it distills Gibran's most inspiring passages, pairing them with thoughtful analysis and practical insights to enrich your perspective. Calibrated to deliver profound insights rapidly and directly, it opens the door to the luminous wisdom of one of the world's most cherished works. WHY NOT EXPLORE FURTHER CONCISE CLASSICS FROM THIS SERIES?Also available: Think and Grow Rich, The Art of War, Meditations, and Autobiography of a Yogi.
Marginalia
"What does it mean to dissolve into one's text?" Naomi Washer asks in Marginalia: An Autobiography. Comprised of a decade's worth of notes made in the margins of other writers' books, collected and arranged into an original work, Marginalia accumulates into an essay that interrogates both its own form and its author's sense of self. From her own readings of writers like Kate Zambreno, Roland Barthes, Maggie Nelson, and Robert Walser, among countless others, Washer arrives at an uncanny rediscovering of a self both her and not, visible and hidden. And in the act of re-reading, she distills the experience of one's ongoing transformation in writing and everyday life.
Beatdom #25
This is the 25th issue of Beatdom literary journal and it is released on the 70th anniversary of the 6 Gallery reading, a landmark literary event that is said to have begun the San Francisco Renaissance. It contains many essays that examine that movement.
Chewing the Page
This is the first collection of creative writing-related interviews originally posted on Mourning Goats, a website founded by the mysterious Mr Goat. Over a year of mostly anonymous work, the Goat managed to interview some of the most exciting English-language authors around. Edited by Phil Jourdan and the Goat himself, and featuring expanded interviews not available online, Chewing the Page offers a series of weird and hilarious glimpses at the world of writing. Includes interviews with Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger, Paul Tremblay, Donald Ray Pollock, Stephen Elliott, Chad Kultgen, Chelsea Cain, Rick Moody, Christopher Moore and Nick Hornby, and others.,
A River Dream
An anthology and tribute to a unique independent publisher, Clark City Press. In 1987, the painter and author and fly fisherman Russell Chatham, renowned for his stunning landscape paintings and his appetite for life, decided to take control of his own career by creating a publishing house in Livingston, Montana. As one does, at least if they are Russell Chatham. "Control" was probably the wrong concept--for the next five years, Clark City Press was the chaotic home of beautifully produced works by an eclectic, talented collection of writers and artists, many of them given a painting in lieu of a publishing advance. What began as an effort to publish Chatham's own work and that of his friends (a large and varied group) in elegant trade paperbacks morphed into something grander and more wayward. Chatham could talk almost anyone into anything, and before the press imploded, all sorts of people said yes: Barry Gifford signed on for A Good Man to Know, a fictionalized memoir about his gangster father, Jim Harrison traded paintings for The Theory & Practice of Rivers and Just Before Dark, and Rick Bass wrote about the first wolves to resettle the continental United States in The Ninemile Wolves. Clark City Press published Thomas McGuane on fishing and memory, Guy de la Valdene on hunting woodcock, Richard Hugo's only mystery, James Crumley's short stories, and Peter Stackpole's Life photos from the golden age of Hollywood. In A River Dream, Clark City's former editor, novelist Jamie Harrison, has collected some of the best of the press's prose, art, and poetry, in a glorious celebration of a small and lost world.
Within, Without
Brings together two intimate, reflective essays by two acclaimed poets, Ilya Kaminsky and Piotr Florczyck, as they revisit their hometowns of Odesa and Krak籀w, exploring the complexities of return, memory, and identity. Within, Without: On Two Cities presents two essays by Eastern European-born poets and translators, Ilya Kaminsky and Piotr Florczyk, now based in the United States. Revisiting their respective hometowns--Odesa and Krak籀w--they grapple with questions of history, identity, and belonging. What does it mean for an immigrant or refugee to return? Can one ever truly go back to a homeland that has since been transformed? Kaminsky and Florczyk chart a path forward by embracing the complexities of their transnational and translingual identities, as artists and as human beings.
Introduction to the Mabinogi
A little book to introduce the Mabinogi, which revolutionised the telling of stories a thousand years ago. All our prose fiction, novels, films, gaming, is descended from this work of genius.Here are the tales themselves in a closely accurate retelling, plus all the main ideas scholars have developed about them.Often known as 'mythology', or 'Celtic mythology', the Mabinogi has been recognised since the 1970s as a sophisticated literature. It deserves to stand with Shakespeare and Homer yet is not nearly as well known as it should be.With all that the tales are wonderful stories of love, adventure, war, tragedy and enchantments. Mature scholars and young children alike can thoroughly enjoy them.The book has a wealth of illustrations, list of characters, and help with translations and further reading. It is written in clear, freindly style and will be well within the reach of teenagers upwards. Yet it also covers many sophusticated theories.
Dante's Divine Comedy
The life and times of Dante's soaring poetic allegory of the soul's redemptive journey toward God Written during his exile from Florence in the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy describes the poet's travels through hell, purgatory, and paradise, exploring the state of the human soul after death. His poema sacro, sacred poem, profoundly influenced Renaissance writers and artists such as Giovanni Boccaccio and Sandro Botticelli and was venerated by modern critics including Erich Auerbach and Harold Bloom. Dante's "Divine Comedy" narrates the remarkable reception of Dante's masterpiece, one of the most consequential religious books ever written. Tracing the many afterlives of Dante's epic poem, Joseph Luzzi shows how it left its mark on the work of such legendary authors as John Milton, Mary Shelley, and James Joyce while serving as a source of inspiration for writers like Primo Levi and Antonio Gramsci as they faced the most extreme forms of political oppression. He charts how the dialogue between religious and secular ideas in The Divine Comedy has shaped issues ranging from changing conceptions of women's identity and debates about censorship to the role of canonical literature in popular culture. An intimate portrait of a work that has challenged and inspired generations of readers, Dante's "Divine Comedy" reveals how Dante's strikingly original and controversial vision of the afterlife can help us define our spiritual beliefs, better understand ourselves, and navigate the complexities of modern life.
La Lucha
From Mexico to Patagonia, the struggle for women's rights in Latin America comes alive in the voices of the artists and activists making the change.La Lucha gathers the voices of 30 artists, scholars, and activists, from 17 countries, actively engaged in the fight for women's rights in Latin America. From the patriarchy to femicide, to the inflections of identity embedded in colour, class, and indigenous cultures, their struggle embodies the contested definitions and priorities of feminism. Their solidarity, and tirelessness, has yielded striking, game-changing results in areas as disparate, and as fundamental to women's lives, as reproductive health, environmentalism, anti-colonialism, and human rights. With contributors that include Isabel Allende, Selva Almada, Gabriela Cabez籀n C獺mara, Valeria Luiselli, Lina Meruane, Claudia Pi簽eiro, and Cristina Rivera Garza, this unprecedented collection is sure to challenge, provoke, and inspire.
Every Day is a GOOD Day
Anarchist, Zen Buddhist, Playboy editor and novelist Robert Shea is best known for the Illuminatus! Trilogy, a cult classic co-authored with Robert Anton Wilson that has never gone out of print. He also had a successful career writing action-filled but philosophical historical novels such as Shike and All Things Are Lights. Shea was still developing his career as a novelist and was just sixty-one when illness cut his writing career short, ruling out a planned sequel to Illuminatus! and also preventing the publication of other novels that were in the works. An outwardly conventional middle class man who was kind to his fans, Shea was also a radical who published anarchist fanzines, kept an authentic Samurai sword in his home, and interacted with Wobblies and counterculture oddballs. Now, three decades after his death, Every Day is a GOOD Day: Robert Shea on Illuminatus!, Writing and Anarchism collects many of his short pieces, giving readers a glimpse of the man behind Illuminatus! and Shike.- - - Entertaining, thought provoking and richly varied, Every Day is a GOOD Day is a perfect introduction to the anarchistic principles and humane thinking of Robert Shea - a man more interested in finding flaws in his own beliefs than he is in forcing those beliefs on others. - John Higgs, author of Love and Let Die and other booksEvery Day Is a GOOD Day is here to preserve the memory of this good-hearted, open-minded man - and to let more people enjoy his humane and freedom-loving writings. - Jesse Walker, author of The United States of Paranoia and Reason magazine books editorShea's intelligence and sense of humor, shine throughout this terrific book. Robert Shea truly seems "the very model of modern armchair anarchist." - Eric Wagner, author of An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson and Straight Outta DublinTom Jackson's delightful collection has rescued the wit, warmth, and anarchist mischief of Robert Shea - the other half of the Illuminatus! equation. This is a resurrection spell for a writer, and an enthusiast's treasure trove! - Daisy Eris Campbell, writer/director of Cosmic Trigger the Play
Ritsos in Parentheses
Winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, Academy of American Poets A bilingual edition of three major poetry collections by one of the most important Greek poets of the twentieth century One of the most prolific and popular of modern Greek poets, Yannis Ritsos follows such eminent predecessors as Cavafy, Sikelianos, and Seferis in the dramatic and symbolic expression of a tragic sense of life. The three volumes of Ritsos's poetry translated here--Parentheses, 1946-47, Parentheses, 1950-61, and The Distant--document a three-decade poetic journey that reveals the evolution of the poet's sensibility. This bilingual edition also features an insightful introduction from translator Edmund Keeley, whom Paul Muldoon has called "the gold standard in translators of Greek poetry."
Dear Orchid
"Powerful, haunting, and precise. Each of the essays and stories in Van Den Hende's collection-whether a three-page reverie of childhood's joys and tragedies or a candid peek into the life of a wounded hero-land with a piercing clarity." -FIONA DAVIS, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen QueenTHESE AREN'T JUST STORIES. THEY'RE LOVE LETTERS.Dear Orchid opens the heart in unexpected ways: through true stories and new fiction that explore loss and love, silence and recovery, and hard-won resilience. This collection is an Asian American author's homage to Mary-Louise Parker's Dear Mr. You, through letters to a girl newly freed from East Berlin, an aunt lost to Communist-era borders, and Purple Heart-decorated heroes. These intimate portraits explore the messy beauty of friendship, family, disability, and belonging. You'll meet a wounded hero who jokes through his pain, a beloved cat with a crayon note taped to his back ("HELP ME"), and people who refuse to be defined by what they've lost.The final chapter brings a fictional reunion with the unforgettable characters from the Goodbye Orchid trilogy, offering healing, closure, and second chances.Told in a lyrical, letter-style format, this collection blends memoir and imagination in a deeply personal exploration of grief, identity, and human connection. It's a window into private moments that echo something universal, especially for those who have ever felt unseen, misunderstood, or left behind.Underneath the heartbreak and humor runs the quiet pull between star-crossed lovers, whose stories unfold across time, distance, and impossible odds. These tales include elements of multicultural and medical romance and unforgettable moments of vulnerability and hope. Whether you're drawn to true stories of survival or fictional narratives filled with tenderness and truth, Dear Orchid offers an emotional journey that celebrates love in all its forms.A collection for anyone who's ever loved, lost, or longed to understand the emotional truth behind the quiet moments that shape us.These aren't just stories.They're letters to everyday heroes.For you. For us. For the moments that make us human.
The Position of Spoons
A feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the allure of Colette, to the streets of Paris, by the inimitable Deborah Levy. Deborah Levy's vital literary voice speaks about many things. On footwear: "It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers." On public parks: "A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles." On Elizabeth Hardwick: "She understands what is at stake in literature." On the conclusion of a marriage: "It doesn't take an alien to tell us that when love dies we have to find another way of being alive." Levy traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations; each page is a beautiful, questioning composition of the self. The Position of Spoons is full of wisdom and astonishments and brings us into intimate conversation with one of our most insightful, intellectually curious writers.
Graveyards
From the author of Gothic, a marvelously illustrated cultural history of graves and graveyards, from the earliest known burial sites to today's green burials Why, how, and where do we inter our dead? How have people throughout history responded to the problem of laying their dead to rest? Roger Luckhurst sets out in search of answers in this arresting book. Taking readers on an unforgettable tour of the rich and unusual visual culture of the grave, he visits locales such as the pyramids of Giza, the catacombs and columbaria of Rome, and the cenotaphs erected to the world's war dead. Along the way, he examines the diverse role of graveyards in literature, art, film, and television. In engaging chapters that look at all aspects of the treatment of the dead, Luckhurst covers topics ranging from early burials and the emergence of necropolises and catacombs to grave robbing, garden cemeteries, the perilous overcrowding of the urban dead, and the emergence of modern funerary culture. Exploring the cultural afterlives of burial and memorial sites in the popular imagination, he shows how graves have served as guides to the underworld, poignant dedications to those we have lost, as reminders of our own mortality, and settings in gothic horror. Blending lively storytelling with a wealth of stunning illustrations, Graveyards is a lyrical, frequently unexpected account of the grave as a signpost to the afterlife, a site of remembrance and self-reflection, and an object of enduring fascination.
Heretic
A memoir of leaving the evangelical church and the search for radical new ways to build community. Jeanna Kadlec knew what it meant to be faithful--in her marriage to a pastor's son, in the comfortable life ahead of her, in her God--but there was no denying the truth that lived under that conviction: she was queer and, if she wanted to survive, she would need to leave behind the church and every foundational building block she knew. Heretic is a memoir of rebirth. Within, Kadlec reckons with religious trauma and Midwestern values, as a means of unveiling how evangelicalism directly impacts every American--religious or not--and has been a major force in driving our democracy towards fascism. From the story of Lilith to celebrity purity rings, Kadlec interrogates how her indoctrination and years of piety intersects with her Midwest working-class upbringing. As she navigated graduate school, a new home on the East Coast, and a new marriage, another insidious truth began to reveal itself --that conservative Christianity has both built and undermined our political power structures, poisoned our pop culture, and infected how we interact with one another in ways that the secular population couldn't see. Weaving the personal with powerful critique, Heretic explores how we can radically abandon these painful systems by taking a sledgehammer to the comfortable. Whether searching for community in the face of millennial loneliness or wanting to reclaim a secular form of fellowship in everyday life, Kadlec envisions the brilliant possibilities that come with not only daring to want a different way but actually striking out and claiming it for ourselves.
Anthologia
An expansive collection from a stellar line-up of twenty-two women, written with verve and clear insight. Powerful, tender, and intimate, Anthologia is engaging and emotionally resonant.DANIELLA LIBRI ELIAS, ROSE MASCARO, BENITA BENSCH, COURTNEY ZERAFA, KELLIE HANNAH, S. JO-ANNE, JOANNE WILLMOTT, JACQUELINE GAUL, ZOE PERRY, ELIZABETH HAMMANG, KRISTINA GARLA, S. A. SISIKA, JACQUI DOYLE, DONNA WALSH, STACEY HOWES, CLAUDIA CALLISTO, NATARSHA WILSON, CHRISTIE-LEE DIDOVICH, EMMA RIGNEY, NATALIE SIMES, ASHLEE CANDY SAM, SARAH ROSS.
