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Odd Girl Out
By Ann Bannon. 1957
Twilight Girl
By Della Martin. 2006
The swaggering butches and dolled-up femmes of this 1961 lesbian pulp novel experience the guilt, thrills, and wonder of forbidden…
love."She knew why they danced with such gay desperation."A budding butch in the Brylcreem era, Lorraine "Lon" Harris fantasizes about a South Pacific island full of women, where everyone will be free and accepting, and she'll never have to wear an eyelet blouse again. Spurned by her high school English teacher, Lon turns to a new friend, the brash, purple-haired Violet, who draws Lon into the lesbian underworld of suburban Los Angeles, to the sordid 28 Percent Club, a private bar where those with "contaminated passions" cling to each other. Here, among the swaggering butches and dolled-up femmes, Lon will discover herself. And here she will first lay eyes on brilliant, lovely Mavis, a black jazz pianist and the girlfriend of wealthy Sassy Gregg, whose heavy bracelets may as well be brass knuckles where Lon is concerned.Spring Fire
By Vin Packer. 1952
Her silky black hair. Her low-cut gown. Her sparkling sorority pin. It's autumn rush in the Tri Epsilon house, and…
the new pledge, Susan Mitchell-"Mitch" to her friends-trembles as the fastest girl on campus, the lovely Leda Taylor, crosses the room toward her for a dance. Will Leda corrupt Mitch? Or will the strong and silent Mitch draw the queen of Tri Ep into the forbidden world of Lesbian Love?Spring Fire was the first lesbian paperback novel and sold an amazing 1.5 million copies when it first appeared in 1952. It launched an entire genre of lesbian novels, as well as the writing career of Vin Packer, one of the pseudonyms of prolific author Marijane Meaker, whose acclaimed memoir, Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, told the story of her own forbidden love. Now available after forty years out of print, Spring Fire is both a vital part of lesbian history and a steamy page-turner.The Blacker the Ink
By John Jennings, Craig Fischer, Frances Gateward, Rebecca Wanzo, William Lafi Youmans, Kinohi Nishikawa, Blair Davis, Nancy Goldstein, Daniel F. Yezbick, Sally Mcwilliams, James J. Zeigler, Qiana Whitted, Reynaldo Anderson, Hershini Bhana Young, Robin Means Coleman, Patrick F. Walter, Consuela Francis, Andre Carrington. 2015
When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes. Perhaps,…
inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women). It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged. But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century. The Blacker the Ink is the first book to explore not only the diverse range of black characters in comics, but also the multitude of ways that black artists, writers, and publishers have made a mark on the industry. Organized thematically into "panels" in tribute to sequential art published in the funny pages of newspapers, the fifteen original essays take us on a journey that reaches from the African American newspaper comics of the 1930s to the Francophone graphic novels of the 2000s. Even as it demonstrates the wide spectrum of images of African Americans in comics and sequential art, the collection also identifies common character types and themes running through everything from the strip The Boondocks to the graphic novel Nat Turner. Though it does not shy away from examining the legacy of racial stereotypes in comics and racial biases in the industry, The Blacker the Ink also offers inspiring stories of trailblazing African American artists and writers. Whether you are a diehard comic book fan or a casual reader of the funny pages, these essays will give you a new appreciation for how black characters and creators have brought a vibrant splash of color to the world of comics.The Whole
By John Reed. 2005
From John Reed, author of the controversial Orwell parody,Snowball's Chance,comes a subversive satire of modern culture, the complete lack thereof,…
and a lost generation that no one even tried to look for. In the middle of America's heartland, a young boy digs a small hole in the ground. . . which grows into a big hole in the ground. . . which then proceeds to drag the boy, his parents, his dog, and most of their house into a deep void. Then, as abruptly as the hole started growing, it stops. So begins the first in a series of events that takes the beautiful-if-not-brainy Thing on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious Hole. Inspired by visions, signs, and an unlimited supply of pink cocktails served by an ever-lurking "Black Rabbit," Thing and her dogged production crew travel around America, encountering Satanists, an Extraterrestrial/Christian cult group, and a surprisingly helpful phone psychic. Their search for answers could very well decide the fate of the world as they know it. But the more Thing learns about the Hole, her shocking connection to it, and the mind-boggling destiny that awaits her, the more she realizes that human civilization isn't all it's cracked up to be -- and that it's just about time to start over.Women in the Shadows
By Ann Bannon. 2002
Designated the "Queen of Lesbian Pulp" for her landmark novels beginning in 1957, Ann Bannon's work defined lesbian fiction for…
the pre-Stonewall generation. Following the release of Cleis Press's new editions of Beebo Brinker and Odd Girl Out, Women in the Shadows picks up with Beebo's relationship with Laura waning, as both women become caught in the cultural tumult (gay bar raids, heavy drinking, gay rights advocacy) that anticipates by ten years the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969. New introduction explains the book's evolution, including the role Bannon's divorce played in shaping the lesbian protagonist's outrage.Anime Explosion!
By Patrick Drazen. 2002
An updated look at Japanese animation, and the manga that inspired them. New chapters on "Fullmetal Alchemist," manga/anime by CLAMP,…
and Satoshi Kon. It brings fans up to date on Studio Ghibli movies after the Academy Award-winning "Spirited Away," new titles like "Negima" and "Ouran High School Host Club," and breakthrough same-sex stories "Gravitation" and "Mother Mary is Watching."Beebo Brinker
By Ann Bannon. 1962
Ann Bannon was designated the "Queen of Lesbian Pulp" for authoring several landmark novels in the '50s. Unlike many writers…
of the period, however, Bannon broke through the shame and isolation typically portrayed in lesbian pulps, offering instead characters who embraced their sexuality. With Beebo Brinker, Bannon introduces a butch 17-year-old farm girl newly arrived in Beat-era Greenwich Village.Journey to a Woman
By Ann Bannon. 1960
Designated the "Queen of Lesbian Pulp" for her series of landmark novels beginning in 1957, Ann Bannon's work defined lesbian…
fiction for the pre-Stonewall generation. Following the release of Cleis Press's new editions of Beebo Brinker and Odd Girl Out, Journey to a Woman finds Laura in love among the lesbian bohemia of Greenwich Village.Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017
By Michael J. Blouin. 2018
Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 tracks the transformation of liberal thought in the contemporary United States…
through the unique lens of the popular paperback. The book focuses on cultural shifts as they appear in works written by some of the most widely-read authors of the last fifty years: the idea of love within a New Economy (Danielle Steel), the role of government in scientific inquiry (Michael Crichton), entangled political alliances and legacies in the aftermath of the 1960s (Tom Clancy), the restructured corporation (John Grisham), and the blurred line between state and personal empowerment (Dean Koontz). To address the current crisis, this book examines how the changed character of American liberalism has been rendered legible for a mass audience.Maverick Jetpants in The City of Quality: A Novel
By Bill Peters. 2012
". . . Bill Peters belongs in the ranks of serious literary artists."-New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice"By turns…
funny and moving, this debut richly captures life in a decaying American city."-Publishers Weekly"A complex and inventive debut, innovative with language and delightfully unique."-Largehearted Boy"Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality is Peters' energetic novelistic response to . . . the universal passage from adolescence to adulthood, the impermanence of friendship and familiar landscapes. . . Readers looking for a story about the slippery transition from silliness to sincerity will find in Maverick Jetpants a style to savor and get lost in."-HTML Giant"There were times, while reading Maverick Jetpants, I thought: This isn't a book. It's a panic attack. In a good way. In the way where everything about it is frantic and urgent."-Necessary Fiction"Peters has done something just this side of insane with this book; he's created a character that speaks in a voice everyone will recognize, even while half the words he says allude to things none of us were part of."-Bookslut"Peters proves himself adept at wordplay through the wildly inventive language of the characters."-The Coffin Factory"One of the most inventive novels published this year."-The Los Angeles Review"Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality announces the arrival of a powerful and innovative young voice in American fiction."-Literate Man"They aren't necessarily found in a prime spot in every writer's toolbox, but fictional private languages can be evocatively effective when used well. Bill Peters's novel Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality is one example of this."-Vol. 1 Brooklyn"With all the elements of the best coming-of-age novels, Maverick offers a voice and a story that could connect with someone of just about any age, as long as they have the appreciation for nimble, far out, and witty repartee."-ForeWord Reviews"Full of madcap energy, swagger, and brinksmanship."-Fiona Maazel, author of Last, Last Chance"Do you want laughter, suffering, and friendship, Rochester-style? Do you want to marinate in raucous sadness? I know you do. So be ready, everybody. Here comes the Vomit Cruiser to rescue your sense of humor, and Bill Peters to rescue your heart."-Sam Lipsyte, author of Homeland and Venus DriveRochester, New York, 1999: An arsonist is loose on the streets of a city in decline. Gone are the days of Rioting in the Vomit Cruiser, searching for a possible Tokyo Rocking Horse. In this hilarious, wildly original debut novel, Nathan Gray and best friend Necro live by the code of Joke Royalty, a system of in-jokes known only to a select few. But as the reality of full-time employment, possible spouses, and Neo-Nazis encroaches, their friendship unravels, threatening their dreams of becoming Kodak Park Winjas.Among the gravest Hellstacheries: Necro's strangely vicious drawings and his sudden interest in a group of weapons enthusiasts who may or may not be responsible for the fires erupting through downtown. With no Holy Grail Points left to his name, Nate ventures into Rochester's strangest corners to find out if his best friend is a domestic terrorist Pinning Bow Ties on the Dead or simply Maverick Jetpantsing on with his life-perhaps even beyond The City of Quality.Bill Peters grew up in Rochester, New York, and has received fiction fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the University of Massachusetts. He works as a copy editor for the New York Times News Service, the wire service for the New York Times, and lives in Gainesville, Florida. This is his first novel.Representing Acts of Violence in Comics (Routledge Advances in Comics Studies)
By Ian Gordon, Ian Hague, Nina Mickwitz. 2019
This book is part of a nuanced two-volume examination of the ways in which violence in comics is presented in…
different texts, genres, cultures and contexts. Representing Acts of Violence in Comics raises questions about depiction and the act of showing violence, and discusses the ways in which individual moments of violence develop, and are both represented and embodied in comics and graphic novels. Contributors consider the impact of gendered and sexual violence, and examine the ways in which violent acts can be rendered palatable (for example through humour) but also how comics can represent trauma and long lasting repercussions for both perpetrators and victims. This will be a key text and essential reference for scholars and students at all levels in Comics Studies, and Cultural and Media Studies more generally.Contexts of Violence in Comics (Routledge Advances in Comics Studies)
By Ian Gordon, Ian Hague, Nina Mickwitz. 2019
This book is part of a nuanced two-volume examination of the ways in which violence in comics is presented in…
different texts, genres, cultures and contexts. Contexts of Violence in Comics asks the reader to consider the ways in which violence and its representations may be enabled or restricted by the contexts in which they take place. It analyzes how structures and organising principles, be they cultural, historical, legal, political or spatial, might encourage, demand or prevent violence. It deals with the issue of scale: violence in the context of war versus violence in the context of an individual murder, and provides insights into the context of war and peace, ethnic and identity-based violence, as well as examining issues of justice and memory. This will be a key text and essential reference for scholars and students at all levels in Comics Studies, and Cultural and Media Studies more generally.Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan
By Patrick W. Galbraith. 2019
From computer games to figurines and maid cafes, men called &“otaku&” develop intense fan relationships with &“cute girl&” characters from…
manga, anime, and related media and material in contemporary Japan. While much of the Japanese public considers the forms of character love associated with &“otaku&” to be weird and perverse, the Japanese government has endeavored to incorporate &“otaku&” culture into its branding of &“Cool Japan.&” In Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, Patrick W. Galbraith explores the conflicting meanings of &“otaku&” culture and its significance to Japanese popular culture, masculinity, and the nation. Tracing the history of &“otaku&” and &“cute girl&” characters from their origins in the 1970s to his recent fieldwork in Akihabara, Tokyo (&“the Holy Land of Otaku&”), Galbraith contends that the discourse surrounding &“otaku&” reveals tensions around contested notions of gender, sexuality, and ways of imagining the nation that extend far beyond Japan. At the same time, in their relationships with characters and one another, &“otaku&” are imagining and creating alternative social worlds.This book foregrounds the figure of the perpetrator in a selection of British, American, and Canadian comics and explores questions…
related to remembrance, justice, and historical debt. Its primary focus is on works that deliberately estrange the figure of the perpetrator—through fantasy, absurdism, formal ambiguity, or provocative rewriting—and thus allow readers to engage anew with the history of genocide, mass murder, and sexual violence. This book is particularly interested in the ethical space such an engagement calls into being: in its ability to allow us to ponder the privilege many of us now enjoy, the gross historical injustices that have secured it, and the debt we owe to people long dead.EW The Ultimate Guide to Stephen King
By The Editors of Entertainment Weekly. 2019
Constructing the Adolescent Reader in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction (Critical Approaches to Children's Literature)
By Elisabeth Rose Gruner. 2019
This book examines the way young adult readers are constructed in a variety of contemporary young adult fictions, arguing that…
contemporary young adult novels depict readers as agents. Reading, these novels suggest, is neither an unalloyed good nor a dangerous ploy, but rather an essential, occasionally fraught, by turns escapist and instrumental, deeply pleasurable, and highly contentious activity that has value far beyond the classroom skills or the specific content it conveys. After an introductory chapter that examines the state of reading and young adult fiction today, the book examines novels that depict reading in school, gendered and racialized reading, reading magical and religious books, and reading as a means to developing civic agency. These examinations reveal that books for teens depict teen readers as doers, and suggest that their ability to read deeply, critically, and communally is crucial to the development of adolescent agency.British Detective Fiction 1891–1901: The Successors to Sherlock Holmes (Crime Files)
By Clare Clarke. 2020
This book examines the developments in British serial detective fiction which took place in the seven years when Sherlock Holmes…
was dead. In December 1893, at the height of Sherlock’s popularity with the Strand Magazine’s worldwide readership, Arthur Conan Doyle killed off his detective. At the time, he firmly believed that Holmes would not be resurrected. This book introduces and showcases a range of Sherlock’s most fascinating successors, exploring the ways in which a huge range of popular magazines and newspapers clamoured to ensnare Sherlock’s bereft fans. The book’s case-study format examines a range of detective series-- created by L.T. Meade; C.L. Pirkis; Arthur Morrison; Fergus Hume; Richard Marsh; Kate and Vernon Hesketh-Prichard— that filled the pages of a variety of periodicals, from plush monthly magazines to cheap newspapers, in the years while Sherlock was dead. Readers will be introduced to an array of detectives—professional and amateur, male and female, old and young; among them a pawn-shop worker, a scientist, a British aristocrat, a ghost-hunter. The study of these series shows that there was life after Sherlock and proves that there is much to learn about the development of the detective genre from the successors to Sherlock Holmes.“In this brilliant, incisive study of late Victorian detective fiction, Clarke emphatically shows us there is life beyond Sherlock Holmes. Rich in contextual detail and with her customary eye for the intricacies of publishing history, Clarke’s wonderfully accessible book brings to the fore a collection of hitherto neglected writers simultaneously made possible but pushed to the margins by Conan Doyle’s most famous creation.” — Andrew Pepper,, Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature, Queen's University, Belfast Professor Clarke's superb new book, British Detective : The Successors to Sherlock Holmes, is required reading for anyone interested in Victorian crime and detective fiction. Building on her award-winning first monograph, Late-Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock, Dr. Clarke further explores the history of serial detective fiction published after the "death" of Conan Doyle's famous detective in 1893. This is a path-breaking book that advances scholarship in the field of late-Victorian detective fiction while at the same time introducing non-specialist readers to a treasure trove of stories that indeed rival the Sherlock Holmes series in their ability to puzzle and entertain the most discerning reader. — Alexis Easley, Professor of English, University of St.Paul, MinnesotaTransgressing Death in Japanese Popular Culture
By Miguel Cesar. 2020
This book focuses on the theme of the transgression of life and death boundaries through its representation in Japanese contemporary…
visual media, more specifically in the manga Fullmetal Alchemist, the animated film Journey to Agartha, and the computer game Shadow of the Colossus. By addressing how the theme was constructed by three different media and what these texts say about it, the book focuses on the narrativization of Japanese ontological anxieties. The book argues that, although these texts deal with matters of afterlife through fantasy worlds, the content of their stories, the archetypes of their characters, and their existential journeys echo contextually-situated conversations. Matters of gender, societal structure and, most of all, the tensions between individuality and sociocentrism not only permeate but structure the interrogation of our relation to the afterlife. This book stands to contribute significantly to media studies, literary studies, and Japanese studies.Transnational Crime Fiction: Mobility, Borders and Detection (Crime Files)
By Maarit Piipponen, Helen Mäntymäki, Marinella Rodi-Risberg. 2020
Focusing on contemporary crime narratives from different parts of the world, this collection of essays explores the mobility of crimes,…
criminals and investigators across social, cultural and national borders. The essays argue that such border crossings reflect on recent sociocultural transformations and geopolitical anxieties to create an image of networked and interconnected societies where crime is not easily contained. The book further analyses crime texts’ wider sociocultural and affective significance by examining the global mobility of the genre itself across cultures, languages and media. Underlining the global reach and mobility of the crime genre, the collection analyses types and representations of mobility in literary and visual crime narratives, inviting comparisons between texts, crimes and mobilities in a geographically diverse context. The collection ultimately understands mobility as an object of study and a critical lens through which transformations in our globalised world can be examined.