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An anthology of the works of American expatriate author Paul Bowles (1910-1999). Includes The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950),…
A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (1962), Things Gone and Things Still Here (1977), Midnight Mass (1981), and more. Edited by Daniel Halpern. Some strong language. 2002Not without laughter
By Langston Hughes. 1995
Steel city love song: extraordinary moments in ordinary lives
By Ann McKenna Fromm. 2007
Honors the author's city Pittsburgh and her family in dramatic stories about family members, doctors, paramedics, and ordinary Pittsburghers. Demonstrating…
insight and compassion, these articles are a "moving tribute to the human spirit."Blueberry summers: growing up at the lake
By Curtiss Anderson. 2008
In this classic story of a midwestern boyhood, Curtiss Anderson takes readers into the colorful lives of his robust Norwegian…
family and their wonderfully familiar summerscape in northern Minnesota: the lake place. Sweet childhood reminiscences comprise this coming-of-age memoir set in the poignant summers of the 1930s and '40sThe polished hoe: a novel
By Austin Clarke. 2003
Award-winning novel set on a small Caribbean island, mid-twentieth century. Mary-Mathilda, servant and mistress of the village's plantation owner, summons…
detective Percy Stuart to confess to murder. Her nightlong statement, complicated by Percy's romantic feelings, reveals a sordid history. Explicit descriptions of sex, strong language, and some violence. 2003Tell my horse: voodoo and life in Haiti and Jamaica
By Zora Neale Hurston. 1990
Travelog and description of Neo-African religious practices based on the author's personal experiences in 1930s Haiti and Jamaica. Covers anthropology,…
natural history, and politics of these countries. Discusses the main Voodoo deities, ceremonies, and the strange phenomenon of possession. 1938. 1938Family
By Ian Frazier. 1994
While going through his parents' belongings after their deaths, Frazier found letters dating back to the time of the Civil…
War. Realizing he knew very little about his family's history, Frazier began research that took him back through two hundred years of middle-class life in small-town America and revealed how his forebears were affected by the social, economic, and domestic events in historyAnna and the King of Siam: Commemorative Edition
By Margaret Landon. 1997
Anna Leonowens, a Welsh widow hired in 1862 to be governess to the children and concubines of the king of…
Siam, found the contrasts between the exotic Orient and Victorian Great Britain striking. Landon recounts Leonowen's five years of adventures and confrontations. This book inspired the Broadway musical The King and IThe narrowing stream
By John Mortimer. 1989
Swinton is off to work leaving his wife, Julia, to get on with her care of the house and their…
three children. Suddenly little Sam reveals that there is a strange man in the boathouse. And soon Julia learns that this appealing person is the brother of Molly Paneth, a well-known actress who has just been found dead on a houseboat. When Swinton's cigarette case is found in Molly's bedroom, the situation becomes even more disturbingTrees of heaven
By Jesse Stuart. 1980
First published in 1940, this tale set in a corner of the Kentucky mountains, focuses on Anse Bushman who rents…
land to a shiftless squatter, Boliver Tussie. Anse offers Boliver a contract forbidding whiskey-making, fishing, frolics, and immoral conduct on pain of eviction and confiscation of crops. Boliver accepts the contract but has many difficulties adhering to it. 1940Nine short stories set in Hawaii featuring the nuanced voices and interior lives of housewives, mechanics, cabdrivers, aging hippies, and…
bargirls. The worlds of Pak's Hawaiians, Asian locals, and the haoles sometimes intersect and collide and other times remain parallel, but each world is haunted by the past. Whether Pak evokes shadows of World War II, the Vietnam War, the radical 60's, or the military dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan in Korea, the larger historical context looms ominously in the background. Contains explicit descriptions of sexCrafty bastards: beer in New England from the Mayflower to modern day
By Lauren Clark. 2014
This Bitter Earth
By Mcfadden, Bernice L.. 2002
In This Bitter Earth, Sugar Lacey is on her way out of Bigelow, Arkansas, where she’d come to break with…
the past. With her worn leopard-print suitcase and her head held high, she walks past the prying eyes of its small-minded, cruel-hearted townsfolk, praying for the strength to keep going. She doesn’t stop until she arrives at her childhood home in Short Junction. Here she learns the truth about her parentage: a terrible tale of unrequited love, of one man’s enduring hatred, and of the black magic that has cursed generations of Lacey women. A powerfully realized novel that brings back the unforgettable characters from Sugar, McFadden’s bestselling debut, This Bitter Earth is a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. .The Itch
By Benilde Little. 1998
From the author of the smashing debut bestseller Good Hair comes The Itch, the stirring story of a crisis-torn woman…
who discovers a depth of character and a sense of self she never knew she possessed.Abra Lewis Dixon is the envy of the fashionable, professional women of her well-heeled social circle. She leads a charmed life -- having attended all the right schools, married the right man, and started a successful film production company with her best friend, Natasha Coleman -- and seems like an ambassador from the world of perfection. It is only when her impeccable marriage turns suddenly shaky that her utopia is left in pieces.Gospel Choirs
By Derrick A. Bell. 1996
Just like the songs of a gospel choir, the pieces in this book give voice to the hardships faced by…
African Americans. Through allegorical stories and fictional encounters, dreams and dialogues, it presents fresh perspectives on the different issues that concern blacks. Despite their tough subjects, however, these stories resound with laughter and compassion and a continuing theme of Christian love.Between Father and Son
By Eric V. Copage. 2011
Thirteen-year-old Jordan Garrison is at a crossroads. He's just about to enter high school, and his biggest worries are his…
new bottom-of-the-totem-pole status as an incoming freshman and his father's constant lectures about becoming a man. Growing further apart from his younger siblings-precocious eight-year-old twins-Jordan thinks his only ally is his grandmother, a hip sixty-two-year-old with a youthful glow that comforts Jordan, especially in the absence of his mother. But when his widowed father suddenly dies, Jordan finds the journey through puberty to adulthood all the more daunting. He feels alone despite the best efforts of his family and friends. He is resentful and confused about new responsibilities forced on him, and torn between acting with his heart or fulfilling the expectations of those around him. A mysterious neighborhood shopkeeper, Snackman, notices Jordan's dilemma and steps in as surely as Jordan's own father would have. He offers Jordan a dirty strip of kente cloth, which he says contains the answers to Jordan's problems. And through this strip of cloth, Snackman guides Jordan to the answer of what it is to be a Black man. But not before Jordan meets with an almost disastrous fire and realizes his true importance to his family. Dazzling and magical, Between Father and Son is a heartening story with a powerful message that adults and children alike will turn to time and time again.The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales
By Charles W. Chesnutt, Richard H. Brodhead. 1993
The stories in The Conjure Woman were Charles W. Chesnutt's first great literary success, and since their initial publication in…
1899 they have come to be seen as some of the most remarkable works of African American literature from the Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance. Lesser known, though, is that the The Conjure Woman, as first published by Houghton Mifflin, was not wholly Chesnutt's creation but a work shaped and selected by his editors. This edition reassembles for the first time all of Chesnutt's work in the conjure tale genre, the entire imaginative feat of which the published Conjure Woman forms a part. It allows the reader to see how the original volume was created, how an African American author negotiated with the tastes of the dominant literary culture of the late nineteenth century, and how that culture both promoted and delimited his work.In the tradition of Uncle Remus, the conjure tale listens in on a poor black southerner, speaking strong dialect, as he recounts a local incident to a transplanted northerner for the northerner's enlightenment and edification. But in Chesnutt's hands the tradition is transformed. No longer a reactionary flight of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the stories in this book celebrate and at the same time question the folk culture they so pungently portray, and ultimately convey the pleasures and anxieties of a world in transition. Written in the late nineteenth century, a time of enormous growth and change for a country only recently reunited in peace, these stories act as the uneasy meeting ground for the culture of northern capitalism, professionalism, and Christianity and the underdeveloped southern economy, a kind of colonial Third World whose power is manifest in life charms, magic spells, and ha'nts, all embodied by the ruling figure of the conjure woman.Humorous, heart-breaking, lyrical, and wise, these stories make clear why the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt has continued to captivate audiences for a century.Blind Ambitions
By Lolita Files. 2000
Hollywood. The place people go to fulfill their dreams. But its reality is a cruel one: Opportunities are few and…
the competition ruthless. Innocent hearts can suddenly turn dark, and the most loyal of friends can become bitter enemies. Desi, Sharon, and Bettina are three black women struggling to make names for themselves amid the glitz, glamour, and deception. Before the women can be swept away by the intrigue and intensity of the entertainment industry, they must answer the desperate calls from the ghosts of their pasts....But if they do, will the shadows of infidelity, abandonment, and murder destroy everything they've worked for?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 Strange Truth About Us
By M.A.C. Farrant. 2011
This tell-all book by M.A.C. Farrant, whom Publishers Weekly has celebrated as "a brave iconoclast" and whose work the Globe…
& Mail has said "bristles with moral fury ... at the absurdities of our accelerated age and a great dose of laugh-out-loud humour," offers her readers nothing less than The Strange Truth About Us.A three-part novel-length work of prose fragments, snippets, questions, speculations, and meditations, by turns philosophical, dark, comedic, and lyrical, it attempts to imagine a multitude of possible futures for our garrisoned world."Annotations About an Absence" is a series of 115 numbered annotations to the day-long ruminations of a retired couple living in a gated community attempting to create an imaginary novel in which they express their fears about the future: "We attempt to express the universal confusion of mind that is the main feature of contemporary life. Which is? We are afraid.""Woman Records Brief Notes Regarding Absence" is written as a series of notes to these annotations, providing (in the utterly blank spirit of transparency) a running satiric narrative on the project. Each of these "notes" is written as if it were a description of a late-night TV movie or the content of a wet Jehovah's Witness pamphlet left on a woman's doorstep that has taken hold of her mind."Other Prose Surrounding Absence" comprises twenty-seven prose pieces that take aim at a globalized world bludgeoned by the threat of "end times"-climate change, species extinction, pandemics, and really bad politics-that seem designed insofar as we are able to retain our status as "individuals."Unique in style and approach, engaging, enigmatic, controversial, and delightful, this book is an attempt to prick the bubble of our complacency in the face of the "awful atrocity" we've made for ourselves.