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Amazing Abe: How Abraham Cahan's Newspaper Gave a Voice to Jewish Immigrants
By Norman H. Finkelstein. 2024
A loving tribute to a towering figure in Jewish American history from two award-winning creators.Two-time National Jewish Book Award winner…
Norman H. Finkelstein and Sydney Taylor Award winner Vesper Stamper have teamed up to tell the story of Abraham Cahan, the founder and longtime editor of the Yiddish language newspaper the Forverts (the Forward), which, in its heyday, was one of the largest newspapers in the United States. As the saying went: "What's a home without the Forverts?"From explaining voting rights to the importance of public health measures to everyday questions like how to play baseball, Cahan improved the lives of countless newly arrived Jewish immigrants who wanted to feel at home in a new, strange land. He also published celebrated writers such as Isaac Bashevis Singer and created the iconic advice column the Bintel Brief for homesick readers.Back matter includes a bibliography, a time line, more info on Cahan's life and the Yiddish language, and a note on the author's personal connection to the Forverts.The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers
By Hollis Robbins, Henry Louis Gates Jr.. 2017
A landmark collection documenting the social, political, and artistic lives of African American women throughout the tumultuous nineteenth century. Named…
one of NPR's Best Books of 2017. The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind: an extraordinary range of voices offering the expressions of African American women in print before, during, and after the Civil War. Edited by Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this collection comprises work from forty-nine writers arranged into sections of memoir, poetry, and essays on feminism, education, and the legacy of African American women writers. Many of these pieces engage with social movements like abolition, women&’s suffrage, temperance, and civil rights, but the thematic center is the intellect and personal ambition of African American women. The diverse selection includes well-known writers like Sojourner Truth, Hannah Crafts, and Harriet Jacobs, as well as lesser-known writers like Ella Sheppard, who offers a firsthand account of life in the world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. Taken together, these incredible works insist that the writing of African American women writers be read, remembered, and addressed. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.My hands sing the blues: Romare Bearden's childhood journey
By Jeanne Walker Harvey. 2011
As a young boy growing up in North Carolina, Romare Bearden listened to his great-grandmother's Cherokee stories and heard the…
whistle of the train that took his people to the North people who wanted to be free. When Romare and his family, faced with Jim Crow laws, boarded that same train, he watched out the window as the world whizzed by. Later he captured those scenes in a famous painting, Watching the Good Trains Go By. Using that painting as inspiration and creating a text influenced by the blues and jazz that Bearden loved, Jeanne Walker Harvey tells the story of Bearden's children by describing the patchwork of daily southern life that Romare saw out the train's window and the story of his arrival in shimmering New York City. Artists and critics today praise Bearden's collages for their visual metaphors honoring his past, African American culture, and the human experience. 2011. For grades K-3The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.
By Gina B. Nahai. 2014
Longlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary AwardFinalist for the Jewish Book Council's 2014 JJ Greenberg Memorial Award"Lyrical, shrewd, and…
daring novelist Nahai...writes with acute emotional and nearly anthropological perception, laser-wit, and deep compassion....With touches of magic realism, extraordinary characters, and a spiraling, multigenerational plot involving fraud, a murder mystery, epic suffering, heroic generosity, women's struggle for freedom, and the clash between East and West, Nahai's mythic, tragic, often beautiful immigrant family saga illuminates timeless questions of prejudice, trauma, inheritance, loyalty, and love."--Booklist, Starred review"A riveting tale....Readers will be well rewarded."--Publishers Weekly, Starred review"A wide-ranging, page-turning, magical realist, multigenerational family saga and Iranian-Jewish-American immigration tale enveloped in a murder mystery...it both entertains and instructs, and its differing genres seem more complimentary than conflicting."--New York Journal of Books"Nahai has crafted an engaging combination of family saga and murder mystery, placed it in the framework of a relatively unknown subculture, and people it with fascinating characters. Flavored with both elements of magical realism and down-to-earth observations, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. brings a little-known Los Angeles community to vivid life."--Shelf Awareness"What results is a novel that feels more universal than anything, and an engrossing, expansive epic that charts not only thousands years of Iranian Jewish life, but the brutality of one family's survival amidst revolution and cultural upheaval."--Kirkus Reviews, Feature on Gina B. Nahai"A bold, brave novel...as surprising as it is satisfying....Captivating."--Forbes"One of the many pleasures of this sprawling, multigenerational story is the way it transcends the specifics of the Iranian diaspora with insights that could apply to anyone."--LA Weekly"One of Nahai's gifts is her astute observation of this community, her own, which she describes with unsparing precision."--Los Angeles Review of Books"The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is a masterpiece that is simultaneously poetic in its unfurling, trans-generational plot, and brutally to the point in the style of a hard-boiled crime novel...This is a book you should not miss."--San Francisco Book Review"Nahai's eye for detail, whether it's succinctly summing up a funeral or providing a description of a Tehran summer, always seems to be spot on."--PopMatters"An intriguing murder-mystery journey anchored within the Iranian-Jewish community of Los Angeles. Vivid and raw...Nahai masterfully introduces us to the mythical and mundane layers that make up Iranian-American identity."--Washington Independent Review of Books"This is irresistible storytelling...Nahai uses her estimable gifts to offer a nuanced, sometimes satirical portrait of the tight-knit Iranian-Jewish exile community in Los Angeles...It's a fascinating read."--BookPageFrom Tehran to Los Angeles, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is a sweeping saga that tells the story of the Soleymans, an Iranian Jewish family tormented for decades by Raphael's Son, a crafty and unscrupulous financier who has futilely claimed to be an heir to the family's fortune. Forty years later in contemporary Los Angeles, Raphael's Son has nearly achieved his goal--until he suddenly disappears, presumed by many to have been murdered. The possible suspects are legion: his long-suffering wife; numerous members of the Soleyman clan exacting revenge; the scores of investors he bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme; or perhaps even his disgruntled bookkeeper and longtime confidant.Award-winning novelist Gina B. Nahai pulls back the curtain on a close-knit community that survived centuries of persecution in Iran before settling and thriving in the United States, but now finds itself divided to the core by one of its own members. By turns hilarious andA Student of History
By Nina Revoyr. 2019
"Revoyr is gifted in her ability to deal with complex ideas like racism, class conflict, and sexuality without sacrificing the…
truth of her narrative. Furthermore, like the most adroit novelists, Revoyr specializes in reversal. All of her books are filled with suspense and sudden surprises that take the stories in unexpected directions...As much as Nina Revoyr herself is a student of history, she's also one of our best teachers."--Los Angeles Review of Books"Revoyr's latest noir tells a story that's somewhere between Sunset Boulevard and the darker regions of The Great Gatsby...Revoyr is a subtle observer of human foibles and social structures, and the result is one of the most insightful, and the most entertaining books of the year."--Literary Hub, one of Lit Hub's 50 Favorite Books of 2019"A Student of History is full of research, detail, lush descriptions, and visual place-setting. [Revoyr's] a fiction writer with an eye for reality set in a dream-like world, often in her home city of Los Angeles."--The Rumpus"Any Nina Revoyr novel is a cause for celebration, and her latest, A Student of History, is assured and marvelous, an absorbing rags among riches tale about a broke USC grad student who finds himself swept off his feet by Los Angeles's insular, powerful .01% class. It's a contemporary novel that feels like an instant classic, with the wry tragedy of The House of Mirth, the sinister glamour of Sunset Boulevard, and a fresh, original point of view."--CrimeReads"With a nod to Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, Rick Nagano is Nick Carraway and young Pip rolled into one...Lambda Award–winner Revoyr focuses on the impact of race in the construct of class and society, and how there are some doors that will always remain closed."--The Advocate"Nina Revyor's new novel, A Student of History, continues the tradition of the Los Angeles oil novel, but steers it in a new direction."--Rain Taxi Review of Books"With her two Walter Mosley-like gifts--impeccable narrative pacing and masterful command of Los Angeles' intricate, evolving dynamics of race and class--Nina Revoyr's LA novels convincingly capture the lifespan of Los Angeles as a major city, none more gracefully than A Student of History."--New York Journal of BooksRick Nagano is a graduate student in the history department at USC, struggling to make rent on his South Los Angeles apartment near the neighborhood where his family once lived. When he lands a job as a research assistant for the elderly Mrs. W--, the heir to an oil fortune, he sees it at first simply as a source of extra cash. But as he grows closer to the iconoclastic, charming, and feisty Mrs. W--, he gets drawn into a world of privilege and wealth far different from his racially mixed, blue-collar beginnings.Putting aside his half-finished dissertation, Rick sets up office in Mrs. W--'s grand Bel Air mansion and begins to transcribe her journals--which document an old Los Angeles not described in his history books. He also accompanies Mrs. W-- to venues frequented by the descendants of the land and oil barons who built the city. One evening, at an event, he meets Fiona Morgan--the elegant scion of an old steel family--who takes an interest in his studies. Irresistibly drawn to Fiona, he agrees to help her with a project of questionable merit in the hopes he'll win her favor.A Student of History explores both the beginnings of Los Angeles and the present-day dynamics of race and class. It offers a window into the usually hidden world of high society, and the influence of historic families on current events. Like Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, it features, in Rick Nagano, a young man of modest means who is navigating a world where he doesn't belong.Hope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachusetts: Or, Early Times In The Massachusetts (American Women Writers Ser.)
By Catharine Maria Sedgwick. 1987
Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in history. At…
the heart of the story is a cross-cultural friendship between Hope-Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society and Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief. It challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and claims for women their rightful place in history. Adult. UnratedTalking to the enemy: stories
By Avner Mandelman. 2005
Nine stories about the Israeli experience. In "Terror" a father beats the son who fails to stand up for his…
five-year-old brother, thus instilling the precept that, right or wrong, family comes first, even before justice or fear. Strong language and some violence. Sophie Brody Medal. 2005Performance at the Urban Periphery: Insights from South India (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
By Anindya Sinha, Sharada Srinivasan, Jerri Daboo, Cathy Turner. 2022
This edited volume considers performance in its engagement with expanding Indian cities, with a particular focus on festivals and performances…
in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The editors ask how performance practices are affected by urbanisation, the effects of such changes on their cultural economy, and the environmental impacts of performance itself. This project also considers how performance responds to its context, and the potential for performance to be critical of the city’s development, and of its own compromises. Bringing together perspectives from the humanities, natural and social sciences, the book takes a multi-faceted analytical view of live performance, connecting contemporary with heritage forms, and human with more-than-human actors. The three sections, themed around heritage, everyday life, and future ecologies, will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance, heritage studies, ecology and art history.The Crooked Line (Women Writing The Middle East Ser.)
By Tahira Naqvi, Ismat Chughtai. 1995
In India's colonial past, in a time of political and social revolution, Ismat Chughtai masterfully unfolds her magna opus, The…
Crooked Line: the semi-autobiographical tale of a fiery-spirited, middle-class Muslim girl bent on exploring the shape and nature of consuming desire. Writing with the same honesty and passion as her scandalous short-story, "The Quilt," Chughtai exposes the complex relationships developed between women living and working in relative seclusion, and the intellectual and emotional contradictions lying in the heart of a rebellious country on the brink of independence from the British Raj and ultimately Partition.Tehran at Twilight
By Salar Abdoh. 2014
"Abdoh paints a gripping portrait of a nation awash in violence and crippled by corruption....Captivating."--Publishers WeeklyIncluded Library Journal's "Books That…
Buzzed at BEA" Roundup, the first word on titles and trends from Barbara Hoffert, EditorIncluded in Publishers Weekly's Fall Preview (Literary Fiction)"Abdoh deftly captures the uneasy atmosphere of 2008 Tehran, swirling with betrayal and corruption."--Library Journal, Books for the Masses/Editors' Picks BEA 2014"Tehran at Twilight is a remarkable meditation on violence, and on all the ways one bears witness to pain...At the center lies the story of two friends whose paths have diverged, and of love restored between a mother and a son. A smart, eloquent novel."--Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz"Connecting the dots of the shadow lives of Iranian, American, and Iranian American double and triple agents, and their double and triple stories in Iran and Manhattan, Baghdad and Berkeley, Abdoh also tells a tale of mothers and sons, using espionage for infrared insight into concealed identities. The startling truth embedded in this tight novel: We Are All Iranians."--Brad Gooch, author of City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara"Tehran--bloated, capricious, corrupt, and with its various secret police agencies competing against one another--becomes a ripe setting for this roman noir...Move over Scandinavia: there's a new kid on the noir block."--Hooman Majd, author of The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay"A smart political thriller for our modern times."--Laila Lalami, author of Secret SonThe year is 2008. Reza Malek's life is modest but manageable--he lives in a small apartment in Harlem, teaches "creative reportage" at a local university, and is relieved to be far from the blood and turmoil of Iraq and Afghanistan where he worked as a reporter, interpreter, and sometime lover for a superstar journalist who has long since moved on to more remarkable men.After a terse phone call from his best friend in Iran, Sina Vafa, Reza reluctantly returns to Tehran. Once there, he finds far more than he bargained for: the city is on the edge of revolution; his friend Sina is embroiled with Shia militants; his missing mother, who was alleged to have run off with a lover before the revolution, is alive and well--while his own life is in danger.Against a backdrop of corrupt clerics, shady fixers, political repression, and the ever-present threat of violence, Abdoh offers a telling glimpse into contemporary Tehran, and spins a compelling morality tale of identity and exile, the bonds of friendship, and the limits of loyalty.A day for rememberin': inspired by the true events of the first Memorial Day
By Leah Henderson, Floyd Cooper. 2021
Today is a special day. Eli knows it's important if he's allowed to miss one second of school, his "hard-earned…
right." Inspired by true events and told through the eyes of a young boy, this is the deeply moving story about what is regarded as the first Memorial Day on May 1, 1865. Eli dresses up in his best clothes, Mama gathers the mayflowers, Papa straightens his hat, and together they join the crowds filling the streets of Charleston, South Carolina, with bouquets, crosses, and wreaths. Abolitionists, missionaries, teachers, military officers, and a sea of faces Black, Brown, and White, they march as one and sing for all those who gave their lives fighting for freedom during the Civil War. With poignant prose and celebratory, powerful illustrations, A Day for Rememberin' shines light on the little-known history of this important holiday and reminds us never to forget the people who put their lives on the line for their country. For grades K-3The Hamilton Affair: A Novel
By Elizabeth Cobbs. 2016
A New York Times Bestseller and one of the best historical fiction books of 2016 and 2017!“A juicy answer to…
Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton…” --CosmopolitanSet against the dramatic backdrop of the American Revolution, and featuring a cast of legendary characters, The Hamilton Affair tells the sweeping, tumultuous, true story of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, from passionate and tender beginnings of their romance to his fateful duel on the banks of the Hudson River.Hamilton was a bastard and orphan, raised in the Caribbean and desperate for legitimacy, who became one of the American Revolution's most dashing--and improbable--heroes. Admired by George Washington, scorned by Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton was a lightning rod: the most controversial leader of the new nation. Elizabeth was the wealthy, beautiful, adventurous daughter of the respectable Schuyler clan--and a pioneering advocate for women. Together, the unlikely couple braved the dangers of war, the perils of seduction, the anguish of infidelity, and the scourge of partisanship that menaced their family and the country itself.With flawless writing, brilliantly drawn characters, and epic scope, The Hamilton Affair tells a story of love forged in revolution and tested by the bitter strife of young America, and will take its place among the greatest novels of American history ever written.The Samurai of Seville: A Novel
By John J. Healey. 2016
A sumptuous novel inspired by one of history’s most intriguing forgotten chapters—the arrival of Japanese Samurai on the shores of…
Europe.In 1614, twenty-two Samurai warriors and a group of tradesmen from Japan sailed to Spain, where they initiated one of the most intriguing cultural exchanges in history. They were received with pomp and circumstance, first by King Philip III and later by Pope Paul V. They were the first Japanese to visit Europe and they caused a sensation. They remained for two years and then most of the party returned to Japan; however, six of the Samurai stayed behind, settling in a small fishing village close to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where their descendants live to this day. Healey imbues this tale of the meeting of East and West with uncommon emotional and intellectual intensity and a rich sense of place. He explores the dueling mentalities of two cultures through a singular romance; the sophisticated, restrained warrior culture of Japan and the baroque sensibilities of Renaissance Spain, dark and obsessed with ethnic cleansing. What one culture lives with absolute normality is experienced as exotic from the outsider’s eye. Everyone is seen as strange at first and then—with growing familiarity—is revealed as being more similar than originally perceived, but with the added value of enduring idiosyncrasies.The story told in this novel is an essential and timeless one about the discoveries and conflicts that arise from the forging of relationships across borders, both geographical and cultural.The General's Cook: A Novel
By Ganeshram Ramin. 2018
Philadelphia 1793. Hercules, President George Washington’s chef, is a fixture on the Philadelphia scene. He is famous for both his…
culinary prowess and for ruling his kitchen like a commanding general. He has his run of the city and earns twice the salary of an average American workingman. He wears beautiful clothes and attends the theater. But while valued by the Washingtons for his prowess in the kitchen and rewarded far over and above even white servants, Hercules is enslaved in a city where most black Americans are free. Even while he masterfully manages his kitchen and the lives of those in and around it, Hercules harbors secrets-- including the fact that he is learning to read and that he is involved in a dangerous affair with Thelma, a mixed-race woman, who, passing as white, works as a companion to the daughter of one of Philadelphia's most prestigious families. Eventually Hercules’ carefully crafted intrigues fall apart and he finds himself trapped by his circumstance and the will of George Washington. Based on actual historical events and people, The General's Cook, will thrill fans of The Hamilton Affair, as they follow Hercules' precarious and terrifying bid for freedom.No-no boy (Classics of Asian American Literature)
By John Okada. 1981
A 25-year-old man returns home to Seattle after spending two years in an internment camp for being Japanese-American, and another…
two years in prison for refusing to join the United States Army during World War II. 1976The Bangalore Detectives Club (The Bangalore Detectives Club Series)
By Harini Nagendra. 2022
Murder and mayhem . . . monsoon season is coming. Solving crimes isn't easy. Add a jealous mother-in-law and having…
to wear a flowing sari into the mix, and you've got a problem. When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of the party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace—and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene. When a vulnerable woman is connected to the crime, Kaveri becomes determined to save her and launches a private investigation to find the killer, tracing his steps from an illustrious brothel to an Englishman's mansion. She soon finds that sleuthing in a sari isn't as hard as it seems when you have a talent for maths, a head for logic and a doctor for a husband. And she's going to need them all as the case leads her deeper into a hotbed of danger, sedition and intrigue in Bangalore's darkest alleyways . . ..Extraordinary Hispanic Americans (Extraordinary People Ser.)
By Susan Sinnott. 1991
Outlines the lives of Hispanics who figure prominently in United States history. The book is divided into five parts titled…
"An Age of Exploration," "Early Hispanic America," "America from Sea to Sea," "The Twentieth Century," and "Looking toward the Twenty-first Century." Included are profiles of Hernando de Soto, Diego de Vargas, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, Desi Arnaz, Rita Moreno, and Roberto Clemente. For grades 5-8 and older readersFarewell to Manzanar: a true story of Japanese American experience during and after the World War II internment (Bantam Starfire Book)
By Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Jeanne Houston, James D. Houston. 1974
A group of one
By Rachna Gilmore. 2001
Fifteen-year-old Tara Mehta's life is turned upside down when her grandmother visits from India. Naniji disapproves of the family's Canadian…
lifestyle and feminist mother. But Tara also learns of her heritage and Naniji's involvement in Gandhi's peace movement. Some strong language. For junior and senior high readers. 2001Black, blue & gray: African Americans in the Civil War
By James Haskins, Jim Haskins. 1998
Examines the gradual acceptance of African American soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War. Includes excerpts…
from letters, documented accounts, and government transcripts. The last chapter describes how historians for many years ignored the role of African American troops in the war. For grades 5-8