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Essays

  • Author:
    Polson, Thor
    Summary:

    Franz Kafka's writings are characterized by an extreme sensitivity manifested in absurdity, alienation, and gallows humor. These two particular collections of short pieces, A Country Doctor (1919) and A Hunger Artist (1924), newly translated by Thor Polson, represent later works in the corpus. Poems and Songs of Love is a translation of the collection Piyyutim ve-Shirei Yedidot by Georg Mordechai Langer. Published in Prague in 1929, it contains an elegy to Langer's friend and mentor Franz Kafka, and other openly homo-romantic poems. This collaborative translation by Elana and Menachem Wolff brings the fascinating work of Langer--poems as well as an essay on Kafka--to the English-reading public for the first time, and sheds light on a hitherto unexamined relationship.

  • Author:
    Summary:

    A unique collection of narratives from women from all around the globe. These are stories of compassion and bravery, empowered by the vision of a better world for all life. They emphasize the need to empower the feminine and assure gender balance and human rights for all. This accumulation of women's stories reveals the role of women in creating needed changes in areas of health and nutrition, supporting efforts toward sustainable environments, promoting political and social rights, protecting women from the travesties of war and rape and promoting religious diversity and better conditions for all beings.

  • Author:
    Simpson-Housley, Paul, Norcliffe, Glen B.
    Summary:

    In 1759, Voltaire in Candide referred to Canada as "quelques arpents de neige." For several centuries, the image prevailed and was the one most frequently used by poets, writers, and illustrators. Canada was perceived and portrayed as a cold, hard, and unforgiving land. this was not a land for the fainthearted. Canada has yieled its wealth only reluctantly, while periodically threatening life itself with its displays of fury. Discovering its beauty and hidden resources requires patience and perseverance. A Few Acres of Snow is a colletion of twenty-two essays that explore, from the geographer’s perspective, how poets, artists, and writers have addressed the physical essence of Canada, both landscape and cityscape. "Sense of place" is clearly critical in the works examined in this volume. Included among the book’s many subjects are Hugh MacLennan, Gabrielle Roy, Lucius O’Brien, the art of the Inuit, Lawren Harris, Malcolm Lowry, C.W. Jefferys, L.M. Montgomery, Elizabeth Bishop, Marmaduke Matthews, Antonine Mailet, and the poetry of Japanese Canadians.

  • Author:
    Southon, Emma
    Summary:

    Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside ancient Rome's darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life and death and what it means to be human.

  • Author:
    Gillespie, Bruce
    Summary:

    Selected as a Finalist for the 27th Annual Lambda Literary Awards for Best LGBT Anthology and Winner of the Silver Medal for Gay / Lesbian / Bi / Trans Non-Fiction at the 2015 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards. At no other time in history have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) relationships and families been more visible or numerous. A Family by Any Other Name recognizes and celebrates this advance by exploring what “family” means to people today. The anthology includes a wide range of perspectives on queer relationships and families—there are stories on coming out, same-sex marriage, adopting, having biological kids, polyamorous relationships, families without kids, divorce, and dealing with the death of a spouse, as well as essays by straight writers about having a gay parent or child. These personal essays are by turns funny, provocative, and intelligent, but all are moving and honest. Including writers from across North America, this collection offers honest and moving real-life stories about relationships and creating families in the twenty-first century.The fifth book in a series of books about the twenty-first-century family, A Family by Any Other Name follows How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting, Somebody’s Child, Nobody’s Mother, and Nobody’s Father, all essay collections that challenge readers to re-examine traditional definitions of “family.”

  • Author:
    Reid, Stephen
    Summary:

    Stephen Reid has grown old in prison and seen more than his share of its solitude, its vicious cycles, and its subculture relationships. He has participated in the economics of contraband, the incredible escapes, the intimacies of torture, the miscarriages of justice, and witnessed the innocent souls whose childhood destinies doomed them to prison life. He has learned that everything is bearable, that the painful separation of family, children, and friend is tolerable, and that sorrow must be kept close, buried in a secret garden of the self, if one is to survive and give others who love you hope. Within his writing runs the motif that his prison life has never been far from his drug additions, but the junkie or drunk who has some straight time and means to stay that way knows a lot about the way we really live, think, feel, hope, and desire in this country. Each of the essays in this collection is a recognition of how Reid’s imprisonment has shaped his life. Some describe his fractured boyhood and the escalation in crimes that led to his imprisonment, others detail the seductive rush and notoriety of the criminal life. There are the regrets too of how his choices have impacted the lives of his daughters, wife and family. But in each essay the refrain is “prison life”, whether it is measuring the integrity of the books in the prison library, the violence and primal intimidation inherent in all-male communities, or the torment and solace of solitary confinement.

  • Author:
    Talvet, Jüri, Hix, H. L.
    Summary:

    In a provocative and thoughtful essay, Estonia's preeminent poet and cultural critic, Jüri alvet, investigates the role of culture in the postmodern world. Against the large background of historical values in western and world culture, Talvet inveighs against monologues and grand narratives launched by Western centers, envisaging instead a cultural symbiosis that would create a new and fertile dialogue between the centers, borders, and peripheries of the world, enrich cultural sensibility, and broaden concern for the Other.

  • Author:
    Hitchins, Shawn
    Summary:

    Comedian Shawn Hitchins explores his irreverent nature in this debut collection of essays. Hitchins doesn't shy away from his failures or celebrate his mild successes--he sacrifices them for an audience's amusement. He roasts his younger self, the effeminate ginger-haired kid with a competitive streak. The ups and downs of being a sperm donor to a lesbian couple. Then the fiery redhead professes his love for actress Shelley Long, declares his hatred of musical theatre, and recounts a summer spent in Provincetown working as a drag queen. Nothing is sacred. His first major break-up, how his mother plotted the murder of the family cat, his difficult relationship with his father, becoming an unintentional spokesperson for all redheads, and many more. Blunt, awkward, emotional, ribald, this anthology of humiliation culminates in a greater understanding of love, work, and family. Like the final scene in a Murder She Wrote episode, A Brief History of Oversharing promises everyone the A-ha! moment Oprah tells us to experience. Paired with bourbon, Scottish wool, and Humpty Dumpty Party Mix, this journey is best read through a lens of schadenfreude.

  • Author:
    Parks, Gregory S.
    Summary:

    When Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was approached by the police on the front porch of his home in an affluent section of Cambridge, many people across the country reacted with surprise and disbelief. But many African American men from coast to coast were not surprised in the least. "Gatesgate" serves as the most recent manifestation of a phenomenon many black men experience regularly: being the subject of increased suspicion because of the color of their skin. In Twelve Angry Men, a dozen eloquent authors tell their own personal versions of this story. From a Harvard law school student tackled by security guard on the streets of Manhattan, a federal prosecutor detained while walking in his own neighborhood in Washington, DC, and a high school student in Colorado arrested for "loitering" in the subway station as he waits for the train home, to a bike rider in Austin, Texas, a professor at a big ten university in Iowa, and the head of the ACLU's racial profiling initiative (who was pursued by national guardsmen after arriving on the red-eye in Boston's Logan airport), here are true stories of law-abiding Americans who happen also to be black men. Cumulatively, the effect is staggering, and will open the eyes of anyone who thinks we live in a "post-racial" or "color-blind" America.

  • Author:
    Wiest, Brianna
    Summary:

    Over the past few years, Brianna Wiest has gained renown for her deeply moving, philosophical writing. This new compilation of her published work features pieces on why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life.

  • Author:
    Barrett, Paul
    Summary:

    Contributor List Paul Barrett, University of Guelph Michael Bucknor, University of West Indies Austin Clarke (1934 – 2016) George Elliott Clarke, University of Toronto Patrick Crean, Toronto, Cyril Dabydeen, Ottawa André Forget, Toronto John Harewood, Ottawa, ON Camille Isaacs, OCAD, Toronto Sonnet L'Abbé, Vancouver Island University John R. Lee, St. Lucia Dennis Lee, Toronto, ON Katherine McKittrick, Queen's University, Kingston E. Martin Nolan, York University Giovanna Riccio, Toronto Leslie Sanders, York University, Toronto Winfried Siemerling, University of Waterloo Kate Siklosi, Toronto Kris Singh,Royal Military College, Kingston Marquita Smith, John Brown University, AR Asha Varadharajan, Queen's University, Kingston.

  • Author:
    Charleyboy, Lisa
    Summary:

    Whether looking back to a troubled past or welcoming a hopeful future, the powerful voices of Indigenous women across North America resound in this book. In the same style as the best-selling Dreaming in Indian, #Not Your Princess presents an eclectic collection of poems, essays, interviews, and art that combine to express the experience of being a Native woman. Stories of abuse, humiliation, and stereotyping are countered by the voices of passionate women making themselves heard and demanding change. Sometimes angry, often reflective, but always strong, the women in this book will give teen readers insight into the lives of women who, for so long, have been virtually invisible.

  • Author:
    Marden, Orison Swett
    Summary:

    Do you have what it takes to be the person you want to be? This is a neat self help book in plain English by the New Thought Movement author Orison Swett Marden. He has included various essays on the principles he believes will lead to success in life. This book is a nice reading for any one who believes in "The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone," which was one of Orison Swett Marden's famous dialogues.

  • Author:
    Biss, Eula
    Summary:

    A frank and fascinating exploration of race and racial identity In a book that begins with a series of lynchings and ends with a series of apologies, Eula Biss explores race in America. Her response to the topic is informed by the experiences chronicled in these essays -- teaching in a Harlem school on the morning of 9/11, reporting for an African American newspaper in San Diego, watching the aftermath of Katrina from a college town in Iowa, and settling in Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood. As Biss moves across the country from New York to California to the Midwest, her essays move across time from biblical Babylon to the freedman’s schools of Reconstruction to a Jim Crow mining town to post-war white flight. She brings an eclectic education to the page, drawing variously on the Eagles, Laura Ingalls Wilder, James Baldwin, Alexander Graham Bell, Joan Didion, religious pamphlets, and reality television shows. These spare, sometimes lyric essays explore the legacy of race in America, artfully revealing in intimate detail how families, schools, and neighborhoods participate in preserving racial privilege. Faced with a disturbing past and an unsettling present, Biss still remains hopeful about the possibilities of American diversity, “not the sun-shininess of it, or the quota-making politics of it, but the real complexity of it.”

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