Drawing on both her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan Coop boards, Where We Stand is a successful black woman's reflection--personal, straight forward, and rigorously honest--on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined, and how we can find ways to think beyond them.

    The book begins with a consideration of the theoretical and practical strategies of the U.S. left over the last three decades: Reed argues against the solipsistic approaches of cultural or identity politics, and in favor of class-based political interpretation and action.Class Notes moves on to tackle race relations, ethnic studies, family values, welfare reform, the so-called underclass, and black public intellectuals in essays called “head-spinning” and “brilliantly executed” by David Levering Lewis.Adolph Reed Jr. has earned a national reputation for his controversial evaluations of American politics. These essays illustrate why people like Katha Pollitt consider Reed “the smartest person of any race, class, or gender writing on race, class, and gender.”

    They wanted to document reality, not to advance any overarching thesis or political agenda. Their sole position on work was that it's a fascinating topic and an elemental part of nearly everyone's life. They were certainly not disappointed with what they found; this wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium is stunning, surprising, and always entertaining. It gives us an unflinching view of the fabric of this country from the point of view of the people who keep it all moving.Recalling Studs Terkel's 1972 classic best-seller, Working, the more than 120 roughly textured monologues that make up Gig beautifully capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy. The selections demonstrate how much our world has changed—and stayed the same—in the last three decades. If you think things have speeded up, become more complicated and more technological, you're right.But people's attitudes about their jobs, their hopes and goals and disappointments, endure. Gig's soul isn't sociological—it's emotional. The wholehearted diligence that people bring to their work is deeply, inexplicably moving. People speak in these pages of the constant and complex stresses nearly all of them confront on the job, but, nearly universally, they throw themselves without reservation into coping with them. Instead of resisting work, we seem to adapt to it. Some of us love our jobs, some of us don't, but almost all of us are not quite sure what we would do without one.With all the hallmarks of another classic on this subject, Gig is a fabulous read, filled with indelible voices from coast to coast. After hearing them, you'll never again feel quite the same about how we work.

    Hollibaugh is a lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker, and journalist. My Dangerous Desires presents over twenty years of Hollibaugh’s writing, an introduction written especially for this book, and five new essays including “A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home,” “My Dangerous Desires,” and “Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism.” In looking at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire or how sexuality can be intimately tied to one’s class identity, Hollibaugh fiercely and fearlessly analyzes her own political development as a response to her unique personal history. She explores the concept of labeling and the associated issues of categories such as butch or femme, transgender, bisexual, top or bottom, drag queen, b-girl, or drag king. The volume includes conversations with other writers, such as Deirdre English, Gayle Rubin, Jewelle Gomez, and Cherríe Moraga. From the groundbreaking article “What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With” to the radical “Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist,” Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth. Dorothy Allison’s moving foreword pays tribute to a life lived in struggle by a working-class lesbian who, like herself, refuses to suppress her dangerous desires. Having informed many of the debates that have become central to gay and lesbian activism, Hollibaugh’s work challenges her readers to speak, write, and record their desires—especially, perhaps, the most dangerous of them—“in order for us all to survive.”

    You've never seen I Spy like this!

    Written in part on stolen time, that is. Because like millions of others who work for a living, I was giving most of my prime time to my employer..." So begins Jeff Schmidt in this riveting book about the world of professional work. Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations, and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker, showing how an honest reassessment of what it means to be a professional in today's corporate society can be remarkably liberating. After reading this book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job.

    You begin to undo the damage that was caused by living your life backward, from the head first, forgetting the body and spirit altogether. As with everything in nature, if your life isn't supported by a grounded source of energy, it will wither and lose its vitality. As you learn about the chakras, you will discover that balancing them isn't particularly hard, especially if you think of it as a process of not just living your life, but actually loving your life." -- From the IntroductionHow can we balance our time and energy when our days are so hectic? How can we find harmony in mind, body, and spirit? In True Balance, renowned intuitive and spiritual healer Sonia Choquette presents a step-by-step workbook for finding balance within our seven essential energy centers, or chakras. Drawing upon her deep personal experience and practice, she offers a wise and down-to-earth guide to achieving harmony. With supportive questionnaires, practical advice, and many specific remedies, Choquette leads us to a balanced life filled with creativity and blessings.

    Drawing from research and personal experience, he shows that only by reclaiming their lost past and proud heritage can blacks lay the foundation for their future. And white Americans can make reparations for slavery and the century of racial discrimination that followed with monetary restitution, educational programs, and the kinds of equal opportunities that will ensure the social and economic success of all its citizens.In a book that is both an unflinching indictment of past wrongs and an impassioned call to our nation to educate all Americans about the history of Africa and its people, Robinson makes a persuasive case for the debt white America owes blacks, and the debt blacks owe themselves.

    Turn to the page that sounds the most interesting to you.Read a sentence or two.Repeat the process. Read this book as a creative act, and feel encouraged.'39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance is a collection of miniature stories, parables, musings and thinkpieces on the nature of reading, writing, art, collaboration, performance, life, death, the universe and everything. It is a unique and moving document for our times, full of curiosity and wonder, thoughtfulness and pain. Matthew Goulish, founder member of performance group Goat Island, meditates on these and other diverse themes, proving, along the way, that the boundaries between poetry and criticism, and between creativity and theory, are a lot less fixed than they may seem. The book is revelatory, solemn yet at times hilarious, and genuinely written to inspire - or perhaps provoke - creativity and thought.

    

    Air Force F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopters over Northern Iraq, killing all twenty-six peacekeepers onboard. In response to this disaster the complete array of military and civilian investigative and judicial procedures ran their course. After almost two years of investigation with virtually unlimited resources, no culprit emerged, no bad guy showed himself, no smoking gun was found. This book attempts to make sense of this tragedy--a tragedy that on its surface makes no sense at all.With almost twenty years in uniform and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior, Lieutenant Colonel Snook writes from a unique perspective. A victim of friendly fire himself, he develops individual, group, organizational, and cross-level accounts of the accident and applies a rigorous analysis based on behavioral science theory to account for critical links in the causal chain of events. By explaining separate pieces of the puzzle, and analyzing each at a different level, the author removes much of the mystery surrounding the shootdown. Based on a grounded theory analysis, Snook offers a dynamic, cross-level mechanism he calls "practical drift"--the slow, steady uncoupling of practice from written procedure--to complete his explanation.His conclusion is disturbing. This accident happened because, or perhaps in spite of everyone behaving just the way we would expect them to behave, just the way theory would predict. The shootdown was a normal accident in a highly reliable organization.

    Their singular takes on their craft, their influences, their lives, the state of contemporary theater, and the tricks of the trade create an illuminating and unparalleled record of the life of the theater itself."At its best,  theater is an antidote to the whiff of barbarity in the millennial air. 'My feeling is that people in a group, en masse, watching something, react differently, and perhaps more profoundly, than they do when they're alone in their living rooms,' Arthur Miller says here. In the dark, facing the stage, surrounded by others, the paying customer can let himself go; he is emboldened. The theatrical encounter allows a member of the public to think against received opinions. He can submerge himself in the extraordinary, admit his darkest, most infantile wishes, feel the pulse of the contemporary, hear the sludge of street talk turned into poetry. This enterprise can be joyous and dangerous; when the theater's game is good and tense, it is both."--from the Introduction by John Lahr

    Joining them are younger writers such as Melvin Jules Bukiet, Jacqueline Osherow, Art Speigelman, Steve Stern and Allegra Goodman, who bring the tradition up to its thriving present.Yiddish and Hebrew Writing in AmericaJewish American Literature: Traces in breadth and depth America's rich Yiddish-language culture, from the work of Morris Rosenfeld and David Edelshtadt in the 1880s through the Yunge and Introspectivist movements to the post-Holocaust writings of Kadya Molodowsky and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Also represented is Hebrew writing, in translations of the work of Ephraim E. Lisitzky and modernist Gabriel Preil.Special Sections: Jewish Humor offers choice selections of Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, and a cluster of perennial Jewish jokes; The Golden Age of the Broadway Song samples the unforgettable lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, and Stephen Sondheim, among others; Jews Translating Jews reflects on the translator's role in transmitting tradition, gathering poems translated from Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Spanish by Jewish American poets from Emma Lazarus to David Unger.Helpful and Lively Reader's Apparatus: The Reader's Apparatus includes a general introduction, period introductions, author headnotes, explanatory annotations, and selected bibliographies.

    The second lecture of this two-part set focuses on the motives and consequences of US Iraq policy—a continuing example of murderous hypocrisy at its most lethal.

    The guide presents the major debates that surround these works as they develop, from Martin Esslin's early appropriation of the plays as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd, to recent poststructuralist and postcolonial readings by critics such as Steven Connor, Mary Bryden and Declan Kiberd. Throughout, Boxall clarifies and contextualizes critical responses to the plays, and considers the difficult relationship between Beckett and his critics.

    This courageous and controversial choice indirectly expands the modern definition of literature to include the power of the spoken word."Volume One includes:We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!ElizabethArchangels Don't Play PinballAbout Face

    Rebecca Copeland challenges this claim by examining in detail the lives and literary careers of three of Ichiyo's peers, each representative of the diversity and ingenuity of the period: Miyake Kaho (1868-1944), Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864-1896), and Shimizu Shikin (1868-1933).In a carefully researched introduction, Copeland establishes the context for the development of female literary expression. She follows this with chapters on each of the women under consideration. Miyake Kaho, often regarded as the first woman writer of modern Japan, offers readers a vision of the female vitality that is often overlooked when discussing the Meiji era. Wakamatsu Shizuko, the most prominent female translator of her time, had a direct impact on the development of a modern written language for Japanese prose fiction. Shimizu Shikin reminds readers of the struggle women endured in their efforts to balance their creative interests with their social roles. Interspersed throughout are excerpts from works under discussion, most never before translated, offering an invaluable window into this forgotten world of women's writing.

    Best known for her ongoing work as a member of The Five Lesbian Brothers, Kron's solo pieces are very personal examinations of both herself and her family history. This is singularly clear in 2.5 Minute Ride, where her writing deftly maneuvers between the tragic drama of the Holocaust and the wry comedy of her family's attempts to pursue pleasure at the local amusement park. This critically acclaimed work played to sold out audience for over six months at New York's Public Theatre. Also included is the riotous 101 Humiliating Stories, which first premiered in 1993, and in fact only consists of seventeen tales but each, as the author observes, has several humiliations. It recounts the adventures and misadventures of a self-described Big Lesbian as she tests the boundaries of decorum in social and professional situations.

    Pace Creagan, seventeen, brimful of adventure, fearless and feared. To Dalton, she's irresistible. To Pace, he's a challenge.The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek is a beautiful and haunting play. A coming-of-age story with a wicked twist, it reaches into the depths of a nation and asks what lies beneath.The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek received its European premi�re at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in February 2001.

    Largely through the efforts of its working class and the dynamic labor movement it built, New York City became the envied model of liberal America and the scourge of conservatives everywhere: cheap and easy-to-use mass transit, work in small businesses and factories that had good wages and benefits, affordable public housing, and healthcare for all.Working-Class New York is an "engrossing" (Dissent) account of the birth of that ideal and the way it came crashing down. In what Publishers Weekly calls "absorbing and beautifully detailed history", historian Joshua Freeman shows how the anticommunist purges of the 1950s decimated the ranks of the labor movement and demoralized its idealists, and how the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s dealt another crushing blow to liberal ideals as the city's wealthy elite made a frenzied grab for power.A grand work of cultural and social history, Working-Class New York is a moving chronicle of a dream that died but may yet rise again.

    In Ehud’s Dagger, James Holstun reconstructs their radical projects and calls for a return to and development of marxist history from below.He begins with a powerful critique of those anti-communist historians and literary critics who have tried to ignore or deny the role of working people in shaping the English Revolution. Then, drawing on Ernst Bloch’s utopian marxism, Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of practical ensembles, and the political marxism of the British marxist historians, he begins his reconstruction of five seventeenth-century radical projects.In a Caroline prologue, he examines the political and poetic furor surrounding John Felton, who assassinated the Duke of Buckingham in 1628, enabling anonymous writers, readers and circulators of verse libels to contemplate a republican alternative to Charles’s attempted absolutism. He then turns to the Revolution proper, focusing on the common soldiers of the Puritan New Model Army, who formed a military soviet in the summer of 1647 and bested their capitalist officers in debate; the Fifth Monarchist visionary Anna Trapnel, who wrote, preached, and prophesied publicly against the Protectorate on behalf of sectarian small producers; the Leveller theorist and desperado Edward Sexby, who wrote the brilliant republican treatise Killing Noe Murder and attempted to assassinate Oliver Cromwell; and the agrarian communist Diggers of Surrey, whose comrade and leader Gerrard Winstanley was the foremost social theorist of seventeenth-century England.Richly detailed and rigorously argued, Ehud’s Dagger will spark renewed historical and literary critical interest in the prophetic writing, political struggle, and creative practical consciousness of working people in the early modern world.

    Each of the five equality issues of gender, race, sexuality, disability and social class are covered as areas in their own right, and in relation to education. Written by experts in each particular field, the chapters trace the history of the various issues up to the present and enable readers to assess their continuing relevance in the future.With a new preface written by leading educationist Peter McLaren, the substantially updated second edition of this comprehensive book provides an important educational perspective on world-wide equality issues for teachers and student teachers at all stages.

    To think transnationally about literature, history, and culture requires a study of the evolution of hybrid identities within nation-states and diasporic identities across national boundaries.Studies addressing issues of race, ethnicity, and empire in U.S. culture have provided some of the most innova-tive and controversial contributions to recent scholarship. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature represents a new chapter in the emerging dialogues about the importance of borders on a global scale.This book collects nineteen essays written in the 1990s in this emergent field by both well established and up-and-coming scholars. Almost all the essays have been either especially written for this volume or revised for inclusion here.These essays are accessible, well-focused resources for college and university students and their teachers, displaying both historical depth and theoretical finesse as they attempt close and lively readings. The anthology includes more than one discussion of each literary tradition associated with major racial or ethnic communities. Such a gathering of diverse, complementary, and often competing viewpoints provides a good introduction to the cultural differences and commonalities that comprise the United States today.The volume opens with two essays by the editors: first, a survey of the ideas in the individual pieces, and, second, a long essay that places current debates in U.S. ethnicity and race studies within both the history of American studies as a whole and recent developments in postcolonial theory.Amritjit Singh, a professor of English and African American studies at Rhode Island College, is coeditor of Conversations with Ralph Ellison and Conversations with Ishmael Reed (both from University Press of Mississippi). Peter Schmidt, a professor of English at Swarthmore College, is the author of The Heart of the Story: Eudora Welty's Short Fiction (University Press of Mississippi).

    and Europe. Tonelson analyzes how the entry of such population giants as China, India, and Mexico into the global market has accelerated the erosion of wages and labor standards around the world. And he describes how an ever-larger share of this low-wage competition is hitting not just sectors like apparel and toys, but also many of America's highest wage industries like aerospace and software. Tonelson explains why the re-education and retraining programs touted by many political leaders offer little but false hopes to most U.S. workers as he outlines the real decisions Washington needs to make to ensure long-term prosperity for the U.S. and the rest of the world. Updated with a new prologue from the author.

    He begins by examining the common assumption that nationalist movements by nature draw lines of inclusion and exclusion around socialgroups, establishing authority and hierarchy among one's own and antagonism towards others. Porter argues instead that the penetration of communal hatred and social discipline into the rhetoric of nationalism must be explained, not merely assumed.Porter focuses on nineteenth-century Poland, tracing the transformation of revolutionary patriotism into a violent anti-Semitic ideology. Instead of deterministically attributing this change to the forces of modernization, Porter demonstrates that the language of hatred and discipline was centralto the way modernity itself was perceived by fin-de-si�cle intellectuals.The book is based on a wide variety of sources, including political speeches and posters, newspaper articles and editorials, underground brochures, published and unpublished memoirs, personal letters, and nineteenth-century books on history, sociology, and politics. It embeds nationalism within amuch broader framework, showing how the concept of the nation played a role in liberal, conservative, socialist, and populist thought.When Nationalism Began to Hate is not only a detailed history of Polish nationalism but also an ambitious study of how the term nation functioned within the political imagination of modernity. It will prove an important text for a wide range of students and researchers of European history andpolitics.

    

    It is both a social history of the creation of chronic poverty (and wealth) in Clay County, KY and an explication of how economic markets, cultural strategies, and the state interact to shape local society. By linking a longitudinal study of a single place to broader understandings of the historical development of the capitalist world system, this book contributes to policy discussions of the underlying causes of persistent rural poverty and reasons for the chronic failure of governmental programs to alleviate such poverty. In doing this study the authors have assembled probably the longest running set of longitudinal data currently available on an American rural population as well as the most extensive body of data available for a persistently poor community in the United States.

    It reaches across centuries and around the world to weave together the strands of Jewish experience. This comprehensive work includes prayers and practices, values and traditions, ideas and hopes, culture, faith and great moments in history. It provides a masterful overview of Judaism which is at once historical and also a warm reflection on the personal meaning that each of us can take from Judaism. Includes two parts: "Torah and History" and "Torah, Mitzvot, and Jewish Thought". In addition, eight maps and 145 illustrations enhance the vivid and lively dialogue.