The Boston-based writer has found his stronghold in the world of social media under the moniker of High Poets Society. His writing is most recognized for its mesmerizing rhyme scheme and clever wordplay.

    

    Across the book’s three sequences, we find the black-girl speaker in the midst of a self-imposed exile, going back in memory to explore her younger self—a mixed-race child being raised by her white supremacist grandfather in the shadow of Churchill Downs, Kentucky’s world-famous horseracing track—before arriving in a state of self-awareness to confront the personal and political landscape of a harshly segregated Louisville. Out of a space that is at once southern and urban, violent and beautiful, racially-charged and working-class, she attempts to transcend her social and economic circumstances. Across the collection, Priest writes a horse that acts as a metaphysical engine of flight, showing us how to throw off the harness and sustain wildness. Unlike the traditional Bildungsroman, Priest presents a non-linear narrative in which the speaker lacks the freedom to come of age naively in the urban South, and must instead, from the beginning, possess the wisdom of “the horses & their restless minds.”    FROM "RODEO"   The four-wheeler is a chariot. Horse-wraiths Kicking up a plume of spirits in the dirt behind us. Her arms kudzu around my middle. Out here,   In the desert, everything is invisible. Only the locusts’ flat buzz gives Them away. Everything native & quieting   Perennial & nighthawk black As we ride through: the cowgirls, The witch & the water sky-mirror-split,   The severity of squall lines. Also, the lips Parting air like lightning & the girl Blowing bubbles—in each one                                                 a rainbow.

    Ted Kooser’s third book in the Pitt Poetry Series is a selection of poems published in literary journals over a ten year period by a writer whose work has been praised for its clarity and accessiblity, its mastery of figurative language, and its warmth and charm.

    She goes on to deftly synthesize the work of Freud, Marx, de Beauvoir, and Engels to create a cogent argument for feminist revolution. Identifying women as a caste, she declares that they must seize the means of reproduction for as long as women (and only women) are required to bear and rear children, they will be singled out as inferior. Ultimately she presents feminism as the key radical ideology, the missing link between Marx and Freud, uniting their visions of the political and the personal. In the wake of recent headlines bemoaning women's squandered fertility and the ongoing debate over the appropriate role of genetics in the future of humanity, The Dialectic of Sex is revealed as remarkably relevant to today's society, a testament to Shulamith Firestone's startlingly prescient vision.

    She investigates topics as varied as purity balls, sexuality, motherhood, and shared breastfeeding; rape, reproductive rights, and the future of feminism. The essays in F 'em! are rounded out by candid one-on-one interviews with leading feminists who have influenced Baumgardner's perspectives—including Riot Grrrls' Kathleen Hanna, Native American activist Winona LaDuke, transgender activist Julia Serano, and artists like Ani DiFranco, Björk, and Amy Ray. At turns intimate, fierce, philosophical, and funny, they are an intimate window into the minds and hearts of Third Wave pioneers. Holding it all together is Baumgardner's insightful thinking about what it means to be a feminist today, as she answers frequently-asked questions: What does it mean to be a woman today? Do we even need feminism anymore?Thought-provoking and cutting-edge, F 'em! provides a clearer and more complete understanding of feminism—its past, its present, and its future.

    Our corporations vie for slots in the Diversity Top 50, our universities brag about minority recruiting, and every month is Somebody's History Month. But in this provocative new book, Walter Benn Michaels argues that our enthusiastic celebration of "difference" masks our neglect of America's vast and growing economic divide. Affirmative action in schools has not made them more open, it's just guaranteed that the rich kids come in the appropriate colors. Diversity training in the workplace has not raised anybody's salary (except maybe the diversity trainers') but it has guaranteed that when your job is outsourced, your culture will be treated with respect. With lacerating prose and exhilarating wit, Michaels takes on the many manifestations of our devotion to diversity, from companies apologizing for slavery, to a college president explaining why there aren't more women math professors, to the codes of conduct in the new "humane corporations." Looking at the books we read, the TV shows we watch, and the lawsuits we bring, Michaels shows that diversity has become everyone's sacred cow precisely because it offers a false vision of social justice, one that conveniently costs us nothing. The Trouble with Diversity urges us to start thinking about real justice, about equality instead of diversity. Attacking both the right and the left, it will be the most controversial political book of the year.

    Wade decision, most women determined to get abortions had to subject themselves to the power of illegal, unregulated abortionists...But a Chicago woman who happened to stumble across a secret organization code-named 'Jane' had an alternative. Laura Kaplan, who joined Jane in 1971, has pieced together the histories of the anonymous (here identified only by pseudonyms), average-sounding women who transformed themselves into outlaws."—Cleveland Plain Dealer"The Story of Jane is a piece of women's history in step with feminist theory demanding that women tell their own stories. It serves to remind people of an important and often overlooked moment in the women's rights movement."—Seattle Weekly"Laura Kaplan's The Story of Jane is the first book to chronicle this controversial sliver of history, and it is a fascinating, if partisan, close-up of the group."—Newsday"[Kaplan] draws on her personal recollections and interviews with Jane members and clients and the doctors who performed the abortions to provide a well-written, detailed history of this radical group."—Publisher's Weekly"Weaving together the voices and memories of her former co-workers, Kaplan recounts how the group initially focused on counseling women and helping them find reliable, reasonably priced doctors....Kaplan's account of this remarkable story recaptures the political idealism of the early '70s...23 years after Roe vs. Wade, the issues and memories raised by the books are close and all too relevant."—K Kaufmann, San Francisco Chronicle"Laura Kaplan's The Story of Jane is the first book to chronicle this controversial sliver of history, and it is a fascinating, if partisan, close-up of the group....The Story of Jane succeeds on the steam of Kaplan's gripping subject and her moving belief in the power of small-scale change."—Cynthia Leive, New York Newsday"During the four years before the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, the 100 members of Jane helped some 11,000 women end their pregnancies....There is more in this remarkable book that will further raise eyebrows....Kaplan's engrossing tales of the quiet courage of the women who risked their reputations and freedom to help others may remind many readers of other kinds of outlaws who have resisted tyranny throughout history."—Chicago Sun-Times

    Women's Studies. INDICTUS re-imagines various creation myths to bear the invisible and unsaid assaults of women. In doing so, it subverts notions of patriarchal power into a genre that can be demolished and set again. INDICTUS is a Latin word, from which other words like "indict" and "indicate" are born. It translates literally as "to write the unsaid." There is an effort in this book to create the supernatural through the utterance of violence, because jurisdiction fails in real time. That sexual assault can so easily become a science fiction when power is rearranged to serve the victim speaks to the abject lack of control within victims to ever be redeemed. Crimes resolve to misdemeanors. In a world without my abusers, how can I soon become myself? Combining the mythological and autobiographical, this book attempts to indict us, so that the wounded might one day be free.

    Drawing on the black feminist tradition, including Audre Lourde’s invitation to use the erotic as power and Toni Cade Bambara’s exhortation that we make the revolution irresistible, the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism. Writers including Cara Page of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice, Sonya Renee Taylor, founder of This Body Is Not an Apology, and author Alexis Pauline Gumbs cover a wide array of subjects— from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—creating new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!

    T. Stepanek has won the hearts of millions with his inspiring poems from his first two New York Times bestsellers. Now he's ready to spread a little love with Loving Through Heartsongs, a beautiful collection of poems written about innocence and trusting love from a child's perspective. Mattie's struggle with muscular dystrophy has never kept him from feeling deep love for his family, friends, country, and faith--heartfelt emotions that are reflected throughout these pages.

    By turns sassy and serious, the poems can seem to sprint in two directions at once, managing to make the reader laugh at the same time they are struck by the emotional strength of the work. "Charming, inviting, beguiling and delightful poems in the language of someone who seems alive speaking refreshing riddles to herself." SHEILA HETI"Uptalk is a book of transcribed whale songs. Some scientists gave a whale a microphone and she took it home and stayed up all night under the covers talking to herself about faces and word-parts. I am delighted that Kimmy took it upon herself to transcribe this unique document of marine biology, and my heart goes out to the brilliant, charming whale author, wherever she may be." SARA WOODS

    

    A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2004 and a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

    The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it’s supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread—all with the support of judges and politicians.In his no-holds-barred style, Butler, whose scholarship has been featured on 60 Minutes, uses new data to demonstrate that white men commit the majority of violent crime in the United States. For example, a white woman is ten times more likely to be raped by a white male acquaintance than be the victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a black man. Butler also frankly discusses the problem of black on black violence and how to keep communities safer—without relying as much on police.Chokehold powerfully demonstrates why current efforts to reform law enforcement will not create lasting change. Butler’s controversial recommendations about how to crash the system, and when it’s better for a black man to plead guilty—even if he’s innocent—are sure to be game-changers in the national debate about policing, criminal justice, and race relations.