Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race / We Should All Be Feminists / Dear Ijeawele


Reni Eddo-Lodge
    Exploring everything from eradicated black history to the inextricable link between class and race, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race is the essential handbook for anyone who wants to understand race relations in Britain today.We Should All Be Feminists A personal and powerful essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americana and Half of a Yellow Sun.I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response. Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions–compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive–for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year


Louise Erdrich - 1995
    Moving, memorable… [The Blue Jay’s Dance is] a book that breaks ground.”—Boston Sunday GlobeFifteen years after its initial publication, New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich’s beloved memoir The Blue Jay’s Dance is available for a whole new generation of families to discover. The first major work of nonfiction by the author of such classics as Love Medicine and The Plague of Doves, The Blue Jay’s Dance is, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, an “observant, tender, and honest” meditation on the experience of motherhood.

Raising Respectful Children in a Disrespectful World


Jill Rigby - 2006
    "And author Jill Rigby says there's a big difference. It's the difference between self-centered and others-centered children, the difference between performance-driven and purpose-focused teenagers."Raising Respectful Children in a Disrespectful World" examines three different styles of parenting--parent-centered, child-centered, and character-centered." "Parent-centered parents are more concerned with their own agenda than their child's best interest. Child-centered parents are more concerned with their child's approval than their child's well-being. Character-centered parents are more concerned with their child's character than their child's comfort. Drawing a distinction between performance and purpose, this book maintains that rather than focusing on what you want your child to "do, "you ask what you want your child to "become. "Finally, Rigby calls for parents to discipline (teach) their children rather than punish them.With wisdom and insight, Jill Rigby shares age-appropriate ways to set boundaries with children without building walls of separation. Whether you're parenting tots or teens, "Raising Respectful Children in a Disrespectful World "offers valuable advice for cultivating a house of respect.

Bruja


Wendy C. Ortiz - 2016
    Ortiz has created a new literary form, a parallel plane where the cast of characters are the people that occupied one’s waking life; Bruja is a narrative that’s equal parts delicate and bold, a literary adventure through the boundaries of memoir, where the self is viewed from a position anchored into the deepest recesses of the mind."The book collects Ortiz's dreams over a period of four years, in spare and at times mesmerizing prose...It is a literary work in its own right...It's testament to Ortiz's courage as a memoirist that she's willing to live for a while on this submarine plane, among the elements that dictate her fate -- and to invite her readers along for the show." -The Los Angeles Times"LA-based writer Ortiz continues her innovative soul-search by weaving dream with memory in order to piece together a poignant story from the elusive symbolism of the subconscious...A few entries into this stunning dreamoir, it's evident that Ortiz is making bold statements about love, desire and womanhood as she defiantly navigates the absurdities and strangeness of everyday reality and taps into the comforting properties of fantasy and daydream." -NBCNews.com"Bruja is a personal history and a travel journal, a book of emotional heft and bizarre incantations, a revelatory experiment and a literary scar produced by life...This is a smart, strange, wonderfully expressive combination of fact and everything that hovers in the periphery of fact." -Vol. 1 Brooklyn"In Wendy Ortiz's dreamoir, Bruja, she finds an utterly fascinating middle ground between the two perspectives. Except that even "middle ground" is insufficient; rather, she presents an inclusive, paradigm-shifting theory in narrative form, one that embraces the interconnectedness of stories, focalization, the unconscious, and how we construct reality." -Angel City Review"In Bruja, Wendy C. Ortiz deftly navigates the land of dreams in what she calls a dreamoir. By telling us her dreams, by revealing her most unguarded and vulnerable self, Ortiz is, truly, offering readers the most intimate parts of herself--how she loves, how she wants, how she lives, who she is. Bruja is not just a book--it is an enigma and a wonder and utterly entrancing." - Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and the New York Times bestselling book of essays, Bad Feminist"Bruja calls into question not only what is a memoir, but what is a life. Politics, books, mass media, random encounters, work, relationships tumble into the depths of consciousness, and the self spirals open, huge and passionate. Ortiz’s dreamoir is a multidimensional love story with the whole mess of existence. I loved it. - Dodie Bellamy, author of When the Sick Rule the World, The TV Sutras, and Cunt-Ups"Wendy C. Ortiz has invented her own genre, in her sleep, no less. Bruja is at once lush and spare, funny and weird, disturbing and sometimes even beautiful in the way that dreams can be. She's crafted an absurdly real and compelling story here, one dream at a time." --Elizabeth Crane, author of The History of Great Things"A memoir of the dreaming soul and reportage from the frontline of a writer's consciousness, Bruja is surreal, mesmerizing, and beautiful. I completely fell under its spell." --Scott Cheshire, author of High as the Horses' Bridles and managing editor of The Scofield

Self-Help


Lorrie Moore - 1985
    Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

Love and Other Poems


Alex Dimitrov - 2020
    Taking time, and specifically the months of the year as an overarching structure, Dimitrov elevates the every day and speaks directly to the reader as if the poem were a phone call or a text message. From the personal to the cosmos, the moon to New York City, NASA’s golden record to the Ouija board, the speaker is convinced that love is “our best invention.” While he navigates darkness and fear, loneliness and guilt, Dimitrov doesn’t resist joy even in despair. There is a determined curiosity about who we are as people and a shameless interest in the idea of hope. These poems are obsessed with everything around us, even the terrible and fraught.

Getting to Commitment: Overcoming the 8 Greatest Obstacles to Lasting Connection (and Finding the Courage to Love)


Steven Carter - 1998
    We sabotage our relationships and undermine our chances; we focus on the wrong partners and run away from real possibility. We find it difficult to be trusting, vulnerable, faithful, and honest. No matter how great the desire, we don't know how to move forward.Getting to commitment is about growth and change. It is about getting the love you deserve. You will learn how to recognize and overcome the eight greatest obstacles to lasting connection, how to focus on real possibility, and how to make and keep the relationships that matter most. Whether you are facing your own commitment issues or the issues of a reluctant partner, there is a way to both understand and resolve these conflicts. Falling in love and staying in love requires its own kind of heroism, because it takes real courage to make a commitment to lasting love. This book is about finding that courage.

Never in a Hurry: Essays on People and Places


Naomi Shihab Nye - 1996
    Instead she travels the world at an observant pace, talking to strangers and introducing readers to an endearing assemblage of eccentric neighbors, Filipina faith healers, dry-cleaning proprietors, and other quirky characters.A Palestinian-American who lives in a Mexican-American neighborhood, Nye speaks for the mix of people and places that can be called the American Experience. From St. Louis, the symbolic Gateway to the West, she embarks on a westward migration to examine America, past and present, and to glimpse into the lives of its latest outsiders--illegal immigrants from Mexico and troubled inner-city children.In other essays Nye ventures beyond North America's bounds, telling of a year in her childhood spent in Palestine and of an adulthood filled with cross-cultural quests. Whether recounting the purchase of a car on the island of Oahu or a camel-back ride through India's Thar Desert, Nye writes in wry, refreshing tones about themes that transcend borders and about the journey that remains the greatest of all--the journey from outside to in as the world enters each one of us, as we learn to see.

The Glass Age


Cole Swensen - 2007
    Starting there, this extended poem—part art criticism, part history—considers the phenomenon of glass, revealing the strength and fragility of our age in the minimalist style that has won Cole Swensen such acclaim.

Bluets


Maggie Nelson - 2009
    With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.

Insidious


Michael McCloskey - 2010
    Some say that it's only the eccentricities of the powerful leaders of capitalistic society. But others speak of dark, twisted rituals, human slavery and illegal experiments in banned technologies.Bren Marcken is a robot handler and strategist on a special team of the United Nations Space Force, formed to occupy the corporate space stations and seize their technological secrets. To accomplish the mission, he's been authorized to field artificial intelligences that he considers just as dangerous as the enemy.Chris Adrastus is an aggressive young executive whose careful machinations have carried him to a high position at the powerful European Union company, Vineaux Genomix. Instead of finding satisfaction, he's become disillusioned with what he discovers at the top of the executive world.Aldriena Niachi is a covert operative of Black Core, a Brazilian software company with a global sphere of influence. She's about to find out what Black Core will do for a technological lead. Do some kinds of knowledge come at inordinate cost, even for a supercorporation?

The Flowering Woman: Becoming and Being


Q. Gibson - 2016
    Gibson. The pages explore hurt, healing, love, forgiveness, self-discovery and the journey towards becoming a woman. Written in four chapters each piece encourages healing and the journeying of self.

Being Mortal: : Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande | Summary & Analysis


aBookaDay - 2015
     Gawande draws on clinical studies, case histories and stories from his own experiences as a doctor and a son to illuminate the subject of mortality relative to modern medical systems. His treatment of the subject covers a broad range of institutions and individuals that shape the lives of the aged and terminally ill. The central thesis of the book is that the experience of the end of life has been problematized and addressed by medical models that place extending life over quality of life and institutional frameworks that place safety and efficiency over the ability for people to have autonomy over the last part of their lives. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor at the Harvard Medical School. He is a writer at The New Yorker magazine and author of three New York Times bestselling books.

Ophelia Wears Black


Segovia Amil - 2015
    Divided into four parts, each mirroring the cycling seasons, we follow Ophelia into her own re-imagined Underworld where she learns to make sense of and find the perfection and necessity of her own inner darkness.

Artemis Awakening


Jane Lindskold - 2014
    All tech was concealed and the animals (and the humans brought to live there) were bioengineered to help the guests enjoy their stay…But the Empire was shattered in a horrific war; centuries later humanity has lost much of the advanced technology, and Artemis is a fable told to children. Until young archeologist Griffin Dane finds intriguing hints that send him on a quest to find the lost world. After crashing his ship, he encounters Adara the Huntress and her psych-linked companion, the puma Sand Shadow. Their journey with her will lead Dane to discover the planet's secrets…and perhaps provide a key to give unimagined power back to mankind.