As he sets about reducing her to his idealised version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back - a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce and courageous When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India.

    This encounter—now one of the most famous in all of literary history—was recorded by Plath in her journal, where she described Hughes as a “big, dark, hunky boy.” Sylvia viewed Ted as something of a colossus, and to this day his enormous shadow has obscured her life and work. The sensational aspects of the Plath-Hughes relationship have dominated the cultural landscape to such an extent that their story has taken on the resonance of a modern myth.Before she met Ted, Plath had lived a complex, creative, and disturbing life. Her father had died when she was only eight; she had gone out with literally hundreds of men, had been unofficially engaged, had tried to commit suicide, and had written more than two hundred poems. Mad Girl’s Love Song chronicles these early years, traces the sources of her mental instability, and examines how a range of personal, economic, and societal factors—the real disquieting muses— conspired against her.Drawing on exclusive interviews with friends and lovers who have never spoken openly about Plath before and using previously unavailable archives and papers, this is the first book to focus on the early life of the twentieth century’s most popular and enduring female poet. Mad Girl’s Love Song reclaims Sylvia Plath from the tangle of emotions associated with her relationship with Ted Hughes and reveals the origins of her unsettled and unsettling voice.

    Narrated by a speaker in mourning marked as an at-risk juvenile, psychologically troubled, an offender, expelled and sent to alternative school for adolescents with behavioral issues, and eventually, a psychiatric hospital, she survives the school to prison pipeline, the immigrant working class condition, grueling low- pay service jobs, conservative classism against Latinos in Texas, queerness, assimilation, and life wrapped up in frivolous citations, fines, and penalties. The traumatic catalyst for the long line of trouble begins with the death of a beloved young grandmother from preventable cervical cancer—another violence of systemic racism and sexism that prevents regular reproductive and sexual health care to poor immigrant communities—and the subsequent deaths of other immigrant family members who are mourned in the dissociative states amidst the depressive trauma that opens the book. The dissociative states that mark the middle—a surreal kind of shadowland where the narrator encounters her animal self and ancestors imagined as animals faces brutal surreal challenges on the way back to life beyond trauma—is a kind of mictlan, reimagined as a state of constant mourning that challenges American notions of "healing" from trauma, and rather acknowledges sadness, mourning, and memory as a necessary state of constant awareness to forge a "way back" toward a broader healing of earth, time, body, history.

    A combined edition of the poet's early work, including Lord Weary's Castle, a collection of forty-two short poems, which won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize, and The Mills of the Kavanaughs, a narrative poem of six hundred lines, and five other long poems.

    A long-buried personal sadness is enfolding her—and her career is stalled—when she stumbles upon an unusual group of immigrants living in rural California. She follows them on their annual return to the remote Azorean islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where bulls run down village streets, volcanoes are active, and the people celebrate festas to ease their saudade, a longing so deep that the Portuguese word for it can’t be fully translated.Years later, California is in a terrible drought, the wildfires seem to never end, and Diana finds herself still dreaming of those islands and the chuva—a rain so soft you don’t notice when it begins or ends.With her troublesome Labrador retriever, Murphy, in tow, Diana returns to the islands of her dreams only to discover that there are still things she longs for—and one of them may be a most unexpected love.

    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

    It's a book of great breadth."--Gregory Djanikian, Philadelphia Inquirer

    In it, she chronicles the turbulent and often disturbing relationship between Kristina, a character based on her own daughter, and the "monster," the highly addictive drug crystal meth, or "crank." Kristina is introduced to the drug while visiting her largely absent and ne'er-do-well father. While under the influence of the monster, Kristina discovers her sexy alter-ego, Bree: "there is no perfect daughter, / no gifted high school junior, / no Kristina Georgia Snow. / There is only Bree." Bree will do all the things good girl Kristina won't, including attracting the attention of dangerous boys who can provide her with a steady flow of crank. Soon, her grades plummet, her relationships with family and friends deteriorate, and she needs more and more of the monster just to get through the day. Kristina hits her lowest point when she is raped by one of her drug dealers and becomes pregnant as a result. Her decision to keep the baby slows her drug use, but doesn't stop it, and the author leaves the reader with the distinct impression that Kristina/Bree may never be free from her addiction. In the author's note, Hopkins warns "nothing in this story is impossible," but when Kristina's controlled, high-powered mother allows her teenage daughter to visit her biological father (a nearly homeless known drug user), the story feels unbelievable. Still, the descriptions of crystal meth use and its consequences are powerful, and will horrify and transfix older teenage readers, just as Alice did over 20 years ago.

    Both sought to redefine themselves beneath the stars. By the time they made it to the snowy Cascade Range of British Columbia—the trail’s end—Aspen and Justin were in love.Embarking on a new pilgrimage the next summer, they returned to those same mossy mountains where they’d met, and they married. They built a world together, three years of a happy marriage. Until a cold November morning, when, after kissing Aspen goodbye, Justin left to attend the funeral of a close friend.He never came back. As days became weeks, her husband’s inexplicable absence left Aspen unmoored. Shock, grief, fear, and anger battled for control—but nothing prepared her for the disarming truth. A revelation that would lead Aspen to reassess not only her own life but that of the disappeared as well.The result is a brave and inspiring memoir of secrets kept and unearthed, of a vanishing that became a gift: a woman’s empowering reclamation of unmitigated purpose in the surreal wake of mystifying loss.

    His imbibing, chain-smoking agent is swooning, and his offbeat, sweetly supportive live-in girlfriend of five years, Sara, is ecstatic—new carpets! Yet even as he feverishly pens (read: mostly makes up) Georgina’s “straight-from-the-heart” life story (he’s thinking maybe a thoughtful, feminist angle), he is lusting for Georgina herself. Soon Tom—poor, misguided, painfully careening Tom—thinks he can have it all: a woman at home who loves him, and a hot, panting affair with a television diva. With a little planning, can it really be so hard?In this clever, rollicking tale of sexual misadventures and the modern man, Mil Millington hilariously explores the sometimes foolish choices mere mortals can make when that certain chemistry forces us to think not with our heads or our hearts but with . . . well, things that usually lead us straight into serious trouble.

    It was filled with hundreds of niches, one over the other. There is a country in each one; they're like boys, they're dead." In this landmark poem, written at the height of the Pinochet dictatorship, major Chilean poet Raul Zurita protests with ferocious invention the extinguishment of a generation and the brutalization of a nation. Of the role of poetry and of his own treatment by the military under this regime, Zurita has said, "You see, the only thing that told me that I wasn't crazy, that I wasn't living in a nightmare, was this file of poems, and then when they threw them into the sea, then I understood exactly what was happening." This elegy refuses to be an elegy, refuses to let the Disappeared disappear.

    

     Last King of the Cross lays bare Australia's most notorious underworld figure.In the mongrel tongue of the streets, John writes of fleeing war-torn Tripoli with his family and growing up in Sydney's rough and tumble west - before establishing himself as a tough guy and teen delinquent, then a bouncer, enforcer and nightclub king on the Golden Mile.Bullets fly, blades flash and bodies fall. In a city of shadows, John builds his army and empire - partying like a playboy prince of darkness while staying one step ahead of the cops, the outlaw gangs and hungry triggermen, plotting to take him and his family down.Crazier than Goodfellas, more compelling than The Godfather, Last King of the Cross is a colourful crime saga like no other and powerful proof that truth is always stranger than fiction.

    As a man whose brand of therapy has always been motion, whether in a skate park or on a snowdrift, Hocking needs an outlet for his restlessness. Then he spies his first New York surfer hauling a board to the subway, and its not long before he's a member of the vibrant and passionate surfing community at Far Rockaway. But in the wake of a traumatic robbery incident, the dark undercurrents of his ocean-obsession pull him further and further out on his own night sea journey.With Moby-Dick as a touchstone, and interspersed with interludes on everything from the history of surfing to Scientology's naval ties to the environmental impact of the Iraq War, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld is a multifaceted and enduring modern odyssey from a memorable and whip-smart new literary voice.

    "It's not about being perfect. It's not about where you get yourself in the end. There's power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there's grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become." - Michelle ObamaIn writing Becoming, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama shared her own extraordinary journey to help create space for others to tell their stories and to give people the courage to discover the power of their own voice. With this journal, she now provides you with the encouragement to find value in your own personal journey of becoming. Printed on cream writing paper, with a grosgrain ribbon, foil-stamped cover, and removable half-jacket, Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice includes thought-provoking prompts designed to help you reflect on your personal and family history; your goals, challenges, and dreams; what moves you and brings you hope; and what future you imagine for yourself and your community. Writes Mrs. Obama in the Introduction to the Becoming journal, "I hope you'll use this journal to write down your experiences, thoughts, and feelings, in all their imperfections, and without judgment. . . . We don't have to remember everything. But everything we remember has value."These pages will help you capture your own voice and journey so you can nurture your sense of belonging. Inside, you'll find an opportunity not only to take heart in the experiences that brought you to where you are today, but also to feel empowered to take those next steps, wherever they might lead.