Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers


Elissa Washuta - 2019
    Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket.Shapes of Native Nonfiction features a dynamic combination of established and emerging Native writers, including Stephen Graham Jones, Deborah Miranda, Terese Marie Mailhot, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Eden Robinson, and Kim TallBear. Their ambitious, creative, and visionary work with genre and form demonstrate the slippery, shape-changing possibilities of Native stories. Considered together, they offer responses to broader questions of materiality, orality, spatiality, and temporality that continue to animate the study and practice of distinct Native literary traditions in North America.

Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now


Maya Angelou - 1993
    This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power do spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou's latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth on every page. "From the Paperback edition."

Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot


Masha Gessen - 2014
    In neon-colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas, they performed a “punk prayer” beseeching the “Mother of God” to “get rid of Putin.” They were quickly shut down by security, and in the weeks and months that followed, three of the women were arrested and tried, and two were sentenced to a remote prison colony. But the incident captured international headlines, and footage of it went viral. People across the globe recognized not only a fierce act of political confrontation but also an inspired work of art that, in a time and place saturated with lies, found a new way to speak the truth. Masha Gessen’s riveting account tells how such a phenomenon came about. Drawing on her exclusive, extensive access to the members of Pussy Riot and their families and associates, she reconstructs the fascinating personal journeys that transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision, gave them the courage and imagination to express it unforgettably, and endowed them with the strength to endure the devastating loneliness and isolation that have been the price of their triumph.

How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics, and the War on Sex


Cristina Page - 2006
    As activist and writer Cristina Page shows, the gains made by birth-control advocates (historically) and pro-choice organizations (currently) have formed the bedrock of freedoms few Americans would choose to live without. Now, not only is the future of legal abortion far from guaranteed, in many parts of the country ready access to many forms of contraception is in jeopardy as well. And that development, Page argues, should have everyone, regardless of moral or political persuasion, deeply concerned. For these basic freedoms are not just for the freewheeling gals of "Sex and the City," but are central to the lives of working mothers and fathers from Phoenix to Duluth, churchgoers and nonbelievers alike. Page crystallizes the thoughts and attitudes of a generation of women and men whose voices are seldom heard in the political arena. How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America is the first book to address the positive transformation our society has undergone because of our ability to plan when and if to have children. It also exposes the anti-choice movement's far-reaching-and dangerous-agenda. Fresh, bold, and stocked with counterintuitive arguments, this is a book bound to form the basis for heated conversations nationwide.

Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion


Virgie Tovar - 2012
    Hot & Heavy rejects the idea that being thin is best, instead embracing the many fabulous aspects of being fat—building fat-positive spaces, putting together fat-friendly wardrobes, turning society’s rules into personal politics, and creating supportive, inclusive communities. Writers, activists, performers, and poets—including April Flores, Alysia Angel, Charlotte Cooper, Jessica Judd, Emily Anderson, Genne Murphy, and Tigress Osborn—cover everything from fat go-go dancing to queer dating to urban gardening in their essays, exploring their experiences with the word "fat," pinpointing particular moments that have impacted the way they think and feel about their bodies, and telling the story of how they each became fat revolutionaries.Ground-breaking and long overdue, Hot & Heavy is a fierce, sassy, thoughtful, authentic, and joyous collection of stories about unapologetically—and unconditionally—loving the body you’re in.

Almost a Woman


Esmeralda Santiago - 1998
    At thirteen, Negi yearns for her own bed, privacy, and a life with her father, who remains in Puerto Rico. Translating for Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York's prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she yearns to find balance between being American and being Puerto Rican. When Negi defies her mother by going on a series of hilarious dates, she finds that independence brings its own set of challenges.At once a universally poignant coming-of-age tale and a brave and heartfelt immigrant's story, Almost a Woman is Santiago's triumphant journey into womanhood.  "A universal tale familiar to thousands of immigrants to this country, but made special by Santiago's simplicity and honesty." --The Miami Herald"A courageous memoir. . . . One witnesses. . .the blessings, contradictions and restraints of Puerto Rican culture." --The Washington Post Book World

US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man


Charlie LeDuff - 2007
    Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charlie LeDuff scours the country, tossing back whiskey with the seedy, the dreamy, and the strange in search of the soul of the American male. No one knows life's underbelly better than "New York Times" reporter Charlie LeDuff. Christened the "bibulous scribe of the working class" by his peers, he's made a career chronicling, with dead-on feel for character and idiom, the gritty lives of the drifters, the forgotten, and the strange-people washed up and washed out on alcohol, broken dreams, lifetimes of hard living. Willing to follow his subjects where no respectable white-collared man would dare go, he is clearly-and admittedly-a writer "not for people who have doormen, but for doormen." And while his wholly original coverage of this beat has brought him acclaim as a journalist, it has also made him something of a working-class hero. Who better, then, to examine what it means to be a man in modern-day America? "US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man" is LeDuff's equally intoxicated and intoxicating journey across the country in search of the heart and soul of today's American male. With characteristic audacity, compassion, and humor, he takes part in a Bacchanalian Burning Man festival in Nevada, clad in a Mohawk and little else; trains with the sadhearted Russian clown of a traveling circus; leads a cavalry charge down the Little Bighorn River with war reenactors; joins a C-level professional football team; infiltrates a West Oakland bike gang that holds fight parties; travels with Appalachian snake handlers and tent revivalists; and covers a cowboy love story at a gay rodeo ("Not like the movie. Life is never like the movies. Life is messy and complicated and self-loathing and funny"). At each juncture LeDuff faithfully records their religion and sins and racism, their freaks and misfits, their search for the American dream, and the sweetness they find in living it out, if only for a moment.

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World


Kai Cheng Thom - 2019
    With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness. Taking its cues from contemporary thought leaders in the transformative justice movement such as adrienne maree brown and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, this provocative book is a call for nuance in a time of political polarization, for healing in a time of justice, and for love in an apocalypse.

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype


Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 1992
    Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis


Ada Calhoun - 2020
    She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too?Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to “have it all,” Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take “me-time,” or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order.In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.

Black Girl Dangerous on Race, Queerness, Class and Gender


Mia McKenzie - 2014
    Her nuanced analysis of intersecting systems of oppression goes deep to reveal the complicated truths of a multiply-marginalized experience. McKenzie tackles the hardest questions of our time with clarity and courage, in language that is accessible to non-academics and academics alike. She is both fearless and vulnerable, demanding and accountable. Hers is a voice like no other. "One of the most provocative and insightful writers of our generation." -Aura Bogado, Colorlines "A fierce voice among a generation of queer and trans folk of color." -Janet Mock, New York Times Bestselling Author of "Redefining Realness" "Tough-love activism at its best-straightforward, challenging, whip-smart, and uncompromising." -Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living


Jes Baker - 2015
    Among the many Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls that you don't want to miss:1. It's Possible to Love Your Body (Today. Now.)2. You Can Train Your Brain to Play Nice3. Your Weight Is Not a Reflection Of Your Worth4. Changing Your Tumblr Feed Will Change Your Life5. Salad Will Not Get You to Heaven6. Cheesecake Will Not Send You to HellWith her trademark wit, honesty, and rallying spirit, veteran blogger and advocate Jes Baker makes the case for embracing a body-positive worldview, changing perceptions about weight, and making mental wellness a priority. Alongside notable guest essayists, Baker calls on all people to reject fat prejudice, fight body-shaming at the hands of marketing and media, and join the life-changing movement with one step: change the world by loving your body. If you're a person with a body, this book is for you.

Puerto Rico Strong


Hazel NewlevantAlan Medina - 2018
    All proceeds go to UNIDOS Disaster Relief & Recovery Program to Support Puerto Rico.Despite being a US territory, Puerto Rico is often thought of as a foreign land, if it’s even a thought in the mind of the average American at all. Its people exist in all corners of America; some of them have parents who immigrated from the home island, others are a part of families that have been on the mainland for generations. Then there are those who have come to the states in search of a dream but struggle to integrate into an unfamiliar culture, while there are those who have lived in the United States all of their lives but still have the same struggle because of the color of their skin or their sexual identity. These stories follow individuals from diverse walks of life but are all part of the culture that is Puerto Rico.Puerto Rico Strong features art and writing by Rosa Colon, Vita Ayala, Naomi Franquiz, Javier Cruz Winnick, Sabrina Cintron, Ronnie Garcia, Fabian Nicieza, Joamette Gil, and many more!

Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica


Zora Neale Hurston - 1938
    Tell My Horse is an invaluable resource and fascinating guide. Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experience in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies and customs and superstitions of great cultural interest.

The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order


Marcelle Karp - 1999
    With contributors who are funny, fierce, and too smart to be anything but feminist, Bust is the original grrrl zine, with a base of loyal female fans--all those women who know that Glamour is garbage, Vogue is vapid, and Cosmo is clueless. The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order contains brand new, funny, sharp, trenchant essays along with some of the best writings from the magazine: Courtney Love's (unsolicited) piece on Bad Girls; the already immortal "Dont's For Boys"; an interview with girl-hero Judy Blume; and lots of other shocking, titillating, truthful articles. A kind of Our Bodies, Ourselves for Generation XX, The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order is destined to become required reading for today's hip urban girl and her admirers.