Book picks similar to
Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space by Susan Harris O'Connor
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Ill Fares the Land
Tony Judt - 2010
Judt masterfully crystallizes what we’ve all been feeling into a way to think our way into, and thus out of, our great collective dis-ease about the current state of things.As the economic collapse of 2008 made clear, the social contract that defined postwar life in Europe and America – the guarantee of a basal level of security, stability and fairness -- is no longer guaranteed; in fact, it’s no longer part of the common discourse. Judt offers the language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the nihilistic individualism of the far right and the debunked socialism of the past. To find a way forward, we must look to our not so distant past and to social democracy in action: to re-enshrining fairness over mere efficiency.Distinctly absent from our national dialogue, social democrats believe that the state can play an enhanced role in our lives without threatening our liberties. Instead of placing blind faith in the market—as we have to our detriment for the past thirty years—social democrats entrust their fellow citizens and the state itself.Ill Fares the Land challenges us to confront our societal ills and to shoulder responsibility for the world we live in. For hope remains. In reintroducing alternatives to the status quo, Judt reinvigorates our political conversation, providing the tools necessary to imagine a new form of governance, a new way of life.
The Born Again Runner: A Guide to Overcoming Excuses, Injuries, and Other Obstacles—for New and Returning Runners
Pete Magill - 2016
Taking up running seemed impossible—but he willed himself to do it anyway. Magill went on to become one of the fastest masters runners ever, and a sought-after coach. Over a glowing (albeit hard-won) career, he has heard every excuse people use to stop running or never start—from achy knees and sore ankles, to advanced age and arthritis, to too many cigarettes or years on the couch. In every case, Magill’s best advice is to do what he did: Run anyway—at a pace and mileage that work. Through inspiration, science, and anecdote, Magill gets runners out the door; through personal action plans, he sets them on the right path; and through the best exercises to protect and rehabilitate the body, he keeps them going—showing a way forward for new and sidelined runners who haven’t before realized how close they are to fun and pain-free running!
Binding Shadows
Jasmine Silvera - 2020
Hunting down lost books is more than a job, it’s a way for Barbara to conceal her powers in the mundane world of the university library. One misstep and she risks exposure to ruthless necromancers willing to destroy anything supernatural they cannot control. But when the prickly new professor in charge of her latest assignment proves more than he seems, rules and reason are no match for her growing fascination. After years of battling to cage the beast within him, Tobias returns to Prague and the safety of his pack of brothers. Unfortunately, his new job handling a collection of rare editions comes with a research assistant irresistible to both beast and man. Revealing his secret could endanger his entire family and he refuses to risk passing on the curse in his blood. When the discovery of an enchanted book of spells triggers unpredictable surges in Barbara’s magic, unleashing the beast within himself may be the only way to free her. Trapped between a witch and a necromancer, they must survive a perilous reckoning with the past, or neither will have a future. Binding Shadows is the first book in the Tooth & Spell Trilogy and is as a prequel to Death's Dancer.
The Accidental Santera
Irete Lazo - 2008
Becoming a santera is not in her plans.But everything changes when her best friend, the feisty Patricia Muñoz, drags her into a French Quarter voodoo shop during a conference in New Orleans. When Gabrielle gets home to the San Francisco Bay Area, the predictions from her on-a-whim reading begin to come true. That’s when she learns she hails from a long line of practitioners of Santeria, the religion created when Yoruba slaves combined their ancient rituals with Catholicism.Out of desperation to become a mother and save both her job and her marriage, Gabrielle turns to Puerto Rican relatives living in Miami she hasn’t seen since she was a child. She finds herself warmly embraced by three generations of Segovia santeras and drawn into their world of séances, sacred drums, and ritual animal sacrifice.Unexpectedly marked for initiation by the gods and goddesses of the Yoruba pantheon, Gabrielle must decide whether she can bring herself to answer the call. And, if she chooses, commit to the seemingly contradictory life of a scientist who is also a santera.In this powerful debut novel, Irete Lazo captures a vibrant world still unknown to many and relates a journey that is at once funny, heart-wrenching, and, ultimately, triumphant.
The Kinship of Secrets
Eugenia Kim - 2018
Wary of the challenges they know will face them, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their other daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her.But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia, under the shadow of the daughter left behind, as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn’t remember. Najin and Calvin desperately seek a reunion with Inja, but are the bonds of love strong enough to reconnect their family over distance, time, and war? And as deep family secrets are revealed, will everything they long for be upended?Told through the alternating perspectives of the distanced sisters, and inspired by a true story, The Kinship of Secrets? explores the cruelty of war, the power of hope, and what it means to be a sister.
Augustown
Kei Miller - 2016
Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don’t, and plenty of things that shouldn’t happen do. For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life.
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
Monique W. Morris - 2016
After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school.Just 16 percent of female students in the USA, Black girls make up more than one-third of all girls with a school-related arrest. The first book to tell these untold stories, Pushout exposes a world of confined potential and supports the growing movement to address the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.For four years Monique W. Morris, author of Black Stats, chronicled the experiences of black girls across America whose intricate lives are misunderstood, highly judged—by teachers, administrators, and the justice system—and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Morris shows how, despite obstacles, stigmas, stereotypes, and despair, black girls still find ways to breathe remarkable dignity into their lives in classrooms, juvenile facilities, and beyond.
Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away
June Cross - 2006
In 1957, when June Cross was four years old, she was sent by her white mother to live with a black family in Atlantic City. Her mother, Norma, had left June’s abusive father, a comic in the well-known black vaudeville duo Stump and Stumpy, and gave June up when it became clear that her dark-skinned, kinky-haired child could no longer "pass." Within her adopted family, June struggled with her identity as the black radicalism of the times collided head on with her family’s more traditional ideals. Summer vacations were spent with her mother, now in Hollywood and married to F Troop TV actor Larry Storch. For many years, Norma, afraid that Larry’s career would suffer if anyone discovered the truth about her illegitimate daughter, told friends and reporters that June was adopted.Secret Daughter, which grew out of Cross’s Emmy Award–winning documentary, traces this thorny story with poignancy and skill. It is both a vivid snapshot of race relations in America and an inspiring journey of understanding between a mother and daughter.
The Girl and the Grove
Eric Smith - 2018
From bouncing around the foster care system to living with seasonal affective disorder, she’s never had an easy road. Leila keeps herself busy with her passion for environmental advocacy, monitoring the Urban Ecovists message board and joining a local environmental club with her best friend Sarika. And now that Leila has finally been adopted, she dares to hope her life will improve.But the voices in Leila’s head are growing louder by the day. Ignoring them isn’t working anymore. Something calls out to her from the grove at Fairmount Park.
Anseo
Una-Minh Kavanagh - 2019
In the days that followed, Úna-Minh had only one niggling regret: that she had not responded in her first language, Irish.Úna-Minh was adopted as a newborn from Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1991 by a single woman from Kerry. Six weeks later she arrived in her new home of Ireland. Raised in a loving home by her teacher mother and retired Garda grandfather, Úna-Minh was instilled with a multi-faceted sense of Irish identity. In her first book, Úna-Minh writes honestly about how the racist attack on Parnell Street was a catalyst for her to live through Irish in a twenty-first century way: online, globalised, in activism and feminism. And she talks frankly and humorously about tackling trolls, flirting abroad, gaming and her passion for creating accessible content in Irish.Sprinkled throughout with funny and relatable Frása an Lae (phrase of the day), this is the heart-warming and important story of a diverse and contemporary Irish life.
Discipline
Vera Roberts - 2012
Yet, Mariana Harlow didn't just break both rules once; she broke them multiple times with little regard to her boyfriend/Master. When Scott Reed discovers the errors of his submissive girlfriend's ways, His reaction is less than pleased. No one disrespects Scott and gets away with it - no one. Discipline is an introductory novelette to the S&M series for new audiences. It contains BDSM, a D/s interracial (Black woman/White man) relationship, explicit sex scenes, bondage, and light humiliation.
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Saidiya Hartman - 1997
Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the black family.In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship that were indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work.Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives recreates the experience of young urban black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them—domestic service, second-class citizenship, and respectable poverty—and whose intimate revolution was apprehended as crime and pathology. For the first time, young black women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives recovers their radical aspirations and insurgent desires.
Trigger Point Self-Care Manual: For Pain-Free Movement
Donna Finando - 2005
Injuries of this type are generally too minor to warrant splinting, casting, or medication and often do not prevent participation in physical activities. They do, however, produce noticeable discomfort and, over time, frequently lead to more severe injuries.In Trigger Point Self-Care Manual Donna Finando presents methods for the healing and prevention of musculature injuries. She identifies the causes of and remedies for areas of muscular tightness and restriction and details many self-care techniques, including precise self-massage, stretching, and the use of wet heat and/or ice. In the fully illustrated reference section, organized by body part, she identifies the pain associated with trigger points in each muscle of the body and provides instructions for palpating, treating, and stretching the muscle in order to release it.
Boomer and Me: A Memoir of Motherhood, and Asperger's
Jo Case - 2012
Like Helen Garner, she has a steady, careful eye, and uses it to bring back news of glorious, rackety life.’Susan JohnsonMe: ‘Are you going to be a good boy this year?’Boomer: ‘Uh huh. I have no interest in toilet humour.’Me: ‘You don’t?’Boomer: ‘No. No interest at all. I mean, I think “it’s funny”when, in The Bad Book, Terence takes off all his clothes.And when Horrid Henry shows his undies. But I wouldthink to myself, “That is something I should not do”.’Between juggling work, joint custody and the ordinary demands of motherhood, Jo tries to work out why her son Leo (aka Boomer) is finding it hard to fit in. His wit wins him friends, but the rituals of friendship—like learning to compromise—are proving challenging. Is it because he’s an only child? Could he be gifted?When Leo is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, Jo fears what it means—and sees herself, and her family, through new eyes. Trapped in a cycle of doubt and discovery, she wonders how you can stay true to who you are and fit in. What the hell is ‘normal’ anyway?This is the bittersweet story of a twenty-first-century family, and why being different isn’t a disability—it just takes some getting used to.
Re Jane
Patricia Park - 2015
Sardonic yet vulnerable, Jane toils, unappreciated, in her strict uncle’s grocery store and politely observes the traditional principle of nunchi (a combination of good manners, hierarchy, and obligation). Desperate for a new life, she’s thrilled to become the au pair for the Mazer-Farleys, two Brooklyn English professors and their adopted Chinese daughter. Inducted into the world of organic food co-ops, and nineteenth–century novels, Jane is the recipient of Beth Mazer’s feminist lectures and Ed Farley’s very male attention. But when a family death interrupts Jane and Ed’s blossoming affair, she flies off to Seoul, leaving New York far behind.Reconnecting with family, and struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, Jane begins to wonder if Ed Farley is really the man for her. Jane returns to Queens, where she must find a balance between two cultures and accept who she really is.