The commentary will contain background on the poems or more deeply delve into themes or topics discussed in the poems themselves. The spiritual seeker as well as the mature in faith will both benefit from the poems.

    Revisiting Magellan’s voyage around the world, these poems explore the speaker’s Filipino American identity by grappling with her relationship to her family and notions of diaspora, circumnavigation, and discovery. Whether rewriting the origin story of Eve (“I always imagined that the serpent had the legs of a seductive woman in black nylons”), or ruminating on what-should-have-been-said “when the man at the party said he wanted to own a Filipino,” Chan paints wry, witty renderings of anecdotal and folkloric histories, while both preserving and unveiling a self-identity that dares any other to try and claim it.

    Here, Stevenson shares about the turmoil of his early life, the rejection and pain faced in his initial attempts to launch his music career, the grief experienced during his mother’s long battle with cancer, the stress and burnout of his days working as a paramedic, and how an unexpected lightning storm gave him a front-row seat to a miracle that would turn his life around. When the dark clouds roll in, Stevenson has learned to listen to that still, small voice he hears—the voice of a trustworthy God who holds on to him even during the fiercest storms.

    With leaky tents, little experience, and no TV cameras or big-time sponsors, the lads set out in 1979 to paddle 1,400 miles north to Hudson Bay. Why? Why not! Driven by a youthful sense of adventure, they took the chance of a lifetime just to see what lay around the next turn. Sit in their canoe as they glide through smooth waters and survive rushing rivers. Experience with them the desolation of true wilderness and go on humorous escapades with local characters. With graceful storytelling, Dennis Weidemann weaves this richly diverse tale of near disasters, splendid sunsets, bootleggers, Mounties, polar bears, and the indomitable spirit of youth. Share the dream that still lives, and that will surely inspire others.

    It is a remarkable story of extremes, and a no-holds barred account of Rollermania.From the Trade Paperback edition.

     The true story of how mildly successful guitarist and New York Times writer Dan Crane relinquished his instrument and became Björn Türoque (pronounced "b-yorn too-RAWK"), the second greatest air guitarist in the nation. This exploration of the international air guitar sub-culture addresses the issue of dedicating oneself to an invisible art in order to achieve the ultimate goal of "airness"-that is, when air guitar transcends the "real" art that it imitates and becomes an art form in and of itself.

    Similar to the first book, Thrift Store Graces contains personal accounts of Knuth’s experiences serving as a once reluctant, now enthusiastic volunteer at a thrift store in Kalamazoo, Michigan. What sets Thrift Store Graces apart from her first book is that Knuth introduces us to some far more challenging personal situations that emerge as a result of her volunteer work. Additionally, she invites us to join her as she hesitantly embarks on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in war-ravaged Bosnia. Through it all, her delightful sense of humor keeps her going, along with her conviction that some of God’s greatest gifts come disguised as difficulties.Witty, inspiring, and thought-provoking all at once, the stories in Thrift Store Graces subtly compel us to redefine what it means to volunteer and to rethink why it is that we volunteer in the first place.

    This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.Among the essays included here are:• "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"• "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"• "I Am Your Sister"• Excerpts from the American Book Award–winning A Burst of LightThe poems are drawn from Lorde’s nine volumes, including The Black Unicorn and National Book Award finalist From a Land Where Other People Live. Among them are:• "Martha"• "A Litany for Survival"• "Sister Outsider"• "Making Love to Concrete"

    Mehra's family: her wife, who is white; her adopted son, who is black; and their experiences dealing with America's rigid ideas of race, gender, and sexuality. Her clear-eyed and incisive writing on her family's daily struggle to make space for themselves amid racial intolerance and stereotypes personalizes some of America's most fraught issues. Mehra writes candidly about her efforts to protect and shelter her young son from racial slurs on the playground and from intrusive questions by strangers while educating him on the realities and dangers of being a black male in America. In other essays, she discusses her childhood living in the racially polarized city of Memphis; coming out as queer; being an adoptive mother who is brown; and what it's like to be constantly confronted by people's confusion, concern, and expectations about her child and her family. Above all, Mehra argues passionately for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of identity and family.Both poignant and challenging, Brown, White, Black is a remarkable portrait of a loving family on the front lines of some of the most highly charged conversations in our culture.

    We change our haircuts and our outfits and our minds. We change names, titles, labels. We attempt to blend in or to stand out. We outgrow relationships, we abandon dreams for new ones, we start fresh. We seize control of our stories. We make resolutions.In fact, nobody knows this better than Vivek, who's made a career of embracing many roles: artist, performer, musician, writer, model, teacher. In People Change, she reflects on the origins of this impulse, tracing it to childhood influences from Hinduism to Madonna. What emerges is a meditation on change itself: why we fear it, why we're drawn to it, what motivates us to change, and what traps us in place.At a time when we're especially contemplating who we want to be, this slim and stylish handbook is an essential companion--a guide to celebrating our many selves and the inspiration to discover who we'll become next.

    As he learned valuable lessons in self-sufficiency, taking responsibility, and how to avoid (for the most part but not always) getting punched in the face by irate hippies, Larry also found his place and made his home in the far-flung, disjointed and eccentric community he encountered in the anarchic realm that begins where Highway 101’s tattered tarmac dissolves into the dust of Spy Rock Road.

    From witnessing homelessness in the United States to struggles for social change in Haiti, El Salvador, and Brazil, Puleo used photography and interviews to be a bridge between poverty and affluence, the First World and the Third World. Puleo's familiarity with suffering, however, was dramatically intensified when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of thirty-one. She died twenty-one months later.

    Wrenching story with a happy ending.

    8 pages of illustrations.

    One minute we were living life and doing our thing, the next, most of us were advised to stay at home for a month or more.