Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger


Lilly DancygerMelissa Febos - 2019
    But all rage isn't created equal. Who gets to be angry? (If there's now space for cis white women's anger, what about black women? Trans women?) How do women express their anger? And what will they do with it-individually and collectively? In Burn It Down, a diverse group of women authors explore their rage-from the personal to the systemic, the unacknowledged to the public. One woman describes her rage at her own body when she becomes ill with no explanation. Another writes of the anger she inherits from her father. One Pakistani American writes, "To openly express my anger would be too American," and explains why. Broad-ranging and cathartic, Burn It Down is essential reading for any woman who has burned with rage but questioned if she is entitled to express it.

Everybody Matters: My Life Giving Voice


Mary Robinson - 2012
    Displaying a gift for storytelling and remembrance, Robinson reveals, in Everybody Matters, what lies behind the vision, strength, and determination that made her path to prominence as compelling as any of her achievements.Born in 1944 into a deeply Catholic family-the only girl among five childrenshe was poised to become a nun before finding her own true voice.Ever since, she has challenged convention in pursuit of fairness-whether in the Church, in government and politics, or in her own family.As an activist lawyer, she won landmark cases advancing the causes of women and marginalized people against the prejudices of the day, and in her twenty years in the Irish Senate she promoted progressive legislation, including the legalizing of contraception. She shocked the political system by winning election as Irelands first woman president in l990, redefining the role and putting Ireland firmly on the international stage. Her role as UN high commissioner for human rights, beginning in 1997, was to prove an even bigger challenge; she won acclaim for bringing attention to victims worldwide but was often frustrated both by the bureaucracy and by the willingness to compromise on principle, which reveal the deep and inherent barriers to changing the status quo. Now back in Ireland and heading her Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice, she has found the independence she needs to work effectively on behalf of the millions of poor around the world most affected by climate change.Told with the same calm conviction and modest pride that has guided her life, Everybody Matters will inspire anyone who reads it with the belief that each of us can, in our own way, help to change the world for the better.

The Big Fellow: Michael Collins and the Irish Revolution


Frank O'Connor - 1937
    Playfully nicknamed "The Big Fellow," Collins began to take a key role in the uprisings, eventually becoming a revered revolutionary leader.Acclaimed writer Frank O'Connor, a man who himself fought in the Irish Civil War, traces Collin's life from the day he returned to Dublin to the day a young Irish soldier shot him dead on a country road.The Big Fellow achieves a narrative both probing and poetic as it chronicles the life of a man so charismatic that he made people "aware of his presence even when he was not visible, through that uncomfortable magnetism of the very air, a tingling of the nerves."

Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923


R.F. Foster - 2014
    Ireland’s long struggle for self-government had suddenly become a radical and bloody fight for independence from Great Britain. Irish nationalists mounted a week-long insurrection, occupying public buildings and creating mayhem before the British army regained control. The Easter Rising provided the spark for the Irish revolution, a turning point in the violent history of Irish independence.In this highly original history, acclaimed scholar R. F. Foster explores the human dimension of this pivotal event. He focuses on the ordinary men and women, Yeats’s “vivid faces,” who rose “from counter or desk among grey / Eighteenth-century houses” and took to the streets. A generation made, not born, they rejected the inherited ways of the Church, their bourgeois families, and British rule. They found inspiration in the ideals of socialism and feminism, in new approaches to love, art, and belief.Drawing on fresh sources, including personal letters and diaries, Foster summons his characters to life. We meet Rosamond Jacob, who escaped provincial Waterford for bustling Dublin. On a jaunt through the city she might visit a modern art gallery, buy cigarettes, or read a radical feminist newspaper. She could practice the Irish language, attend a lecture on Freud, or flirt with a man who would later be executed for his radical activity. These became the roots of a rich life of activism in Irish and women’s causes.Vivid Faces shows how Rosamond and her peers were galvanized to action by a vertiginous sense of transformation: as one confided to his diary, “I am changing and things around me change.” Politics had fused with the intimacies of love and belief, making the Rising an event not only of the streets but also of the hearts and minds of a generation.

Six Years at the Russian Court


Margaret Eager - 2015
    Originally published in 1906, the book captures Eager’s years as governess to the four daughters of the Emperor and Empress Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna: the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. All of whom would be executed during the Russian civil war just over a decade later.This first-person account provides a fascinating insight into what was everyday life for the Romanov family. From religious celebrations and family illness to assassination attempts and life during the war; Eager’s central role gained her access to some of the family’s most precious and testing times. In addition to documenting the time spent with her royal employers, Eager also reveals intriguing aspects of Russian society as whole. Through a series of anecdotal references she includes recollections of her time in Russia regarding such things as the tough life of the peasantry, criminal activity and even the national post service.This classic, written from the unsuspecting eyes of a foreign nanny, shows early twentieth century Russia and the last Russian royal family like you’ve never seen before. Margaret Eager (1863-1936) left the Russia in 1904 and returned to Ireland where she received a pension from the Russian government for her time as a nurse. She kept in contact with the family she had known so well right up to their brutal deaths in 1918. Eager’s family stated that she never fully recovered from the news.Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Blue Ribbons Bitter Bread: Joice Loch, Australia's Most Heroic Woman


Susanna de Vries - 2000
    She had the inspired courage that saved many hundreds of Jews and Poles in World War II, the compassion that made her a self-trained doctor to tens of thousands of refugees, the incredible grit that took her close to death in several theatres of war, and the dedication to truth and justice that shone forth in her own books and a lifetime of astonishing heroism.Born in a cyclone in 1887 on a Queensland sugar plantation she grew up in grinding poverty in Gippsland and emerged from years of unpaid drudgery by writing a children's book and freelance journalism. In 1918 she married Sydney Loch, author of a banned book on Gallipoli. After a dangerous time in Dublin during the Troubles, they escaped from possible IRA vengeance to work with the Quakers in Poland. There they rescued countless dispossessed people from disease and starvation and risked death themselves.In 1922 Joice and Sydney went to Greece to aid the 1,500,000 refugees fleeing Turkish persecution. Greece was to become their home. They lived in an ancient tower by the sea in the shadows of Athos, the Holy Mountain, and worked selflessly for decades to save victims of war, famine and disease.During World War II, Joice Loch was an agent for the Allies in Eastern Europe and pulled off a spectacular escape to snatch over a thousand Jews and Poles from death just before the Nazis invaded Bucharest, escorting them via Constantinople to Palestine. By the time she died in 1982 she had written ten books, saved many thousands of lives and was one of the world's most decorated women. At her funeral the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Oxford named her 'one of the most significant women of the twentieth century.'This classic Australian biography is a tribute to one of Australia's most heroic women, who always spoke with great fondness of Queensland as her birthplace. In 2006, a Loch Memorial Museum was opened in the tower by the sea in Ouranoupolis, a tribute to the Lochs and their humanitarian work.

Season of Second Chances


Aimee Alexander - 2020
    A novel of family, love, and learning to be kind to yourself by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Aimee Alexander. Grace Sullivan flees Dublin with her two teenage children, Jack and Holly, returning to the sleepy West Cork village where she grew up. No one in Killrowan knows what Grace is running from - or that she's even running. She'd like to keep it that way. Taking over from her father, Des, as the village doctor offers a real chance for Grace to begin again. But will she and the family adapt to life in a small rural community? Will the villagers accept an outsider as their GP? Will Grace live up to the doctor that her father was? And will she find the inner strength to face the past when it comes calling? Season of Second Chances is a heart-warming story of friendship, love and finding the inner strength to face a future that may bring back the past. Perfect for fans of Call The Midwives, The Durrells, Doc Martin and All Creatures Great and Small. The villagers of Killrowan will steal into your heart and make you want to stay with them forever.

A Secret History of the IRA: Gerry Adams and the Thirty Year War


Ed Moloney - 2002
    At the heart of that campaign lies one man: Gerry Adams. From the outbreak of the troubles to the present day, he has been an immensely influential figure. The most compelling question about the IRA is: how did a man who condoned atrocities that resulted in huge numbers of civilian deaths also become the guiding light behind the peace process? Moloney's book is now updated to encompass the anxious and uneasy peace that has prevailed to 2007.

Translations


Brian Friel - 1981
    The 'scholars' are a cross-section of the local community, from a semi-literate young farmer to and elderly polygot autodidact who reads and quotes Homer in the orginal.In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, engaged on behalf of the Britsh Army and Government in making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes ofr cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and transliterated - or translated - into English, in examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group of people, Irish and English, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the unexperctedly far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative and harmless. While remaining faithful to the personalities and relationshiops of those people at that time he makes a richly suggestive statement about Irish - and English - history.

Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently


Emer O'Toole - 2015
    With all the revolutionary zeal, laugh-out-loud humour and intelligence of Laura Bates, Caitlin Moran and Bell Hooks, Emer O'Toole explores what it really means to 'act like a girl'.Being a woman is, largely, about performance - how we dress and modify our bodies, what we say, the roles we play, and how we conform to expectations. Gender stereotypes are still deeply embedded in our society, but Emer O'Toole is on a mission to re-write the old script and bend the rules of gender - and she shows how and why we should all be joining in.With game-changing ideas and laugh-out-loud humour, this book will open your mind and revolutionise the way that you think about gender.

Postcard Stories


Jan Carson - 2017
    Each of these tiny stories was inspired by an event, an overheard conversation, a piece of art or just a fleeting glance of something worth thinking about further.Collected in one volume, Carson's postcards present a panoramic view of contemporary Belfast -- its coffee shops, streets and museums and airports -- and offer it to the wider world. Even as they seem to spring from a writer's solitary perspective, taken together, these observations and their distribution speak of human connectedness. Like a pleasant surprise in the mail, this collection reminds us how many friendships are born and strengthened in a story shared.Illustrated by Benjamin Phillips.

Roar


Cecelia Ahern - 2018
    Ahern takes the familiar aspects of women's lives—the routines, the embarrassments, the desires—and elevates these moments to the outlandish and hilarious with her astute blend of magical realism and social insight.One woman is tortured by sinister bite marks that appear on her skin; another is swallowed up by the floor during a mortifying presentation; yet another resolves to return and exchange her boring husband at the store where she originally acquired him. The women at the center of this curious universe learn that their reality is shaped not only by how others perceive them, but also how they perceive the power within themselves.By turns sly, whimsical, and affecting, these thirty short stories are a dynamic examination of what it means to be a woman in this very moment. Like women themselves, each story can stand alone; yet together, they have a combined power to shift consciousness, inspire others, and create a multi-voiced Roar that will not be ignored.

A Place Apart


Dervla Murphy - 1979
    She also sought to interrogate her own opinions and emotions. As an Irishwoman and traveller who had only ever spent thirty-six hours of her forty-four years over the border to the north, why had she been so reluctant to engage with the issues? Despite her own family connections to the IRA, she travelled north largely unfettered by sectarian loyalties. Armed instead with an indefatigable curiosity, a fine ear for anecdote, an ability to stand her own at the bar and a penetrating intelligence, she navigated her way through horrifying situations, and sometimes found herself among people stiff with hate and grief. But equally, she discovered an unquenchable thirst for life and peace, a spirit that refused to die.

Watching the Door: Drinking Up, Getting Down, and Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast


Kevin Myers - 2006
    Quickly absorbed into the local community and privy to the secrets of both the Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries, Myers gained a unique perspective into both sides of the sectarian violence.Devoid of any political agenda, Myers describes the streets of Belfast at its bloodiest with searing clarity, capturing every inch of the city's disturbing violence. Flirting with death at every turn, Myers comes of age as the world around him falls apart, fueled by the psychotic rage, senseless murder, and unrelenting terror that surround Northern Ireland's loyalist gangs, paratroopers, police force, and, of course, average citizen.Part unofficial history, part personal memoir, Watching the Door is raw, provocative, and darkly funny, offering an unbridled account of sex, death, and violence in Northern Ireland by one of its most dynamic witnesses.

An Old Woman's Reflections: The Life of a Blasket Island Storyteller


Peig Sayers - 1936
    She was a natural orator, and students and scholars of the Irish language came from far and wide to visit her. In this book, as an old lady, she muses and reflects on the days of her youth, recounting tales which evoke characters and an era now dead, and capture the superstitions and hard life of her beloved island.