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Burqa de chair: nouvelles
Par Nelly Arcan. 2011
" Dès son premier roman, Putain (Seuil, 2001), Nelly Arcan na cessé de brasser dans un lyrisme flamboyant quelques thèmes…
obsessionnels, inséparables de sa vie : la dictature de limage, limpossibilité dun rapport innocent à soi-même, le culte vertigineux de la jeunesse, et son envers : la pulsion de mort, qui anime souterrainement les sociétés modernes. Passé le temps du scandale et celui de lémotion, voici donc les derniers échos dune œuvre aussi éblouissante que brève. Burqa de chair : titre terrible, qui agit avec la force dun boomerang en regard de certains débats actuels. On trouvera assemblés ici trois inédits : La robe , Lenfant dans le miroir et La honte . Les deux premiers sont écrits à la première personne, dans ce phrasé tourbillonnant, suffocant, qui était sa marque singulière, celle dun écrivain en danger . Dans le troisième texte, elle décortique avec une inépuisable férocité son expérience humiliante sur un plateau de télévision. " -- 4e de couvFire: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1937
Par Anaïs Nin. 1995
The renowned diarist continues the story begun in Henry and June and Incest. Drawing from the author&’s original, uncensored…
journals, Fire follows Anaïs Nin&’s journey as she attempts to liberate herself sexually, artistically, and emotionally. While referring to her relationships with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and author Henry Miller, as well as a new lover, the Peruvian Gonzalo Moré, she also reveals that her most passionate and enduring affair is with writing itself.Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir
Par Delia Ephron. 2021
The bestselling, beloved writer of romantic comedies like You've Got Mail tells her own late-in-life love story in her "resplendent…
memoir," complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution (Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone). Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She&’d lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry&’s death, she decided to make one small change in her life—she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell. She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love. But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia. In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.A "Most Anticipated Book of 2022" by TIME, Bustle, Parade, Publishers Weekly, Boston.comA "Best Memoir of 2022" by Marie ClaireA "Best Memoir of April" by Vanity FairWe Are the Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History
Par Stephen Guinan. 2022
Discover the unlikely story of the Toledo Troopers, the winningest team in the National Women's Football League, who won seven…
league championships in the 1970s—and gain full access to the players and key figures in the organization. Amid a national backdrop of the call to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the National Women&’s Football League was founded as something of a gimmick. However, the league&’s star team, the Toledo Troopers, emerged to challenge traditional gender roles and amass a win-loss record never before or since achieved in American football. The players were housewives, factory workers, hairdressers, former nuns, high school teachers, bartenders, mail carriers, pilots, and would-be drill sergeants. Black, white, Latina. Mothers and daughters and aunts and sisters. But most of all, they were athletes who had been denied the opportunity to play a game they were born to play. Before the protests and the lobbyists, before the debates and the amendments, before the marches and the mandates, there was only an obscure advertisement in a local Midwestern paper and those who answered it, women such as Lee Hollar, the only woman working the line at the Libbey glass factory; Gloria Jimenez, who grew up playing sports with her six brothers; and Linda Jefferson, one the greatest, most accomplished athletes in sports history. Stephen Guinan grew up in Toledo pulling for his hometown football team, and—in the innocence of youth—did not realize at the time what a barrier-breaking lost piece of history he was witnessing. We Are the Troopers shines light on forgotten champions who came together for the love of the game.Sisters in Resistance: How a German Spy, a Banker's Wife, and Mussolini's Daughter Outwitted the Nazis
Par Tilar J. Mazzeo. 2022
In a tale as twisted as any spy thriller, discover how three women delivered critical evidence of Axis war crimes…
to Allied forces during World War II: &“A tantalizingly novelistic history lesson" (Kirkus). In 1944, news of secret diaries kept by Italy's Foreign Minister, Galeazzo Ciano, had permeated public consciousness. What wasn't reported, however, was how three women—a Fascist's daughter, a German spy, and an American banker&’s wife—risked their lives to ensure the diaries would reach the Allies, who would later use them as evidence against the Nazis at Nuremberg. In 1944, Benito Mussolini's daughter, Edda, gave Hitler and her father an ultimatum: release her husband, Galeazzo Ciano, from prison, or risk her leaking her husband's journals to the press. To avoid the peril of exposing Nazi lies, Hitler and Mussolini hunted for the diaries for months, determined to destroy them. Hilde Beetz, a German spy, was deployed to seduce Ciano to learn the diaries' location and take them from Edda. As the seducer became the seduced, Hilde converted as a double agent, joining forces with Edda to save Ciano from execution. When this failed, Edda fled to Switzerland with Hilde&’s daring assistance to keep Ciano's final wish: to see the diaries published for use by the Allies. When American spymaster Allen Dulles learned of Edda's escape, he sent in Frances De Chollet, an &“accidental&” spy, telling her to find Edda, gain her trust, and, crucially, hand the diaries over to the Americans. Together, they succeeded in preserving one of the most important documents of WWII. Drawing from in‑depth research and first-person interviews with people who witnessed these events, Mazzeo gives readers a riveting look into this little‑known moment in history and shows how, without Edda, Hilde, and Frances's involvement, certain convictions at Nuremberg would never have been possible.Includes a Reading Group Guide.Inciting Joy: Essays
Par Ross Gay. 2022
From Ross Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights, comes an intimate and electrifying collection…
of essays about the joy that comes from connection. &“BRILLIANT.&” —Ada Limón, U.S. poet laureate In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life&’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. In &“We Kin,&” Gay thinks about the garden (especially around August, when the zucchini and tomatoes come in) as a laboratory of mutual aid; in &“Share Your Bucket,&” he explores skateboarding&’s reclamation of public spaces; he considers the costs of masculinity in &“Grief Suite&”; and in &“Through My Tears I Saw,&” he recognizes what was healed in caring for his father as he was dying. In an era when divisive voices take up so much airspace, Inciting Joy offers a vital alternative: What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love? Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive. &“A gift that&’s meant to be shared . . . [This book] inspires us to look beyond the miseries of our era to envision a more welcoming future.&”―The Washington PostThe Fabulous Fannie Farmer: Kitchen Scientist and America’s Cook
Par Emma Bland Smith. 2024
Fannie Farmer, America&’s most famous cooking teacher, discovers that precise measurements are a recipe for cooking success in this STEAM…
picture book that includes two of her classic recipes.When Fannie Farmer learned to cook in the late 1800s, recipes could be pretty silly. They might call for &“a goodly amount of salt&” or &“a lump of butter&” or &“a suspicion of nutmeg.&” Girls were supposed to use their &“feminine instincts&” in the kitchen (or maybe just guess). Despite this problem, Fannie loved cooking, so when polio prevented her from going to college, she became a teacher at the Boston Cooking School. Unlike her mother or earlier cookbook writers, Fannie didn&’t believe in feminine instincts. To her, cooking was a science. She&’d noticed that precise measurements and specific instructions ensured that cakes rose instead of flopped and doughnuts fried instead of burned. Students liked Fannie&’s approach so much that she wrote a cookbook. Despite skepticism from publishers, Fannie&’s book was a recipe for success.Written with humor and brought to life with charming illustrations, this book explores the origins of Fannie Farmer&’s quintessentially American cookbook. A cookbook that was beloved because it allowed anyone to make tasty things, with no guessing, no luck—and certainly no feminine instincts—required.The Ukraine
Par Artem Chapeye. 2024
A stunning debut collection of fiction and creative nonfiction— irreverent and unglorified; loving and tender; uncomfortable and inconvenient—by a Ukrainian…
writer currently fighting for his country in Kyiv. Includes the celebrated title story "The Ukraine," which was published in the New Yorker in 2022.The Ukraine is a collection of 26 pieces that deliberately blur the line between nonfiction and fiction, conjuring the essence of a beloved country through its tastes, smells, and sounds, its small towns and big cities, its people and their compassion and indifference, simplicities and complications.In the title story, Chapeye facetiously plays with the English misuse of the article &“the&” in reference to Ukraine, capturing a country as perceived from the outside, by foreigners. That pseudo-kitsch, often historically shallow, and not-quite-real Ukraine resonates because of its highly engaging and brutally candid snapshots of ordinary lives and typical places.In &“One Soul per Home&” an elderly woman laments that the men are dying and the young are leaving for the cities, changing the face of her small town;In &“The Unscrupulous Spirit of the Provinces,&” a couple of unspecified gender get stoned and go to church; and in &“False Premises,&” a man romanticizes his younger years working for a Soviet fishing fleet only to reconstruct his nostalgia in the face of Putin&’s Russia.The Ukraine conveys to readers a place that Chapeye and his countrymen are currently fighting for with their lives. The book features a preface by the author, which he composed on his phone from the front lines.Molly
Par Blake Butler. 2023
A gripping, unforgettable memoir from one of the best, most original writers of the 21st century. Blake Butler has changed…
the world of language with his mind-melting literary thrillers, and now he brings his abilities to bear on the emotional world."Terrifyingly intense and eerily spiritual ...The best book I&’ve read this year." —LOS ANGELES TIMES "A powerfully sad book ... Writers are often praised as 'fearless,' but Butler is not. In Molly, he makes fear his companion. That is the only way to write, and to live." —THE NEW YORKER "Shattering ... The result is a brutal yet beautiful look at the ravages of mental illness and the complexities of grief." —PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY &“I&’m not sure I&’ve ever been so totally consumed by any book—the way I was by Molly.&” —INTERVIEW "The most immediate feeling of life I've ever had reading a book—a life lived at the desk and out in the world, a life of openness and secrets. "Make art for me," Molly wrote to Blake. "I will read it all." I breathed along with every word." —PATRICIA LOCKWOOD "How to praise a book of such wounded beauty as Blake Butler's phenomenal Molly? The same way one would a life lost early: with love and sincerity and anger and wonder and lithely elegant and observant insights that remind us and inspire us, as Butler precisely does, to live and to love ourselves." —JOHN D'AGATA "Molly is a brilliant and brutal book. Blake Butler fearlessly takes on love and grief and the mysteries of this world and the next." —EMMA CLINE "A dark miracle—actual evidence that what we can never know, what we could never imagine about the one we love, is what binds us to them, beyond death." —MICHAEL W. CLUNE "I was gripped from the start by this memoir's urgent honesty. Blake Butler turned a story that was almost unspeakable into a narrative at once brutal and loving, broken and solid." —CATHERINE LACEY Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly&’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was. A masterpiece of autobiography, Molly is a riveting journey into the darkest and most unthinkable parts of the human heart, emerging with a hard-won, unsurpassedly beautiful understanding that expands the possibilities of language to comprehend and express true love. Unrelentingly clear, honest and concise, Molly approaches the impossible directly, with a total empathy that has no parallel or precedent. A supremely important work that will be taught, loved, relied on and passed around for years to come, Blake Butler affirms now beyond question his position at the very top rank of writers.Kintsugi
Par Marie O'Rourke. 2024
All her life, Marie O'Rourke has been a Good Girl, a perfectionist, using words to apply golden seams to an…
imperfect life in an attempt to make something beautiful out of things that are flawed or broken. A volatile father, the death of a sister far too young, a faltering marriage, the ghosts of lovers past: these are just some of the fragments that Marie puts together again in these essays that explore her closest relationships as a daughter, sister, mother, wife and lover. With exquisite prose, Marie reflects on the beauty of brokenness and the ways in which time can transform our understanding of truth, forgiveness, and healing. These essays are a poignant reminder that some things cannot be fixed but can still hold immense beauty and meaning. Whether you've experienced similar struggles, or are seeking a deeper understanding of the human experience, Marie's collection will leave you moved and inspired.How many of us feel our family life is not picture perfect? This book will resonate with those who are interested in exploring the human condition through universal themes of love and loss, forgiveness and redemption.Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her (Thorndike Nonfiction Ser.)
Par Melanie Rehak. 2006
The true story behind the iconic fictional detective is &“a fascinating chapter in the history of publishing&” (The Seattle Times).…
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Biography and a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year The plucky &“titian-haired&” sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930—and eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women&’s libbers) to enter the pantheon of American culture. As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers&’ lives. Here, in a narrative with all the page-turning pace of Nancy&’s adventures, Melanie Rehak solves an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to icon? The brainchild of children&’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over her father&’s business empire as CEO. In this century-spanning, &“absorbing and delightful&” story, the author traces their roles—and Nancy&’s—in forging the modern American woman (The Wall Street Journal). &“It&’s truly fun to see behind the scenes of the girl sleuth&’s creation.&” —Publishers Weekly &“As much a social history of the times as a book about the popular series . . . Those who followed the many adventures of Nancy Drew and her friends will be fascinated with the behind-the-scenes stories of just who Carolyn Keene really was.&” —School Library Journal &“Sheds light on perhaps the most successful writing franchise of all time and also the cultural and historic changes through which it passed. Grab your flashlights, girls. The mystery of Carolyn Keene is about to begin.&” —Karen Joy FowlerBring Out Your Dead: Elegies from the Plague Year
Par Chad Davidson. 2024
Could the shlock-rock ’70s band Kiss in any way affect the outcome of a death-dealing twenty-first-century virus? Is Bob Ross—that…
permed, inimitable painter of Edenic nostalgia on PBS—actually an emissary from the land of personal loss? Might the work of Edward Hopper reflect facets of a global plague? What is the grammar, finally, of grief, of isolation? The essays in Chad Davidson’s Bring Out Your Dead: Elegies from the Plague Year mainly concern the loss of the author’s father directly before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ways in which the pandemic itself provided a strangely ideal backdrop to grieving. Refracted through the kaleidoscopic, yet strangely stagnant, isolation period in the first year of COVID, his father’s death—another plague visited on the author—found its way into all his waking hours, coloring whatever he tried to write, particularly when he tried not to let it. Friends both lost and nearly so, the burning of Notre Dame in Paris, even the seemingly inconsequential discovery of a rash of chew toys in the yard: these events assumed an unmistakable gravity, considered in the midst of a pandemic and the ruins of personal grief. Bring Out Your Dead adds Davidson’s father to the growing list of loved ones lost in—and, in this case, right before—the pandemic. It’s a personal memorial, given over to a father’s memory and the grief endured while living through dueling plagues (one viral, the other psychological). In the end, the book becomes more about the ways we eulogize, how we remember those who are gone, why their memories persist, and what summons them back into our thoughts, our language, and our lives.The Elephant of Silence: Essays on Poetics and Cinema
Par John Wall Barger. 2024
“A poem is an act of faith because the poet believes in it,” contends John Wall Barger in The Elephant…
of Silence, a collection of essays exploring forms of knowing (and not knowing) that awaken a poetic mind. By considering poetry, film, and the intersections among aesthetic moments and our lives, Barger illuminates the foundations of poetic craft but also probes how to be alive, creative, and open in the world. Each piece investigates unanswerable questions and indefinable words: Lorca’s duende, Nabokov’s poshlost, Bashō’s underglimmer, Huizinga’s ludic, Tarkovsky’s Zona. Influenced by poets such as Glück and Ruefle, and filmmakers such as Kubrick and Lynch, Barger writes—first always sharing his own personal life stories—on the nature of perception, experience, and the human mind. With lyric eloquence and disarming candor, The Elephant of Silence tackles how to live an imaginative life, how to gravitate toward the silence from which art comes, and how the mystical is also the everyday.X in the Tickseed: Poems
Par Ed Falco. 2024
From discursive essay-poems to tightly constructed lyrics, Ed Falco’s X in the Tickseed examines a world that reveals itself through…
its mysteries, reflecting upon the ephemeral nature of all things. In the series of poems that bookend the collection, a speaker identified only as X reviews personal history and relationships, speculating, pondering, and questioning in the face of a baffling universe. Peppered between the X poems, artists as varied as Artemisia Gentileschi, Frank O’Connor, and Nick Cave surface, usually in poems posing as essays about their art. Other poems range from explorations of cultural perspective, as in “A Few Words to a Young American Killed in the Tet Offensive,” where a war resister addresses a young man of his generation who died in Vietnam, to the often playful “An Alphabet of Things.” Throughout, Falco’s poems speculate on matters of life and faith, intensified by an awareness of death.Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir
Par Lamya H. 2023
A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this &“raw…
and relatable memoir that challenges societal norms and expectations&” (Linah Mohammad, NPR).&“A masterful, must-read contribution to conversations on power, justice, healing, and devotion from a singular voice I now trust with my whole heart.&”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of UntamedAN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER: The Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, the Stonewall Book Award, the Israel Fishman Nonfiction AwardA BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, Autostraddle, Book Riot, BookPage, Harper&’s Bazaar, Electric Lit, She ReadsWhen fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher—her female teacher—she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can&’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don&’t matter, and it&’s easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya? From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own—ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant. This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya&’s childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one&’s own life.Sunrise with Seamonsters: Travels and Discoveries, 1964-84
Par Paul Theroux. 1986
This collection of wide-ranging essays from the New York Times–bestselling travel writer is &“a steamer trunk full of delights&” (Chicago…
Sun-Times). This collection of decidedly opinionated articles, essays, and ruminations, by the author of My Other Life and Kowloon Tong, transports the reader not only to exotic, unexpected places in the world but also into the interior life of the writer himself. Whether it is his time serving in the Peace Corps, his memorable interview with tennis star John McEnroe, bearing witness to the uprising in Uganda, or the debt he owes to his mentor, V. S. Naipaul, Theroux approaches each subject with characteristic intelligence, insight, and an eye for life&’s great ironies. Over the course of two decades, Paul Theroux gathers people, places, and ideas in precise, evocative writing that &“serves as both the camera and the eye, and both the details and the illusions are developed with brilliance&” (Time). &“What makes Mr. Theroux most persuasive as a writer is simply his willingness to put himself on the line. . . . Gusty, personal, and astonishing.&” —The New York Times &“These pieces prove anew Theroux&’s unflagging, infectious enthusiams [sic] for exploring.&” —Kirkus ReviewsGetting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick
Par Molly Ringwald. 2010
The iconic Molly Ringwald shares intimate stories and candid advice in this fun, stylish, and sexy girlfriend's guide to lifeTo…
her millions of fans, Molly Ringwald will forever be sixteen. As the endearing and witty star of the beloved John Hughes classics Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, Molly defined teenage angst, love, and heartbreak. While remembered eternally as the enviable high school princess Claire, or the shy, vulnerable Samantha, Molly has just celebrated her fortieth birthday. Facing a completely new, angst-inducing time in her life, she is embracing being a woman, wife, mother of three, actress, and best friend with her trademark style, candor, and humor.In Getting the Pretty Back, Molly encourages every woman to become "the sexiest, funniest, smartest, best-dressed, and most confident woman that you can be." She shares personal anecdotes and entertaining insights about the struggle to get through the murky milestones and identity issues that crop up long after the prom ends. Whether she's discussing sex and beauty, personal style, travel and entertaining, motherhood, or friendship, Molly embodies the spirit of being fabulous at every age, and reminds us all that prettiness is a state of mind: it's "the part of you that knows what you really want, that takes risks."Lavishly illustrated by Ruben Toledo, Getting the Pretty Back is sure to charm women of all ages with Molly's unforgettably personal, refreshingly outspoken take on life, love, and, of course, finding that perfect red lipstick. . . .The Essential Ginsberg
Par Allen Ginsberg. 2015
Featuring the legendary and groundbreaking poem "Howl," this remarkable volume showcases a selection of Allen Ginsberg's poems, songs, essays, letters,…
journals, and interviews, and contains sixteen pages of his personal photographs.One of the Beat Generation's most renowned poets and writers, Allen Ginsberg became internationally famous not only for his published works but also for his actions as a human rights activist who championed the sexual revolution, gay liberation, Buddhism and Eastern religion, and the confrontation of societal norms—all before it became fashionable to do so. He was also the dynamic leader of war protesters, artists, Flower Power hippies, musicians, punks, and political radicals.The Essential Ginsberg collects a mosaic of material that displays the full range of Ginsberg's mental landscape. His most important poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews are displayed in chronological order. His poetic masterpieces, "Howl" and "Kaddish," are presented here along with lesser-known and difficult-to-find songs and prose. Personal correspondence with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is included, as well as photographs—shot and captioned by Ginsberg himself—of his friends and fellow rogues William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and others.Through his essays, journals, interviews, and letters, this definitive volume will inspire readers to delve deeper into a body of work that remains one of the most impressive literary canons in American history.Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press
Par James McGrath Morris. 2015
[An] important and often absorbing new book . . . It’s a deep pleasure to meet Ethel Payne. ‘We are…
soul folks,’ she declared in 1967, ‘and I am writing for soul brothers’ consumption.’ Her own soul beams from this book. — New York Times“A riveting biography of a groundbreaking African American journalist . . . In James McGrath Morris’s compelling biography Eye on the Struggle, this ‘first lady of the black press’ finally gets her due.” — O, the Oprah Magazine“Morris’s research on Payne is meticulous…” — Washington Post“[A] beautifully written and carefully researched new book.” — Chicago Tribune“Afast-paced tour through the highlights of 20th-century African-American history, with Payne as witness.” — Boston Globe“It is through Payne’s eyes that author James McGrath Morris deftly shows us the history of post-World War II America.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune“…James McGrath Morris lifts Ethel Payne from relative obscurity revealing a fearless, intrepid journalist who covered practically every important event of her day…” — Herb Boyd, National Association of Black Journalist, Hall of Fame, inducteeEthel Payne was a pioneer who experienced the challenges but little of the glory that comes with the title. With this book, her legacy is assured. — Paula J. Giddings, author of Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching“A deeply researched, skillfully written biography about a previously underappreciated individual.” — Kirkus Reviews“James McGrath Morris’s eloquent book - quite a feat of historical excavation into the black press as well - should bring her many new admirers.” — Wil Haygood, author of the bestselling,The Butler: A Witness to HistoryIn Eye on the Struggle James McGrath Morris lifts Ethel Payne from relative obscurity revealing a fearless, intrepid journalist who covered practically every important event of her day, whether at home in the heat of the civil rights movement or traveling abroad to Africa and Asia. ” — Herb Boyd, author of Brotherman and Baldwin's Harlem“Eye on the Struggle is an incredibly important act of historical recovery. James McGrath Morris’ penetratingly insightful biography of Ethel Payne takes us into the world of the civil rights era black press through the eyes of one its trailblazing journalists.” — Peniel E. Joseph, author of Waiting Til the Midnight Hour and Stokely Peniel E. Joseph, author of Waiting Til the Midnight Hour and Stokely “A debt of gratitude is due James McGrath Morris for bringing the remarkable life of Ethel Payne out of the shadows.” — Pamela Newkirk, author of,Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota BengaThe rich use of sources and glimpses of Payne’s personal life will engage readers interested in civil rights, journalism, and women’s history.” — Library Journal“Besides reclaiming an important figure in American journalism, Eyes on the Struggle offers historical context for the journalistic role that alternative media play in current civil rights movements. . . His quest not only recounts a storied life but also reminds readers of the historic centrality of alternative media in social change.” — Journal of American History“A well-researched, detailed look at the life of a pioneering journalist.” — The Washington Independent Review of Books“[A] groundbreaking biography” — KamWilliams.com“Morris is not only insightful, but also wise…” — Dallas Morning News“Morris has written a fast-paced, engrossing biography…” — New York Times Book Review“Biographer James McGrath Morris pulls back the curtain oHow Did I Get Here?: Making Peace with the Road Not Taken
Par Jesse Browner. 2015
A literary exploration that seeks to answer the question: Have I lived the life I intended?Based on an essay he…
wrote for Poets & Writers magazine, Jesse Browner, a novelist who finds himself torn between his creative calling and a full-time job in the civil service, asks hard questions about the choices life imposes on us, and our tendency to believe in a parallel, alternative existence where we might have felt more fulfilled, more free, more true to ourselves. He wonders: Is the genuine artist made by single-minded devotion to his craft? Do we compromise our dreams in service to family and work? In the face of life's inevitable disappointments, how do we learn to reassess our own achievements and live without regret?These questions prompted Browner to take a hard look at the lifelong journey that brought him to this moment of existential doubt. He divides his adult life into five distinct phases: ambition, love, work, fulfillment, and wisdom. Sketching portraits of himself at each stage, he looks for the idiosyncrasies, blind spots, and commonalities that led him to question every assumption he has ever made about who he is and the nature of his ambitions, his successes, and his failures. He also draws on the lives of others, from Franz Kafka to indie rocker Elliott Smith to his own sister, in search of understanding and guidance. What he finds in his courageous quest is inspiring and honest—sometimes brutally so—touching on what it means to live a life with intention and meaning.