A Visitation of Spirits

A Visitation of Spirits PDF Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 080215932X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
“With A Visitation of Spirits, Randall Kenan continues James Baldwin’s legendary tradition of ‘telling it on the mountain.’”—San Francisco Chronicle When A Visitation of Spirits was published, Randall Kenan (1963-2020) was instantly recognized as a writer of significance, and one who brought into literary fiction the southern Black, gay experience, one of the first such writers to achieve mainstream success. His groundbreaking first novel, A Visitation of Spirits, is the powerful story of Horace Cross, a popular and high-achieving sixteen-year-old boy, who wrestles with the guilt of discovering who he is, a young man attracted to other men and yearning to escape the narrow confines of the small town of Tims Creek, North Carolina, where he grew up. Raised on stories of prophets, revelations, and dreams, his internal struggles take shape in his mind as demons and angels battling for his soul, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. A Visitation of Spirits established Randall Kenan as a literary master, and his influence continues to be felt. Now in Grove paperback and with an introduction by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Oscar-winning writer of Moonlight, A Visitation of Spirits is a classic novel of growing up from a literary giant.

A Visitation of Spirits

A Visitation of Spirits PDF Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 080215932X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
“With A Visitation of Spirits, Randall Kenan continues James Baldwin’s legendary tradition of ‘telling it on the mountain.’”—San Francisco Chronicle When A Visitation of Spirits was published, Randall Kenan (1963-2020) was instantly recognized as a writer of significance, and one who brought into literary fiction the southern Black, gay experience, one of the first such writers to achieve mainstream success. His groundbreaking first novel, A Visitation of Spirits, is the powerful story of Horace Cross, a popular and high-achieving sixteen-year-old boy, who wrestles with the guilt of discovering who he is, a young man attracted to other men and yearning to escape the narrow confines of the small town of Tims Creek, North Carolina, where he grew up. Raised on stories of prophets, revelations, and dreams, his internal struggles take shape in his mind as demons and angels battling for his soul, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. A Visitation of Spirits established Randall Kenan as a literary master, and his influence continues to be felt. Now in Grove paperback and with an introduction by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Oscar-winning writer of Moonlight, A Visitation of Spirits is a classic novel of growing up from a literary giant.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead and Other Stories

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead and Other Stories PDF Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156505154
Category : North Carolina
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This remarkable collection of twelve short stories is about the diverse folk--black and white, young and old, rich and poor, rural and sophisticated--who live in the eastern North Carolina town of Tims Creek. Among the memorable characters are Clarence Pickett, who at age three began receiving messages from beyond the grave and whose gift seems tied to a hog's ability to talk; matronly Ida Perry, haunted by a boy her judge husband may have drowned years before; Dean Williams, hired to seduce the richest black man in Times Creek, yearning after innocence while he betrays love.

If I Had Two Wings: Stories

If I Had Two Wings: Stories PDF Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005475
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Finalist for 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction Finalist for the 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Mingling the earthy with the otherworldly, these ten stories chronicle ineffable events in ordinary lives. In Kenan’s fictional territory of Tims Creek, North Carolina, an old man rages in his nursing home, a parson beats up an adulterer, a rich man is haunted by a hog, and an elderly woman turns unwitting miracle worker. A retired plumber travels to Manhattan, where Billy Idol sweeps him into his entourage. An architect who lost his famous lover to AIDS reconnects with a high-school fling. Howard Hughes seeks out the woman who once cooked him butter beans. Shot through with humor and seasoned by inventiveness and maturity, Kenan riffs on appetites of all kinds, on the eerie persistence of history, and on unstoppable lovers and unexpected salvations. If I Had Two Wings is a rich chorus of voices and visions, dreams and prophecies, marked by physicality and spirit. Kenan’s prose is nothing short of wondrous.

School Spirits

School Spirits PDF Author: Rachel Hawkins
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 1423179080
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Fans of Rachel Hawkins' Hex Hall series will shriek with joy over this dark spin-off adventure full of humor, magic, and snark! Fifteen-year-old Izzy Brannick was trained to fight monsters. For centuries, her family has hunted magical creatures. But when Izzy's older sister vanishes without a trace while on a job, Izzy's mom decides they need to take a break. Izzy and her mom move to a new town, but they soon discover it's not as normal as it appears. A series of hauntings has been plaguing the local high school, and Izzy is determined to investigate. But assuming the guise of an average teenager is easier said than done. For a tough girl who's always been on her own, it's strange to suddenly make friends and maybe even have a crush. Can Izzy trust her new friends to help find the secret behind the hauntings before more people get hurt? Rachel Hawkins brings the same delightful wit and charm captured in her New York Times best-selling Hex Hall series. Get ready for more magic, mystery and romance!

Understanding Randall Kenan

Understanding Randall Kenan PDF Author: James A. Crank
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611179599
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
The first book-length study of the life and writings of the critically acclaimed Southern writer Randall Kenan is an American author best known for his novel A Visitation of Spirits and his collection of stories Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was a nominee for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, and named a New York Times Notable Book. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as the Whiting Writers Award, Sherwood Anderson Award, John Dos Passos Award, Rome Prize, and North Carolina Award for Literature. Understanding Randall Kenan is the first book-length critical study of Kenan, offering a brief biography and an exploration of his considerable oeuvre—memoir, short stories, novels, journalism, folklore, and essays. Kenan's writing can be complex and sometimes highly stylized while covering a broad range of topics, though he often explores African Americans' complicated relationships, specifically as they struggle to make connections along other axes of class, gender, and sexual identity. Crank explores these themes and how they influence Kenan's work through a personal interview with the author.

The Spirits of America

The Spirits of America PDF Author: Eric Burns
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781592137695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In The spirits of America, Burns relates that drinking was "the first national pastime," and shows how it shaped American politics and culture from the earliest colonial days. He details the transformation of alcohol from virtue to vice and back again and how it was thought of as both scourge and medicine. He tells us how "the great American thirst" developed over the centuries, and how reform movements and laws sprang up to combat it. Burns brings back to life such vivid characters as Carrie Nation and other crusaders against drink. He informs us that, in the final analysis, Prohibition, the culmination of the reformers' quest, had as much to do with politics and economics and geography as it did with spirituous beverage.

Walking on Water

Walking on Water PDF Author: Randall Kenan
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
From the author of "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead" comes a profoundly moving and provocative account--both timely and enduring--of the thinking, the feelings, and the lives of African-Americans in the nineties.

The Aguero Sisters

The Aguero Sisters PDF Author: Cristina García
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345406516
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Reina and Constancia Agüero are Cuban sisters who have been estranged for thirty years. Reina--tall, darkly beautiful, and magnetically sexual--still lives in her homeland. Once a devoted daughter of la revolución, she now basks in the glow of her many admiring suitors, believing only in what she can grasp with her five senses. The pale and very petite Constancia lives in the United States, a beauty expert who sees miracles and portents wherever she looks. After she and her husband retire to Miami, she becomes haunted by the memory of her parents and the unexplained death of her beloved mother so long ago. Told in the stirring voices of their parents, their daughters, and themselves, The Agüero Sisters tells a mesmerizing story about the power of myth to mask, transform, and finally, reveal the truth--as two women move toward an uncertain, long awaited reunion.

The Discernment of Spirits

The Discernment of Spirits PDF Author: Wendy Love Anderson
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161516641
Category : Discernment of spirits
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
[Anderson] succeeds in neatly fitting together selected pieces of the history of discernment of spirits to provide a valuable, readable description of the contours of its evolution in the late Middle Ages. -- Debra L. Stoudt, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, The Medieval Review Late medieval Christians lived in a world of visions, but they knew that not all visions came from God: angels, demons, illness, nature, or passion could also inspire an apparent divine visitation. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the involvement of visionaries in everything from reform movements to military campaigns to papal schisms raised the political and spiritual stakes of determining whether or not a vision was truly from God. In response, a diverse group of medieval thinkers - including men and women, clergy and laity, visionaries and theologians - gradually began to transform the loose patristic readings of Pauline discretio spirituum into a system with the potential to distinguish between true and false visions and between genuine and delusional visionaries. Wendy Love Anderson chronicles the historical, political, and spiritual struggles behind the flowering of late medieval mysticism and what came to be seen as the Christian doctrine of discernment of spirits.

Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision

Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision PDF Author: Nadra Nittle
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 1506471528
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
When Toni Morrison died in August 2019, she was widely remembered for her contributions to literature as an African American woman, an identity she wore proudly. Morrison was clear that she wrote from a Black, female perspective and for others who shared her identity. But just as much as she was an African American writer, Toni Morrison was a woman of faith. Morrison filled her novels with biblical allusions, magic, folktales, and liberated women, largely because Christianity, African American folk magic, and powerful women defined her own life. She grew up with family members who could interpret dreams, predict the future, see ghosts, and go about their business. Her relatives, particularly her mother, were good storytellers, and her family's oral tradition included ghost stories and African American folktales. But her family was also Christian. As a child, Morrison converted to Catholicism and chose a baptismal name that truly became her own--Anthony, from St. Anthony of Padua--going from Chloe to Toni. Morrison embraced both Catholicism and the occult as a child and, later, as a writer. She was deeply religious, and her spirituality included the Bible, the paranormal, and the folktales she heard as a child. Toni Morrison's Spiritual Vision unpacks this oft-ignored, but essential, element of Toni Morrison's work--her religion--and in so doing, gives readers a deeper, richer understanding of her life and her writing. In its pages, Nadra Nittle remembers and understands Morrison for all of who she was: a writer, a Black woman, and a person of complex faith. As Nittle's wide-ranging, deep exploration of Morrison's oeuvre reveals, to fully understand the writing of Toni Morrison one must also understand the role of religion and spirituality in her life and literature.