Author: Jane Wong
Publisher: Tin House Books
ISBN: 1953534740
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
2024 PNBA Award Winner "[Wong] paints her story with flourish."—The New York Times "A love letter to Atlantic City and the Asian American working class."— The Los Angeles Times "Blazing, lyrical."—The Boston Globe "Joyful. . . . Wong’s memoir invites those who have been overlooked in America to hold up their verses, accolades and solidarity in a collective rejoinder to their detractors."—The Washington Post An incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore. In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant. In her debut memoir, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have—and what you don’t. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability—and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share.
Author: David Masciotra
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441141812
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
For almost four decades, Bruce Springsteen's music has directly inspired, influenced, and uplifted millions of devoted fans, who hold a special place in their hearts and minds for his work. Springsteen's rise to the top of American music coincided with the triumph of American conservatism, and the veneration of marketplace values above democratic principles and humanistic priorities. Springsteen has consistently summoned his creative power and artistic vision to indict these political developments and demand the cultivation of a more compassionate and progressive society. And yet his often harsh critique of the status quo and radical ideas for reform have either been ignored or misunderstood, as a result of his "All American" image and his narrative storytelling style. On nearly every major issue-poverty, racism, urban decay, war, and peace- Springsteen's music has offered a unique vision for moving forward with the agenda of creating the "country we carry in our hearts"-as he called it in an op-ed for the New York Times. Filled with provocative analysis of Springsteen's best known hits and his most obscure songs, comparisons to other important works of American culture-ranging from The Sopranos to Edward Hopper-and a wealth of information about the last fifty years of American politics, culture, and society, Working On a Dream is a powerful and engaging study of this songwriter and performer's art. David Masciotra shows how Springsteen's music darkly comments on the increased isolation of Americans, and calls for a return to community living and values, based on compassion, empathy, and tolerance. He illustrates how Springsteen has forced listeners to wrestle with the facts of rising poverty rates in the world's richest nation, of wars with questionable justification, and of the continued mistreatment of racial minorities, arguing that Springsteen does this by emphasizing the suffering that everyday people - usually ignored in mainline political discussions - endure on a daily basis. By using Springsteen's life and music to shine a light on the dark recesses of America's most important political and social trials and conflicts- race, religion, and working class hardship-Working on a Dream connects readers with the power, purpose, and promise of Springsteen's extraordinary and enduring music.
Author: Mark R. Johnson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501347276
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Casino games and traditional card games have rich and idiosyncratic histories, complex subcultures and player practices, and facilitate the flow of billions of dollars each year through casinos and card rooms, and between professional players and amateurs. They have nevertheless been overlooked by game scholars due to the negative ethical weight of “gambling” – with such games pathologized and labelled as deviance or mental illness, few look beyond to unpick the games, their players, and their communities. The Casino, Card and Betting Game Reader offers 25 chapters studying the communities playing these games, the distinctive cultures and practices that have emerged around them, their activities and beliefs and interpersonal relationships, and how these games influence – both positively and negatively – the lives and careers of millions of game players around the world. It is the first of a new series of edited collections, Play Beyond the Computer, dedicated to exploring the play of games beyond computers and games consoles.
Author: Bathroom Readers' Hysterical Society
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1607106027
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Experience New Jersey as you never have before, in this historical, hysterical guide to the Garden State. You from Jersey? What exit? Go ahead and laugh. But watch it, New Jersey is home to legendary tough guys like Tony Soprano and Frank Sinatra, and no one knows for sure if Jimmy Hoffa’s buried in the Meadowlands Stadium. Though many believe ‘New Jersey culture’ is an oxymoron, something conjured up while inhaling the fumes on the Turnpike, your Uncle John, a connoisseur of the Garden State, is out to prove them wrong. Take the plunge into N.J., and see why it’s like nowhere else - from Springsteen’s Asbury Park and Trump’s Atlantic City to the ivy walls of Princeton and the tidy townships to the west.
Author: Clinton Heylin
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0143124552
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
The celebrated popular music scholar presents an intimate portrait of The Boss and his legendary band Bruce Springsteen fans know that the band makes the man, which is why millions of people have jammed stadiums and arenas to see The Boss play countless shows with his incredible E Street Band. In this revelatory and unapologetic biography, respected music scholar Clinton Heylin turns a critical eye towards Springsteen’s early days, capturing this classic phase of his career and his rise from Asbury Park hood rat to global rock star. Using long-buried archival recordings and bootlegs, Heylin expertly traces Springsteen’s creative process as a songwriter and performer and illuminates the roles of the E Street Band members in creating their distinctive sound. Highly nuanced and as fiery as Springsteen himself, E Street Shuffle offers the most revealing portrait yet written on this American icon.
Author: Patricia Phillippy
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421429217
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
This original analysis of the representation and self-representation of women in literature and visual arts revolves around multiple early modern senses of "painting": the creation of visual art in the form of paint on canvas and the use of cosmetics to paint women's bodies. Situating her study in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, France, and England, Patricia Phillippy brings together three distinct actors: women who paint themselves with cosmetics, women who paint on canvas, and women and men who paint women—either with pigment or with words. Phillippy asserts that early modern attitudes toward painting, cosmetics, and poetry emerge from and respond to a common cultural history. Materially, she connects those who created images of women with pigment to those who applied cosmetics to their own bodies through similar mediums, tools, techniques, and exposure to toxic materials. Discursively, she illuminates historical and social issues such as gender and morality with the nexus of painting, painted women, and women painters. Teasing out the intricate relationships between these activities as carried out by women and their visual and literary representation by women and by men, Phillippy aims to reveal the delineation and transgression of women's creative roles, both artistic and biological. In Painting Women, Phillippy provides a cross-disciplinary study of women as objects and agents of painting.
Author: Rich Hillen Jr
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0557562597
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
Yellow Socks: Confessions of a Non-Don Juan is a fictional novel about a young man slowly growing into adulthood. From relationships with his Paranoid Schizophrenic Mother, oddball friends to emotionally unbalanced women through out his life, the book covers his hardships, successes and everything in between. He bases his self worth on how others feel about him through sexual and loving relationships. Written in diary or 'blog' form the book has a certain flow that peaks the reader's interest to see what will happen next in his adventures through life, chronicling each detailed relationship with people. Despite its classification as a novel, it can be picked up at any page and each story has a life of it's own so it can be read in pieces as well.
Author: Jonathan D. Cohen
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978805284
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
Bruce Springsteen might be the quintessential American rock musician but his songs have resonated with fans from all walks of life and from all over the world. This unique collection features reflections from a diverse array of writers who explain what Springsteen means to them and describe how they have been moved, shaped, and challenged by his music. Contributors to Long Walk Home include novelists like Richard Russo, rock critics like Greil Marcus and Gillian Gaar, and other noted Springsteen scholars and fans such as A. O. Scott, Peter Ames Carlin, and Paul Muldoon. They reveal how Springsteen’s albums served as the soundtrack to their lives while also exploring the meaning of his music and the lessons it offers its listeners. The stories in this collection range from the tale of how “Growin’ Up” helped a lonely Indian girl adjust to life in the American South to the saga of a group of young Australians who turned to Born to Run to cope with their country’s 1975 constitutional crisis. These essays examine the big questions at the heart of Springsteen’s music, demonstrating the ways his songs have resonated for millions of listeners for nearly five decades. Commemorating the Boss’s seventieth birthday, Long Walk Home explores Springsteen’s legacy and provides a stirring set of testimonials that illustrate why his music matters.
Author: Eckhard Gerdes
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595260748
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 509
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Book Description
A-way with it! Simply put, that's what this is all about. The authors in this volume of The Journal of Experimental Fiction have demonstrated time and again that they have a way with words. Literature is ultimately driven by language, and these folks understand how to use language better than most. They prod it, ply it, tweak it, fry it, sling it, smash it, caress it, destroy it, uphold it, defend it, laugh at it, play with it, split it, spit on it, cajole it, stir it, freeze it, melt it, stomp on it, and hold it up for all to see as if it were the most precious thing in the entire world. Maybe it is.
Author: Randall E. Auxier
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 0812697774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Known as the working man's poet, the Boardwalk prophet, or simply, the Boss. If "love is a banquet at which we feed," Bruce Springsteen has provided much food for thought. In this collection of metaphysical probes, a gang of E-street philosophers will undress Bruce's deeper mysteries like irresistible Jersey girls. Can Springsteen settle the nature-nurture debate through his song "Born to Run"? What do the famous philosopher Ricuoer and Springsteen have in common in their depiction of time? These die-hard Springsteen fans, who just happen to be philosophers, compile an entertaining handbook to the field of Springsteen studies, covering topics like Springsteen's connection to Marx and the proletariat, Springsteen's concept of the soul, and his status as a poet.
