Author: Audre Lorde
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393312386
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 75
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Book Description
A collection of poetry by the African-American activist and artist describes her personal identities as a lesbian, mother, black woman, and cancer survivor, and notes the tension created by the often conflicting drives of these identities. Reissue.
Author: Danez Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 1555977855
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 101
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Book Description
Digte. Addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity
Author: Vinciane Despret
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452965935
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
An award-winning exploration of the presence of the dead in the lives of the living A common remedy after suffering the loss of a loved one is to progress through the “stages of grief,” with “acceptance” as the final stage in the process. But is it necessary to leave death behind, to stop dwelling on the dead, to get over the pain? Vinciane Despret thinks not. In her fascinating, elegantly translated book, this influential thinker argues that, in practice, people in all cultures continue to enjoy a lively, inventive, positive relationship with their dead. Through her unique storytelling woven from ethnographic sources and her own family history, Despret assembles accounts of those who have found ways to live their daily lives with their dead. She rejects the idea that one must either subscribe to “complete mourning” (in a sense, to get rid of the dead) or else fall into fantasy and superstition. She explores instead how the dead still play an active, tangible role through those who are living, who might assume their place in a family or in society; continue their labor or art; or thrive from a shared inheritance or an organ donation. This is supported by dreams and voices, novels, television and popular culture, the work of clairvoyants, and the everyday stories and activities of the living. For decades now, in the West, the dead have been discreet and invisible. Today, especially as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, Despret suggests that perhaps we will be willing to engage with the dead in ways that bring us happiness despite our loss. Despret’s unique method of inquiry makes her book both entertaining and instructive. Our Grateful Dead offers a new, pragmatic approach to social and cultural research and may indeed provide compassionate therapy for those of us coping with death.
Author: Muriel Rukeyser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781946684219
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Written in response to the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster of 1931 in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, The Book of the Dead is an important part of West Virginia's cultural heritage and a powerful account of one of the worst industrial catastrophes in American history. The poems collected here investigate the roots of a tragedy that killed hundreds of workers, most of them African American. They are a rare engagement with the overlap between race and environment in Appalachia. Published for the first time alongside photographs by Nancy Naumburg, who accompanied Rukeyser to Gauley Bridge in 1936, this edition of The Book of the Dead includes an introduction by Catherine Venable Moore, whose writing on the topic has been anthologized in Best American Essays.
Author: Richard Blanco
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816524792
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 84
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Book Description
In his second book of narrative, lyric poetry, Richard Blanco explores the familiar, unsettling journey for home and connections, those anxious musings about other lives: ÒShould I live here? Could I live here?Ó Whether the exotic (ÒIÕm struck with Maltese fever ÉI dream of buying a little Maltese farmÉ) or merely different (ÒToday, home is a cottage with morning in the yawn of an open windowÉÓ), he examines the restlessness that threatens from merely staying put, the fear of too many places and too little time. The words are redolent with his Cuban heritage: Marina making mole sauce; T’a Ida bitter over the revolution, missing the sisters who fled to Miami; his father, especially, Òhis hair once as black as the black of his oxfordsÉÓ Yet this is a volume for all who have longed for enveloping arms and words, and for that sanctuary called home. ÒSo much of my life spent like this-suspended, moving toward unknown places and names or returning to those I know, corresponding with the paradox of crossing, being nowhere yet here.Ó Blanco embraces juxtaposition. There is the Cuban Blanco, the American Richard, the engineer by day, the poet by heart, the rhythms of Spanish, the percussion of English, the first-world professional, the immigrant, the gay man, the straight world. There is the ennui behind the question: why cannot I not just live where I live? Too, there is the precious, fleeting relief when he can write "ÉI am, for a moment, not afraid of being no more than what I hear and see, no more than this:..." It is what we all hope for, too.
Author: Francine J. Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781938584251
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Identity, gender, and race politics all collide ferociously in this unflinching collection that actively cuts through cultural and social constructs.
Author: Marvin Bell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 10
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Book Description
Author: Caleb Wilde
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
ISBN: 1506471625
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
What if our dead remain with us? What if closure is not the goal? No matter what you believe about the afterlife, what if the hereafter intersects with the here and now? Caleb Wilde, author of the acclaimed memoir Confessions of a Funeral Director, was a skeptic. The baffling stories people told him--deathbed visions of long-dead parents, visits from the other side--must be hallucinations or wishful thinking, he thought. But the more stories he heard, and the more he learned about non-Western understandings of body and spirit, the less sure he was. All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak takes readers on a lyrical and tender quest to encounter the hereafter. As Wilde picks up bodies, organizes funerals, and meets with grieving families in a small town in Pennsylvania, those who remain share with him--and us--what they experience in the thin places between life and death. Entwining these stories with his own as a sixth-generation funeral director, and with the findings of neuroscience and the solace of faith, Wilde creates a searching, reverent inquiry into all the ways our dead remain with us. In the process, he takes on prevailing dogmas about death: from a narrow Christian view of heaven and hell, to secular assumptions that death is the end, to pop-psychology maxims that say we all need "closure" after our loved ones die. The dead don't have to be buried twice, once in the ground and again in our hearts. In the pages of this unforgettable book, learn how love and memory and mystery fuse this world to the next.
Author: Mary K. DeShazer
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472065639
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
A survey of the empowering poetry of politically active women in El Salvador, South Africa, and the United States.
Author: Camellia Lee
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
ISBN: 1454948655
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
According to Taoist philosophy, every body—not to mention everything in the cosmos—possesses quantities of the five elements: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. Each element has an emotional component (water, for example, is associated with fear), a meridian in the body that can be worked on through somatic exercises like massage, and a moral imperative. Camellia Lee, an energy worker with a family lineage of healing going back generations to Taiwan, explains elements of Taoist philosophy, traditional Chinese medicine, and other related studies through the lens of the Five Elements in an easy-to-understand and enjoyable way. This is a Five-Element plan—with plenty of exercises for introspection, healing, and enlightenment—that anyone can commit to in order to restore order to their bodies, minds, and spirits.
