Sojourn

Sojourn PDF Author: Amit Chaudhuri
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681377098
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
In this haunting and noirish novel by a leading author and critic, an Indian writer travels to Berlin and soon finds himself slipping into a fragmented, fuguelike state. An Indian writer has come to Berlin as a visiting professor. This is his second sojourn in the city, which seems strange, and also strangely familiar, to him. He is disoriented by its names, its immensity, and its history; he is worried that something may happen to him there. Faqrul, a friendly Bangladeshi poet living in exile, takes him up—then disappears. The visiting writer is increasingly adrift in a city that not long ago was two cities, each cut off from the other, much as the new unified city is cut off from the divided one of the past. It is the fall of 2005; every day it grows colder. The visitor is beginning to feel his middle age. To him, the new world of the twenty-first century, with its endless commodities from all over the place and no prospect of any sort of historical transformation, appears to exist in a state of amnesiac suspense. He gets involved with a woman, Birgit. He begins to miss his classes. He blacks out in the street. People are worried. “I’ve lost my bearings—not in the city; in its history,” he thinks. “The less sure I become of it, the more I know my way.” But does he? Amit Chaudhuri’s Sojourn is a dramatic and disconcerting work of fiction, a book about the present as it slips into the past, a picture of a city and of a troubled mind, a historical novel about an ostensibly post-historical time, a story of haunting. Here, as in his earlier work, Chaudhuri pries open fictional form to explore questions of public and private life in ways that are both bold and subtle.

Sojourn

Sojourn PDF Author: Amit Chaudhuri
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681377098
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
In this haunting and noirish novel by a leading author and critic, an Indian writer travels to Berlin and soon finds himself slipping into a fragmented, fuguelike state. An Indian writer has come to Berlin as a visiting professor. This is his second sojourn in the city, which seems strange, and also strangely familiar, to him. He is disoriented by its names, its immensity, and its history; he is worried that something may happen to him there. Faqrul, a friendly Bangladeshi poet living in exile, takes him up—then disappears. The visiting writer is increasingly adrift in a city that not long ago was two cities, each cut off from the other, much as the new unified city is cut off from the divided one of the past. It is the fall of 2005; every day it grows colder. The visitor is beginning to feel his middle age. To him, the new world of the twenty-first century, with its endless commodities from all over the place and no prospect of any sort of historical transformation, appears to exist in a state of amnesiac suspense. He gets involved with a woman, Birgit. He begins to miss his classes. He blacks out in the street. People are worried. “I’ve lost my bearings—not in the city; in its history,” he thinks. “The less sure I become of it, the more I know my way.” But does he? Amit Chaudhuri’s Sojourn is a dramatic and disconcerting work of fiction, a book about the present as it slips into the past, a picture of a city and of a troubled mind, a historical novel about an ostensibly post-historical time, a story of haunting. Here, as in his earlier work, Chaudhuri pries open fictional form to explore questions of public and private life in ways that are both bold and subtle.

An Indian Sojourn

An Indian Sojourn PDF Author: Ellen Besso
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780981238128
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Holistic MidLife Coach Ellen Besso had always wanted to travel to India. As a coach and author who helps women uncover their passions, find new directions in life, and put spirituality into practice in their daily lives, for as long as she could remember, she had a preoccupation with India and its people, feeling drawn to go there. An Indian Sojourn: One woman's spiritual experience of travel & volunteering is a wonderful book describing Ellen Besso's travel in India. Ellen writes: "India's draw is complex; we can't understand it within the frame of reference of our Western minds, and that is part of what pulls us in. Once our constant internal analysis abates, we're more open to flowing with what is unfolding around us. To say that the environment there is over stimulating would be an understatement. People, vehicles, cows, even the colours are de trop, but my approach has been, "bring it on." I was thirsty for India after waiting for her so long and I wanted to soak in every tiny little detail." Ellen and her partner Don have now made three journeys visiting India, in 2007, 2009 and again very recently. During their travel to India, they made lifelong friends, volunteering and tutoring Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, India. Ellen looks forward to returning to India again in the future. Ellen writes: "I invite you to join me on my journey, through the ups and downs of travel and volunteering, meet the people we developed strong friendships with, and enjoy the fascination and wild rides that are India. This book is also about the heartfelt stories of refugees, fellow travellers and the Indian people themselves and the effort of trying to understand cultures very different from ours. Ultimately though it is the moments when we are not so far apart that defines An Indian Sojourn." An Indian Sojourn - One woman's spiritual experience of travel and volunteering is the second book in Ellen Besso's MidLife Maze Series.

Muscogee Daughter

Muscogee Daughter PDF Author: Susan Supernaw
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496220366
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
How American is Miss America? For Susan Supernaw, a Muscogee (Creek) and Munsee Native American, the question wasn't just academic. Throughout a childhood clouded by poverty, alcoholism, abuse, and a physical disability, Supernaw sought escape in school and dance and the Native American Church. She became a presidential scholar, won a scholarship to college, and was crowned Miss Oklahoma in 1971. Supernaw might not have won the Miss America pageant that year, but she did call attention to the Native peoples living largely invisible lives throughout their own American land. And she did at long last earn her Native American name. Chronicling a quest to escape poverty and find meaning, Supernaw's story is revealing, humorous, and deeply moving. Muscogee Daughter is the story of finding a Native American identity among the distractions and difficulties of American life and of discerning an identity among competing notions of what it is to be a woman, a Native American, and a citizen of the world.

Island Sojourn

Island Sojourn PDF Author: Elizabeth Arthur
Publisher: St. Paul, Minn. : Graywolf Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
A young woman's very real journey of self-discovery set in the Canadian wilderness.

A Spiritual Sojourn

A Spiritual Sojourn PDF Author: Brinda Venkataraman
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1947634518
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
A Spiritual Sojourn is an autobiographical collection of poems based on the poet’s life experiences. It records incidents from the poet’s journey through childhood right up to her middle-age years—from being a sick child to becoming a healthy adult. She expresses her struggles, fears, dreams, visions, and her near-death experiences through her lucid poetry. Some of the poems are of a philosophical, spiritual, or devotional nature. Readers will certainly be able to relate to the poet as she relates how she overcomes obstacles and triumphs over the setbacks in her life.

Spring, Heat, Rains

Spring, Heat, Rains PDF Author: David Shulman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226755789
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
“Rocks. Goats. Dry shrubs. Buffaloes. Thorns. A fallen tamarind tree.” Such were the sights that greeted David Shulman on his arrival in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in the spring of 2006. An expert on South Indian languages and cultures, Shulman knew the region well, but from the moment he arrived for this seven-month sojourn he actively soaked up such simple aspects of his surroundings, determined to attend to the rich texture of daily life—choosing to be at the same time scholar and tourist, wanderer and wonderer. Lyrical, sensual, and introspective, Spring, Heat, Rains is Shulman’s diary of that experience. Evocative reflections on daily events—from explorations of crumbling temples to battles with ineradicable bugs to joyous dinners with friends—are organically interwoven with considerations of the ancient poetry and myths that remain such an inextricable part of life in contemporary India. With Shulman as our guide, we meet singers and poets, washermen and betel-nut vendors, modern literati and ancient gods and goddesses. We marvel at the “golden electrocution” that is the taste of a mango fresh from the tree. And we plunge into the searing heat of an Indian summer, so oppressive and inescapable that when the monsoon arrives to banish the heat with sheets of rain, we understand why, year after year, it is celebrated as a miracle. An unabashedly personal account from a scholar whose deep knowledge has never obscured his joy in discovery, Spring, Heat, Rains is a passionate act of sharing, an unforgettable gift for anyone who has ever dreamed of India.

The Other "Hermit" of Thoreau's Walden Pond

The Other Author: Terry Barkley
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1940669952
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
“Barkley’s biography brings Hotham back to life and paints a picture of a complex and fascinating man.” —Richard Smith, acclaimed Living History interpreter of Henry David Thoreau Nearly seven years after Henry Thoreau died in 1862 of tuberculosis in Concord, Massachusetts, a young theological student from New York City arrived in Concord in November 1868. Edmond Hotham had never been there, but he immediately began preparations to pursue the “wild life.” He met transcendentalist poet (William) Ellery Channing, a former close friend of Thoreau’s who had suggested to Thoreau that he build his cabin at Walden Pond. It was Channing who likely introduced Hotham to transcendentalist leader Ralph Waldo Emerson (the “Sage of Concord”), and Emerson who gave Hotham permission, like Thoreau before him, to build his “Earth-cabin” on the poet’s property at Walden Pond. Hotham built his shanty on the pond’s shore about 100 yards in front of Thoreau’s, where he attempted to out-economize and out-simplify Thoreau. Hotham’s sojourn as the second “hermit” at Walden Pond exemplified the growing adulation of Henry David Thoreau and his literary work. Author Terry Barkley has gleaned archival sources, vital records, period newspaper accounts, and census rolls for everything that is known about Edmond Hotham. The Other “Hermit” of Thoreau’s Walden Pond is the first book-length treatise on Hotham, half of which is wholly new material. It far supersedes the late Kenneth Walter Cameron’s 1962 article on Hotham, which until now was the most complete study of the man. Barkley’s groundbreaking study book is an important addition to the Concord-Walden Pond story and a fascinating read. To quote Thoreau, “What is once well done is done forever.”

Castes of Mind

Castes of Mind PDF Author: Nicholas B. Dirks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400840945
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

Jockomo

Jockomo PDF Author: Shane Lief
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496825926
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Jockomo: The Native Roots of Mardi Gras Indians celebrates the transcendent experience of Mardi Gras, encompassing both ancient and current traditions of New Orleans. The Mardi Gras Indians are a renowned and beloved fixture of New Orleans public culture. Yet very little is known about the indigenous roots of their cultural practices. For the first time, this book explores the Native American ceremonial traditions that influenced the development of the Mardi Gras Indian cultural system. Jockomo reveals the complex story of exchanges that have taken place over the past three centuries, generating new ways of singing and speaking, with many languages mixing as people’s lives overlapped. Contemporary photographs by John McCusker and archival images combine to offer a complementary narrative to the text. From the depictions of eighteenth-century Native American musical processions to the first known photo of Mardi Gras Indians, Jockomo is a visual feast, displaying the evolution of cultural traditions throughout the history of New Orleans. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Mardi Gras Indians had become a recognized local tradition. Over the course of the next one hundred years, their unique practices would move from the periphery to the very center of public consciousness as a quintessentially New Orleanian form of music and performance, even while retaining some of the most ancient features of Native American culture and language. Jockomo offers a new way of seeing and hearing the blended legacies of New Orleans.

The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and Its Dependencies

The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and Its Dependencies PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description