"Everyone is free here. . . . The cities are open. They are open to the world and to the future. That is what gives them all an air of adventure; and . . . a kind of touching beauty." So wrote the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre on a 1945 trip to the United States during which he crossed the country and dove deep into the soul of the American city. In this new volume, Sartre's reflections on the distinctly American quality of cities in the United States are accompanied by Pedro Meyer's photographs of American cities, offering similarly sharp insights, but through a different historical lens: that of the late eighties and early nineties. Together, the photographs and essays articulate the enduring essence of American urban existence--its relationship with time, with labor and humanity, and with the open spaces emblematic of America.
Kim Thúy is a literary phenomenon, rising in her first decade of writing to a level of international recognition that few Québécois writers ever attain. The Vietnamese-born author’s novels have garnered literary prize recognition and have been translated from French into twenty-nine languages in nearly forty countries. Touching Beauty is the first collection to focus solely on Thúy and her economical yet poetic storytelling style that expresses both the traumatic and the beautiful. Her writings, which manage to be culturally specific all while speaking to the fundamentals of the human condition, are examined within the context of what is known as migrant literature in Canada and are situated within the history of Vietnamese literature in French that grew out of the colonial period. Chapters explore food, identity, gender, and the role of writing in Thúy’s life and work. Thúy herself contributes an unpublished poem and an extended interview that focus on her ongoing struggle to find, and write, beauty amidst war, migration, poverty, and loss. Touching Beauty maps the themes that have, to date, animated a literary career of global relevance and enduring value and encourages a deeper appreciation of Thúy’s writing.
Photography does more than simply represent the world. It acts in the world, connecting people to form relationships and shaping relationships to create communities. In this beautiful book, Margaret Olin explores photography’s ability to “touch” us through a series of essays that shed new light on photography’s role in the world. Olin investigates the publication of photographs in mass media and literature, the hanging of exhibitions, the posting of photocopied photographs of lost loved ones in public spaces, and the intense photographic activity of tourists at their destinations. She moves from intimate relationships between viewers and photographs to interactions around larger communities, analyzing how photography affects the way people handle cataclysmic events like 9/11. Along the way, she shows us James VanDerZee’s Harlem funeral portraits, dusts off Roland Barthes’s family album, takes us into Walker Evans and James Agee’s photo-text Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and logs onto online photo albums. With over one hundred illustrations, Touching Photographs is an insightful contribution to the theory of photography, visual studies, and art history.
E. B. White Read-Aloud winner Mac Barnett celebrates individuality in a story told with tenderness and subtlety. It’s John’s big day at school today—a performance for Sharing Gifts time. His bag is carefully packed and prepared, his classmates are ready, and the curtain is waiting to open. John is nervous, looking out at all the other children staring back at him. But he takes a big breath and begins. Mac Barnett’s compassionate text and Kate Berube’s understated and expressive art tell the story of a kid who finds the courage to show others his talent for dancing.
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog. Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg's inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.
When Courtney Westlake’s family was given the shocking news that their daughter, Brenna, was born in 2011 with a severe, life-threatening skin disorder, they began to discover a new and different beautiful in their lives–one that values extraordinary differences and appreciates the wonderful sameness found in humanity. In A Different Beautiful, Courtney explores what her family has discovered in raising a child with physical differences and what she has learned about true beauty. Through her personal insights and experiences, Courtney shares how you, too, can learn to find and celebrate God’s version of beautiful in your life, especially within our differences and struggles.
Told from three diverse points of view, this story of life and love after loss is one Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give, believes "will stay with you long after you put it down." We've lost everything...and found ourselves. Loss pulled Autumn, Shay, and Logan apart. Will music bring them back together? Autumn always knew exactly who she was: a talented artist and a loyal friend. Shay was defined by two things: her bond with her twin sister, Sasha, and her love of music. And Logan has always turned to writing love songs when his real love life was a little less than perfect. But when tragedy strikes each of them, somehow music is no longer enough. Now Logan is a guy who can't stop watching vlogs of his dead ex-boyfriend. Shay is a music blogger who's struggling to keep it together. And Autumn sends messages that she knows can never be answered. Despite the odds, one band's music will reunite them and prove that after grief, beauty thrives in the people left behind. "Woodfolk's debut cuts deeply and then wipes your tears away. Wrenching, heartfelt, and vividly human." --Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda "Haunting, heart-wrenching, and powerful...a tearjerker must-read for teens!" --Dhonielle Clayton, author of the Belles series and coauthor of the Tiny Pretty Things series "This books hurts so good. With three distinct narrators and lyrical prose, Ashley Woodfolk stakes her claim as a fresh new voice to follow in the world of young adult literature."--Julie Murphy, author of Ramona Blue and Dumplin'
Part lyric essay, part prose poetry, Where Things Touch grapples with the manifold meanings and possibilities of beauty. Drawing on her experiences as a physician-in-training, Orang considers clinical encounters and how they relate to the concept and very idea of beauty. Such considerations lead her to questions about intimacy, queerness, home, memory, love, and other aspects of human existence. Throughout, beauty is ultimately imagined as something inextricably tied to care: the care of lovers, of patients, of art and literature and the various non-human worlds that surround us. Eloquent and meditative in its approach, beauty, here, beyond base expectations of frivolity and superficiality, is conceived of as a thing to recover. Where Things Touch is an exploration of an essential human pleasure, a necessary freedom by which to challenge what we know of ourselves and the world we inhabit.
A best book of the year from New York Public Library, NPR, the Financial Times, Book Riot, and the Sunday Times (London). A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard. Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew. To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns. In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
