Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, American Radiance, at turns funny, tragic, and haunting, reflects on the author's experience immigrating as a child to the United States from Ukraine in 1991. What does it mean to be an American? Luisa Muradyan doesn't try to provide an answer. Instead, the poems in American Radiance look for a home in history, folklore, misery, laughter, language, and Prince's outstretched hand. Colliding with the grand figures of late '80s and early '90s pop culture, Muradyan's imagination pushes the reader forward, confronting the painful loss of identity that assimilation brings.
Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, American Radiance, at turns funny, tragic, and haunting, reflects on the author’s experience immigrating as a child to the United States from Ukraine in 1991. What does it mean to be an American? Luisa Muradyan doesn’t try to provide an answer. Instead, the poems in American Radiance look for a home in history, folklore, misery, laughter, language, and Prince’s outstretched hand. Colliding with the grand figures of late ’80s and early ’90s pop culture, Muradyan’s imagination pushes the reader forward, confronting the painful loss of identity that assimilation brings.
"Combining new research, never-before-published color photographs, and detailed entries on each artwork, American Radiance is indispensable for students and collectors, yet broadly appealing to the folk art market. The book celebrates the opening of the Museum's new building, where the Esmerian Collection is the widely publicized inaugural exhibition."--BOOK JACKET.
AMERICAN RADIANCE marks the donation of the Ralph Esmerian Collection of paintings, sculptures, weathervanes, pottery, fraktur, samplers and furniture to the American Folk Art Museum
The Selected Prose and Poetry of Danny Siegel This first anthology of the most important writings by Danny Siegel, spanning and renewing fifty years of his insights intersperses soulful Jewish texts with innovative Mitzvah ideas to rouse individuals and communities to transform our lives, communities, neighborhoods, and world. As a renowned teacher Siegel describes the creative—often startling—ways individuals from different walks of life have brought compassion into the world, recognizes them as Mitzvah heroes, and suggests how we can apply their life lessons. He also plumbs how giving enriches living and presents Jewishly informed best principles for doing more world repair (Tikkun Olam). As a scholar of rabbinic literature Siegel offers translations and commentaries on Jewish texts illuminating Tzedakah, values, caring, and leadership. In addition he tops off a half-century of his thought with five new essays reflecting on his visions for a better world. The selected poetry asks religious and theological questions in the face of oppression and war, gives voice to personal moments often neglected by ritual, and exults at the wonders of modern Israel and the revelation of love. Both inspirational and pragmatic, this anthology offers practical guidance on using Siegel’s classic and novel works in personal living and in Jewish organizational settings. Ultimately, in exploring the dynamic interaction between heroes, texts, and ourselves, Siegel seeks to engage each of us in discovering our own radiant potential for creative Mitzvah living.
The guru of extreme tourism sets out to face his worst fears in Africa, India, Mexico City, and—most terrifying of all—at Disney World In the widely-acclaimed Smile When You're Lying, Chuck Thompson laid bare the travel industry's dirtiest secrets. Now he's out to discover if some of the world's most ill-reputed destinations live up to their bad raps, while confronting a few of his own travel anxieties in the process. Whether he's traveling across the Congo with a former bodyguard from notorious dictator Joseph Mobutu's retinue or diving into the heart of India's monsoon season, To Hellholes and Back delivers Thompson's trademark combination of hilarious stories and wildly provocative opinions, as well as some surprising observations about America's evolving place in the world.
This book presents watercolor renderings along with a selection of the artifacts in the Index of American Design, a visual archive of decorative, folk, and popular arts made in America from the colonial period to about 1900. Three essays explore the history, operation, and ambitions of the Index of American Design, examine folk art collecting in America during the early decades of the twentieth century, and consider the Index's role in the search for a national cultural identity in the early twentieth-century United States.
