Elissa Schappell, “a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora’s box of feeling in a single line” (The New York Times Book Review) delivers eight provocative, darkly funny linked stories that map America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Blueprints for Building Better Girls delves into the lives of an eclectic cast of archetypal female characters—from the high school slut to the good girl, the struggling artist to the college party girl, the wife who yearns for a child to the reluctant mother—mapping America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Its interconnected stories explore the commonly shared but rarely spoken of experiences that build girls into women and women into wives and mothers. In revealing all their vulnerabilities and twisting our preconceived notions of who they are, Elissa Schappell alters how we think about the nature of female identity and how it evolves.
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A “boisterous and infectious debut novel” (The Guardian) about a group of friends and their immigrant families from Queens, New York—a tenderly observed, fiercely poetic love letter to a modern generation of brown girls. “An acute study of those tender moments of becoming, this is an ode to girlhood, inheritance, and the good trouble the body yields.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster FINALIST: The New American Voices Award, The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, The New American Voices Award, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Kirkus Reviews If you really want to know, we are the color of 7-Eleven root beer. The color of sand at Rockaway Beach when it blisters the bottoms of our feet. Color of soil . . . Welcome to Queens, New York, where streets echo with languages from all over the globe, subways rumble above dollar stores, trees bloom and topple over sidewalks, and the funky scent of the Atlantic Ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Within one of New York City’s most vibrant and eclectic boroughs, young women of color like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and countless others, attempt to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture in which they come of age. Here, they become friends for life—or so they vow. Exuberant and wild, together they roam The City That Never Sleeps, sing Mariah Carey at the tops of their lungs, yearn for crushes who pay them no mind—and break the hearts of those who do—all while trying to heed their mothers’ commands to be obedient daughters. But as they age, their paths diverge and rifts form between them, as some choose to remain on familiar streets, while others find themselves ascending in the world, beckoned by existences foreign and seemingly at odds with their humble roots. A blazingly original debut novel told by a chorus of unforgettable voices, Brown Girls illustrates a collective portrait of childhood, adulthood, and beyond, and is a striking exploration of female friendship, a powerful depiction of women of color attempting to forge their place in the world today. For even as the conflicting desires of ambition and loyalty, freedom and commitment, adventure and stability risk dividing them, it is to one another—and to Queens—that the girls ultimately return.
Women don’t feel comfortable telling a man what they wish he knew about dating. He’s expected to know it. Unfortunately, the only time men receive specific guidelines is when they’re being told what they’re notsupposed to do. As a result, very few know what they are supposed to do! What men want is a clear blueprint. Imagine how much simpler dating would be if women could just speak their minds! Therefore, Jason Evert surveyed more than a thousand women and asked them questions such as: · How would you want a man to ask you out? · How do you not want to be asked on a date? This book reveals their surprising answers, plus: · How to know if she’s the right one · Where women don’t want to go on a first date · What word they want a man to say when he asks · When, where, and how he should ask · What she hopes the date will include · How a man can save his marriage before he’s married Dating doesn’t need to become a relic of the past. It needs to be revived. For this to happen, men need to put down their screens, look a woman in the eye, and ask her on a date. The Dating Blueprint explains how.
A gorgeous literary debut about second chances, New England Book Festival prize winner The Rest of Us is an indelible love story that explores the legacy of an affair between a young student and her older professor. As a college student, Terry fell madly and destructively in love with Rhinehart, her famous poetry professor—a relationship from which she never fully recovered. Now, fifteen years later, she is single, still living in the New York City walk-up she moved into after college, and languishing as a photographer’s assistant, having long since abandoned her own art. When she stumbles on Rhinehart’s obituary online, complete with litany of his many accomplishments, she finds herself taking stock of the ways she has not lived up to her youthful expectations—and surprisingly distraught at the thought of never seeing him again. And then, a few weeks later, she bumps into Rhinehart himself: very much alive, married, and Christmas shopping at Bloomingdale’s. What ensues is an intense and beautiful friendship, an unexpected second act that inspires Terry to come to terms with the consequences of their past and the depth of her own aspirations—and to begin to grow again, as an artist and a woman. A captivating read to the last page, The Rest of Us explores those nagging questions that haunt us when we think of who we are, and who we might have been—a love letter to New York City and the struggles of its artists, and a sharp and stirring novel of the heart from a “promising new voice in fiction” (The Daily Beast).
How women around the world are leading powerful change Women's progress is global progress. Where there is an increase in women's university enrollment rates, women's earnings, and maternal health, and a reduction in violence against women, we see more prosperous communities, better educated, healthier families, and the preservation of equal human rights. Yet globally, women remain the most consistently under-utilized resource. Vital Voices calls for and makes possible transformative leadership around the world. In Vital Voices, CEO Alyse Nelson shares the stories of remarkable, world-changing women, as well as the story of how Vital Voices was founded, crossing lines that typically divide. For 15 years, Vital Voices has brought together women who want to enable others to become change agents in their governments, advocates for social justice, and supporters of democracy. They equip women with management and business development skills to expand their enterprises and create jobs in their communities. Their voices, stories, and hard-earned lessons—shared here for the first time—are deeply authentic and truly vital. Features interviews and first-person accounts of global leaders, such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, and Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize-winning Burmese pro-democracy leader, as well as business leaders Draws on the work of the Vital Voices, the organization founded by Hillary Clinton in 1997 as a government initiative that transformed into a leading non-profit, which enables a network of 10,000 emerging women leaders in politics, human rights, and economic development in 127 countries. These women have gone on to mentor and train more than 500,000 Focuses on the key elements of the Vital Voices five-step model of transformational leadership, including how to find a voice, lead with purpose, cross lines that divide, and more Through the firsthand accounts of trail-blazing leaders, Vital Voices introduces unforgettable, inspiring women who are shaping our world.
The exquisitely artful fiction debut of Vanity Fair columnist Elissa Schappell is a novel told in ten stories that resonate with the most profound experiences in the life of a young woman -- friendship and rivalry, the love for a man, the birth of a child, and the death of a father.
A thought-provoking collection of personal essays about home What makes a home? What do equality, safety, and politics have to do with it? And why is it so important to us to feel like we belong? In this collection, 30 women writers explore the theme in personal essays about neighbors, marriage, kids, sentimental objects, homelessness, domestic violence, solitude, immigration, gentrification, geography, and more. Contributors -- including Amanda Petrusich, Naomi Jackson, Jane Wong, and Jennifer Finney Boylan -- lend a diverse range of voices to this subject that remains at the core of our national conversations. Engaging, insightful, and full of hope, This is the Place will make you laugh, cry, and think hard about home, wherever you may find it. "This collection, encompassing a spectrum of races, ethnicities, religions, sexualities, political beliefs and classes, could not be timelier . . . open this book, hear its chorus of voices and remember that we are a nation of individuals, bound to each other by our humanity." -- The New York Times Book Review " . . . an honest portrait of the U.S., pieced together like an imperfect American quilt. We need more books like this." -- BUST
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil---literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul---it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
The host of HGTV’s Room Crashers presents twenty-five awesome projects for dads to build with their kids—including skate ramps, zip lines, go-carts, and more! On his popular home improvement show, Todd Davis is known for transforming interiors with eye-popping DIY design. But in Handy Dad, he uses his know-how to create twenty-five simple yet super-fun projects that dads can build with their kids. Dads can choose from projects that range from basic to challenging and take anywhere from five minutes to a full weekend. Readers are given all the directions they need to grab materials that can be found around the house or at the local hardware store and get to work banging up a sweet BMX ramp or half-pipe, building a tree house or tire swing, or throwing together a slip-and-slide or tie-dye station for an afternoon of fun. With plenty of color photographs, easy-to-follow instructions, and detailed illustrations, Handy Dad is chock-full of creative and inexpensive ways to keep kids (and dads) endlessly entertained.
