Shares the myths of the contemporary Mayans of Guatemala, in tales of tricksters, lords of the underworld, warriers, kings, Spanish invaders and missionaries, and even anthropologists.
“Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way.”—Charles Bukowski In The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way, Charles Bukowski considers the art of writing, and the art of living as a writer. Bringing together a variety of previously uncollected stories, columns, reviews, introductions, and interviews, this book finds him approaching the dynamics of his chosen profession with cynical aplomb, deflating pretensions and tearing down idols armed with only a typewriter and a bottle of beer. Beginning with the title piece—a serious manifesto disguised as off-handed remarks en route to the racetrack—The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way runs through numerous tales following the author’s adventures at poetry readings, parties, film sets, and bars, and also features an unprecedented gathering of Bukowski’s singular literary criticism. From classic authors like Hemingway to underground legends like d.a. levy to his own stable of obscure favorites, Bukowski uses each occasion to expound on the larger issues around literary production. The book closes with a handful of interviews in which he discusses his writing practices and his influences, making this a perfect guide to the man behind the myth and the disciplined artist behind the boozing brawler. Born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) is the author of over forty-five books of poetry and prose. David Stephen Calonne has written several books and edited four previous volumes of uncollected Bukowski for City Lights.
**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** 'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful,' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal What makes life worth living in the face of death? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both. 'A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living' Nigella Lawson
“The Mirror in the Mirror” – in the E-Book now also with illustrations by his father Edgar Ende, to whom Michael Ende dedicated this book. It is a fantastic story labyrinth of a very special kind. For the author himself, this work was of great importance: in interviews, he liked to call it his “never-ending story for adult readers.” The reader is taken into a mysterious narrative world, full of bizarre situations and mysterious fates, surreal images and philosophical thoughts. Those who open themselves in amazement to these enigmatic visions and allow themselves to be drawn into the fantastic stories will emerge from Michael Ende’s magic labyrinth with a new perspective. The core question is: What is reflected in a mirror that is reflected in a mirror? If two readers read the same book, they are still not reading the same thing. For both people immerse themselves into the reading. The book becomes a mirror in which the reader is reflected. But in the same way, the reader is also a mirror in which the book is reflected: The mirror in the mirror refers the reader back to himself. The FAZ, one of the major newspapers in Germany, writes that Michael Ende shows with the book “how much darkness, wildness and rawness is inherent in dreams. He does not trivialize. His dreams make reference to reality because in dreams, Cicero wrote, ‘the remnants of those objects roll and tumble about in the souls which we have thought and impelled while awake’.”
Dee I always thought it would be cool to escape into another world. I never believed I'd find one in my reflection. But there I was, falling through the mirror into a parallel life—Samara's life. And she needed me. The cutting, the dead mom, no friends...She was hurting, and I knew it was up to me to fix it. She needed me to fix her. She'll thank me... Samara I never had a friend until I met Dee, at least not a real friend. But then she's my reflection, so maybe I'm just crazy. When she suggested we switch places, it seemed like the perfect answer. So I let her live in my world, and I lived in hers. With her mom, her boyfriend, her friends—her perfect life...I don't belong here. But how can I go back after what she's done? Two girls, one reflection, and a startling discovery about what really lies beyond the bathroom mirror...
2019 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Winner 2020 Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold Recipient An engaging and interactive story showing children ages 3-6 the power of breath when dealing with new and difficult emotions. Read aloud and breathe along with this sweet story teaching children how to navigate powerful emotions like anger, fear, sadness, confusion, anxiety, and loneliness. With rhythmic writing and engaging illustrations, Breathing Makes It Better guides children to breathe through their feelings and find calm with recurring cues to stop and take a breath. Simple guided practices, like imagining you are a tree blowing in the wind, follow each story to teach children how to apply mindfulness techniques when they need them the most.
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick! As seen in Vulture, Essence, Good Morning America, The Independent, Goodreads, PureWow, and many more! "A sexy, surprising, searing debut about love, loss, desire, and the many dimensions of Black womanhood."—Deesha Philyaw, 2020 National Book Award Finalist & award-winning author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies An arresting debut for anyone looking for insight into what it means to be a Black woman in the world. Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm as they build their new lives in the most open society run by the most private people. Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi's move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life. A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege—a life she's not sure she wants—as the object of his unhealthy obsession. And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny's office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home. Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She's Black is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society. Praise for In Every Mirror She's Black: "In Every Mirror She's Black is a wise and complicated exploration of the lives of three Black women in America and Sweden. Lola Akinmade Åkerström offers a sharply written story with messy, deeply moving characters, raising brutal questions and steering clear of easy answers. A book that will stick with you long after you've turned the last page." —Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six and Malibu Rising "In Every Mirror She's Black highlights the struggles of three women fighting to assimilate into a society that ignores their worth. These characters will pull at your heartstrings. Lola writes with a contemporary flair, highlighting the layered subtleties of the Black woman's plight. In Every Mirror She's Black will stay with readers for a long time." —Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of bestselling novels Here Comes the Sun and Patsy "In her debut novel, Lola Akinmade Akerstrom has given us a story that is at once enjoyable and disturbing as it explores the painful price millions of women around the world pay for walking around with black skin." —Imbolo Mbue, New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers
Derived from interviews with a wide range of people who experienced or observed New York's 1991 Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The Mirror is as distinguished a work of commentary on black-white tensions as it is a work of drama. In August 1991 simmering tensions in the racially polarized Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Crown Heights exploded into riots after a black boy was killed by a car in a rabbi's motorcade and a Jewish student was slain by blacks in retaliation. Fires in the Mirror is dramatist Anna Deavere Smith's stunning exploration of the events and emotions leading up to and following the Crown Heights conflict. Through her portrayals of more than two dozen Crown eights adversaries, victims, and eyewitnesses, using verbatim excerpts from their observations derived from interviews she conducted, Smith provides a brilliant, Rashoman-like documentary portrait of contemporary ethnic turmoil.
Explores the rise of the idea of nothing in Western modernity and how its figuration is transforming and offering new possibilities. In this groundbreaking, interdisciplinary history of ideas, Andrew W. Hass explores the ascendency of the concept of nothing into late modernity. He argues that the rise of the reality of nothing in religion, philosophy, and literature has taken place only against the decline of the concept of One: a shift from a sovereign understanding of the One (unity, universality) toward the figure of the Oa cipher figure that, as nonentity, is nevertheless determinant of other realities. The figuring of this O culminates in a proliferation of literary expressions of nothingness, void, and absence from 1940 to 1960, but by centurys end, this movement has shifted from linear progression to mutation, whereby religion, theology, philosophy, literature, and other critical modes of thought, such as feminism, merge into a shared, circular activity. The writer W. H. Auden lends his name to this O, his long poetic work The Sea and the Mirror an exemplary manifestation of its implications. Hass examines this work, along with that of a host of writers, philosophers, and theologians, to trace the revolutionary hermeneutics and creative space of the O, and to provide the reasoning of why nothing is now such a powerful force in the imagination of the twenty-first century, and of how it might move us through and beyond our turbulent times.
Blackness, as the entertainment and sports industries well know, is a prized commodity in American pop culture. Marketed to white consumers, black culture invites whites to view themselves in a mirror of racial difference, while at the same time offering the illusory reassurance that they remain “wholly” white. Charting a rich landscape that includes classic American literature, Hollywood films, pop music, and investigative journalism, Eric Lott reveals the hidden dynamics of this self-and-other mirroring of racial symbolic capital. Black Mirror is a timely reflection on the ways provocative representations of racial difference serve to sustain white cultural dominance. As Lott demonstrates, the fraught symbolism of racial difference props up white hegemony, but it also tantalizingly threatens to expose the contradictions and hypocrisies upon which the edifice of white power has been built. Mark Twain’s still-controversial depiction of black characters and dialect, John Howard Griffin’s experimental cross-racial reporting, Joni Mitchell’s perverse penchant for cross-dressing as a black pimp, Bob Dylan’s knowing thefts of black folk music: these instances and more show how racial fantasy, structured through the mirroring of identification and appropriation so visible in blackface performance, still thrives in American culture, despite intervening decades of civil rights activism, multiculturalism, and the alleged post-racialism of the twenty-first century. In Black Mirror, white and black Americans view themselves through a glass darkly, but also face to face.