The most comprehensive collection of writing by and about African-Americans ever to appear in one volume Never before has such an impressive and far-reaching mix of writings by African-Americans been gathered together into a single anthology. Combining an extensive selection of poetry, prose, speeches, songs, documents, and letters dating from the pre-Colonial era through today's best and most well-known writers, this anthology offers a testament to the pervasive influence of African-Americans on the political, creative, and cultural development of the United States, even well before its inception.
"Crossing the Water, a collection of poems written just prior to those in Ariel, . . . is of immense importance in recording [Plath's] extraordinary development. One senses on every page a voice coming into its own, the chaos of a lifetime at last getting ready to assume its final, triumphant shape." — Kirkus Reviews Sylvia Plath's extraordinary collection pushes the envelope between dark and light, between our deep passions and desires that are often in tension with our duty to family and society. Water becomes a metaphor for the surface veneer that many of us carry, but Plath explores how easily this surface can be shaken and disturbed.
Lost in the Ohio River Valley in May 1793, twelve-year-old Clare and her two brothers struggle to survive in the wilderness and to avoid capture by the Shawnee Indians.
In the decades since Black liberation theology burst onto the scene, it has turned the world of church, society, and academia upside down. It has changed lives and ways of thinking as well. But now there is a question: What lessons has Black theology not learned as times have changed? In this expansion of the 2017 Yale Divinity School Beecher Lectures, Allan Boesak explores this question. If Black liberation theology had taken the issues discussed in these pages much more seriously – struggled with them much more intensely, thoroughly, and honestly – would it have been in a better position to help oppressed black people in Africa, the United States, and oppressed communities everywhere as they have faced the challenges of the last twenty five years? In a critical, self-critical engagement with feminist and, especially, African feminist theologians in a trans-disciplinary conversation, Allan Boesak, as Black liberation theologian from the Global South, offers tentative but intriguing responses to the vital questions facing Black liberation theology today, particularly those questions raised by the women.
Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky. In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus, John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing, his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.
When we leave our destiny in the hands of others and live our life in the past, we immediately destroy our future. Scientists in the human genome industry have proved that all humans are 99.9 percent the same. Why then are some ethnicities progressive and others nonprogressive? Our current problems are not with the slave or colonial masters. We Are Becoming the Problem Now! Had we continued in the legacy of our ancestors simply known as slaves, we ought to have been the pride and joy of the whole world. They went through unimaginable pain, sorrow, hardship, and torment. They survived and even succeeded by leaving a godly legacy behind in the Negro spiritual songs and in arts, education, industry, and every conceivable field. Our current major problems as blacks in Africa and all over the world simply put are leadership and disunity. We do the dirty work by self-destroying ourselves and each other. Only few illiterate Caucasian would engage in overt discrimination. The majority of us have been trained in the art and act of covert self-destruction and in the destruction of the whole. We have so much zeal but without knowledge. We must bear in mind that zeal without knowledge is dead, so also knowledge without zeal is equally lifeless (Romans 10:2). Not until we harness our zeal and knowledge comprehensively can we live a progressive life. It has been said that if the West is to stand still and halt all development and progress, Africa would never catch up. Yet we have PhDs in every conceivable field. Do we blame that on the ancestors of the slave or colonial masters? No! We are to be blamed. We Are Becoming the Problem Now! Those who have ears to hear, let them hear because time is of the essence.
An examination of the lingering effects of a hydroelectric power station on Pimicikamak sovereign territory in Manitoba, Canada. The child of South Asian migrants, Kazim Ali was born in London, lived as a child in the cities and small towns of Manitoba, and made a life in the United States. As a man passing through disparate homes, he has never felt he belonged to a place. And yet, one day, the celebrated poet and essayist finds himself thinking of the boreal forests and lush waterways of Jenpeg, a community thrown up around the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Nelson River, where he once lived for several years as a child. Does the town still exist, he wonders? Is the dam still operational? When Ali goes searching, however, he finds not news of Jenpeg, but of the local Pimicikamak community. Facing environmental destruction and broken promises from the Canadian government, they have evicted Manitoba’s electric utility from the dam on Cross Lake. In a place where water is an integral part of social and cultural life, the community demands accountability for the harm that the utility has caused. Troubled, Ali returns north, looking to understand his place in this story and eager to listen. Over the course of a week, he participates in community life, speaks with Elders and community members, and learns about the politics of the dam from Chief Cathy Merrick. He drinks tea with activists, eats corned beef hash with the Chief, and learns about the history of the dam, built on land that was never ceded, and Jenpeg, a town that now exists mostly in his memory. In building relationships with his former neighbors, Ali explores questions of land and power?and in remembering a lost connection to this place, finally finds a home he might belong to. Praise for Northern Light An Outside Magazine Favorite Book of 2021 A Book Riot Best Book of 2021 A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2021 “Ali’s gift as a writer is the way he is able to present his story in a way that brings attention to the myriad issues facing Indigenous communities, from oil pipelines in the Dakotas to border walls running through Kumeyaay land.” —San Diego Union-Tribune “A world traveler, not always by choice, ponders the meaning and location of home. . . . A graceful, elegant account even when reporting on the hard truths of a little-known corner of the world.” —Kirkus Reviews “[Ali’s] experiences are relayed in sensitive, crystalline prose, documenting how Cross Lake residents are working to reinvent their town and rebuild their traditional beliefs, language, and relationships with the natural world. . . . Though these topics are complex, they are untangled in an elegant manner.” —Foreword Reviews (starred review)
