A portrait of the thriving African-American community on the island of Martha's Vineyard describes the various groups who settled in Oak Bluffs, including vacationing families, local domestics, and multi-generational professionals.
African Americans of Martha's Vineyard have an epic history. From the days when slaves toiled away in the fresh New England air, through abolition and Reconstruction and continuing into recent years, African Americans have fought arduously to preserve a vibrant culture here. Discover how the Vineyard became a sanctuary for slaves during the Civil War and how many blacks first came to the island as indentured servants. Read tales of the Shearer Cottage, a popular vacation destination for prominent blacks from Harry T. Burleigh to Scott Joplin, and how Martin Luther King Jr. vacationed here as well. Venture through the Vineyard with local tour guide Thomas Dresser and learn about people such as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and President Barack Obama, who return to the Vineyard for respite from a demanding world.
Michael Blanchard had just received his third DUI in three months—this time after falling asleep on the side of the road with the engine running and being wrestled to the ground by a state trooper.Life had just gone from bad to the very worst. Thirty years of drinking had narrowed his choice to a simple decision between jail and an addiction rehab center.Michael chose a three-month rehab program; and when he came out, began to dedicate his life to staying sober. This is his story— painful, provocative, and, because he has used photography as one of his mainstays in his efforts to keep from drinking, both beautiful and moving.
In this radiant new collection, Franz Wright shares his regard for life in all its forms and his belief in the promise of blessing and renewal. As he watches the “Resurrection of the little apple tree outside / my window,” he shakes off his fear of mortality, concluding “what death . . . There is only / mine / or yours,– / but the world / will be filled with the living.” In prayerlike poems he invokes the one “who spoke the world / into being” and celebrates a dazzling universe–snowflakes descending at nightfall, the intense yellow petals of the September sunflower, the planet adrift in a blizzard of stars, the simple mystery of loving other people. As Wright overcomes a natural tendency toward loneliness and isolation, he gives voice to his hope for “the only animal that commits suicide,” and, to our deep pleasure, he arrives at a place of gratitude that is grounded in the earth and its moods.
Betrayal shattered her world, but this alluring billionaire is determined to convince her to forget about her past and become his future. Travel writer Daisy Blanchard has just discovered the worst news ever. Her boyfriend is now engaged to her best friend! To add insult to injury, she learned about their blasphemous relationship from a Facebook post. To escape her life in shambles, Daisy takes a last-minute work assignment, which leads her to the island of Martha's Vineyard. She doesn't know it yet, but this one decision will lead her into the arms, and definitely in the bed, of a tempting, daring, and mysterious billionaire named Jack Lord. But is Daisy ready to betray her broken heart and jump two feet into the most sensual love affair of her life? Find out now in Find Her, Keep Her: A Martha's Vineyard Love Story, the first steamy contemporary romance in the LOVE in the USA series.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist “gives a familial face to the mystique of Martha’s Vineyard” in a memoir with “gentle humor and . . . elegiac sweetness” (Kirkus Reviews). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais’s in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard. A little more than two miles down a dirt road, it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond—well-stocked with delicious oysters and crab—the house faced the ocean and the sky. Though improvements were made, the ethos remained the same: no heat, television, or telephone. Instead, there were countless hours at the beach, meals cooked and savored with friends, nights talking under the stars, until, in 2014, the house was sold. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais’s “witty and charming . . . deeply felt memoir” of this house, and of the Vineyard itself, from the history of the island and its famous visitors, to the ferry, the pie shops, the quirky charms and customs, and the abundant natural beauty. But more than that, this is an elegy for a special place—a retreat that held the intimate history of her family (The National Book Review).
A memoir about a brokenhearted, middle-aged man who stumbles upon solace, meaning, and Larry David while hitchhiking around Martha’s Vineyard One summer day on Martha’s Vineyard Paul Samuel Dolman was hitchhiking, and none other than Larry David pulled over and asked, “You’re not a serial killer or something, are you?” The comedic writer and actor not only gave Dolman a ride but helped him find his way. Dolman found himself on Martha’s Vineyard that summer in the wake of a painful breakup. Desperately seeking companionship, he began hitchhiking around the island and met a wide array of characters: the rich and the homeless, movie stars and common folk, and, of course, Mr. David. Written with disarming honest humor, Hitchhiking with Larry David will leave readers simultaneously laughing and crying as they ponder the mystery and spirituality of life.
Home bird: A person who likes to stay at home.For Laura Wainwright that home is Martha's Vineyard. Her essays celebrate the simple but profound pleasures that can be found by listening carefully to the voices of the natural world and the rhythms of each season. Walk with her to find lady's slippers or painted turtles in springtime. Join her in the barn across the road on a cold afternoon. Follow her as she cuts watercress, gathers scallops, casts for striped bass — and then prepares some of her favorite recipes.With nuanced observations of everyday details, Wain- wright shows how connecting to the complexity and beauty of the natural world can ground us and help us uncover deeper meaning in our lives.— Includes Eight Recipes —
An honest and courageous examination of what it means to navigate the in-between Cole has heard it all before—token, bougie, oreo, Blackish—the things we call the kids like him. Black kids who grow up in white spaces, living at an intersection of race and class that many doubt exists. He needed to get far away from the preppy site of his upbringing before he could make sense of it all. Through a series of personal anecdotes and interviews with his peers, Cole transports us to his adolescence and explores what it’s like to be young and in search of identity. He digs into the places where, in youth, a greyboy’s difference is most acutely felt: parenting, police brutality, Trumpism, depression, and dating, to name a few. Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World asks an important question: What is Blackness? It also provides the answer: Much more than you thought, dammit.