Aura, the land of the Muggles, is cloaked in a purple haze, until the arrival of two unexpected visitors: the two infant sons that Lady Catherine launched off the shore of Aura years before.
Females and Harry Potter is a deconstruction of the representations of women's agency in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Using critical discourse analysis and focusing on five themes (rule following and breaking, intelligence, validating and enabling, mothering, and resistance), Mayes-Elma explores the construction of traditional gender roles in the book. Additionally, the author locates the foundations of feminist epistemology--binary oppositions, gender boundaries, and woman as "other"--that is deeply embedded within the book's themes. Traditional gender constructions of both men and women are found throughout the Sorcerer's Stone. Ultimately, the book explores the sexism inherent in the Harry Potter series: a hero and his male friends are the focus and center of activity and the female characters are enablers--at best. Passive and invisible female characters exist only as bodies, "bound" by traditional gender conventions; they resist evil, but never gender stereotypes. Mayes-Elma concludes with a discussion of the implications for development of school curricula that enable students to critically deconstruct these texts.
To Andrea, the life of a princess is not a dream; it's tedious and stifling. But the certainties of her life, both good and bad, are thrown into chaos when she accidentally travels to an alternative world, from a cave on a forbidden beach in her family's kingdom to the warm and carefree life of Southern California. Then a careless visit to the cave results in terrible consequences: a brewing war between kingdoms, her sister's love for the wrong man, Andrea's own conflicted feelings for an enemy leader, and dark family secrets exposed. Andrea needs to act to resolve problems which she helped to create, and she faces many difficult choices, torn between duty and desire on so many levels. Readers will enjoy the mix of traditional elements of the fantasy genre, with fresh ideas and a look at our culture through the eyes of a stranger.
A guide to accessing your true self and living abundantly, based on the teachings of Jesus and Buddha, by the bestselling author of Writing Down Your Soul. TheLotus and the Lily offers a new thirty-day program for accessing your true creativity, breakthrough thinking, and divine guidance. Janet Conner continues her unique method of deep soul writing by showing readers how to exit their conscious minds, get in touch with their authentic selves, and activate the voice of wisdom within. For those seeking the riches that lie beyond the popular explanation of the Law of Attraction, Lotus and the Lily cracks the abundance code by linking the wisdom of the inner voice with the surprising parallel teachings of Jesus and Buddha. In a profound yet simple program, Conner sheds radical new light on how to: Awaken your inner shaman Discover the power of naming your past and your future Experience the generative power of your own voice Each day is reflective of you. Lotus and the Lily is a book with an array of prompts for reading, reflection, writing, exploring, and nourishing one’s soul. Each week Janet Conner takes you through a program of rich exploration and redirects you from asking for things, to creating the receptive conditions that nourish a bountiful life. If you enjoyed The Gifts of Imperfection, The Untethered Soul, or The Power of Now, then you’ll want to read Lotus and the Lily. “The principles that Janet Conner guides the reader to discover become the essential elements of a dynamic spiritual practice. These principles transcend denomination and dogma. They are practical, universal, and impacting.” —Mary Anne Radmacher, author of Live with Intention
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.