On an uneven dirt road, a child rides home, guided by the tall palm tree by his house. In Bangladesh, it is the boy’s beacon of happiness and safety. Everyone in the land admires the palm tree. Its sugary sap is a delightful nighttime treat for animals, and it gives the gift of shade. My House by the Tall Palm Tree will help American parents of Bangladeshi descent connect their children with their heritage through words and pictures. The vivid illustrations depict the different lifestyles in America and in Bangladesh. It’s time to come home, even just in the imagination, to the house by the big palm tree.
A queer, feminist spin on Stephen King’s The Mist, this ode to female-rage is a perfect pick for fans of She Is a Haunting, and a reminder that if "boys will be boys", girls will fight back. For high school senior Nell and her friends, a vacation house on a private Florida island sounds like the makings of a dream spring break. But Nell brings secrets with her—secrets that fuse with the island's tragic history, trapping them all with a curse that surrounds the island in a toxic, vengeful mist and the surrounding waters with an unseen, devouring beast. Getting out alive means risking her friendships, her sanity, and even her own life. In order to save herself and her friends, Nell will have to face memories she'd rather leave behind, reveal the horrific truth behind the encounter that changed her life one year ago, and face the shadow that's haunted her since childhood. Easier said than done. But when Nell's friends reveal that they each brought secrets of their own, a solution even more dangerous than the curse begins to take shape. Reading like a YA feminist spin on Stephen King’s The Mist, So Witches We Became is a diverse, queer horror about female friendship, the emotional aftermath of surviving assault, and how to find power in the shadows of your past. Step into your witchy power or be swallowed by the curse–the choice is yours.
Flowing throughout these testimonies from women all over the world is a sense of profound appreciation for these sweet undeserved gifts of mercy. Listen quietly . . . you¿ll recognize grace notes echoing in your own soul.
‘Thursday 17 April 1975 is the day that I will never forget until the day I die. That was the day the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh and overthrew the government of General Lon Nol and his Republican Party...’ Thus begins Firos Iseu’s gripping memoir of his experiences during the Khmer Rouge’s brutal regime in Cambodia between April 1975 and January 1979. At the tender age of 12, Iseu – whose ‘revolutionary name’, Comrade Sao, provides the book with its title – faced the horrors of the regime’s first wave of killings, which at a stroke deprived him of his parents and elder siblings. Bearing a diverse heritage of Indian, Laotian, and Vietnamese roots, he was branded a ‘17 April’ or ‘new’ person, marking him as an outsider and second-class citizen. Comrade Sao stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, showcasing the author’s remarkable courage and resourcefulness in the face of terrifying adversity. This harrowing, unflinching and above all honest narrative sheds a necessary light on one of the darkest chapters of humanity of the past 50 years.
This sweeping memoir tells the life story of longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist Cleve Jones in a profoundly moving account from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his involvement with the marriage equality battle. Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s to San Francisco, a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual freedom. Jones found community--in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city's bathhouses and gay bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation's most outspoken gay elected official. With Milk's encouragement, Jones dove into politics and found his calling in "the movement." When Milk was killed by an assassin's bullet in 1978, Jones took up his mentor's progressive mantle--only to see the arrival of AIDS transform his life once again. By turns tender and uproarious, When We Rise is Jones' account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and and violence alike. When We Rise is not only the story of a hero to the LQBTQ community, but the vibrantly voice memoir of a full and transformative American life. Lambda Literary Award Winner The partial inspiration for the ABC television mini-series! "You could read Cleve Jones's book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key participants--maybe heroes--but really, you should read it for pleasure and joy."--Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me
You’ve fought and you’ve run away. You’ve danced with other Black queer bodies until sunrise. Sometimes you wanted to be caught and sometimes you wanted to be held. With all that you’ve endured, you are nothing less than miraculous. From choirboy to drag act, grandson to mentor, poet to lover, Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In this formally inventive, candid and courageous book, he explores what he has carried in his body: wins and losses, shame and pride, pain and joy. Dean also investigates how radical self-acceptance and a willingness to abide with discomfort open up the possibility of a life lived beyond definition: a person unlimited.
When we think of Catholicism, we think of Europe and the United States as the seats of its power. But while much of Catholicism remains headquartered in the West, the Church’s center of gravity has shifted to Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia. Focused on the transnational Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Unequal Partners explores the ways gender, race, economic inequality, and colonial history play out in religious organizations, revealing how their members are constantly negotiating and reworking the frameworks within which they operate. Taking us from Belgium and the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sociologist Casey Clevenger offers rare insight into how the sisters of this order work across national boundaries, shedding light on the complex relationships among individuals, social groups, and formal organizations. Throughout, Clevenger skillfully weaves the sisters’ own voices into her narrative, helping us understand how the order has remained whole over time. A thoughtful analysis of the ties that bind—and divide—the sisters, Unequal Partners is a rich look at transnationalism’s ongoing impact on Catholicism.
"... mesmerizing... a haunting trauma... grippingly strange, poignantly melancholic and psychologically sophisticated... a sensitive exploration of the effects of unreconciled sadness." Kirkus Reviews. Hardly any relationship is more fraught with unspoken feelings and words than one between a male psychiatrist and a sad female patient. It is even more so when the patient takes the therapist back to tormenting memories of a woman from his youth. In 1961, a year before her death, Marilyn Monroe’s last psychiatrist invited her into his family in a desperate attempt to save the actress by giving her a family she never had. One evening over dinner the doctor suggests that his son take the actress to his senior prom at Hollywood High School, an experience Marilyn missed because she never finished school. She was 35—looking no older than a college coed—and the boy was 17. That night haunts him until 2007 when that youth, now a psychiatrist himself, takes on a patient who reminds him of Marilyn.
