MacKinnon contends that pornography, racial and sexual harassment, and racial hate speech are acts of intimidation, subordination, terrorism, and discrimination, and should be legally treated as such.
Literature is the world for sixty-year-old Robert Montgomery. A high school English teacher for more than thirty years, this Brooklyn reader and book lover believes his life has had meaning. But it hasn't been without struggle-especially with the women in his life.Robert Montgomery grew up in post-war England with a promiscuous mother who struggled to conform to the buttoned-up society in which she lived. Kathleen, the woman he marries when he moves to America, suffers severe bouts of depression and dies before her time. Robert's younger sister, Elizabeth, follows him to America to put order back in his life, but later feels her position is threatened. His daughter, Emily, loses herself in her career, only to discover that the diversion is not enough and that she must face what plagues her. In order to make sense of his own life, Robert begins to write, blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction.Delving into the realms of depression and mental illness, "It's Only Words" explores the fears of an uncertain future and the effects of one life on that of another.
"A darkly comic, wildly original novel of a family in flight from the law, set in a near-future American dystopia, a tender-hearted A Clockwork Orange. In an America of the semi-distant future, human knowledge has reverted to a pre-Copernican state. Science and religion are diminished to fairy tales, and Earth once again occupies the lonely center of the universe, the stars and planets mere etchings on the glass globe that encases it. But when an ancient bunker containing a perfectly preserved space vehicle is discovered beneath the ruins of Cape Canaveral, it has the power to turn this retrograde world inside out. Enter the miscreant Van Zandt clan, whose run-ins with the law leave them with a no-win choice: test-pilot the spacecraft together as a family, or be sent separately to prison for life. Their decision leads to some freakish slapstick, one nasty bonfire, and a dissolute trek across the ass-end of an all-too-familiar America. As told to his daughter by Rowan, the Van Zandt son who flees the ashes of his family in search of a new one, the story is a darkly comic road trip that pits the simple hell of solitude against the messy consolations of togetherness. Uniquely tying the dark-comic futures of Kurt Vonnegut to the absurdist, slow-cooked wit of Charles Portis, The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering is an indelible vision of a future in which we might one day live. "--
This is a collection of short stories, verse, and so-named 'Flash Fiction' for the male or female reader who enjoys variety. Topical themes covered by the short stories range from Crime drama (from differing perspectives) Satire (you may even think you recognize a character or two!) and Comedy pieces doing their best to raise a smile or a chuckle. So if you would like to know what might have happened to a pacifist during the first world war, then there's a story here for you. If you want to find out how a man called Malone deals with his unfaithful wife, there's a story here for you. If you want to visit a coward's grave (with a difference) you can do so within these pages. If the spiritual world interests you, then hopefully you will find something positive to take from 'It's Only Words', the short story bearing the title which has been given to this collection. As for the versed work within this collection, the author has again ranged across a multi-coloured palate of subject matter. He has written to amuse you or stimulate you, or even move you if he has caught you at a time when a particular piece may resonate within you as you read.
This book is a collection of poems and short stories. Some were easy to write like memoirs; others took a lot of hard work. It may seem something of a weird collection, but its just the way the authors mind works. The title says it all.
Is it “just words” when a lawyer cross-examines a rape victim in the hopes of getting her to admit an interest in her attacker? Is it “just words” when the Supreme Court hands down a decision or when business people draw up a contract? In tackling the question of how an abstract entity exerts concrete power, Just Words focuses on what has become the central issue in law and language research: what language reveals about the nature of legal power. John M. Conley, William M. O'Barr, and Robin Conley Riner show how the microdynamics of the legal process and the largest questions of justice can be fruitfully explored through the field of linguistics. Each chapter covers a language-based approach to a different area of the law, from the cross-examinations of victims and witnesses to the inequities of divorce mediation. Combining analysis of common legal events with a broad range of scholarship on language and law, Just Words seeks the reality of power in the everyday practice and application of the law. As the only study of its type, the book is the definitive treatment of the topic and will be welcomed by students and specialists alike. This third edition brings this essential text up to date with new chapters on nonverbal, or “multimodal,” communication in legal settings and law, language, and race.
Have you ever felt something so deep that it scared you? Have you ever felt so drowned in emotion that it drained you? Have you ever faced something so real that it forever changed you? This book is a collection of those moments, thoughts, poetry, musings and observations that are woven into an unconscious, yet hugely familiar narrative. In these words, you will find your moments of fear, expressions of joy, teardrops of truth, questions of curiosity and reflections on love. If only words could breathe, they would have this to say.