Born in the Caribbean, Philomena Jones is abandoned by her mother and left to the mercy of her grandmother, who, after raising eight children and grandchildren, is not capable of dedicating herself to another child. Love-starved, Philomena is easy prey for the island’s new pastor. She leaves home for America, hoping to find her mother, but ends up drifting and battling mental illness. Relocated to a supportive housing facility, Philomena meets a diverse cast of women who, despite their wildly differing backgrounds and difficulties, share one common bond; their history of abuse. In this most unexpected of places, will Philomena finally find the family she has been longing for?
Overlooked in the history of artistic endeavors are the contributions of female writers, painters, and crafters of the Caribbean. The creative works by women from the Caribbean proves to be as remarkable as the women themselves. In Caribbean Women and Their Art: An Encyclopedia, Mary Ellen Snodgrass explores the rich history of women’s creative expression by examining the crafts and skill of over 70 female originators in the West Indies, from the familiar islands—Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico—to the obscurity of Roatan, Curaçao, Guanaja, and Indian Key. Focusing particularly on artistic style during the arrival of Europeans among the West Indies, the importance of cultural exchange, and the preservation of history, this book captures a wide variety of artistic accomplishment, including Folk music, acting, and dance Herbalism and food writing Sculpture, pottery, and adobe construction Travel writing, translations, and storytelling Individual talents highlighted in this volume include dancer Katherine Dunham, storyteller Louise Bennett-Coverley, paleontologist Sue Hendrickson, dramatist Maryse Condé, herbalist and memoirist Mary Jane Seacole, ballerina and choreographer Alicia Alonso, and athor Elsie Clews Parsons. Each entry includes a comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, as well as further readings on the female artists and their respective crafts. This text also defines and provides examples of technical terms such as ramada, slip, hematite, patois, and mola. With its informative entries and extensive examinations of artistic talent, Caribbean Women and Their Art: An Encyclopedia is a valuable resource for students, scholars, and anyone interested in learning about some of the most influential and talented women in the arts.
A Brain of My Own is about slavery, about brains stolen in childhood and before; brains that have been intruded upon, stopped, shrunk, paralyzed. We know about the history of people whose bodies were enslaved; but we know barely anything about the victims who appear free but whose brains are invisibly chained. Nor do we know about the international collusion, silence, and apathy that surround this kind of slavery.A Brain of My Own describes Wendy Hoffman's final years of attempting escape from the criminal mind control cult into which she had the misfortune of being born. This is her third memoir, and chronicles the final years of reclaiming her brain, including the ongoing abuse and torture during her recovery process. Hoffman describes the ways in which perpetrators manipulate the brain to create amnesiac barriers, methods held secret for generations. She exposes the duplicity of perpetrators functioning as normal people in the ordinary world and what is under their masks. She gives advice about how to spot seemingly helpful people who are actually out to destroy victims of mind control.This kind of dissociation is difficult to overcome, but the path back to full humanity is possible and happening.
Onesmus Muriuki is a prosperous, hard-working, hard-living man. He lives his life on the edge. Never satisfied with what is legally his, he likes reaching over the fence and grabbing his neighbors' possessions. Leaving a swathe of adultery, fraud and broken hearts in his wake, Onesmus is on a knife's edge as his list of enemies grows by the day. The clock is ticking. His doom is about to fall upon him by the hand of one of his victims. Will it be Kevin, the young man whose girlfriend has fallen under Onesmus's spell? Or could it be James Munene, Onesmus's business partner, whom he has been shamelessly robbing in broad daylight? The butterfly's wings have flapped, and the hurricane is gathering strength and momentum. Onesmus's days are numbered.
Frank Tartt, a New York newspaper reporter, and a devout Catholic, loses his faith after the tragic, accidental death of his daughter. Once his faith is gone, he feels that if there is no judgement day in the next life, he should spend the rest of his days hunting down those who abuse their power for personal gain, without thought to the collateral damage inflicted on the innocent and vulnerable. Disregarding the laws of God or man, Tartt focuses his fury into acts of his own sense of justice and decides what price others will pay. New York Police Lieutenant Sean Horgan also tragically loses a child, his son, in a violent exchange with the son of a wealthy man who was in a position to buy his own son’s freedom. Still, Horgan continues to keep his strong faith and work within the confines of the law, but never forgets the injustice done to his son and his family. As investigations into high profile individuals are seemingly, inexplicably squashed from above, these two inherently good men cross paths. This is a gritty story where we feel the inner turmoil and desperation of these men and the people they investigate as they peel back layers of corruption and uncover dark secrets. All the while, readers witness Tartt’s downward spiral as he deals with the moral consequences of the path he has taken.
New York Times Bestseller The heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a “fallen woman.” Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Philomena’s son was trying to find her. Renamed Michael Hess, he had become a leading lawyer in the first Bush administration, and he struggled to hide secrets that would jeopardize his career in the Republican Party and endanger his quest to find his mother. A gripping exposé told with novelistic intrigue, Philomena pulls back the curtain on the role of the Catholic Church in forced adoptions and on the love between a mother and son who endured a lifelong separation.
The women who spoke or wrote in the margins of the Middle Ages—women who were oppressed and diminished by social and religious institutions—often were not literate. Or, if they could read, they did not know how to write. Transforming or subverting Western and patristic traditions associated with the clergy, they also turned to Eastern and North African traditions and to popular oral theater, and focused in their choice of genre on lyric, romance, and confessional autobiography. These essays analyze their texts and reconstruct a medieval feminine aesthetic that begins a rewriting of cultural and literary history.
Bernice Archer raised her blind twin daughters in the isolation of a big city housing project. Every night Eva and Ava, now middle-aged, wait for their mother's bedtime stories with both excitement and suspicion, experiencing the world through her eyes. Now Bernice has begun a new story, about two women whom she believes share the same soul.
