Bernadette is 16. She is pregnant. Her boyfriend doesn't know. Much more importantly than all that, however, she will soon be auditioning for her high school's production of Genet's The Maids. As she stands on the cusp of adulthood, she must learn to untangle the real world outside from the thorns of her imagination. It's a bitter winter night when 16-year-old Bernadette, an aspiring short story writer, boards a train to New York City carrying her notebook and important news for her boyfriend. What follows is a searing and poetic coming-of-age story as Bernadette intimately shares her encounters along the way and the devastating result of her visit, a journey punctuated by both a need to be heard and an aching desire to disappear.
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and LitHub Winner of the 2021 Science in Society Journalism Book Prize A fascinating and provocative new way of looking at the things we use and the spaces we inhabit, and a call to imagine a better-designed world for us all. Furniture and tools, kitchens and campuses and city streets—nearly everything human beings make and use is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless, or until, a misfit between our own body and the world is acute enough to be understood as disability, we may never stop to consider—or reconsider—the hidden assumptions on which our everyday environment is built. In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it—from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture—Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with. What might assistance based on the body’s stunning capacity for adaptation—rather than a rigid insistence on “normalcy”—look like? Can we foster interdependent, not just independent, living? How do we creatively engineer public spaces that allow us all to navigate our common terrain? By rendering familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous, What Can a Body Do? helps us imagine a future that will better meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Water is the element that, more than any other, ties human beings in to the world around them – from the oceans that surround us to the water that makes up most of our bodies. Exploring the cultural and philosophical implications of this fact, Bodies of Water develops an innovative new mode of posthuman feminist phenomenology that understands our bodies as being fundamentally part of the natural world and not separate from or privileged to it. Building on the works by Luce Irigaray, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, Astrida Neimanis's book is a landmark study that brings a new feminist perspective to bear on ideas of embodiment and ecological ethics in the posthuman critical moment.
"God's eternal plan for us involves our body. We can't write off our physical life as spiritually irrelevant." — Sam Allberry There's a danger in focusing too much on the body. There's also a danger in not valuing it enough. In fact, the Bible has lots to say about the body. With the coming of Jesus, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us"—flesh that was pierced and crushed for the sins of the world. In What God Has to Say about Our Bodies, Sam Allberry explains that all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and should regard our physicality as a gift. He offers biblical guidance for living, including understanding gender, sexuality, and identity; dealing with aging, illness, and death; and considering the physical future hope that we have in Christ. In this powerfully written book, you'll gain a new understanding for the immeasurable value of our bodies and God's ultimate plan to redeem them.
Learn to love your body—for real this time Women in touch with the wisdom of their bodies are the single greatest threat to societal systems of domination, oppression, and control. We are also the greatest possibility to bring healing, peace, and restoration to our world. —Lauren Geertsen No matter how much we try to tell ourselves to love our bodies and accept our flaws, most women can’t quite get there. Even though we know the beauty standard is unrealistic, we secretly feel like it would be so much easier if our stomach were just a little flatter, or our skin a little smoother, or a million other little things. As a result, we sacrifice our health, heritage, sanity, and lives on the altar of beauty culture. Why is it so hard to feel confident about our bodies, or even just accept them? Because willpower alone isn’t enough to undo generations of brainwashing intended to repress women’s confidence and power. In The Invisible Corset, Geertsen carefully illustrates the psychological gaslighting that leads women to internalize the belief that their appearance makes them not only unworthy of love, but incapable of fulfilling their actual destiny. By highlighting each restricting string of the invisible corset all women wear, Geertsen helps us reclaim our bodies for ourselves, discovering newfound confidence, power, joy, and pleasure as we do. You’ll explore: How the invisible corset cuts you off from your body’s wisdom and nature’s intelligence—the true sources of your intuition, pleasure, and powerHow beauty culture is the most recent form of patriarchal oppression — and why women are both responsible and able to free ourselvesWhy the body positivity movement often makes self-criticism even worseThe racist history of beauty culture, and how it still perpetuates racism todayJournaling prompts, rituals, meditations, and other exercises to help unravel the toxic beliefs that keep the invisible corset in placeA variety of practices to help you reconnect with your body—to tune into your intuition, set healthy boundaries, align with your True Self, and more For any woman who is ready to go from struggle, discomfort, control, and shame to pleasure, confidence, freedom, and soul-fulfilling purpose, The Invisible Corset is an essential guide.
Ben and Joe Weider are the legendary founders of the modern fitness movement. Their name is synonymous with athletic excellence and their proven programs have created champion bodybuilders and sports professionals for more than fifty years, making Weider Nutrition International the number-one sports nutrition company in the world. Now in "The Edge," the Weiders share the training secrets of the pros that can help anyone interested in fitness achieve peak performance. Here's why athletes and weekend warriors alike need "The Edge" *Cutting-edge research- The most advanced scientific research on supplements and nutrition informs the book, offering readers a definitive guide to natural performance-enhancing supplements as an alternative to steroids. *Specificity- Fitness goals, weight training, and nutrition programs tailored to individual needs. *The Weider Triangle Method- This simple program combines weight training, nutrition, and skill training. *Variable Weight Training- As the founders of the International Federation of Bodybuilders, nobody knows more than the Weiders about weight training. All of the recommended exercises are demonstrated in photographs by natural bodybuilding champions Mike O'Hearn and Gea Johnson. *Dynanutrition- A revolutionary nutrition program based on the Weiders' 10 Commandments of Nutrition. "The Edge" is an effective prescription for anyone who wants to be on top of their game—and look their best while they're playing it.
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice."— Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide. Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system. Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary. Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, is a therapist with decades of experience currently in private practice in Minneapolis, MN, specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. He has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil as an expert on conflict and violence. Menakem has studied with bestselling authors Dr. David Schnarch (Passionate Marriage) and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score). He also trained at Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.
Author Dotty Holcomb Doherty's quietly heroic tale of two women's voyages through disease and dying, interwoven with voyages upon Chesapeake creeks that offer comfort and grace. Janet, a young mother, had months to live, doctors said in 1989. She and her husband would overcome staggering odds for 20 more years. Author Dotty Holcomb Doherty, afflicted by MS in 2002, became kayak buddy, confidante and biographer to Janet, her account both unsparing and loving. With a naturalist's eye, she frames their struggles with portraits of Chesapeake seasons, rhythms of migration and tide, the charms of water's edge. As their bodies betrayed them, the Bay buoyed them as they buoyed one another.-Tom Horton, Chesapeake Bay-based author and filmmaker.
'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane 'Gorgeous' Amy Liptrot 'Urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. Lee Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo – where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London. In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together memories, dreams and nature writing. Exploring everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar, Nina reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and what it means to belong.
