Told in two voices Mati, a devout Muslim from Afghanistan, and Elise, a seventeen-year-old whose brother was killed there, try to keep their budding romance secret from their families.
The last thing Elise wants is to start over in a new town. But after her brother’s death in Afghanistan, she and her mother move to a sleepy coastal village to be closer to Elise’s sister-in-law and niece. When Elise meets Mati during a beachside walk, they quickly discover how much they have in common. Mati is new to town, too. Over the course of the summer, their relationship begins to blossom, and what starts out as a friendship becomes so much more. But as Elise and Mati grow closer, her family becomes more and more uncomfortable with their relationship, and their concerns all center on one fact—Mati is Afghan. Beautifully written, utterly compelling, and ultimately hopeful, The Impossibility of Us asks—how brave can you be when your relationship is questioned by everyone you love? Praise for Katy Upperman: “Perfect for readers wanting a strong female character in a realistic romance. ” —Miranda Kenneally, author of Catching Jordan “Full of wit, humor, and spine-tingling smooches.” —Erin Bowman, author of Vengeance Road “Sarah Dessen fans rejoice—you are going to love Kissing Max Holden!” —Lisa Schroeder, author of Chasing Brooklyn
The Constitution may guarantee it. But religious freedom in America is, in fact, impossible. So argues this timely and iconoclastic work by law and religion scholar Winnifred Sullivan. Sullivan uses as the backdrop for the book the trial of Warner vs. Boca Raton, a recent case concerning the laws that protect the free exercise of religion in America. The trial, for which the author served as an expert witness, concerned regulations banning certain memorials from a multiconfessional nondenominational cemetery in Boca Raton, Florida. The book portrays the unsuccessful struggle of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish families in Boca Raton to preserve the practice of placing such religious artifacts as crosses and stars of David on the graves of the city-owned burial ground. Sullivan demonstrates how, during the course of the proceeding, citizens from all walks of life and religious backgrounds were harassed to define just what their religion is. She argues that their plight points up a shocking truth: religion cannot be coherently defined for the purposes of American law, because everyone has different definitions of what religion is. Indeed, while religious freedom as a political idea was arguably once a force for tolerance, it has now become a force for intolerance, she maintains. A clear-eyed look at the laws created to protect religious freedom, this vigorously argued book offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society. It will have broad appeal not only for religion scholars, but also for anyone interested in law and the Constitution. Featuring a new preface by the author, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom offers a new take on a right deemed by many to be necessary for a free democratic society.
“I know how to watch my back. I’m the only one that ever has.” India Maxwell hasn’t just moved across the country—she’s plummeted to the bottom rung of the social ladder. It’s taken years to cover the mess of her home life with a veneer of popularity. Now she’s living in one of Boston’s wealthiest neighborhoods with her mom’s fiancé and his daughter, Eloise. Thanks to her soon-to-be stepsister’s clique of friends, including Eloise’s gorgeous, arrogant boyfriend, Finn, India feels like the one thing she hoped never to be seen as again: trash. But India’s not alone in struggling to control the secrets of her past. Eloise and Finn, the school’s golden couple, aren’t all they seem to be. In fact, everyone’s life is infinitely more complex than it first appears. And as India grows closer to Finn and befriends Eloise, threatening the facades that hold them together, what’s left are truths that are brutal, beautiful and big enough to change them forever… From New York Times bestselling author Samantha Young comes a story of friendship, identity and acceptance that will break your heart—and make it whole again.
For centuries Seraphina Ames roamed the world with her controlling boyfriend Cyrus and their clan of immortal incarnates.Having perfected a method of alchemy that allowed them to switch bodies, they did whatever they wanted and killed whomever they wanted, until Sera made the choice to break free. Now she's hiding from Cyrus and the rest of their clan in the body of sixteen-year-old Kailey Morgan. Sera has fallen in love with her new life and family, and never thought she'd enjoy life as a teenager so much. And she certainly never expected to fall in love with Noah, the boy next door. But it seems that Cyrus has managed to track her down. He doesn't know who she is… yet, but Sera has no idea who he is either, and as Cyrus closes in, she begins to grow suspicious of Noah and all the new friends in her life. Could Cyrus and her old coven be disguising themselves right under her nose? In a deadly game of hide-and-seek, Sera must work out who Cyrus is, and fast, before he destroys the ones she loves the most…
"An utterly delightful epistolary romance....The Impossible Us is that rare 'I laughed, I cried' book."--The New York Times Nick: Failed writer. Failed husband. Dog owner. Bee: Serial dater. Dress maker. Pringles enthusiast. One day, their paths cross over a misdirected email. The connection is instant, electric. They feel like they’ve known each other all their lives. So they decide to meet. While Nick buys a new suit, and gets his courage up, Bee steps away from her desk, and sets off to meet him at a London train station. With their happily-ever-after nearly in hand, what happens next is incredible and threatens to separate them forever. As their once in a lifetime connection is tested, Nick and Bee will discover whether being together is an impossible chance worth taking.
The contemporary novel does more than revise our conception of love—it explodes it, queers it, and makes it unrecognizable. Rather than providing union, connection, and completion, love in contemporary fiction destroys the possibility of unity, harbors negativity, and foregrounds difference. Comparing contemporary and modernist depictions of love to delineate critical continuities and innovations, Unmaking Love locates queerness in the novelistic strategies of Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureshi, Alan Hollinghurst, and Hari Kunzru. In their work, "queer love" becomes more than shorthand for sexual identity. It comes to embody thwarted expectations, disarticulated organization, and unnerving multiplicity. In queer love, social forms are deformed, affective bonds do not bind, and social structures threaten to come undone. Unmaking Love draws on psychoanalysis and gender and sexuality studies to read love's role in contemporary literature and its relation to queer negativity.
A bold new history of the American presidency, arguing that the successful presidents of the past created unrealistic expectations for every president since JFK, with enormously problematic implications for American politics In The Impossible Presidency, celebrated historian Jeremi Suri charts the rise and fall of the American presidency, from the limited role envisaged by the Founding Fathers to its current status as the most powerful job in the world. He argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success-the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it. As managers of the world's largest economy and military, contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There is little room left for bold vision. Suri traces America's disenchantment with our recent presidents to the inevitable mismatch between presidential promises and the structural limitations of the office. A masterful reassessment of presidential history, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand America's fraught political climate.
Four girls. One summer. And a pact to do the impossible. Skyler, Ellie, Scarlett, and Amelia Grace are forced to spend the summer at the lake house where their moms became best friends. One can’t wait. One would rather gnaw off her own arm than hang out with a bunch of strangers just so their moms can drink too much wine and sing Journey at two o'clock in the morning. Two are sisters. Three are currently feuding with their mothers. One is hiding how bad her joint pain has gotten. All of them are hiding something. One falls in love with a boy she thought she despised. One almost sets her crush on fire with a flaming marshmallow. One has a crush that could change everything. None of them are the same at the end of the summer.
An adequate analysis of experiences and situations specific to women, especially mothering, requires consideration of women's difference. A focus on women's difference, however, jeopardizes feminism's claims of women's equal individualist subjectivity, and risks recuperating the inequality and oppression of women, especially the view that all women should be mothers, want to be mothers, and are most happy being mothers. This book considers how thinkers including de Beauvoir, Kristeva, Chodorow and Rich struggle to negotiate this dilemma of difference in analyzing mothering, encompassing the paradoxes concerning embodiment, gender and representation they encounter. Patrice DiQuinzio shows that mothering has been and will continue to be an intractable problem for feminist theory, and argues for a reconceptualization of feminist theory itself, and suggests the political usefulness of an explicitly paradoxical politics of mothering.