A memoir of the author's quest for motherhood details her six-year odyssey from her decision to have a baby, through her desperate pursuit of everything humanly possible to achieve her goal, to the repercussions of the ordeal for her marriage.
Filled with humor, raw emotion, a strong voice, and a brilliant dog named Sandy Koufax, When You Were Here explores the two most powerful forces known to man-death and love. Daisy Whitney brings her characters to life with a deft touch and resonating authenticity. Danny's mother lost her five-year battle with cancer three weeks before his graduation-the one day that she was hanging on to see. Now Danny is left alone, with only his memories, his dog, and his heart-breaking ex-girlfriend for company. He doesn't know how to figure out what to do with her estate, what to say for his Valedictorian speech, let alone how to live or be happy anymore. When he gets a letter from his mom's property manager in Tokyo, where she had been going for treatment, it shows a side of a side of his mother he never knew. So, with no other sense of direction, Danny travels to Tokyo to connect with his mother's memory and make sense of her final months, which seemed filled with more joy than Danny ever knew. There, among the cherry blossoms, temples, and crowds, and with the help of an almost-but-definitely-not Harajuku girl, he begins to see how it may not have been ancient magic or mystical treatment that kept his mother going. Perhaps, the secret of how to live lies in how she died.
A brilliant exploration of the natural, medical, psychological, and political facets of fertility When Belle Boggs's "The Art of Waiting" was published in Orion in 2012, it went viral, leading to republication in Harper's Magazine, an interview on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, and a spot at the intersection of "highbrow" and "brilliant" in New York magazine's "Approval Matrix." In that heartbreaking essay, Boggs eloquently recounts her realization that she might never be able to conceive. She searches the apparently fertile world around her--the emergence of thirteen-year cicadas, the birth of eaglets near her rural home, and an unusual gorilla pregnancy at a local zoo--for signs that she is not alone. Boggs also explores other aspects of fertility and infertility: the way longing for a child plays out in the classic Coen brothers film Raising Arizona; the depiction of childlessness in literature, from Macbeth to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; the financial and legal complications that accompany alternative means of family making; the private and public expressions of iconic writers grappling with motherhood and fertility. She reports, with great empathy, complex stories of couples who adopted domestically and from overseas, LGBT couples considering assisted reproduction and surrogacy, and women and men reflecting on childless or child-free lives. In The Art of Waiting, Boggs deftly distills her time of waiting into an expansive contemplation of fertility, choice, and the many possible roads to making a life and making a family.
An “oddball fairy tale” (The New York Times)—shortlisted for one of France’s highest literary prizes—a dark, funny, and wholly charming novel about a young boy and his eccentric family, who grapple with the realities of mental illness in unique and whimsical ways. A young boy lives with his madcap parents, Louise and George, and an exotic bird in a Parisian apartment, where the unopened mail rises in a tower by the door and his parents dance each night to Nina Simone’s mellifluous classic “Mister Bojangles.” As his mother, mesmerizing and unpredictable, descends deeper into her own mind, it is up to the boy and his father to keep her safe—and, when that fails, happy. Fleeing Paris for a country home in Spain, they come to understand that some of the most radiant people bear the heaviest burdens. Told from the perspective of a young boy who idolizes his parents—and from George’s journals, detailing his epic love story with his wife—Waiting for Bojangles is a “lighthearted and yet sorrowful tale” (San Francisco Chronicle) that will stay with you long after the final page.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR When Peggy Orenstein's now-classic examination of young girls and self-esteem was first published, it set off a groundswell that continues to this day. Inspired by an American Association of University Women survey that showed a steep decline in confidence as girls reach adolescence, Orenstein set out to explore the obstacles girls face--in school, in the hoime, and in our culture. For this intimate, girls' eye view of the world, Orenstein spent months observing and interviewing eighth-graders from two ethnically disparate communities, seeking to discover what was causing girls to fall into traditional patterns of self-censorship and self-doubt. By taking us into the lives of real young women who are struggling with eating disorders, sexual harrassment, and declining academic achievement, Orenstein brings the disturbing statistics to life with the skill and flair of an experienced journalist. Uncovering the adolescent roots of issues that remain important to American women throughout their lives, this groundbreaking book challenges us to change the way we raise and educate girls.
Fiction. Two raucous, funny and piercing stories--"Men in Love" and "America Strikes Back"--about the "wars" we live with--you've got a front row seat.
Buffeted by one jaw-dropping obstacle after another, Orenstein seeks answers both medical and spiritual, all the while trying to save a marriage threatened by cycles, appointments, procedures, and disappointments. Her journey takes her around America and as far as East Asia - on the way she visits an ex-boyfriend who now has fifteen children; encounters 'parasite singles' in Tokyo, women who are rejecting marriage and motherhood in favour of shopping sprees and foreign travel; and shares stories with survivors of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The world's professional women are only now beginning to become aware of the risks and realities of 'having it all', and Orenstein's saga unfolds as infertility is developing into a boom industry, with over a million women a year seeking treatment. Waiting for Daisy is a profoundly honest, wryly funny report from the front, a story about doing all the things you swore you'd never do to get something you hadn't even been sure you wanted; it's about being a woman, about trying to become a mother, and above all, about the ambivalence, obsession and sacrifice that characterises the struggles of so many modern couples.
This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s. Table of Contents: Novels: Liza of Lambeth (1897) The Making of a Saint (1898) The Hero (1901) Mrs Craddock (1902) The Merry-go-round (1904) The Bishop's Apron (1906) The Explorer (1908) The Magician (1908) The Canadian (The Land of Promise) (1914) Of Human Bondage (1915) The Moon and Sixpence (1919) Short Story Collections: Orientations (1899) The Punctiliousness of Don Sebastian A Bad Example De Amicitia Faith The Choice of Amyntas Daisy The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands (1921) The Pacific Mackintosh The Fall of Edward Barnard Red The Pool Honolulu Rain Envoi Plays: A Man of Honour (1903) Lady Frederick (1912) The Explorer (1912) The Circle (1921) Caesar's Wife (1922) East of Suez (1922) Travel Sketches: The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia (1905) On a Chinese Screen (1922)
This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest paid author during the 1930s. Table of Contents: Novels: Liza of Lambeth (1897) The Making of a Saint (1898) The Hero (1901) Mrs Craddock (1902) The Merry-go-round (1904) The Bishop's Apron (1906) The Explorer (1908) The Magician (1908) The Canadian (The Land of Promise) (1914) Of Human Bondage (1915) The Moon and Sixpence (1919) Short Story Collections: Orientations (1899) The Punctiliousness of Don Sebastian A Bad Example De Amicitia Faith The Choice of Amyntas Daisy The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands (1921) The Pacific Mackintosh The Fall of Edward Barnard Red The Pool Honolulu Rain Envoi Plays: A Man of Honour (1903) Lady Frederick (1912) The Explorer (1912) The Circle (1921) Caesar's Wife (1922) East of Suez (1922) Travel Sketches: The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia (1905) On a Chinese Screen (1922)