Lily is the daughter of a humble farmer, and to her family she is just another expensive mouth to feed. Then the local matchmaker delivers startling news: if Lily's feet are bound properly, they will be flawless. In nineteenth-century China, where a woman's eligibility is judged by the shape and size of her feet, this is extraordinary good luck. Lily now has the power to make a good marriage and change the fortunes of her family. To prepare for her new life, she must undergo the agonies of footbinding, learn nu shu, the famed secret women's writing, and make a very special friend, Snow Flower. But a bitter reversal of fortune is about to change everything.
Deep in the forests of Cameroon in the heart of Western Africa a young girl named Snow Flower lives with her grandmother. One day, when Snow Flower is exploring she and her friend, Remi stumble across an injured panther cub who follows them back to her house. What will Snow Flower do when she learns a new secret about the panther cub? This is the Snow Flower and the Panther book by the author Fleurie Leclercq with beautiful illustrations. Perfect for kids ages 5 to 8 and suitable for all the family. "
An epic novel steeped in action, intrigue, and romance. July 1187: the forces of the Muslim sultan known as Saladin have defeated the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, allowing Saladin to achieve his lifelong ambition of recapturing the Holy City for Islam. This sets the stage for the Third Crusade: the confrontation between Saladin and the legendary Christian warrior, Richard the Lionheart. Both men believe they are destined by God to lead their holy armies to complete victory. Richard, a legendary warrior with a keen military mind, finds his vow to retake Jerusalem complicated by infighting over succession to the British throne, a rivalry with the French king, and a choice between two potential queens. Meanwhile, Saladin struggles to keep his fractious forces together while remaining true to the noblest principles of Islam. These events are also portrayed through the eyes of two common men: Pierre of Botron is a Christian knight who is captured on the battlefield and subjected to the indignity of slavery. Rashid of Yenbo is a Muslim trader who finds prosperity in Saladin's triumphs. The relationship between Rashid and Pierre offers the possibility that people of good will can overcome polarizing conflicts. As events build toward the Battle of Jaffa, one of the most well-known conflicts of the Crusades, the fates of the characters depend on the choices they make between the compassionate and fanatical aspects of their faiths. The Swords of Faith offers an eye-opening comparison and contrast of the tenets of Christianity and Islam, insights that reverberate into the present day.
Snow Flowers is a rare study by one of the 1,300 Hungarian Jewish inmates who were "eased out" by the SS to Junkers Company to produce airplane parts in Markkleeberg, Germany. Working conditions and profits shed light on slave labor establishments. Describing prisoners' ways of coping, their spiritual world addresses the question of how it was possible to live in the camp. A recurring theme is the experience of the author and her teenage sister. The 250 French political resistance fighters in the camp shared the death march and the anguish of the Allied bombing. Russian soldiers bent on sexual exploitation were the first disappointment after liberation. Homecoming and life of the survivor are recounted in the concluding chapters. The eight years of research on this book was prompted by the query of a Markkleeberg school teacher. German archival documents, songs, diaries written in the camp, and the testimonies of 110 fellow survivors provide a collective and a personal narrative. The book is part of a traveling exhibit, "The Forgotten Women of Buchenwald." Dr. Stessel is a retired librarian from The New York Public Library.
Memoirs of an Orthodox Jew (née Einhorn) from Szombathely. In 1942 she married Yaakov Klein from Ujhely, and they settled in Budapest. Yaakov found work in a textile firm. Soon after the Nazi occupation in March 1944, one day Rivka met Károly Bitter, whose wife Magda worked in Yaakov's firm. The Bitters were Catholics who offered to help the Kleins. Károly himself went into the countryside and brought one of Rivka's sisters and later a brother of hers (who he smuggled out of a ghetto) to Budapest. Rivka gave birth to a daughter in May 1944. The Bitters also had a little daughter. When roundups and deportations of Jews began, the Bitters took the Kleins and ten of their relatives to hide in the their own apartment. Later, the Bitters got another place to live and gave their apartment to the Klein and Einhorn family. Rivka, her husband, and her sister and brother had false papers and could go out to do errands and shopping. The others had to remain silent and indoors all the time. Presents a detailed description of what life was like for hidden Jews, and specifically Orthodox Jews, during the German occupation. When the war ended, the Kleins and Einhorns discovered that almost all the residents of their apartment building were Jews in hiding (all of them had been pretending to be good fascists and Catholics), and that it was built by a wealthy Jewish architect in 1942 specifically for the purpose of hiding his family. All of the residents of this building survived. However, other members of the two families were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. The Kleins later emigrated to New York.
Over the course of a dozen years, Scottish plant collector Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889?1982) explored northern latitudes from the Lofoten Islands of Norway to the far reaches of the American Aleutians. To achieve her goals, she traveled by any means available, from rowboats in Greenland to trading schooners and coast-guard vessels in Alaska. When necessary, she journeyed by snowshoe or sled in pursuit of her botanical specimens, accompanied only by strangers who served as guides. In Flowers in the Snow, Gwyneth Hoyle paints a vivid portrait of a woman gloriously out of the step with the conventions of her time.
In 1867, Lisa See's great-great-grandfather arrived in America, where he prescribed herbal remedies to immigrant laborers who were treated little better than slaves. His son Fong See later built a mercantile empire and married a Caucasian woman, in spite of laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Lisa herself grew up playing in her family's antiques store in Los Angeles's Chinatown, listening to stories of missionaries and prostitutes, movie stars and Chinese baseball teams. With these stories and her own years of research, Lisa See chronicles the one-hundred-year-odyssey of her Chinese-American family, a history that encompasses racism, romance, secret marriages, entrepreneurial genius, and much more, as two distinctly different cultures meet in a new world.
"Tarot archetypes provide the reader with a window into present circumstances and future potential. But what if that window only opened up on a world that was white, European, and heterosexual? This book explores themes of sexuality, coming out, gender and gender-queering, sources of oppression and empowerment, and many other topics especially familiar to "not-straight" folks"--
