The Hallucinogenic Rooster is a moment captured in time, a dreamlike and nightmarish expansion of one brief moment. In a place called Fairy Tale Town, some years ago, I walked with a girl I was in love with among grimy fantasies; a concrete Pirate ship, a castle and drinking fountains in the form of hippos and tin soldiers. Strange music came over loudspeakers. Three of us (we were baby-sitting her sister's infant) as a sort of makeshift family walked in this strange place. I watched a rooster walk in and out of shadows and light. I hallucinated that I was seeing its molecules and atoms coming apart and reassembling in bright colors. I chose this event to represent the moment when we could have spoken to each other with our hearts but instead kept our silence. . . This book is a sort of poetic expansion of that brief, lonely and beautiful moment.
"Jamaica is the land where the rooster lays an egg...When a Jamaican is born of a black woman and some English or Scotsman, the black mother is literally and figuratively kept out of sight as far as possible, but no one is allowed to forget that white father, however questionable the circumstances of birth...You get the impression that these virile Englishmen do not require women to reproduce. They just come out to Jamaica, scratch out a nest and lay eggs that hatch out into 'pink' Jamaicans." --Zora Neale Hurston We may no longer issue scarlet letters, but from the way we talk, we might as well: W for welfare, S for single, B for black, CC for children having children, WT for white trash. To a culture speaking with barely masked hysteria, in which branding is done with words and those branded are outcasts, this book brings a voice of reason and a warm reminder of the decency and mutual respect that are missing from so much of our public debate. Patricia J. Williams, whose acclaimed book The Alchemy of Race and Rights offered a vision for healing the ailing spirit of the law, here broadens her focus to address the wounds in America's public soul, the sense of community that rhetoric so subtly but surely makes and unmakes. In these pages we encounter figures and images plucked from headlines--from Tonya Harding to Lani Guinier, Rush Limbaugh to Hillary Clinton, Clarence Thomas to Dan Quayle--and see how their portrayal, encoding certain stereotypes, often reveals more about us than about them. What are we really talking about when we talk about welfare mothers, for instance? Why is calling someone a "redneck" okay, and what does that say about our society? When young women appear on Phil Donahue to represent themselves as Jewish American Princesses, what else are they doing? These are among the questions Williams considers as she uncovers the shifting, often covert rules of conversation that determine who "we" are as a nation.
Pursued by a misguided colonel, Zed and his companion must face many obstacles, including a giant spider, cannibals and a vast chessboard, in their journey to reach an unknown treasure hidden deep within a mountain range in Peru where he meets a Genie and is given the opportunity to travel through time and witness prominent events. e.g. Adam and Eve created for food, EDEN constructed in space, and the ultimate collision that shaped the Earth and its inhabitants.
Soul Trains shows how the interaction of social classes and ethnic communities, and the growth of a music industry, created new music in the United States and Britain. A central question addressed is how popular perceptions of " authentic" musical expression are influenced by attempts to control or modify musical taste. The dynamic of musical innovation in capitalist society emerges from a process conditioned by historical events, language, and cultural traditions acting variously as forces for rebellion, resistance or reaction. This book avoids abstract language or jargon. It shows how popular musical culture cannot be understood apart from economic change and the evolution of social relationships. An excellent initiation to the history of popular music, it is especially recommended to the general reader and for use as an introductory text in the study of cultural and social change. A " people's history, " Soul Trains combines major contributions to scholarship in a singleparnorama of musical evolution related to the struggles of ordinary people.
“As clever and witty a novel as anyone has written in a long time . . . Robbins takes readers on a wild, delightful ride. . . . A delight from beginning to end.”—Buffalo News Switters is a contradiction for all seasons: an anarchist who works for the government; a pacifist who carries a gun; a vegetarian who sops up ham gravy; a cyberwhiz who hates computers; a man who, though obsessed with the preservation of innocence, is aching to deflower his high-school-age stepsister (only to become equally enamored of a nun ten years his senior). Yet there is nothing remotely wishy-washy about Switters. He doesn’t merely pack a pistol. He is a pistol. And as we dog Switters’s strangely elevated heels across four continents, in and out of love and danger, discovering in the process the “true” Third Secret of Fatima, we experience Tom Robbins—that fearless storyteller, spiritual renegade, and verbal break dancer—at the top of his game. On one level this is a fast-paced CIA adventure story with comic overtones; on another it’s a serious novel of ideas that brings the Big Picture into unexpected focus; but perhaps more than anything else, Fierce Invalids is a sexy celebration of language and life. Praise for Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates “Superb.”—New York Post “Dangerous? Wicked? Forbidden? You bet. . . . Pour yourself a bowl of chips and dig in.”—Daily News, New York “Robbins is a great writer . . . and definitely a provocative rascal.”—The Tennessean “Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction never read a Tom Robbins novel. . . Clever, creative, and witty, Robbins tosses off impassioned observations like handfuls of flower petals.”—San Diego Union-Tribune
The Pan-American "Huckleberry Finn" for the Twenty-first Century, a memoir of the young author's struggle with two realities, one Anglo-Saxon and the other Hispanic. In this picaresque "coming-of-age" memoir, we see a vision of North America's future in twenty-five years, when the Hispanic population becomes the majority and changes not only the demographics of the United States of America, but its culture. The author sweeps us along on a whirlwind of culture shock. He chronicles the adventures of a disgruntled industrial-age young man who feels a tribal and instinctual reluctance to accept the Third World's view of the United States, and America's foreign policy. But before he can assimilate the profound changes in language, culture, and reality, along comes a new relationship and an earthquake that stops a war only to kill twenty-two thousand people, and changes blind patriotism into something else.
This volume, Toxicology in Antiquity II, continues to tell the story of the roots of toxicology in ancient times. Readers learn that before scientific research methods were developed, toxicology thrived as a very practical discipline. Toxicologists are particularly proud of the rich and storied history of their field and there are few resources available that cover the discipline from a historical perspective. People living in ancient civilizations readily learned to distinguish safe from hazardous substances, how to avoid these hazardous substances and how to use them to inflict harm on enemies. Volume II explores the use of poison as weapons in war and assassinations, early instances of air pollution, the use of hallucinogens and entheogens, and the role of the snake in ancient toxicology. - Provides the historical background for understanding modern toxicology - Illustrates the ways ancient civilizations learned to distinguish safe from hazardous substances, how to avoid the hazardous substances and how to use them against enemies - Details scholars who compiled compendia of toxic agents
This cinematic picture book from critically acclaimed author and illustrator Evan Turk follows the life of a baby whale from birth, to song, to silence, to a new song of compassion and hope for a brighter future. Two hearts, one song. A young whale and her mother sing together. Heartbeat. Then the mother is gone. One heart, one song. The young whale swims, alone and lonely, for days and years and decades… until one day a little girl hears her and joins her song. Together, they sing of hope for a brighter future. One world, one song, one heartbeat.
