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What does it mean to have, or to love, a black body? Taking on the challenge of interpreting the black body's dramatic role in American culture are thirty black, white, and biracial contributors—award-winning actors, artists, writers, and comedians—including voices as varied as President Obama’s inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander, actor and bestselling author Hill Harper, political strategist Kimball Stroud, television producer Joel Lipman, former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts, and singer-songwriter Jason Luckett. Ranging from deeply serious to playful, sometimes hilarious, musings, these essays explore myriad issues with wisdom and a deep sense of history. Meri Nana-Ama Danquah’s unprecedented collection illuminates the diversity of identities and individual experiences that define the black body in our culture.
Now in paperback -- "A compelling collection . . . providing insights into the variety of immigrant experiences." --Publishers Weekly Take part in an extraordinary journey through the lives of 23 first-generation immigrant women as they uncover their own unique experiences in the new world. In this remarkable collection of original essays, these acclaimed writers speak to issues of identity, ethnicity, and race, as well as how the self begins to take on and absorb the label "American." Some of the contributors in Becoming American include: Nina Barragan -- Argentina; Lilianet Brintrup -- Chile; Veronica Chambers -- Panama; Judith Ortiz Cofer -- Puerto Rico; Edwidge Danticat -- Haiti; Gabrielle Donnelly -- England; Lynn Freed -- South Africa; Akuyoe Graham -- Ghana; Lucy Grealy -- Ireland; Suheir Hammad -- Jordan/Palestine; Ginu Kamani -- India; Nola Kambanda -- Burundi/Rwanda; Helen Kim -- Korea; Kyoko Mori -- Japan; Irina Reyn -- Russia; Joyce Zonana -- Egypt
Showcasing the newest generation of black women writers, this collection gathers 23 voices that came of age in the wake of the civil rights, black arts, gay rights, and feminist movements.
Accra joins Lagos, Nairobi, Marrakech, and Addis Ababa in representing the African continent in the Noir Series arena. “Superb . . . Each story reaffirms how fundamental ‘place’ is to the noir genre and how the locale shapes the story as much as the characters themselves . . . Strongly recommended.” —Library Journal “There’s good writing as well as a strong sense of place and culture, and the reader will absorb a side of Accra that doesn’t make it into the tourist brochures.” —New York Journal of Books Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, Kwame Dawes, Adjoa Twum, Kofi Blankson Ocansey, Billie McTernan, Ernest Kwame Nkrumah Addo, Patrick Smith, Anne Sackey, Gbontwi Anyetei, Nana-Ama Danquah, Ayesha Harruna Attah, Eibhlín Ní Chléirigh, and Anna Bossman.
Describing her struggle as a black woman with an eating disorder that is consistently portrayed as a white woman's problem, this insightful and moving narrative traces the background and factors that caused her bulimia. Moving coast to coast, she tries to escape her self-hatred and obsession by never slowing down, unaware that she is caught in downward spiral emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Finally she can no longer deny that she will die if she doesn't get help, overcome her shame, and conquer her addiction. But seeking help only reinforces her negative self-image, and she discovers her race makes her an oddity in the all-white programs for eating disorders. This memoir of her experiences answers many questions about why black women often do not seek traditional therapy for emotional problems.
A short, intense and profoundly moving debut novel about race, identity, sex and death – from one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35
Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of William Styron's Darkness Visible, finds vivid expression for an elusive illness suffered by more than one in five Americans today. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost includes many voices and depicts the most complete portrait of the illness. Lauren Slater eloquently describes her own perilous experience as a pregnant woman on antidepressant medication. Susanna Kaysen, writing for the first time about depression since Girl, Interrupted, criticizes herself and others for making too much of the illness. Larry McMurtry recounts the despair that descended after his quadruple bypass sur...
Mahama chronicles his coming-of-age in Ghana during the dismal post-independence "lost decades" of Africa. It offers a look at the country that has long been considered Africa's success story with a rare literary voice from a political leader, with personal stories, fables, and analysis.
The fifth edition of The Disability Studies Reader addresses the post-identity theoretical landscape by emphasizing questions of interdependency and independence, the human-animal relationship, and issues around the construction or materiality of gender, the body, and sexuality. Selections explore the underlying biases of medical and scientific experiments and explode the binary of the sound and the diseased mind. The collection addresses physical disabilities, but as always investigates issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities as well. Featuring a new generation of scholars who are dealing with the most current issues, the fifth edition continues the Reader’s tradition of remaining timely, urgent, and critical.
White kids from the ’burbs are throwing up gang signs. The 2001 Grammy winner for best rap artist was as white as rice. And blond-haired sorority sisters are sporting FUBU gear. What is going on in American culture that’s giving our nation a racial-identity crisis? Following the trail blazed by Norman Mailer’s controversial essay “The White Negro,” Everything but the Burden brings together voices from music, popular culture, the literary world, and the media speaking about how from Brooklyn to the Badlands white people are co-opting black styles of music, dance, dress, and slang. In this collection, the essayists examine how whites seem to be taking on, as editor Greg Tate’s moth...