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Young, vulnerable, naIve. Twenty two year old Michelle Nicholson had no idea how to deal with the strange and menacing stranger who seemed to be taking over her life. He had sucked friends and family into believing his fantasy that he was a good, kind man, trying to offer Michelle a better life. But beneath the faCade lurked a dangerous and deadly psychopath, hell bent on revenge for Michelle's rejection of him. Twenty four years later, still fighting to clear her name, Michelle tells, with raw honesty, the true and horrifying story of the murder of her beloved father and how she was framed for that murder, losing her youth, her young daughter, her freedom and almost her sanity.
A raw, revealing and powerful account of life inside, as told by prison inmates. Violence. Gangs. Drugs. Smuggling. Weapons. Scams. Hierarchy. Murder. Welcome to prison life in New Zealand. Most New Zealanders will never know what it’s like to do time, to spend days, months, years, even decades behind bars with some of the country’s most dangerous, volatile and notorious criminals. For the men and women who have spent time inside, it’s an experience they will never forget. These are their stories. Behind Bars takes you deep into the prisons of New Zealand and reveals the private lives of inmates — their first night inside, how they spend their time, how they change, learn who to trust, how to fit in and, ultimately, how they survive. A raw and fascinating glimpse into a world most of us can only imagine. ‘You exist, you survive. You see many things, and you meet many people you wish to God you’d never met. Prison is not real. What happens in there happens, but it’s not real life.’
This shimmering debut story collection intimately explores race, identity, and the pursuit of the American Dream in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. I’ll Give You a Reason explores the lives of immigrants and first-generation Americans searching for their American Dream in the Ironbound, an ethnic enclave and immigrant haven in Newark, New Jersey, a place once best known for its high murder rate. This story collection illustrates the complicated beauty of Newark and the lives of its diverse residents. A young widow goes on her first date since her husband’s death and finds herself hunting a bear in the woods with a near stranger. A high school student helps...
One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Straight’s memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women’s stories . . . The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco Chronicle In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self–proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African America...
"from JESUS, with LOVE" written by Jim Kenney, shows us a Jesus who understands and cares. Based on a careful reading of the gospels this book is an imaginary series of letters from Jesus to you, the reader. But is it imaginary? To Jim, as he explains in the introduction, these letters came to him as a message to the heart. What is different about these devotions on the earthly life of Jesus is that they are written in the fi rst person, much as Paul's letters to the early churches were. So the first letter begins, "My Mum was already pregnant with me when Dad married her." We experience the trauma of a young child tormented by his peers and beginning to doubt his legitimacy but then discovering the marvel of his true parenthood. We hear of the long wait in obscurity and the power of temptation. Each letter is a devotion in itself, but taken together they reveal to us a Jesus who, for all that he is God in the flesh, yet is one who struggled through our common trials, -someone who truly understands. As each letter ends Jesus speaks directly to our heart in an affirmation of His care for each of us. Geof Galbraith, Combined Churches Committee, Beechworth
Ideal Homes? shows how both popular images and experiences of home life relate to the ability of society's members to produce and respond to social change. The book provides for the first time an analysis of the space of the home and the experiences of home life by writers from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, architecture, geography and anthropology. It covers a range of subjects, including gender roles, different generations relationships to home, the changing nature of the family, transition and risk and alternative visions of home.
This book addresses theatre’s contribution to the way we think about ecology, our relationship to the environment, and what it means to be human in the context of climate change. It offers a detailed study of the ways in which contemporary performance has critiqued and re-imagined everyday ecological relationships, in more just and equitable ways. The broad spectrum of ecologically-oriented theatre and performance included here, largely from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, and Mexico, have problematised, reframed, and upended the pervasive and reductive images of climate change that tend to dominate the ecological imagination. Taking an inclusive approach this book foregrounds marginalised perspectives and the multiple social and political forces that shape climate change and related ecological crises, framing understandings of the earth as home. Recent works by Fevered Sleep, Rimini Protokoll, Violeta Luna, Deke Weaver, Metis Arts, Lucy + Jorge Orta, as well as Indigenous activist movements such as NoDAPL and Idle No More, are described in detail.
This book offers a unique and much-needed interrogation of the broader questions surrounding international performance research which are pertinent to the present and the future of Theatre and Performance studies. Marking the completion of eight years of the Erasmus Mundus MA Programme in International Performance Research (MAIPR) - a programme run jointly by the universities of Warwick (UK), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Helsinki/Tampere (Finland), Arts in Belgrade (Serbia), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) - the essays in this volume take stock of the achievements, insights and challenges of what international performance research is or ought to be about. By reflecting on the discipline of Performance Studies using the MAIPR programme as a case study in point, the volume addresses the broader question of the critical link between the discipline of Performance Studies and humanities education in general, examining their interactions in the contemporary university in the context of globalisation.
This ground-breaking book is the first to bring an ecological focus to theatre and performance design, both in scholarship and in practice. Ecoscenography weaves environmental philosophies and practices across genres and fields to provide a captivating vision for the future of sustainable theatre production. The book forefronts leading designers that are driving this emerging field into the mainstream through their relational and reciprocal engagement with place, audiences, materials, and processes. Beyond its radical philosophy and framework, Ecoscenography makes a compelling case for pursuing an ecological ethic in theatre and performance design, not only as a moral imperative, but for the extraordinary possibilities that it offers for more-than-human engagement. Based on her personal insights as a leading ecological researcher and practitioner, Beer offers a rich resource for scholars, students and practitioners alike, opening up new processes and aesthetics of theatrical design that enhance the environmental and social advocacy of the field.