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The Worker Writers School supports writers from one of New York City's most ubiquitous yet least-heard populations: low-wage workers. Mark Nowak, a writer and founding director of the school, presents a selection of haiku written by "frontline workers" during the Covid 19 crisis. The poets included here had already been studying examples of the form and its connection to political resistance from seventeenth-century Japan to the Black Arts Movement of the twentieth century, as well as its capacity to amplify voices of everyday life. These "coronavirus haiku" convey moments of protest, solace, wonder, certainty, love, and strife. The writers in this anthology hail from the school's worker center partners in New York City including Domestic Workers United, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Damayan Migrant Workers Association, Street Vendor Project, and Retail Action Project: Thomas Barzey, Kerl Brooks, Estabon Chimilio, Nimfa Despabiladeras, Lorraine Garnett, Davidson Garrett, Seth Goldman, Christine Lewis, Doreen McGill, Alando McIntyre, Kelebohile Nkheranye, Alfreda Small, and Paloma Zapata.
Social Poetics documents the imaginative militancy and emergent solidarities of a new, insurgent working class poetry community rising up across the globe. Part autobiography, part literary criticism, part Marxist theory, Social Poetics presents a people’s history of the poetry workshop from the founding director of the Worker Writers School. Nowak illustrates not just what poetry means, but what it does to and for people outside traditional literary spaces, from taxi drivers to street vendors, and other workers of the world.
Conroy, a coal miner's son who apprenticed at age thirteen in a railroad shop, later migrated to factory cities and experienced the privation and labor struggles of the 1930s. As worker and writer he composed The Disinherited, one of the most important working-class novels of the thirties. As editor of a radical literary journal, The Anvil, he nurtured the early careers of Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, and Meridel LeSueur before his own literary work was eclipsed in the cold war years. Douglas Wixson draws upon a wealth of letters and manuscripts made available to him as Conroy's literary executor, as well as numerous interviews with Conroy and his former contributors and colleagues. Wixson explores the origins and development of worker-writing and the numerous "little magazines" it generated. He examines the differences between the midwestern and East Coast literary worlds and the milieu in which Conroy and others like him worked - the Depression, job layoffs, factory closings, homelessness, and migration.
Fifteen-year-old Donald Leroy Samson is the son of an absentee St. Lucian father and a drug-addicted English mother. Growing up in dire poverty in Hackney, East London, his life is shaped by casual violence, gang initiation, drug-dealing, and knife crime. When Donny's bored, rich, white girlfriend Zoe is offered a dubious modeling audition, the couple "borrow" a barge and navigate the 29 locks on the canal system from Hertfordshire down into Kings Cross. When they start out on their journey, the future for both of them looks unpromising, like the fake audition, but as each lock is navigated and conquered, as the waters fall then rise again, their adventure takes on a new dimension. Life will never be the same again. A gritty, urban tale of redemption.
How can we prepare the work-force of tomorrow for the increasing writing demands of the Information Age? Anne Beaufort provides a multidimensional response to this critical question. Offering a vital view of the developmental process entailed in attaining writing fluency in school and beyond, and the conditions that contribute to acquiring such expertise, Beaufort illuminates what it takes to foster the versatility writers must possess in the workplace of the twenty-first century.
The hard times faced by steelworkers and miners in America's rust belt inform these poetic oral histories.
Jowan wants only one thing - to bond with a dragon of his own. Then disaster strikes and his world suddenly turns into a darker and more dangerous place. But a new friend and an astonishing discovery could lead him to what he has always wanted... if he is just willing to take a leap of faith and brave the impossible.
Best before twenty-five? With newsfeeds full of perfect pouts, hot-dog legs, and the self-proclaimed hashtag-blessed, it's hard not to feel inadequate. How has everyone figured out how to live their best life, except you?' That's what Kylie wants to know. She thought she would spend her twenty-fifth birthday having a mini-break - not a mini-breakdown! After an evening of finger-food and snide remarks, Kylie decides that things must change. Naturally, Alexa disagrees. She doesn't think anything needs to change at all, and is quite happy plodding along with her best friend by her side. So, when everything changes for the better for Alexa - while it's going from bad to worse for Kylie - will it tear them apart?
Who gets to speak for China? During the interwar years, when American condescension toward “barbarous” China yielded to a fascination with all things Chinese, a circle of writers sparked an unprecedented public conversation about American-Chinese relations. Hua Hsu tells the story of how they became ensnared in bitter rivalries over which one could claim the title of America’s leading China expert. The rapturous reception that greeted The Good Earth—Pearl Buck’s novel about a Chinese peasant family—spawned a literary market for sympathetic writings about China. Stories of enterprising Americans making their way in a land with “four hundred million customers,” as Carl Crow sai...
On the island of Arcosi, dragons and their riders used to rule the skies. But now they are only legends, found in bedtime stories, on beautiful murals and ancient jewellery. Then servant girl Milla witnesses a murder and finds herself caring for the last four dragon eggs. Forced to keep them secret amidst the growing tensions in the city, she begins to fear that the island's ruler, Duke Olvar, isn't all that he seems. But how can Milla and her friends keep the eggs safe when it means endangering everything she's ever loved? Fiery friendships, forgotten family and the struggle for power collide as Milla's fight to save the dragons leads her to discover her own hidden past.