Drinking Coffee Elsewhere


Book Description

The acclaimed debut short story collection that introduced the world to an arresting and unforgettable new voice in fiction, from multi-award winning author ZZ Packer Her impressive range and talent are abundantly evident: Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white girls; a young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March and must decide where his allegiance lies; an international group of drifters in Japan, who are starving, unable to find work; a girl in a Baltimore ghetto who has dreams of the larger world she has seen only on the screens in the television store nearby, where the Lithuanian shopkeeper holds out hope for attaining his own American Dream. With penetrating insight, ZZ Packer helps us see the world with a clearer vision. Fresh, versatile, and captivating, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a striking and unforgettable collection, sure to stand out among the contemporary canon of fiction.




Study Guide: Brownies by ZZ Packer


Book Description

SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides for challenging works of literature. This 34-page guide for the short story "Brownies" by ZZ Packer includes detailed summary and analysis, as well as several more in-depth sections of expert-written literary analysis. Featured content includes commentary on major characters, 15 important quotes, essay topics, and key themes like social hierarchies and coming of age.




First Confession


Book Description

Jackie faces his first confession with great trepidation following a warning lecture from his obnoxious, older sister.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer


Book Description

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction Debut Novel prize, this fableistic, "beautifully crafted, poetic" debut novel about a sister trying to hold back her brother from the edge of the abyss is for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Tommy Orange (The New York Times Book Review). In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be. As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother's ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina's vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved.




Song of the Hummingbird


Book Description

An Aztec princess describes the Spanish conquest of Mexico. She is Huitzitzlin, 82, of the court of Montezuma and she tells her tale to a priest so history will know who the Aztecs really were. By the author of The Memories of Ana Calderon.




The Black Dog Gang


Book Description

With our bags full of rats, the five of us began walking towards the line. We'd gone only a few yards when a voice sounded off to our left. 'What 'ave we 'ere, then?' it said. We turned our heads and say Bluey Lonnegan lifting himself up off a sandstone wall. 'You're lookin' at the Black Dog Gang,' said Mickey. 'No doubt ya heard a us?' The gang was Mickey's idea. We'd heard the rumours – rats were coming in off the ships and spreading disease. Then the government started offering tuppence a rat, so we decided to get stuck in. But we hadn't counted on someone getting sick. Or on Mickey's dad finding his rats chaining Mickey up. And what happened next . . . well, it would change things forever . . .




A Gathering of Old Men


Book Description

A powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man--set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s. The Village Voice called A Gathering of Old Men “the best-written novel on Southern race relations in over a decade.”




Gotham Writers' Workshop Fiction Gallery


Book Description

A collection of short fiction selected by members of New York's acclaimed creative writing school presents works that range from F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," to "A Romantic Weekend by Mary Gaitskill, to Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," reflecting a rich variety of themes, perspectives, and plot and character development. Original. 15,000 first printing.