The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains


Book Description

Explore this section of the Appalachians in these essays examining its history, its wilderness, and what change means for its future. In the eighteenth century, naturalist and artist William Bartram traveled in the Blue Ridge Mountains and spent time documenting both plant life and the customs of the Middle Town Cherokees. Since that time, men and women like Bartram have journeyed through Western North Carolina’s wildest and most remote places and written about their experiences. The essays in this volume compare the present day to those historical journeys and explore the idea of wilderness and what change means for the future of the people and the species who live in the mountains. Join local writer and guide Brent Martin on a journey through this incredible landscape. “With unflinching candor, Brent Martin celebrates the heartbreaking beauty of Appalachia. He wrings out every sensory and emotional detail in these passionate, probing essays that explore the wild within. These aren’t lyrical paeans to nature; they are gritty, gutsy journeys into the rugged, remote landscapes of the human heart. Immersed in mountain tradition, culture, and community, he wanders deep and alone into the wild to find what remains. Martin’s powerful, masterful writing shines with real, hard-earned hope.” —Will Harlan, author of the New York Times bestseller Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America “If you love the Southern Appalachians and Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard and Gary Snyder, read this beautifully written and deeply thought-provoking book.” —Charles Frazier, author of the New York Times bestseller Cold Mountain “A thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of essays from one of Appalachia’s staunchest proponents of wilderness and one of its most devoted writers. Brent Martin is a preeminent naturalist and a scholar of the history of his place. This book is deeply personal, highly instructive, far-reaching.” —Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood “A loving a troubling portrait of the southern Appalachians—the rich history and complexity of ecosystems alongside the damage we’ve wrought on them.” —Catherine Reid, author of Falling into Place: An Intimate Geography of Home




George Masa's Wild Vision


Book Description

George Masa's Wild Vision recounts the incredible, overlooked life of the photographer George Masa. Self-taught photographer George Masa (born Masahara Iizuka in Osaka, Japan), arrived in Asheville, North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century amid a period of great transition in the southern Appalachians. Masa's photographs from the 1920s and early 1930s are stunning windows into an era where railroads hauled out the remaining old-growth timber with impunity, new roads were blasted into hillsides, and an activist community emerged to fight for a new national park. Masa began photographing the nearby mountains and helping to map the Appalachian Trail, capturing this transition like no other photographer of his time. His images, along with his knowledge of the landscape, became a critical piece of the argument for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, compelling John D. Rockefeller to donate $5 million for initial land purchases. Despite being hailed as the "Ansel Adams of the Smokies," Masa died, destitute and unknown, in 1933. In George Masa's Wild Vision: A Japanese Immigrant Imagines Western North Carolina, poet and environmental organizer Brent Martin explores the locations Masa visited, using first-person narratives to contrast, lament, and exalt the condition of the landscape the photographer so loved and worked to interpret and protect. The book includes seventy-five of Masa's photographs, accompanied by Martin's reflections on Masa's life and work.




Back Talk from Appalachia


Book Description

Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty--the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.




Rumors of Change


Book Description

These essays span five decades and mirror American culture in the postwar years. They represent Hassan's various topics, styles, critical methods, and social attitudes. From formalism in the forties to multiculturalism in the nineties, from existential engagements to postmodern dubieties, from Paul Bowles, Jean Stafford, and William Burroughs to Peter Matthiessen, Marge Piercey, and Christina Dodwell, the essays move with the momentum of history. But they move critically. In sympathy with their subjects, they challenge nonetheless the cant and pieties of their moment.




Through the Mountains


Book Description

Two generations have passed since the publication of Wilma Dykeman’s landmark environmental history, The French Broad. In Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time, John Ross updates that seminal book with groundbreaking new research. More than the story of a single river, Through the Mountains covers the entire watershed from its headwaters in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains to its mouth in Knoxville, Tennessee. The French Broad watershed has faced new perils and seen new discoveries since 1955, when The French Broad was published. Geologists have learned that the Great Smoky Mountains are not among the world’s oldest as previously thought; climatologists and archaeologists have traced the dramatic effects of global warming and cooling on the flora, fauna, and human habitation in the watershed; and historians have deepened our understanding of enslaved peoples once thought not to be a part of the watershed’s history. Even further, this book documents how the French Broad and its tributaries were abused by industrialists, and how citizens fought to mitigate the pollution. Through the Mountains also takes readers to notable historic places: the hidden mound just inside the gate of Biltmore where Native Americans celebrated the solstices; the once-secret radio telescope site above Rosman where NASA eavesdropped on Russian satellites; and the tiny hamlet of Gatlinburg where Phi Beta Phi opened its school for mountain women in 1912. Wilma Dykeman once asked what the river had meant to the people who lived along it. In the close of Through the Mountains, Ross reframes that question: For 14,000 years the French Broad and its tributaries have nurtured human habitation. What must we start doing now to ensure it will continue to nourish future generations? Answering this question requires a knowledge of the French Broad’s history, an understanding of its contemporary importance, and a concern for the watershed’s sustainable future. Through the Mountains fulfills these three criteria, and, in many ways, presents the larger story of America’s freshwater habitats through the incredible history of the French Broad.




Study Material Based on NCERT English Class- XII


Book Description

Section A : Flamingo (Prose and Poetry) Flamingo : A Prose 1.The Last Lesson - Alphone Daudet, 2. Lost Spring - Anees Jung, 3. Deep Water - William Douglas, 4. The Rattrap - Selma Lagerlof, 5. Indigo - Louis Fischer, 6. Poets and Pancakes - Ashokmitran, 7. The Interview - Christopher Silverster, 8. Going Places- A.P.Barton, Flaming : B Poetry 1. My Mother at sixty - Six - Kamala Das, 2. An Elementry School Classroom in a Slum- Strphen Spender, 3. Keeping Quiet- Pablo Neruda, 4. A Thing of Beauty - John Keats, 5.A Roadside Stand - Robert Frost, 6. Aunt Jennifer's Tigers - Adrienne Rich, Section B : Vistas (Supplementary Reader) 1. The Third Level - Jack Finney, 2. The Tiger King - Kalki, 3. Journey to the End of the Earth - Tishani Doshi, 4. The Enemy - Pearl s. Buck, 5. Should Wizard Hit Mommy- John Updike, 6.On the Face of it - Susan Hill, 7. Evans Tries an O-Level- Colin Dexter, 8. Memoreis of Childhood - Zitkala-Sa and Bama, Section C : Grammar, Reading and Writing 1. Unseen Passage, 2. Case Based Factual Passages, 3. Advertisement, Notice and Poster, 4. Writng Invitaion and Replies, 5. Letter Writing, 6. Report Writing, 7. Articale, 8. Debate, 9. Speech Writing, Board Examination Paper




The Oxford Companion to African American Literature


Book Description

This, the first comprehensive one-volume reference work devoted to African American literature, contains much information on little known writers unavailable elsewhere. The book covers all types of genre and examines unique aspects of Afro-Americanism




Forthcoming Books


Book Description




Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston


Book Description

Collects reviews and essays considering Kingston's three book-length works-- The Woman Warrior (1976), China Men (1980) and Tripmaster Monkey (1989). Excepting a few pieces written specifically for this book, most appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, various journals (including MELUS), and in other critical works. The editor includes an interview with Kingston, an overview of her methodology and accomplishments, and Kingston's response to reviews of The Woman Warrior: Cultural Mis-readings by American Reviewers. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR