Dreaming of a Place Called Home


Book Description

"This book auto-ethnographically explores the experiences of students and teachers both locally and globally, while addressing the critical intersection of race, class, and gender in education. It explores diversity perspectives on schools and society in Japan, the United States, Bahamas, and Jamaica in regards to living and attending schools in a foreign country; being an international minority student in the U.S.; and being a minority teacher in U.S. public schools. In doing so, the book addresses minority experiences as it seeks to promote agency and advocacy for the underserved both locally and globally, and making the world more humane and inclusive through education. It acknowledges that we live in a global society, and as such, we must become global citizens and ambassadors of the world in which we live. Greg Wiggan is an Associate Professor of Urban Education, Adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology, and Affiliate Faculty Member of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research addresses urban education and urban sociology in the context of school processes that promote high achievement among African American students and other underserved minority student populations. In doing so, his research also examines the broader connections between the history of urbanization, globalization processes and the internationalization of education in urban schools. His books include: Global Issues in Education: Pedagogy, Policy, Practice, and the Minority Experience; Education in a Strange Land: Globalization, Urbanization, and Urban Schools – The Social and Educational Implications of the Geopolitical Economy; Curriculum Violence: America’s new Civil Rights Issue; Education for the New Frontier: Race, Education and Triumph in Jim Crow America (1867–1945); Following the Northern Star: Caribbean Identities and Education in North American Schools; Unshackled: Education for Freedom, Student Achievement and Personal Emancipation; In Search of a Canon: European History and the Imperialist State; and Last of the Black Titans: The Role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 21st Century.




A Dream Called Home


Book Description

From bestselling author of the remarkable memoir, The Distance Between Us comes an inspiring account of one woman’s quest to find her place in America as a first-generation Latina university student and aspiring writer determined to build a new life for her family one fearless word at a time. “Here is a life story so unbelievable, it could only be true” (Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of The House on Mango Street). As an immigrant in an unfamiliar country, with an indifferent mother and abusive father, Reyna had few resources at her disposal. Taking refuge in words, Reyna’s love of reading and writing propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Although her acceptance is a triumph, the actual experience of American college life is intimidating and unfamiliar for someone like Reyna, who is now estranged from her family and support system. Again, she finds solace in words, holding fast to her vision of becoming a writer, only to discover she knows nothing about what it takes to make a career out of a dream. Through it all, Reyna is determined to make the impossible possible, going from undocumented immigrant of little means to “a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild); a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist whose “power is growing with every book” (Luis Alberto Urrea, Pultizer Prize finalist); and a proud mother of two beautiful children who will never have to know the pain of poverty and neglect. Told in Reyna’s exquisite, heartfelt prose, A Dream Called Home demonstrates how, by daring to pursue her dreams, Reyna was able to build the one thing she had always longed for: a home that would endure.




The Distance Between Us


Book Description

In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father. Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home. Also available in Spanish as La distancia entre nosotros.




The City of Dreaming Books


Book Description

In this whimsical fantasy adventure, a novelist’s search for an author takes him to a magical city, a villainous literary scholar, and perilous catacombs. Optimus Yarnspinner’s search for an author’s identity takes him to Bookholm―the so-called City of Dreaming Books. On entering its streets, our hero feels as if he has opened the door of a gigantic second-hand bookshop. His nostrils are assailed by clouds of book dust, the stimulating scent of ancient leather, and the tang of printer’s ink. Soon, though, Yarnspinner falls into the clutches of the city’s evil genius, Pfistomel Smyke, who treacherously maroons him in the labyrinthine catacombs underneath the city, where reading books can be genuinely dangerous . . . In The City of Dreaming Books, Walter Moers transports us to a magical world where reading is a remarkable adventure. Only those intrepid souls who are prepared to join Yarnspinner on his perilous journey should read this book. We wish the rest of you a long, safe, unutterably dull, and boring life! Praise for The City of Dreaming Books “German author and cartoonist Moers returns to the mythical lost continent of Zamonia in his uproarious third fantasy adventure to be translated into English, a delightfully imaginative mélange of Shel Silverstein zaniness and oddball anthropomorphism à la Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. . . . A wonderfully whimsical story that will appeal to readers of all ages.” —Publishers Weekly “A salmagundi of whimsy, imagination and book lore—remarkable fun.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer “Moers puts Tolkien through some sort of Willy Wonka sweetening process and comes up with characters such as Optimus Yarnspinner, who, names being fate and all, just has to be a storyteller.” —Kirkus Reviews




Dreams, A Portal to the Source


Book Description

First published in 1991. An introductory guidebook to dream interpretation which will be of interest to analysts and therapists both in practice and training and to a wider readership interested in the origins and significance of dreams. This book should be of interest to dream psychology analysts, therapists, counsellors, and the general reader.




A Place Called Home


Book Description




Places the Dead Call Home


Book Description

Places the Dead Call Home begins on a summer night in 1958, as bullets tear through the body of a young man on a lonely Oklahoma highway. Nineteen years later, a soldier lies in the pool of his own blood on an army base in Virginia. Death has made room at home for both of them. Death can always find room for more. Josh Kincaid is happy with life in Phoenix where he manages a bar and sells a few drugs on the side. His serenity is soon shattered, however, by a call from his cousin, Frankie McKnight, who claims to know why Josh's father died many years earlier in the parking lot of a gas station in Oklahoma City. Soon, a reporter named Jeffrey Bonus and his traveling companion, Jeanette Koskos, arrive with questions for Josh about the death of Bonus's father, a highly decorated army colonel. All of these characters converge on Mesa Verde, where Josh and Frankie seek the answer to Jimmy Kincaid's destiny and Bonus hopes to learn the true fate of his father. But others are making plans of their own to ensure that the dead stay where they belong-the places they call home.




Dreaming in Cuban


Book Description

“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post




Brown Girl Dreaming


Book Description

Jacqueline Woodson's National Book Award and Newbery Honor winner is a powerful memoir that tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. A President Obama "O" Book Club pick Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. Includes 7 additional poems, including "Brown Girl Dreaming." Praise for Jacqueline Woodson: "Ms. Woodson writes with a sure understanding of the thoughts of young people, offering a poetic, eloquent narrative that is not simply a story . . . but a mature exploration of grown-up issues and self-discovery.”—The New York Times Book Review




A Place Called Home


Book Description

For twenty-five years readers of the Lake Country Echo in north-central Minnesota have enjoyed the biweekly column by Craig Nagel called "The Cracker Barrel." His essays have been photocopied and sent to friends, cut out and taped to the wall, read aloud at group meetings, reprinted in area newsletters and, on occasion, praised or damned in letters to the editor. Nagel's observations of the world around himsometimes witty, sometimes philosophical, always fresh and uniquehave earned him a loyal following. Now, from the hundreds of essays that have appeared through those years in the Echo, he's chosen the best and put them in book form. Join him as he contemplates the mystery of the night sky on a midnight walk at 30 below zero, stares eyeball to eyeball in the chicken coop with an intruding Great Horned Owl, paddles his way through an autumn marsh as he and his wife harvest wild rice, and reflects upon the mystical resurrection of early-spring frogs, who days before were entombed in frozen mud. His insights offer the reader a walk down a road less traveled, to moments filled with peace and quiet wonder. Enjoy the magic of A Place Called Home.