Author : Kia Abdullah
Publisher : Kia Abdullah
Page : 86 pages
File Size : 43,42 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1897312008
This volume is a raw and unpretentious account of the battles faced by Kieran Ali, an Asian girl growing up in London. It tackles drug addiction, gender inequality, arranged marriage and religion but is ultimately a story about the love and freedom that is seldom afforded to young Asian women living between two cultures.
Author : Michael P. Amram
Publisher : WestBow Press
Page : 139 pages
File Size : 24,87 MB
Release : 2017-04-24
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 1512782009
Finding meand Them: Stories of Assimilation is a collection of ten stories. They are autobiographical. They are nonfiction. They are fiction based on fact. Each story tells the authors life as an individual with or (fictional) without a disability. All of them find the author. They show different phases and challenges in his life, from rehabilitating from a head injury at age five to learning the logistics of an after-life. In ways that co-mingle genres, the stories in my book are related. There are central themes concurrent in all of them. Many of the stories are written from the perspective of someone growing up with an ambiguous disability. A theme is how I found the world to perceive me. Family is a theme. Wandering, exploration, the search for identity, are central themes in my stories. My book is learning to live (physically different). Its learning to love. Its learning what faith can do and whats offered in worlds we cant see. In Finding me and Them, Michael Amram shows his versatility as a writer, combining stories of fact and fiction, often with poetic lyricism, to tell the story of his life, a life he says is influenced by the disabilities caused when a distracted teen driver hit the then 5-year-old boy. In reality, its a life that reflects Amrams abilities his ability to see joy and sorrow in life, his ability to observe the ironies of life, his ability to appreciate that overcoming takes many forms. Amram blends humor and poignancy to engage readers as he portrays lifes simplest interactions as meaningful. Never preachy, each of the 10 stories in this collection teaches us something about living the fullest life we can. - Ellen Weingart, editor
Author : Lyn Gala
Publisher : Lyn Gala
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 25,70 MB
Release : 2018-05-19
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781393325611
Ondry and Liam have settled into a good life, but their trading is still tied up with humans, and humans are always messy. When political changes at the human base lead Ondry to attempt a difficult trade, the pair find themselves entangled in human affairs. Liam wants to help the people he left and the worlds being torn apart. He also wants to serve Ondry with not only the pleasures of the nest but also by bringing human profits. Ondry has no hope of understanding human psychology in general, he only knows that he will hold onto his palteia with the last breath in his body, and he'd like to keep his status and his wealth too. Unfortunately, new humans bring new conflicts and he is not sure how to protect Liam. He does know one thing that humans seem to constantly forget--that the peaceful Rownt are predators and when their families are threatened, Rownt become deadly killers. Liam is his family, and Ondry will protect him with his last breath... assuming that he can recognize the dangers in time to do so.
Author : Anna Qu
Publisher : Catapult
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 24,22 MB
Release : 2021-08-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1646220358
A young girl forced to work in a Queens sweatshop calls child services on her mother in this powerful debut memoir about labor and self-worth that traces a Chinese immigrant's journey to an American future. As a teen, Anna Qu is sent by her mother to work in her family's garment factory in Queens. At home, she is treated as a maid and suffers punishment for doing her homework at night. Her mother wants to teach her a lesson: she is Chinese, not American, and such is their tough path in their new country. But instead of acquiescing, Qu alerts the Office of Children and Family Services, an act with consequences that impact the rest of her life. Nearly twenty years later, estranged from her mother and working at a Manhattan start-up, Qu requests her OCFS report. When it arrives, key details are wrong. Faced with this false narrative, and on the brink of losing her job as the once-shiny start-up collapses, Qu looks once more at her life's truths, from abandonment to an abusive family to seeking dignity and meaning in work. Traveling from Wenzhou to Xi'an to New York, Made in China is a fierce memoir unafraid to ask thorny questions about trauma and survival in immigrant families, the meaning of work, and the costs of immigration.
Author : Phuc Tran
Publisher : Flatiron Books
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 26,29 MB
Release : 2020-04-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1250194725
For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Displaced and The Refugees, Sigh, Gone explores one man’s bewildering experiences of abuse, racism, and tragedy and reveals redemption and connection in books and punk rock. Against the hairspray-and-synthesizer backdrop of the ‘80s, he finds solace and kinship in the wisdom of classic literature, and in the subculture of punk rock, he finds affirmation and echoes of his disaffection. In his journey for self-discovery Tran ultimately finds refuge and inspiration in the art that shapes—and ultimately saves—him.
Author : Dara Horn
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 45,93 MB
Release : 2021-09-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0393531570
Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.
Author : Bootbrush
Publisher :
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 31,86 MB
Release : 2012-04-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781610982399
"Rubber moves through me until every cell is coated, every nerve insulated; every part of me rubberised and assimilated. The process is slow, purposeful, unrelenting, and irreversible - and it feels like slowly drowning in a rising black tide of ecstasy." These stories weave tales of delicious perversity, unrelenting transformations, heady submission, and willingly given surrender. They speak of masculinity and hunger - of bondage, hypnosis, pup-play and water-sports... They tell of men released from their limitations to test and push and explore at the very limits of experience and play - and all are wrapped within a seductively hypnotic skin of rubber and leather...
Author : Amanda Skenandore
Publisher : Kensington Books
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 38,54 MB
Release : 2018-04-24
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1496713672
In Amanda Skenandore’s provocative and profoundly moving debut, set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture, a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging. On a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906, a newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead, and the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry—or Asku, as Alma knew him—was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father, where Alma was the only white pupil. Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known—language, customs, even their names—and left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake. The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart. Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.
Author : Michelle Tea
Publisher : The Feminist Press at CUNY
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 16,52 MB
Release : 2016-08-22
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1558619461
This metaliterary end-of-the-world novel is “scary, funny and genre-bending . . . wonderfully strange . . . yet completely universal and true” (Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent). Desperate to quell her addiction to drugs and alcohol, disastrous romance, and nineties San Francisco, Michelle heads south to LA But soon it’s officially announced that the world will end in one year, and life in the sprawling metropolis becomes increasingly weird. While living in an abandoned bookstore, dating Matt Dillon, and keeping an eye on the encroaching apocalypse, Michelle begins a new novel, a meta-textual exploration to complement her vows to embrace maturity and responsibility. But as she tries to make queer love and art without succumbing to self-destructive impulses, the boundaries between storytelling and everyday living begin to blur, and Michelle wonders how much she’ll have to compromise her artistic process if she’s going to properly ride out doomsday.
Author : Etaf Rum
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 48,94 MB
Release : 2019-03-05
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0062699784
A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Fiction and Best Debut • BookBrowse's Best Book of the Year • A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of the Year • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year • A PopSugar Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March • A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer • A USA Today Best Book of the Week • A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel • A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month • A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month • A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors • An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the Year “Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum’s debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice.” —Refinery 29 The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community. "Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.” Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear. Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can’t help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.
