Magic Lessons: Celebratory and Cautionary Tales about Life as a (Single, Gay, Transracially Adoptive) Dad


Book Description

Every family has a story-but very few have a story like Joseph Sadusky and his sons, Daveon and Mark. In Magic Lessons, Joe shares a look back as he, a single gay man, decided to build his family through transracial adoption. In a lighthearted collection of stories and lessons learned, Joe humorously but honestly describes the process as he set out to adopt two older children, and what happened after they came together under one roof and became "us." Along the way, Joe details how often he was, in his own words, "amazed, aggravated, mind-blown, jaw-dropped, befuddled, exasperated, and awed-both in good ways and bad, both by my kids and by the many players who have had a part in our family story overall." Among these players are members of the majority-racial, cultural, and otherwise-who taught Joe many bewildering, if not outright painful, lessons about being "other." To complete the picture, Joe reflects on his own mistakes made as he has ventured through the land of alt-parenthood.




The Diversity Style Guide


Book Description

New diversity style guide helps journalists write with authority and accuracy about a complex, multicultural world A companion to the online resource of the same name, The Diversity Style Guide raises the consciousness of journalists who strive to be accurate. Based on studies, news reports and style guides, as well as interviews with more than 50 journalists and experts, it offers the best, most up-to-date advice on writing about underrepresented and often misrepresented groups. Addressing such thorny questions as whether the words Black and White should be capitalized when referring to race and which pronouns to use for people who don't identify as male or female, the book helps readers navigate the minefield of names, terms, labels and colloquialisms that come with living in a diverse society. The Diversity Style Guide comes in two parts. Part One offers enlightening chapters on Why is Diversity So Important; Implicit Bias; Black Americans; Native People; Hispanics and Latinos; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; Arab Americans and Muslim Americans; Immigrants and Immigration; Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation; People with Disabilities; Gender Equality in the News Media; Mental Illness, Substance Abuse and Suicide; and Diversity and Inclusion in a Changing Industry. Part Two includes Diversity and Inclusion Activities and an A-Z Guide with more than 500 terms. This guide: Helps journalists, journalism students, and other media writers better understand the context behind hot-button words so they can report with confidence and sensitivity Explores the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that certain words can alienate a source or infuriate a reader Provides writers with an understanding that diversity in journalism is about accuracy and truth, not "political correctness." Brings together guidance from more than 20 organizations and style guides into a single handy reference book The Diversity Style Guide is first and foremost a guide for journalists, but it is also an important resource for journalism and writing instructors, as well as other media professionals. In addition, it will appeal to those in other fields looking to make informed choices in their word usage and their personal interactions.




Bro Code for Parents


Book Description

The newest book in the New York Times bestselling “Barney Stinson” canon teaches prospective parents everything they need to know to have a legendary kid. So you’re going to be a parent. You might be asking yourself a series of important questions: Will I be a good parent? • Will I be able to afford this? • Can I ever have sex again? Well, the answer to all these questions is a rock-solid no. But just because your existence is now a petrifying turd on the canvas of life doesn’t mean your kid has to be as lame as you’re about to become. That’s why I’ve written this book—to teach you how to be an awesomommy or legendaddy. The Bro Code for Parents will help you: Choose a baby name that won’t get your kid stuffed into a junior high locker • Interview and hire a smokin’ hot nanny • Teach your child instant classics like “The Boobs on the Bus” and “Bro, Bro, Bro Your Boat” With full-color illustrations, interactive work sheets, and even suggestions for how to turn a stroller into a broller, The Bro Code for Parents gives you all the tools you’ll need to raise your child to be almost as awesome as I am. Almost.




The Self-Love Experiment


Book Description

Put a stop to self-sabotage and overcome your fears so that you can gain the confidence you need to reach your goals and become your own best friend. Too many people seem to believe that they are not allowed to put themselves first or go after their own dreams out of fear of being selfish or sacrificing others' needs. The Self-Love Experiment rectifies this problem. Whether you want to achieve weight loss, land your dream job, find your soul mate, or get out of debt, it all comes back to self-love and accepting yourself first. Shannon Kaiser learned the secrets to loving herself, finding purpose, and living a passion-filled life after recovering from eating disorders, drug addictions, corporate burnout, and depression. Shannon walks you through her own personal experiment, a simple plan that compassionately guides you through the process of removing fear-based thoughts, so you can fall in love with life. If you want to change your outcome in life, you have to change your daily habits and perspective. Shannon takes you on this great journey into self-love and true self-acceptance.




The Joy Luck Club


Book Description

“The Joy Luck Club is one of my favorite books. From the moment I first started reading it, I knew it was going to be incredible. For me, it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational.” —Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians Amy Tan’s beloved, New York Times bestselling tale of mothers and daughters, now the focus of a new documentary Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir on Netflix Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue. With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery.




Don't Go Crazy Without Me


Book Description

A woman recounts coming of age in the shadow of her father’s mental illness in this “candid, unsettling portrait of madness and enduring love” (Kirkus). Deborah A. Lott grew upina Los Angeles suburb in the 1950s, under the sway of her outrageously eccentric father. A lay rabbi who enjoyed dressing up like Little Lord Fauntleroy, he taught her how to have fun. But he also taught her to fear germs, other children, and contamination from the world at large. Deborah was so deeply bonded to her father and his peculiar worldview that when he plunged from neurotic to full-blown psychotic, she nearly followed him. Sanity is not always a choice, but for sixteen-year-old Deborah, lines had to be drawn between reality and her own “overactive imagination.” She saved herself through an unconventional reading of Moby Dick, a deeply awkward sexual awakening, and entry into the world of political activism as a volunteer in Robert F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. After attending Kennedy’s last stop at the Ambassador Hotel the night of his assassination, Deborah would come to a new reckoning with loss. Ultimately, she would find her own path, and her own way of turning grief into love.




Blind Turn


Book Description

In the aftermath of a fatal texting and driving accident, a mother and daughter must come to terms with the real meaning of forgiveness. Liz Johnson single-handedly raised an exemplary daughter. Jessica is an honor-student, track star, and all-around good kid. So how could that same teenager be responsible for the death of the high school's beloved football coach? This is Texas, where high school football ranks right up there with God, so while the legal battle wages, the public deals its own verdict. Desperate for help, Liz turns to a lawyer whose affection she once rejected and attempts to play nice with her ex-husband. Jessica faces her angry peers and her own demons as she awaits a possible prison sentence for an accident she doesn't remember. A tragic, emotional, ultimately uplifting story, Blind Turn is a natural book club pick.




I'm Not Her


Book Description

It was a Tuesday like any other. And then it wasn't. A simple encounter at a supermarket changed Carin Fletcher's and Leann Cane's lives literally. Suddenly Carin, a pretty, self-absorbed, underemployed college graduate, finds herself living as Leann, an uneducated, perennially poor, obese checkout clerk, and vice versa. Carin is at first horrified: she s enormous, she can barely make ends meet, her husband is an abusive loser, and she's saddled with the kid Leann had when she was a teenager. Meanwhile, Leann is initially thrilled: she's escaped destitution, she looks like a model, and people treat her completely differently. But as the days pass, it becomes clear that life isn't clear-cut for either woman. Carin finds herself attaching to Trevor, Leann's precocious son, and developing feelings for Jimmy, a fellow employee who treats her with the respect few others bother to give her because of her appearance. At the same time, Leann is living a life she's always wanted in a body she's always dreamed about, but that doesn't mean that all of her problems have gone away...and a new one is emerging with Carin's sometimes-boyfriend. Both women are facing unknowable futures that neither could have imagined. Are they destined to live this way forever? And if so, where will it all lead? A brilliant, nuanced, and surprising tale about the way the world sees us and the courses we are on, I'M NOT HER is a remarkably assured first novel that introduces a profound new storyteller."




Lana and Lilly Wachowski


Book Description

Lana and Lilly Wachowski have redefined the technically and topically possible while joyfully defying audience expectations. Visionary films like The Matrix trilogy and Cloud Atlas have made them the world's most influential transgender media producers, and their coming out retroactively put trans* aesthetics at the very center of popular American culture. Cáel M. Keegan views the Wachowskis' films as an approach to trans* experience that maps a transgender journey and the promise we might learn "to sense beyond the limits of the given world." Keegan reveals how the filmmakers take up the relationship between identity and coding (be it computers or genes), inheritance and belonging, and how transgender becoming connects to a utopian vision of a post-racial order. Along the way, he theorizes a trans* aesthetic that explores the plasticity of cinema to create new social worlds, new temporalities, and new sensory inputs and outputs. Film comes to disrupt, rearrange, and evolve the cinematic exchange with the senses in the same manner that trans* disrupts, rearranges, and evolves discrete genders and sexes.




In Search of Belonging


Book Description

A substantial anthology giving voice to the experience of transracial adoption in the UK through poetry, art, autobiography, memoir and oral testimony from over 50 adoptees.