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To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World (Feminist Media Histories #7)
by Yiman WangA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theater, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinized due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant misfit—innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism that beset her life and career. In this critical study of Wong's cross-media and transnational career, Yiman Wang marshals extraordinary archival research and a multifocal approach to illuminate a lifelong labor of performance. Viewing Wong as a performer and worker, not just a star, To Be an Actress adopts a feminist decolonial perspective to speculatively meet her as an interlocutor while inviting a reconsideration of racialized, gendered, and migratory labor as the bedrock of the entertainment industries.
Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory
by Solomon J. BragerA moving and provocative graphic memoir exploring inherited trauma, family history, and the ever-shifting understanding of our own identities, for readers of Gender Queer and I Was Their American Dream.Solomon Brager grew up with accounts of their great-grandparents’ escape from Nazi Germany, told over and over until their understanding of self was bound up with the heroic details of their ancestors’ exploits. Their great-grandmother related how her husband, a boxing champion, thrashed Joseph Goebbels and cleared beer halls of Nazis with his fists, how she broke him out of an internment camp and carried their children over the Pyrenees mountains. But that story was never the whole picture; zooming out, everything becomes more complicated.Alongside the Levis’ propulsive journey across Europe and to the United States, Brager distills fascinating research about the Holocaust and connected periods of colonial history. Heavyweight asks us to consider how the patterns of history emerge and reverberate, not as a simple chain of events but in haunting layers. Confronting the specters of violence as both historian and descendent, this book is an exploration of family mythology, intergenerational memory, and the mark the past makes on the present.In conversation with works by Rebecca Hall, Nora Krug, Rutu Modan, and Leela Corman, Heavyweight will contribute to the collective work of Holocaust studies and the chronicle of woven human stories.
Creep \ Creep (Spanish edition): Acusaciones y confesiones
by Myriam GurbaDe la aclamada autora de Mean (Mala onda), una de las escritoras que con más ferocidad han explorado la identidad latinx desde una perspectiva interseccional, llega esta implacable e incisiva colección de ensayos que confronta la opresión dominante e insidiosa, y la toxicidad que se ha colado en la sociedad: tanto en los libros, las escuelas y los hogares como en los sistemas que la perpetúan. Un creep puede ser una figura singular, un villano que obliga a las cosas a hacer ruido por la noche. Pero creep es también lo que hace la niebla: acecha para realizar su trabajo sucio, silenciar los gritos, ocultar la verdad y encubrir a aquellos que rondan en su interior. Creep es la sociología informal de Gurba sobre los creeps, una profunda exploración dentro de los oscuros recovecos de las tradiciones tóxicas que asolan a los Estados Unidos y dan vida a los agresores que invaden nuestros libros, escuelas y hogares. A través de una crítica cultural a modo de ensayos personales, Gurba explora las formas en las que la opresión se propaga colectivamente y sostiene ecosistemas que distribuyen de manera injusta el sufrimiento y la muerte prematura de los más vulnerables. Sin embargo, identificar individuos, grupos sociales y culturas creep es sólo la mitad del proyecto de este libro: la otra mitad consiste en examinar cómo nosotros, en tanto individuos, comunidades e instituciones, podemos desafiar los creeps y deshacer la niebla que pretende cegarnos.Con implacable agudeza, humor áspero y un estilo atrevido y despiadado, Gurba implica a todos y todo; desde Joan Didion hasta su antiguo agresor, desde los estereotipos mexicanos hasta el sistema carcelario, nadie saldrá indemne.---From talented Mexican American writer, story-teller, and visual artist Myriam Gurba comes a brand-new collection of essays that seek to redefine what a "creep" is, via cultural criticism disguised as personal essays and seek to redefine accountability, illuminating how social groups create, strengthen, perpetuate, and protect hierarchies which ensnare, harm, and sometimes even kill the subjugated.Myriam’s new book is an essay collection entitled CREEP (and Other Essays), which aims to be an informal sociology of creeps. Though the term may instantly evoke images of the Harvey Weinsteins of the world—and they are by no means outside of Myriam’s scope—these essays range far and wide to zero in on lesser-known and unexpected creeps like William Burroughs, Joan Didion, the criminal justice system, the public education system, and, yes, even our own publishing industry. Each essay a bullet, Myriam targets and identifies individual creeps, creepy social groups, and creepy cultures. But that’s only half of the book’s taxonomic project. The other half is examining how individuals, communities, and institutions challenge creeps and creepiness. The essays in CREEP—cultural criticism disguised as personal essay—seek to redefine accountability, illuminating how social groups create, strengthen, perpetuate, and protect hierarchies which ensnare, harm, and sometimes even kill the subjugated. The collection also maps oppression not as an act, but as an environment—the very water we’re swimming in, the air we breathe—that unfairly distributes suffering and premature death to those minoritized by gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, immigration status, age, poverty, and other exploitable differences. Of course, Myriam does it all in the distinctive campy style for which she has become known, propelled by aggressive Chicana wit and an insatiable urge to tip sacred cows.
The Grief Cure: Looking for the End of Loss
by Cody DelistratyThe Next Big Idea Club’s Must-Read Book of JuneA Bustle Most Anticipated Read“A wise and perceptive journey into grief and the ways we seek to assuage it. Incredibly powerful reading for all who have known, or who will inevitably know, loss.” —Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse and Art MonstersIn this lyrical and moving story of the world of Prolonged Grief, journalist Cody Delistraty reflects on his experience with loss and explores what modern science, history, and literature reveal about the nature of our relationship to grief and our changing attitudes toward its cure.When Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer in his early 20s, he found himself unsure how to move forward. The typical advice was to move through the five stages, achieve closure, get back to work, go back to normal. So begins a journey into the new frontiers of grief, where Delistraty seeks out the researchers, technologists, therapists, marketers, and communities around the world who may be able to cure the pain of loss in novel ways. From the neuroscience of memory deletion to book prescriptions, laughter therapy, psilocybin, and Breakup Bootcamp, what ultimately emerges is not so much a cure as a fresh understanding of what living with grief truly means. As Delistraty created his own ad hoc treatment plan, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health Organization gave extended, disruptive grief an official name: Prolonged Grief Disorder. A diagnosis, based on meeting several symptoms and contingencies, has opened innovative avenues of treatment and an important conversation about a debilitating form of grief, but it has also opened a debate as to whether this form of grief, no matter how severe and unrelenting, is best approached medically at all.Braiding deep, emotional resonance with sharp research and historical insight, Delistraty places his own experience in dialogue with great writers and thinkers throughout history who have puzzled over this eternal question: how might we best face loss?
Woman of Interest: A Memoir
by Tracy O'NeillMOST ANTICIPATED READ and MUST READ OF 2024: The Millions, LitHub, Esquire, BookRiot, Bustle, Vulture, Boston Globe, Brit & Co, Southern LivingA National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honoree delivers her first work of nonfiction: a compulsively readable, genre-bending story of finding her missing birth mother and, along the way, learning the priceless power of self-knowledge.In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she’d never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea.After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O’Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done, picking up the trail of clues and becoming her own hell-bent detective. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover—the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own—was too tempting.Written like a mystery novel, Woman of Interest is a tale of self-discovery and fugitivity from convention that features a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family. O’Neill gorgeously bends the detective genre to her own will as a writer, stepping out of the shadows of her own self-conception to illuminate the hopes of the woman of interest she is both chasing and becoming.
Queens of Afrobeat: Women, Play, and Fela Kuti's Music Rebellion
by Dotun AyobadeIn Queens of Afrobeat, the women of Afrobeat music—a unique blend of jazz, soul, highlife, and West African rhythms—are finally given the recognition they deserve. This extensive study takes a multifaceted view of the storied lives of the women behind Fela Kuti's activist music.Dotun Ayobade's wide-ranging research pulls from interviews with surviving queens, ethnographic narratives, the exploration of newspaper archives, and close readings of album covers, photographs, and promotional materials to help us see and understand the women who surrounded Fela Kuti on stage and in everyday life. Not only were these artists crucial performers and backup singers for Kuti's most important compositions, they also played key roles in his activism and campaigns of social protest against the Nigerian government in the 1970s. Drawing on previously untapped material, Queens of Afrobeat weaves together an intricate narrative of women's participation in popular music. The stories of these remarkable women transform and uniquely personalize our understanding of the politics and performance of one of the major modern musical traditions in Africa.
Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond
by Dean ButlerCelebrating its 50th anniversary and still airing in the U.S. and around the world, Little House on the Prairie is one of the most cherished family dramas in television history, and this smart, candid memoir from beloved star Dean &“Almanzo&” Butler, who played Laura &“Half-Pint&” Ingalls&’ eventual husband, is a must-read for fans, filled with insider stories and anecdotes. Cast just before his twenty-third birthday, Dean Butler joined Little House on the Prairie halfway through its run, gaining instant celebrity and fans&’ enduring affection.Ironically, when the late, great Michael Landon remarked that Little House would outlive everyone involved in making it, Butler deemed it unlikely. Yet for four decades and counting, Butler has been defined in the public eye as Almanzo Wilder—a role he views as the great gift of his life. Butler had been cast as a romantic lead before, notably in the made-for-TV movie of Judy Blume&’s Forever, opposite Stephanie Zimbalist. But Little House was, and remains, one of the most treasured shows in television history. As the eventual husband of Laura &“Half-pint&” Ingalls—and the man who would share actress Melissa Gilbert&’s first real-life romantic kiss—Butler landed as a central figure for the show&’s devoted fans. Now, with wit and candor, Butler recounts his passage through the Prairie, sharing stories and anecdotes of the remarkable cast who were his on-screen family. But that was merely the beginning of a diverse career that includes Broadway runs and roles on two other classic shows—Moondoggie in The New Gidget and Buffy&’s ne&’er-do-well father, Hank, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Coming of age during a golden era of entertainment, Butler has evolved along with it, and today enjoys success and fulfillment as a director and producer—notably of NBC Golf&’s Feherty—while remaining deeply loyal to Little House. The warmth, heart, and decency that fans of Laura and Almanzo fell in love with on Little House echo through this uplifting memoir, a story, in Butler&’s words, about &“good luck, good television, and the very good—if gloriously imperfect—people who made it so.&”
Remembering Che: My Life with Che Guevara (The Che Guevara Library)
by Aleida MarchChe Guevara&’s widow remembers a great revolutionary romance tragically cut short by Che&’s assassination in Bolivia.When Aleida March first met Che Guevara, she was a twenty-year-old combatant from the provinces of Cuba, he an already legendary revolutionary and larger-than-life leader. And yet there was another, more human side to Che, one Aleida was given special access to, first as his trusted compañera and later as the love of his life.With great immediacy and poignancy, Aleida recounts the story of their epic romance—their fitful courtship against the backdrop of the Cuban revolutionary war, their marriage at the war&’s end and the birth of their four children, up through Che&’s tragic assassination in Bolivia less than ten years later. Featuring excerpts from their letters, nearly one hundred never-before-seen photographs from their private collection, and a moving short story Che wrote for Aleida, here is an intimate look at the man behind the legend and the tenacious, courageous woman who knew him best—a story of passionate love, wrenching sacrifice, and unwavering heroism.
Another Step Up the Mountain: A Journey of Courage
by Brit Elders Dianette WellsA True Story of Triumph Over Adversity and the Loss of a ChildIn this gripping memoir, learn the true story of how mountaineering and extreme sports enthusiast Dianette Wells endures the devastating loss of her son and learns to balance motherhood with a life of extreme adventure.Climbing over adversity. In her groundbreaking memoir, Another Step Up the Mountain, Dianette tells of her unique experiences climbing the Seven Summits, participating in adventure races (including four Eco-Challenges and ultra marathons around the world), as she raised three wonderful children. Trying to survive a tumultuous marriage, Dianette felt empty and unhappy. However, everything changed when she discovered adventure racing. Full of beautiful and uplifting moments, Dianette’s story will inspire you to discover the meaning of joy in your own healing journey.Grief recovery and restoration with every step of the way. In 2015, Dianette lost her son Johnny to a wingsuiting accident, driving her to withdraw into severe depression. However, with the support of those around her, Dianette’s desire to compete in endurance sports and her love of mountain climbing helped her find an inner strength to begin healing. As she had in the past, she faced adversity and found her inner power by embracing her devotion to sports and family. Full of beautiful and uplifting moments, Dianette’s story will inspire you to rediscover what joy means to you and how we must cherish our intrinsic abilities.Inside discover how Dianette:Discovers inner strength amidst adversityBalances motherhood while participating in extreme sportsFinds resilience through mountaineering and ultra marathonsLives with tragic loss with unwavering determinationIf you liked books such as No Summit Out of Sight; Climbing High; Into Thin Air; or Mother, Nature, you’ll love Another Step Up the Mountain.
Israel Odyssey: A Memoir
by P. David HornikA deeply personal account of an American Jew&’s relocation to the Holy Land from &“one of Israel&’s best-informed and most astute journalists&” (Chicago Jewish Star). What makes a young American Jew who was never encouraged to move to Israel—whether by individuals or in an organizational framework—suddenly decide to do so at age twenty-eight? How does a young American Jewish family, with little background in Hebrew, make its way in a new, highly distinct culture with no more than a shallow resemblance to America&’s? This memoir traces the unlikely emergence in its author of a fascination, a passionate concern, and an identification with Israel that left him no choice but to relocate there. On the one hand, his parents were Austrian Jewish refugees from Nazism; on the other, the family moved to what was then a rural area of New York State where almost no other Jews lived—resulting in a richly complex, albeit confusing and difficult, identity to navigate. Israel Odyssey opens a window on modern Israel as seen by an immigrant both deeply patriotic but, at the same time, carrying cultural baggage from across the ocean. P. David Hornik&’s highly personal story is his quest for inner peace and fulfillment amid the pressures, strife, and special vitality of the old-new Land.
Five Hours North: A Memoir of Outlaw Farming on California's Cannabis Frontier
by Ty KearnsThe colorful true adventures of an unexpected "pot-star" turned cannabis CEO in the new Wild West of California's green rush. Don't give anyone your real name. Never say anything to your loved ones. Always have a full tank of gas, a jump starter, and an alibi. The year is 2008, and the green rush is taking root in Humboldt County, California. Born and raised in this "Emerald Triangle" famous for its natural beauty and perfect cannabis-growing conditions, Ty Kearns wants no part of it. He has seen too many friends and acquaintances lose or derail their lives for the green dream, always feeling the itch for more cash and more power. But as a college student with tuition to pay—and few options in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression—Ty is willing to try almost anything. When his eccentric Uncle Bob introduces him to some local growers, the rules of the industry start to dominate Ty's double life. He spends his days taking notes in lecture halls and his nights and weekends five hours north at his secret farm in the mountains, where danger and beauty are as tangible as the plants themselves. Soon, he is more successful than he ever could have imagined—more successful than just about any other grower on the mountain. But he faces natural disasters, animal encounters, the gossip mill, the authorities, the highs and lows of first love, and a crowd of "trimmigrants" and pot-star groupies as he grapples with the damage that growing does to his mental health and the land itself. Today, Ty is the CEO of SEVEN LEAVES, a fully licensed cannabis cultivation operation with product in over four hundred stores and a commitment to 100 percent green energy. But his path to sustainable growing was long and gnarly. Growing pot wasn't Ty's plan, but he found his calling when he stepped out of the shadow of the mountain. A coming-of-age journey where the truth is stranger than fiction, Five Hours North tells the story of the lost pre-legalization weed scene, when the characters were larger than life and the growers were always one step from disaster.
Billy Waters is Dancing: Or, How a Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain
by Mary L. ShannonThe story of William Waters, Black street performer in Regency London, and how his huge celebrity took on a life of its own Every child in Regency London knew Billy Waters, the celebrated &“King of the Beggars.&” Likely born into enslavement in 1770s New York, he became a Royal Navy sailor. After losing his leg in a fall from the rigging, the talented and irrepressible Waters became London&’s most famous street performer. His extravagantly costumed image blazed across the stage and in print to an unprecedented degree. For all his contemporary renown, Waters died destitute in 1823—but his legend would live on for decades. Mary L. Shannon&’s biography draws together surviving traces of Waters&’ life to bring us closer to the historical figure underlying them. Considering Waters&’ influence on the London stage and his echoing resonances in visual art, and writing by Douglass, Dickens, and Thackeray, Shannon asks us to reconsider Black presences in nineteenth-century popular culture. This is a vital attempt to recover a life from historical obscurity—and a fascinating account of what it meant to find fame in the Regency metropolis.
Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir
by Mark MortonA gritty, revealing heavy metal memoir by Lamb of God&’s guitarist and lyricist, Mark Morton, which explores both his life in music and his tumultuous path through addiction and into recovery
Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter's Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination
by Sadie DingfelderAn award-winning science writer discovers she&’s faceblind and investigates the neuroscience of sight, memory, and imagination—while solving some long-running mysteries about her own life. Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she&’s a little quirky. But while she&’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it&’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory. As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people—including Dingfelder—can&’t. A lively blend of personal narrative and popular science, Do I Know You? is the story of one unusual mind&’s attempt to understand itself—and a fascinating exploration of the remarkable breadth of human experience.
After the Worst has Happened: Tales from a funeral director on the lighter side of death
by Richard GoslingWhen Richard Gosling's young daughter faced emergency surgery, a colleague carelessly asked what would happen if she died. In that moment, Richard was forced to picture his own daughter's funeral, and the people who are there to help families after the worst has happened.Aged 40, Richard left his job in the public service and started preparing coffins, driving hearses, assisting in the mortuary and bringing in the deceased from hospitals and nursing homes, slowly working his way up to become operations manager of a venerable Sydney funeral home.After the Worst Has Happened lifts the curtain on a world we all try to avoid but must pass through. It shows the lighter side of death amid all its other facets, as Richard steers families through heartbreak, anger and grief while holding space for love and acceptance. Ultimately, it's about how extraordinarily beautiful it can be to spend a daily life surrounded by our final rite of passage.
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
by Olivia LaingAn Oprah Daily Summer Reading Recommendation • Named one of the most anticipated books of 2024 by the BBC, The Observer, Irish Times, The Guardian, and The Millions. Inspired by the restoration of her own garden, "imaginative and empathetic critic" (NPR) Olivia Laing embarks on an exhilarating investigation of paradise. In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth-century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there’s still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change. The result is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.
Resilient Grieving, Second Edition (Second Edition): How To Find Your Way Through A Devastating Loss
by Lucy HoneThe loss of someone you hold dear may be beyond your control; being paralyzed by grief is not. In 2014, Dr. Lucy Hone, the trailblazer in the field of Resilient Grieving, was faced with her own inescapable sorrow after her twelve-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. By developing—and following—the strategies of Resilient Grieving shared here, she found a proactive way to manage her grief, embrace life again, and discover profound meaning. In this completely updated and expanded second edition, she continues to shift the narrative on how to grieve. With new scientific evidence, Dr. Hone demonstrates the inadequacy and potential harm of Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages model of grief. In its place, Dr. Hone shares the best of contemporary grief advice—offering tools to handle emotions, manage relationships, and get the support you need—replacing helplessness with hope and a sense of control. Here, also, are all-new, practical insights into how to keep your loved one’s memory alive. Dr. Hone has never been more convinced that the tools of Resilient Grieving can transform the ways that readers approach grief, helping them draw on their innate ability to cope with loss and become active participants in their grief journey—and, in time, get back to living happy, healthy, meaningful lives, just as she has done.
To Make a Killing: Arthur Cutten, the Man Who Ruled the Markets
by Robert StephensOne of the wildest, most spectacular decades in American history, the 1920s were a period of unprecedented growth and mass consumerism. In the New Era, people drank in speakeasies, danced to jazz, idolized gangsters, and bet their life savings on stocks.Born and raised in a small Canadian town, Arthur Cutten went to Chicago in 1890 with ninety dollars to his name. Through utter ruthlessness, he amassed a fortune trading in grain futures and stocks. Cutten was heralded as the modern Midas, and his every move was followed by the masses, who believed they could get rich quick. But everything changed after the crash of 1929. The heroes of prosperity became the villains of the Great Depression. Determined to crack down on the “banksters,” the Roosevelt administration launched an all-out attack on those it blamed for the collapse – and Cutten was at the top of the list. A US Senate committee probed how he manipulated stock prices. The Grain Futures Administration moved to bar him from trading. And the Bureau of Internal Revenue indicted him for income tax evasion. But the wily operator won on every count: he emerged from the Senate investigation unscathed, maintained his grain trading privileges after a victory in the Supreme Court, and left almost nothing for the tax collectors upon his death.To Make a Killing tells the tale of Cutten’s journey to fabulous wealth, the forces that propelled him, and the fascinating characters in his life.
The Essence of Invention: Medicine and the Joy of Creativity
by Kieran MurphyMeet the brilliant mavericks who invented the future of medicine and saved the lives of millions.The Essence of Invention tells the story of medical invention, from the development of anesthesia and safe surgery, through to the advent of vaccines against smallpox, polio, and Covid-19, that have changed the very foundation of patient care. Dr. Kieran Murphy, a renowned neuroradiologist and inventor in his own right, captures the mind of the inventor — their turmoil, their persistence, their rejection by their peers — and how a small percentage are eventually recognized.The same kind of energy that drove van Gogh or the Beatles can manifest in medicine as inventiveness and the creation of new medical devices. The field may be very different from what is traditionally considered a creative industry, but the fundamental energy, drive, motivation, dreaming, aspiration, belief, and resilience are the same.In The Essence of Invention, Dr. Murphy celebrates the creative energy of courageous men and women who changed the world through medical science. He honours their unique gifts, and explains how a culture of creativity and collaboration can and must be established around them to allow their talents to take flight.
Dancing on My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy
by Simon WuA The Millions and Hyperallergic Most Anticipated Book of 2024 | A Publishers Weekly Summer Reads Pick“Simon Wu manages to be both a shrewd critic and enthused aspirant of what passes for today’s cultural capital. . . . with a disarming lack of cynicism that is both keen and refreshing.” –Cathy Park Hong"A genius melding of art criticism, autobiography, personal essay, and travel writing. . . . Wu—an artist, curator, and writer—layers experiences like translucent curtains through which we see the landscape of a past in the present making its future." –Claudia RankineAn expansive and deeply personal essay collection which explores the aesthetics of class aspiration, the complications of creating art and fashion, and the limits of identity politics.In Robyn’s 2010 track Dancing on My Own, the Swedish pop-singer chronicles a night on the dance floor in the shadow of a former lover. She is bitter, angry, and at times desperate, and yet by the time the chorus arrives her frustration has melted away. She decides to dance on her own, and in this way, she transforms her solitude into a more complex joy. Taking inspiration from Robyn’s seminal track, emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu dances through the institutions of art, capitalism, and identity in these expertly researched, beautifully rendered essays. In “A Model Childhood” he catalogs the decades’ worth of clutter in his mother’s suburban garage and its meaning for himself and his family. In “For Everyone,” Wu explores the complicated sensation of the Telfar bag (often referred to as “the Brooklyn Birkin”) and asks whether fashion can truly be revolutionary in a capitalist system—if something can truly be “for everyone” without undercutting someone else. Throughout, Wu centers the sticky vulnerability of living in a body in a world where history is mapped into every choice we make, every party drug we take, and every person we kiss.Wu’s message is that to dance on your own is to move from critique into joy. To approach identity with the utmost sympathy for the kinds of belonging it might promise, and to look beyond it. For readers of Cathy Park Hong and Alexander Chee, Dancing on My Own is a deeply felt and ultimately triumphant anthem about the never-ending journey of discovering oneself, and introduces a brilliant new writer on the rise.
The House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power
by Tom BowerFor fans and watchers of the Beckham Netflix documentary who want the rest of the story—an explosive tell-all account of the real lives of David and Victoria Beckham.As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For decades, adoring fans have been captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while their unrivalled fusion of showbiz, fashion, football and celebrity has been cultivated alongside the image of a strong marriage. When the much-trailed Netflix documentary Beckham aired in 2023, viewers were offered an even more intimate insight into their private lives. Produced by the Beckhams themselves, the series raised many questions, not only about their success and personal relationship, but also about the ruthlessly successful management of their image in the media. Are their lives really as perfect as the Beckhams would like the world to believe?Through extensive research, expert sourcing and interviews with insiders, Britain’s most celebrated investigative biographer, Tom Bower, has unearthed a succession of revelations that give surprising insight into the reality of ‘Brand Beckham’. Exploring the couple’s relationship, and the truth about their football and fashion careers, their finances and their new life in Miami, The House of Beckham unravels the extraordinary reality of the business-savvy cultural icons to tell an engrossing, often astonishing story of money, sex and power.
At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China
by Edward Wong&“This book&’s power comes from Wong&’s broad sense of the patterns of Chinese history, reflected in the lives of a father and son, and from his ability to toggle effortlessly between the epic and the intimate.&” —Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic&“Edward Wong&’s exquisite family chronicle achieves a level of humane illumination that only one of America&’s finest reporters on China could deliver. In tracing his father&’s journey—from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to America—Wong gives us a profound story of modern China itself. Anyone who once was absorbed by the power of Wild Swans will savor this meditation on memory, history, and belonging.&” —Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book AwardOne of Foreign Policy&’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024An epic story of modern China that weaves a riveting family memoir with vital reporting by the New York Times diplomatic correspondentThe son of Chinese immigrants in Washington, DC, Edward Wong grew up among family secrets. His father toiled in Chinese restaurants and rarely spoke of his native land or his years in the People&’s Liberation Army under Mao. Yook Kearn Wong came of age during the Japanese occupation in World War II and the Communist revolution, when he fell under the spell of Mao&’s promise of a powerful China. His astonishing journey as a soldier took him from Manchuria during the Korean War to Xinjiang on the Central Asian frontier. In 1962, disillusioned with the Communist Party, he made plans for a desperate escape to Hong Kong.When Edward Wong became the Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, he investigated his father&’s mysterious past while assessing for himself the dream of a resurgent China. He met the citizens driving the nation&’s astounding economic boom and global expansion—and grappling with the vortex of nationalistic rule under Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao. Following in his father&’s footsteps, he witnessed ethnic struggles in Xinjiang and Tibet and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. And he had an insider&’s view of the world&’s two superpowers meeting at a perilous crossroads.Wong tells a moving chronicle of a family and a nation that spans decades of momentous change and gives profound insight into a new authoritarian age transforming the world. A groundbreaking book, At the Edge of Empire is the essential work for understanding China today.
Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal: 1954-1955
by Norman MailerThe final previously unpublished work from two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the National Book Award, Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer is one of America's most consequential public intellectuals of the postwar period. He cofounded the Village Voice, and he was the author of twelve novels, among them The Naked and the Dead and Harlot&’s Ghost, as well as numerous works of nonfiction. He is truly one of the giants of American literature.Lipton's, A Marijuana Journal is the only work by Norman Mailer that has not been published previously. Written between 1954-55, from December to March, it contains many ideas he would develop in his later work. The journal includes daily musings, as well as thoughts profound. It is a must-read for Norman Mailer scholars, as well as literature professors.Lipton&’s, A Marijuana Journal also includes never before published letters between Robert Lindner (author of Rebel Without a Cause, Prescription for a Reberllion, and The 50 Minute Hour) and Norman Mailer. They introduce the reader to Mailer&’s state of mind during the time he was writing the journal and to the unique relationship he had with Dr. Lindner.
An Unexpected Light
by José SaramagoNobel Prize winner José Saramago tells a quiet and poetic story, an excerpt from his book Small Memories, of a lasting childhood experience of simple, soulful joy.The narrator's memories of a lost childhood paradise focus on two glorious days when he helped his uncle take some piglets to the market in Santarém. They traverse dusty roads, sleep in a barn and awake to a miraculous moonglow, and hear the animals in their &“infinite conversations.&” The journey, the night, the wind, the light. . . . This poetic story is an unforgettable adventure narrated by José Saramago and presented alongside Armando Fonseca&’s fanciful and evocative illustrations.A very special gift for readers of all ages.
Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey
by Florence WilliamsWinner of the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A Five Books "Best Literary Science Writing" Book of 2023 • A Smithsonian Best Science Book of 2022 • A Prospect Magazine Top Memoir of 2022 • A KCRW Life Examined Best Book of 2022 "Keen observer [and] deft writer" (David Quammen) Florence Williams explores the fascinating, cutting-edge science of heartbreak while seeking creative ways to mend her own. When her twenty-five-year marriage suddenly falls apart, journalist Florence Williams expects the loss to hurt. But when she starts feeling physically sick, losing weight and sleep, she sets out in pursuit of rational explanation. She travels to the frontiers of the science of "social pain" to learn why heartbreak hurts so much—and why so much of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Soon Williams finds herself on a surprising path that leads her from neurogenomic research laboratories to trying MDMA in a Portland therapist’s living room, from divorce workshops to the mountains and rivers that restore her. She tests her blood for genetic markers of grief, undergoes electrical shocks while looking at pictures of her ex, and discovers that our immune cells listen to loneliness. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to game her way back to health, she seeks out new relationships and ventures into the wilderness in search of an extraordinary antidote: awe. With warmth, daring, wit, and candor, Williams offers a gripping account of grief and healing. Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love.