Elevate Difference

Books

Unmentionables

Unmentionables is a striking collection of bold, in-your-face poetry that covers a variety of subjects using a type of broken-up and eclectic writing style. I found the poetry somewhat confusing, and though they focused on ordinary topics, like animals and nature, It was challenging to discern what they were all about.

Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical

Jesus Girls is a truly beautiful array of humbling feelings and bittersweet experiences, from fears of generational sin to tales of exchanging the pants off your own body with those from a hitchhiker. Divided into sections—community, worship, education, gender and sex, and story and identity—many of the stories were first printed in publications like Geez Magazine.

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems

Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems is a book outlining how virtues can be included in modern ethical analysis. There are multiple ways to apply virtue ethics, or, as the authors like to say, to put virtue ethics "to work." Illustrating the variations are thirteen different authors giving detailed accounts of virtue ethics at work inside schools, hospitals, courtrooms and boardrooms.

Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn

A “mitzvah” is colloquially translated as “a good deed,” but this Hebrew word actually means “commandment,” and observant Jews believe in 613 “mitzvot.” The commandments structure daily life and religious rituals, such as prayer, dietary habits, and romantic and sexual relationships.

My Father’s Love: Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl

I find memoirs difficult to criticize, especially when the content is personal and intimate. The first volume of author and poet Sharon Doubiago’s memoir, My Father's Love, feels like an open wound, the scar tissue scraped off to allow for belated healing.

Happy at Work, Happy at Home: The Girl’s Guide to Being a Working Mom

Happy at Work, Happy at Home is a starter lifestyle guide for the professional who is new to motherhood. It’s a great book to begin the parenting-career balance, although many moms may seek more specific guides about topics contained within, such as how to work effectively from a home office, or how to choose a day care center or nursery school.

How to Rule the World from Your Couch

Do you want to make a change in your life? Each December, as one calendar year ends and a new one is about to begin, most of us reflect upon where we have been and plan for where we want to be.

Louder Than Words: Emily

There were two things that drew me to this book. Firstly, the title is Emily and, hey, that’s my name, too! Secondly, and more importantly, the story revolves around a young girl called Emily whose life is plagued by physical illnesses, which she endearingly calls “Emily flu.” Could this book possibly be written about me? Alas, whilst I just suffer from chronic hypochondria, literary Emily has a genuine disease; the rare and incurable West Nile Virus.

Chocolate, Please: My Adventures in Food, Fat and Freaks

What is not to love about a comedian who combines the raunch of Margaret Cho with the political incorrectness of a Don Rickles, and the acerbic wit of a Dorothy Parker? Lisa Lampinelli deftly employs all of these qualities to describe a hard-fought but nonetheless victorious perspective on her own decisions and accomplishments.

Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan

Intimate Encounters: Filipina Women and the Remaking of Rural Japan is a culmination of professor Lieba Faier's fieldwork in the late 1990s in the Nagano region of Japan, specifically Central Kiso. For a few years, Faier lived in the area, interviewing both the Japanese natives and the Filipina women who came to Japan under entertainment visas.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life

Anyone who has ever been interested in the history of feminism knows of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. As author Lori D. Ginzberg notes, much of the focus has shifted towards Anthony, leaving few to know about Stanton.

Unrest: Poems

The poems in Joanna Rawson’s recent collection, Unrest, have the quality of things scrawled in the harsh fluorescent light of insomnia. The lines scurry in jagged lengths, infesting the broad pages with buzzing images of immigrants suffocating in a boxcar, feverish babies, a suicide bomber, and war.

Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank

When researching medical or social history, one of the things that often becomes apparent is the level of mystery that surrounded women’s bodies and bodily functions. This mystery and speculation is the subject of Randi Hutter Epstein’s Get Me Out. As the title suggests, Hutter Epstein, a medical journalist, presents an overview of ideas related to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth spanning from antiquity to the modern day.

Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits

Ask people to picture the Great Depression of the 1930s, and they’ll likely envision bread lines, rural poverty, and ragged families trying to hold destitution at bay. One photo, of a tired-looking woman, personifies the crisis. Called Migrant Mother, it depicts a worried female, hand on chin, looking into the distance as two cowering toddlers curl into her body. Taken by Dorothea Lange, the chillingly beautiful, if austere, photo has been used for nearly eighty years to illustrate the personal toll of economic troubles.

Epistemic Injustice: Power & The Ethics of Knowing

In Epistemic Injustice, Miranda Fricker identifies and explores the role of identity prejudice (based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) in producing both systematic and incidental epistemic injustices or injustices against people in their capacities as speakers, informants, or participants in the community’s sharing of knowledge.

The Sixties

Jenny Diski gave me more to contemplate in 134 pages of The Sixties than I could manage to willfully squeeze out of the last piece of popular literary fiction I read. It is clear after only a few sentences that Diski is a writer worth her salt, and why she was the one chosen to handle this topic. Often the sixties are romanticized to the point of obscurity, those who lived through them trying to weave fame, and infamy, out of their psychedelic experiences.

Girl Mary: A Novel

The Mary in _Girl Mary__ is known by many names and revered by many people. Type “Mary” into Google and the first match is a Wikipedia entry for “Mary (mother of Jesus),” her best known role. She is a major player in the spirituality of millions, yet much of her life remains a mystery.

A Community Organizer's Tale: People and Power in San Francisco

A Community Organizer’s Tale: People and Power in San Francisco is a radical history with a heap of theory folded in and a touch of imagery. It would be fascinating and informative to anyone interested in community organizing, housing issues, ethnic and labor struggles, civil rights, the history of San Francisco, or community-friendly city planning.

Never Make the Same Mistake Twice: Lessons On Love and Life Learned the Hard Way

Although I had never watched The Real Housewives of Atlanta, I was immediately drawn to Nene Leakes’ story even without knowing who she was. Once I opened this book, I did not put it down.

A Black Tie Affair

Sherrill Bodine is back with more characters from Chicago's fated world of fashion and money in her second book A Black Tie Affair.

Louder Than Words: Marni

Louder Than Words is a series aimed at teenagers about teenage experiences. Atypically, the volumes are also written by teenagers.

Thicker Than Water: A Kit O'Malley Mystery

When I took creative writing classes in college, our professor always said, “Show, don’t tell.” Meaning, let the reader see the story without articulating every detail. Well, Lindy Cameron, author of Thicker Than Water, tells everything through wordy dialogue, detailed facial expressions, and exhaustive character descriptions.

Hollywood Is Like High School With Money

In the new novel Hollywood is Like High School with Money, Zoey Dean explores high-stakes backstabbing amidst the glamorous realm of movie making. This book is reflective of the author’s typical genre: juvenile novels set in ritzy realms where teenagers act like jaded adults beyond what is typical among American youth.

I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s

I Still Do was written to help anyone who has or may be coping with someone in their family who has Alzheimer’s. It is a candid and emotional portrayal of author Judith Fox’s husband Ed along with their heartfelt story. Fox loves photography and capturing that perfect picture, and it shows in the photos in this book, as well as in the striking photo on the book cover.

Living History: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement

“I am neutral on Israel,” I said as I helped lay out the first issue of a women’s newspaper one evening in the early seventies. “After all, I am not Jewish.” Like many critical of nationalism, I was silent. After all, comments on Israeli policy can be matches igniting discussions among friends and co-workers that end in bitterness, charges of anti-Semitism, or in the case of Jewish critics, of being “self-hating Jews.” Frankly, only the bombing of Lebanon in 2006 and the invasion of Gaza last winter pushed me into open criticism of Israeli policies and my first participation in protests.

Feminist Agendas and Democracy in Latin America

The feminist experience of women in Latin America is not one that is often written about or discussed. Many discussions about politics in Latin America leave feminism out, as discussions of feminism in general are often limited to the U.S. and Europe.

The Sand Castle

Sometimes, you can judge a book by it’s cover. In this case, the front cover of the book in question depicts two women in bathing caps and red lipstick and resembles a scene from an Esther Williams movie.

From Pink to Green: Disease Prevention and the Environmental Breast Cancer Movement

...the environmental breast cancer movement is well positioned to use its breast cancer work as a way to contribute not only to the eradication of the disease itself but also to the environmental health of all humans and other living beings. When I was diagnosed with Stage II invasive ductile carcinoma, I was angry not just because I now had cancer, but because no one seemed to be talking about its causes or, better yet, prevention.

NIV: 39 & 27

Hayes' new volume of poetry, NIV: 39&27 is theology that travels. Most people know a story of someone accosted at an airport with a copy of The Bhagavad Gita.

The Delicacy and Strength of Lace

The Delicacy and Strength of Lace is a rare and beautiful collection, illustrating the power of artful expression in a time when communication is, more often than not, abrupt, cursory, and expedient.
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