Elevate Difference

Books

Enterprising Women in Urban Zimbabwe: Gender, Microbusiness, and Globalization

In the early 1990s, Mary Osirim took a team of interviewers to several urban areas in Zimbabwe to learn about the lives and financial status of women working in the “microenterprise sector.” She found that while women were largely excluded from education and much of the Zimbabwean economy, some had found a niche as crocheters, seamstresses, hairdressers, and “market traders” in fruits and vegetables and other goods. There is plenty of sociological theory—the author is, after all, an eminent sociologist—much of it concerning the damage wrought by globalization generally and more specifically

The Real HipHop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground

As a Euro-Native girl growing up neglected in a Canadian redneck home in the late '80s and early '90s, I copied my anti-establishment parents by hanging with drug dealers, thieves, and bikers. The only element of life I drew inspiration from was the arts: drawing, making and listening music, and martial arts.

The White Queen

Philippa Gregory’s latest novel, The White Queen, opens her series on the War of the Roses with a tale of blood and lust shrouded in historic mythology.

Rebel Rebel: Anti-Style

I have always been interested in the fashion of subcultures. I've been stenciling my clothes, painting stuff on them, adding studs and strategic rips, sewing random things together and pillaging thrift stores since I was a freshman in high school—which is why designer Keanan Duffty's book Rebel Rebel: Anti-Style originally caught my eye.

High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Beauty Pageants

Style writer Simon Doonan’s foreword starts out High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Pageants. Doonan feels that beauty pageants geared for children are no more exploitative or harmful than cheerleading or little league. He writes that children learn endurance, losing gracefully, and social skills. It also gives them exercise and breaks from the tedium of childhood.

American Romances: Essays

In this bountiful blend of writing, Rebecca Brown discusses the interpretation of words in the past and present. She mixes classic pieces of writing with contemporary history and combines her own coming-of-age anecdotes with other writings. Her commentary is sometimes shocking, sometimes eloquent, and overall, leaves you to wonder what she is thinking. Why does she choose to develop these essays this way?

Smash the Church, Smash the State!: The Early Years of Gay Liberation

Like all good memoirs of the 1960s and early ‘70s, Smash the Church, Smash the State! takes readers back to a time when revolution seemed imminent. Change was in the air and the fifty-one essays comprising Tommi Avicolli Mecca’s important anthology vividly capture the heady exhilaration of queer activists on both U.S. coasts as the possibility of being out-and-proud became increasingly tangible. The book is both a look back and a look forward.

Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility

Hollis Gillespie is a mother, writer, friend, sister, girlfriend, daughter and more. Her third book, Trailer Trashed, is comprised of touching and hilarious essays that shed light on all the different aspects of her life.

Garden Anywhere: How to Grow Gorgeous Container Gardens, Herb Gardens, and More—Without Spending a Fortune

Gardens are a form of autobiography. - Sydney Eddison Alys Fowler is British. Her book, The Thrifty Gardener, has been a hit in England. Garden Anywhere, the re-titled North American version, deserves the same success in Canada and the U.S. as it has across the pond. Fowler started gardening as a teenager. Now roughly 30, she goes against the grain of British gardening—or so it seems.

Kinky Gazpacho: Love, Life, and Spain

Lori Tharps’ Kinky Gazpacho does what memoirs do best: it brings us the author’s journey through her inner psychological life. The book spans Tharps’ kindergarten “Culture Day” in Milwaukee, Wisconsin through her present life as a freelance writer in Philadelphia.

Invisible Sisters

The loss of a loved one can wreak havoc on the closest of families. There doesn’t seem to be a formula that can predict which families will survive a tragedy and which families will break apart as a result.

All in a Day

All in a Day is a children's book by Cynthia Rylant that helps kids understand time is fleeting without being dark or frightening. The book urges readers to make the most of each day because "a day is all you have to be, it's all you get to keep." Rylant, who has written over 100 children's books and has received such honors as the Newbery Medal, does this quite effectively.

Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence Are Changing America

As sprawl becomes less environmentally acceptable, foreclosures soar, and media trumpet the end of the suburban dream, the suburbs or at least some of them, have emerged as a problem, rather than as a solution. Although the house prices in the true islands of affluence have fallen, crime, drugs, and gangs are emerging in suburban neighborhoods abandoned to working-class and immigrant people.

Silence Not, A Love Story

Everyone loves a love story, especially one with a happy ending, and award-winning playwright and journalist Cynthia L. Cooper’s latest play, a forty-four-scene two-act, is a whopper. Silence Not, A Love Story tells the improbable tale—based on a true story—of Gisa Peiper, a young Jewish student stifled by religious Orthodoxy, and Paul Konopka, a Catholic craftsman, who met in late-1920s Germany while working with the anti-fascist International Socialist Combat League, known as the ISK.

American Adulterer

I’ll admit I am neither a friend of celebrity culture or the particular brand of it that centers on the Kennedys. I am, however, interested in sexual politics and thus in the normative institutions of marriage and monogamy and the hardly less institutionalized behaviors of male bonding.

In Her Own Sweet Time: One Woman's Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment, and Motherhood

I read this book in one day. It, like the author, and like the problems she explores, is not perfect. Like the author, In Her Own Sweet Time is lovable and I eagerly devoured it for the stories she tells, the problems she outlines, and the social phenomena she identifies. The question “What is the impact of new reproductive technologies (NRTs) on feminism?" is a recurring motif within this book.

Yes, My Darling Daughter

“Such a pretty girl. Four years old; well loved by her young mother, Grace. But there’s something...'off ' about the child.” The above excerpt sets the scene for Margaret Leroy’s Yes, My Darling Daughter. Margaret Leroy offers a novel that is so original and suspenseful it pulls you in from the first page. The story involves Grace, a single mother who works full-time at a London flower shop, and Sylvie, her four-year-old daughter.

Geek Mafia

Rick Dakan’s novel, Geek Mafia, tells the exciting tale of Paul Reynolds, a recently unemployed comic book artist/videogame designer who befriends a wild crew of techie con men and women living in Silicon Valley.

Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do

Wednesday Martin lists Step-Dilemma Number One as “The Myth of the Blended Family” in this emotionally charged look into the real experiences of stepmothers: Stepmonster.

The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys

There’s no shortage of texts examining Jean Rhys, the woman whose writing is as highly regarded among second wave feminists as it is among literature professors. Rhys herself was at work on a memoir when she passed away in 1979, leaving behind the collection of pieces that became Smile Please.

Approaching Neverland: A Memoir of Epic Tragedy and Happily Ever After

I think a lot of writers, regardless of genre, dislike it when people ask, “So, what’s your book about?” I think they dislike it because oftentimes the inquirer (whether a bar buddy, an aunt, or literary agent) cannot take the time to sit down and feel the emotional pulse of the work. What they really want is for the writer to give them the SparkNotes version, the blurb, or the pitch.

The Man From Kinvara

Tess Gallagher's The Man From Kinvara is a richly written volume of short stories spanning the well-known poet and writer’s vast and prolific career. Who knew narratives of such everyday life could be so fascinating and provide captivating images? “The Lover of Horses,” the first story in this collection, is a tale of a family legacy passed on to each generation.

Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck

To paraphrase Sartre, heck is other people. For Marlo and Milton Fauster, it’s each other. The Fauster siblings are polar opposites; Milton is bookish and bullied while Marlo is tough and angsty. Both are intelligent, and after their deaths, become trapped in Heck, the underworld school run by Bea “Elsa” Bubb, the demon principal.

Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways

The fifth edition of Road Trip USA comes at an opportune time. Gas per gallon is down more than a dollar from last year, and in looking at a line graph projecting the U.S. unemployment rate, if it doesn’t trigger a desire to go on an uphill hike in the Colorado mountains, it exposes that there are plenty of people out there with newly found time on their hands.

Kiss The Sky

_“I don’t believe in the devil anymore. But if I did, he would look a lot like Ari Malcolm Klein.” _ This is how Farai Chideya draws her readers into her mesmerizing, charismatic novel Kiss The Sky. Sophie Maria Clare Lee, a Black girl from blue collar Baltimore, remakes herself by applying and being accepted to attend Harvard.

The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture

Once homosexuality has been fully incorporated and accepted into “mainstream” society, I wonder what group will be placed at the bottom of the totem pole. I use the word incorporated because it symbolizes a capitalistic tolerance without a desire or need to understand a person's totality.

The New Weird

The New Weird takes its name from the literary movement of the same name that includes speculative fiction and horror stories popularized in pulp magazines by authors such as [H.P.

Live Nude Elf: The Sexperiments of Reverend Jen

Reverend Jen Miller—artist, troll museum proprietor, elf-ear wearer, and reverend in the Universal Life Church—reprints and adapts the essays she wrote during her two-year stint as the writer for Nerve.com’s "I Did it for Science" column in Live Nude Elf: The Sexperiments of Reverend Jen. As the name suggests, the essays feature Miller performing experiments related to sex on herself and her friends.

Afraid to Go Home

Afraid to Go Home tells the story of Cathy, a successful career woman who is the head of a large company’s HR Department, but, after two failed marriages, trapped in an abusive relationship with Fred.

On the Line

I love everything about the U.S. Open except the line calls. I experienced this past weekend's U.S. Open upset for Serena Williams with a different perspective than if I hadn't read her memoir On the Line. The book is written in Serena's voice. It's personal, it's conversational, and that's why I like it. I enjoyed her reflection on her life thus far. I have to say that Serena is a spoiled brat, but that observation comes from her directly.
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