Elevate Difference

Books

The Ravenscar Dynasty

In 1904 a fire in a hotel in Carrarra, Italy takes the lives of brothers Richard and Rick Deravenel and one teenage offspring of each. A family relative, Neville Watkins, informs Richard's wife, Cecily, and their eighteen-year-old son, Edward, of the tragic deaths of their loved ones. He also uniforms his cousin that he believes the four men, who were in Carrarra on business, were murdered to hide questionable problems involving marble quarries.

Chick Lit: The New Woman's Fiction

You’ve seen it. Unmistakably pink, highly stylized and adorned with images of contemporary (glamorized) femininity – martini glasses, stilettos and Prada handbags. If you’ve stepped foot inside a chain bookstore in the past five years or so, you’ve seen chick lit in all its glory, usually grouped in a flashy eye-catching bunch near the front of the store. Hailed by some as “the new woman’s fiction,” the phenomenon known as chick lit is storming North America, the UK and beyond.

Globalization from Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Networks

On November 30, 1999, roughly 50,000 demonstrators descended upon Seattle, Washington, to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference. The mission of the conference was to increase global market liberalization, and every imaginable progressive activist group was in attendance—from Greenpeace and the AFL-CIO to the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, whose members donned turtle costumes and patrolled the crowds to promote non-violence.

The Woman’s Belly Book

The title made me laugh. After all, I am a woman with a belly upon which childbirth and a lack of exercise have left their marks. Like countless women, I love to loathe it. However, the uplifting tone of the author, Lisa Sarasohn, (also a public speaker, yoga instructor and bodywork therapist) has changed my outlook on my pudgy pooch and may do the same for others. Boosting vitality, releasing stress, revving up one’s sex life and sensuality, plus even increasing confidence are many of the goals Sarasohn aims to accomplish through suggested yoga-based exercises, journaling and crafting.

Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations Of Aje In Africana Literature

Teresa N. Washington, an associate professor of Africana Literature at Kent State University, has attempted a vindication of Africana writers who have tried to explicate the importance of aje in women of African heritage. The Yoruba word aje denotes the potency of personal spiritual power derived from Creation that can be possessed by both women and men. The controllers of that power, however, are revered women – matriarchs of society and the cosmos, who are given the respectful title of Mothers.

Mission Rejected: U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq

Mission Rejected explores the lives and motivations behind soldiers who have refused to serve in Iraq—either by finding a way out before their tours began or by returning home, devastated by what they saw in the desert and finding ways not to return when called.

The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy

Materialist feminist geographers Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham who write as J.K. Gibson-Graham have reissued their postmodern critique of representations of capitalism and economy. Using an Althusserian lens of over-determination, Gibson-Graham show that capitalism is not an inevitable tendency or hegemonic in diverse post-Fordist societies, as it has often been constituted in triumphalist right-wing discourses or in Marxian analyses, but that alternative non-capitalist economies are possible.

Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

Cutting isn’t just about cutting. It’s about burning, fainting, fingernail scratches, hospital visits, and apparent suicide attempts. It’s about what the author calls self-mutilation (though many sufferers prefer the term "self-injury" as "mutilation" implies that the goal is the scar, which isn’t always the case). These girls (and they are mostly girls) act out their anger or sadness on their own skin, inflicting pain but not attempting suicide.

Breaking the Silence: French Women’s Voices from the Ghetto

In her recently translated book Breaking the Silence, Fadela Amara attempts to rework and redefine feminism as it relates to her specific time and place. As a Muslim girl of Algerian immigrant parents growing up in the projects, Amara’s experience of feminism as the term is traditionally defined by western academics was non-existent. In fact, her book critiques the very term as it exists now, perceived by her to be owned by the white middle and upper-class women who coined it.
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