Elevate Difference

Books

City of Victory

Anita Saran’s short story, City of Victory, is one of the best crafted stories I’ve read in a long time. She has a knack of bringing the setting to the forefront without intrusion. To call this piece of work a short story is an understatement. I find it to be more of a novella. The story is set in sixteenth century Vijayanagar, a city in South India known as Hampi today. Jehaan is a gypsy girl, who is forced to be one of the maids of honor to the queen.

Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective

Forgiveness is everywhere. Oprah is extolling its necessity when not engaged directly in seeking it for herself. Female celebrities seem to be forever forgiving (or not) someone, though among the most talked about are unresolved differences between mothers and daughters (a la Jennifer Aniston and Tori Spelling).

Sex Work and the City: The Social Geography of Health and Safety in Tijuana, Mexico

Most studies of prostitution still focus on the supply side: the women and girls, the boys and men, and the transgender and transsexual people who toil sexually to survive, meet temporary needs, and thrive. An increasing number of studies focus on the demand side: the direct consumers and the globalizing forces that bring them together. Carved down from what was probably a fine Ph.D.

Fed Up

Given the strained and perilous relationship I have with my own mother, I have a lot of admiration for any mother-daughter pair that get along well enough to successfully negotiate the writing of a novel. That said, Fed Up could have been a lot better than it was. I give the authors points for creating a strong and opinionated female character, Chloe, who solves the mystery of a poisoned woman on her own through a rough mixture of luck and logic.

Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region

Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region is the fourth in a series of volumes, following The Southern Region, The Eastern Region, and _[West Africa and the Sahel](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pro

Micrographia

Monadnock. Ochers. Moraine. These are some of the terms you’ll find while reading Emily Wilson’s Micrographia. You will find yourself consulting Webster’s a lot. Unless, of course, you know a great deal about isolated rock hills and unconsolidated glacial debris. Heading spinning yet?

Men and Feminism

First off, when you see the cover of Men and Feminism you'll notice that this book is part of the Seal Press Studies series. But do not freak out! While this book can easily be in a Gender & Women's Studies course syllabus, I also believe this is an excellent book for anyone to pick up in order to know more about how men have fit into the feminist movement. What's that? You don't think that men have been a part of the feminist movement?

First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War

Before reading First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War, I didn’t even know to whom Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America from 1861-1865, was married. The book is certainly educational, and was interesting to read about the war from a Southern perspective rather than the Union point of view I received in my U.S.

Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited

When I was about ten years old, my mother sat me down one Saturday afternoon and said “Sara, today we’re going to watch Gone with the Wind.

Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness

Much has been made of representations of bodies, women’s bodies especially, in the media; this terrain is heavily traversed, particularly in feminist discourse. Magazines can be particularly insidious culprits of spreading rigid body doctrines, and for this they have been criticized and pulled apart in many ways. What makes Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness different is that Shari L.

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma: A Tale of Obsession, Nostalgia, and the World’s Most Charming Mammal

I remember the first time that I saw a hedgehog. I was studying abroad in England, returning home after a night out, and outside my flat I heard a snuffling sound in the underbrush. Seconds later, a small hedgehog toddled out, seemingly unfazed by our presence.

Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States

In Making Marriage Work, Kristin Celello outlines the evolution of public perceptions and attitudes about marriage and divorce in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on magazine articles, films and popular books, she specifically looks at the development of the notion that being married requires a great deal of work and that a happy marriage is something worth working toward.

Christotainment: Selling Jesus through Popular Culture

For years now, “Bible-thumping ideology” has clashed with a mainstream popular culture that seems to stand for everything fundamentalist Christians oppose. That is, however, until fundamentalist Christians discovered how they could harness the power of popular culture to sell their own messages of purity, penance, and prayer. This is where Shirley Steinberg and Joe Kincheloe’s anthology Christotainment: Selling Jesus through Popular Culture begins.

The Woman In The Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory

I have always associated the zoot suit with Cab Calloway and the big band, jazz, and swing era. Never did it occur to me that this type of suit would be the focal point of a movement or two, faceously put. I also thought the trend of wearing loose clothing, as an act of rebellion, was taken from the prison population in which the usage of belts was not allowed. Little did I know how central it was to the Mexican American identity, from the 1930s leading up to the Chicano movement. Catherine S.

Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Elizabeth Alexander’s Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration captures the essence of hope. Alexander unites all readers through illustrations of day-to-day activities. She begins “Each day we go about our business/Walking past each other, catching each other’s/Eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.” This opening stanza illuminates the monotony of daily activities by breathing new life into them.

The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation

Fanny Howe’s ostensible concern in The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation is the origin and nature of her writing life.

Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with your Body

Quit dieting and declare a truce with your body. This seemingly straight-forward proposition functions as the springboard from which authors Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby jump into a discussion of what it means to accept one's self and how to dismantle the countless negative and judgmental messages we receive and propagate on the daily.

The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It

It’s impossible to study, be in, write about, or fight against _______ (you fill in the blank) sex work, prostitution, and sexual trafficking without getting some or all of it wrong. I’m not the only straight white guy to write about prostituted women, but without always acknowledging my privilege and standpoints reflexively.

Haley’s Hints Green Edition

Green is the new black. Today, it’s fashionable to be environmentally conscious, yet many of the eco-conscious tips and remedies in Haley’s Hints Green Edition are household remedies and grocery solutions that a hardworking and wise grandmother would have meted out 'back in the day'.

Eat First--You Don't Know What They'll Give You: The Adventures of an Immigrant Family & Their Feminist Daughter

Normally the books I get pitches for are new and about to come out. Today I present you with a book that is now ten years old, but is better than most memoirs at your local big box bookstore. Eat First--You Don't Know What They'll Give You is actually more of a family memoir than a personal memoir. Most notably, Sonia is one the founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

El Reflejo

Long Beach is unlike any other city in Southern California; it is a place where both million dollar homes and low-income housing co-exist within mere miles of each other, it is suburban and urban, it’s an oppressive, concrete jungle that happens to be surrounded by picturesque beaches, but most compelling, perhaps, is the eclectic mix of people that call the city home.

What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

March 20, 2009 marked the six-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Although the half a dozen years of occupation must seem like an extended nightmare from which Iraqis are anxious to awake, for many young Americans an occupied Iraq is the only Iraq they have ever known. This is precisely why Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s research could not have come at a better time.

A Toast in the House of Friends

Oliver’s collection of poetry is a haunting tribute to her son’s death. However, the collection itself has a universal theme, relatable to readers who haven’t experienced the same loss. Oliver creatively uses words and structure to create her own expression. The book is a collection of poetry in varying lengths and poetic pattern, thus keeping a good flow, as well as engaging.

The Makedown

The Makedown is marketed as a witty take on a makeover in reverse. However, this part of the storyline actually occurs in the last fourth of the novel.

Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire

A clever play on the seminal novel Kiss of the Spider Woman by Argentine writer and political exile Manuel Puig, Amber Dawn’s anthology Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire promises a transgressive alternative to traditional horror literature and its stereotypical, categorical portrayals of women and their

Ruins

Upon reading Ruins, I was struck by the urgency of the content. Set in post-revolutionary Cuba the characters exist in a state of stagnant ideologies and hopes. Throughout the narrative Achy Obejas exposes a world that is startlingly familiar, one in which political values change according to the realities in which they exist.

Quietly Sure - Like the Keeper of a Great Secret

If I could clap for a book, I would without a doubt for Jo Dery’s newest release, Quietly Sure - Like the Keeper of a Great Secret. (Come to think of it, there’s nothing stopping me, is there?) For a book with such few words, it’s surely good at captivating your attention from the get-go.

Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America

Originally published in 1931, Dynamite hearkens back to an era of American capitalism a little less glossy, a little bloodier, and with striking parallels to today. In this account, Adamic provided one of the first overviews of U.S. labor history to that point, although his narrative is clearly not intended to be comprehensive, but rather focuses on the role of violence in the movements.

A World I Loved: The Story of an Arab Woman

Nostalgia is front and center in Wadad Makdisi Cortas’ atmospheric memoir of life in Beirut, a war-torn city once belonging to Syria and later, the capital of Lebanon. Born in 1909, Cortas died in 1979, but her impassioned account of a four-decade career as principal of the Ahliah School for Girls touches on themes that remained pertinent throughout the twentieth century—colonialism and the founding of Israel, among them. Cortas was fiercely committed to the education of girls and sought international examples to prod her students into imagining an array of possibilities for their lives.

Be Strong and Curvaceous

It is not easy to like Be Strong & Curvaceous, especially if you are not a Christian and die-hard fashionista. In this novel, believing in a Christian god is as usual as fancying the latest Chanel dress or a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. Don’t let the title fool you either.
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