Elevate Difference

Books

Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture

Writing a book and having it published is not the accomplishment it used to be. While academic presses are not known for being as competitive as popular presses, they appear to be on the precipice of absurdity.

It's Beginning to Hurt

As the title of It’s Beginning to Hurt suggests, one may expect this book to be a compilation of short stories filled with love, despair, loss, and anguish that reach into the profound depths of unimaginable hurt—and it is.

The Love Children

spoiler alert On May 4, 2009, I visited Jezebel, one of my favorite blogs, only to find out that Marilyn French had passed. She was one of the first feminist thinkers to open my eyes to issues surrounding womanhood, the dominance of patriarchy, and expectations of the female gender.

The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour

I should come clean about this now: I was a total mystery addict as a kid. Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and The Boxcar Children were my favorites.

Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization

Things Fall Away is a scholarly book, not composed for easy reading or comprehension. Tadiar writes as an expert in the areas of political science, anthropology and economics.

Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally

Thirty-seven days after being diagnosed with cancer, author Patti Digh’s stepfather died. It is this moment that inspired the book Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally.

All the Dead Voices

I have always been drawn to a good crime story. When I was given the opportunity to read a writer previously unknown to me, a book that sold itself as a cross breed of modern American noir and Irish culture, I was excited at the prospect. I should have opted for a love story. All the Dead Voices is a strange mix of modern American urban gangster style with an Irish bent and a distinct dislike of the female in all her forms.

Politicking Online: The Transformation of Election Campaign Communications

By now, we are all so familiar with the way the Obama campaign used technology to revolutionize politics that it almost seems cliché. Media coverage of the campaign’s strategy has made it seem as if Obama invented Internet campaigning.

China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa

In China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa, Serge Michel and Michel Beuret invest a lot of time and energy in examining China’s presence in African countries. They travel to various places to interview different people in order to find out what affects Chinese business has across the continent.

The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World

Having raised daughters and taught young girls, I know what is required to be competent in those roles. The nature and needs of boys, however, were foreign to me. I had very little experience with the care and nurturing of very young boys. I naively and wrongly presumed that a child’s gender was of little, if any, consequence affecting the parent/teacher role. In reality, infancy seems to be the only time of relative equality. Once these tiny beings begin developing skills of locomotion and communication, the gender dichotomy begins in earnest.

Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Radical Chic, noun: a small clique of the New York upper elite who, in order to appear groundbreakingly fashionable, support social movements and causes which ironically are at odds with the morays inherent to their identity Mau-mau, verb: to stubbornly and meticulously badger someone into supporting a cause; to petition while using one’s minority identity in such a way that a member of a majority is left without rebuttal Flak Catcher, noun: poorly paid and hardly respected public officials who are often used as human shields to protect their bosses from mau-mauing _(see definition

Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950 – 1980

In 2004, at the age of twenty-three, I entered my gynecologist's office to request permanent sterilization. My doctor repeatedly refused my request, and would not honor my alternate request for an IUD. I tried changing doctors, but still encountered severe resistance to my wish to be permanently sterilized.

Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight over Sexual Rights

The war on drugs. The down low. Rainbow parties. Obamacare death panels. Our society has a crazy way of taking contemporary moral issues and, with a dash of religious fervor and moral superiority and a pinch of media dramatization, blowing them up into large-scale panics.

In Praise of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds of Hypocrisy, Censorship and Free Expression

This is the first of two books Paul Krassner put out this year and, in my opinion, the better one.

The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art

Eileen Myles’ The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art begins with travels in Iceland. Myles writes about her own writing and research on art and culture in the little island country. From there, it moves in any number of ways, yet always comes back to an affirmation of life for all of its complications and trials. Myles is an intensely alive and proud woman, lesbian, and artist with a widely varied and beautiful personal history.

Easy on the Eyes

On the heels of her 2006 book release Flirting with Forty—which would become a Lifetime movie—Jane Porter shines in her latest novel Easy on the Eyes, which focuses on a woman fighting the ravages of time.

Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today

I've long been a fan of Paul Krassner's more illustrious friends like Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, but until now I'd never gotten around to reading Krassner's own work. Who's to Say What's Obscene? appears to be a collection of random essays. I say "appears to be" because for most of the book, I had no idea what was going on. The stories were interesting, but would just go from one to the next with seemingly no connection.

When I Forgot

This kind of forgetting does not erase memory, it lays the emotion surrounding the memory to rest. – Clarissa Estes The protagonist of this short, dense novel is Anna Louhiniitty, a twenty-something Finnish journalist. It’s a slushy April day in Helsinki. Anna sits at a café table. She’s supposed to be transcribing an interview. On the table sits a copy of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, that famous novel of war, suicide, and society parties.

Fugue State

The Library of Congress’ perfunctory “Cataloging-in-Publication Data” (printed on the verso of the title page) rarely has anything novel or even in the least bit helpful to contribute to the discussion. However, in the case of Fugue State, a collection of stories by Brian Evenson, the dissembled “data” contains a single bit of notable information.

Bone Dream

After an encounter with the divine, even dreams must seem mundane and tiny, despite their distance from everyday reality.

Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine

Whether you're rebuilding yourself or just doing daily maintenance, healthy food is a necessity for bringing the body back and keeping it going. Now that I can't go to Whole Foods, it's time to get creative with the selection from produce stands and farmer's markets. Today I saw a man with a straw cowboy hat selling tomatoes, melons, and sunflowers out of a battered pick-up truck. Chilled soup, sorbet, and an arrangement for the table?

Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor: More Rebellion and Fire or Your Healing Journey

Kris Carr was diagnosed with chronic cancer and instead of sitting around and waiting to die, she began to really live. She reshaped her life from the inside physically and mentally.

Little Bird of Heaven

Oates' thirty-sixth novel grapples with familiar themes: the rocky underside of marriage, racial injustice, childhood trauma, sexual obsession, and the ways gender plays out among various subsets of the U.S. working classes. The story is set in fictitious Sparta, New York, a once thriving town seven-to-eight hours north of Manhattan. A former center of industry, the area was left high-and-dry when the factories that employed almost everyone relocated in the 1970s.

So Happy Together

So Happy Together is Maryann McFadden’s second novel in which the themes of love, change, and nature—along with a strong and very human woman protagonist—are at the heart. Claire Noble is a forty-five-year-old woman in the “sandwich” generation; she has to juggle living her own life while caring for her daughter, as well as her aging parents.

The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal

Mark Ribowsky did not interview singer Diana Ross or Berry Gordy, the founder and iron-fisted ruler of Motown Records, for this unauthorized look at The Supremes’ rise and fall.

Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City

Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City is a mixed collection of memoir and fiction short stories that center on the city of Portland, OR. All of the stories are written in first person narrative and beautifully display the diversity of the human experiences which only a city like Portland can provide the backdrop. These stories provide readers with a view of the city that may not have been available before this collection was published.

The SimplyRaw Living Foods Detox Manual

Which should I do first, save my butt or save the planet? The SimplyRaw Living Foods Detox Manual contains much useful information, but it appears that any local food aspirations may conflict with many of the program's staples. Some recipes incorporate avocados, bananas, and papayas.

The Richest Season

The Richest Season is a familiar tale to any romance reader, occasional or obsessive: a wife and mother, disillusioned with her compressed, tepid worldview and identity, flees to an exotic locale in order to find herself. In this case, the wife and mother in question is Joanna Harrison. An empty nester with a distant corporate husband, she spontaneously decides to run away to a new life on Pawleys Island.

Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture

I’ve always thought of indie culture as the marriage of individuality and community, and of course, a celebration of the do-it-yourself (DIY) morality that is ingrained in our society. However, some of our most creative pioneers are often obscured from mainstream art, music, and literature.

You’ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity

Each essay in Laurie J. Shrage’s collection, You've Changed, takes on the challenge of analyzing the philosophical, cultural, and psychological dimensions of the—for lack of a better or more acute concept—umbrella category of “trans” identity. This same challenge, which underlines the collection’s creation, is the same challenge that often times handicaps its clarity and ultimate success.
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