Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged nonfiction

Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen

Pay cable offers us a whole new realm of addictions and one of the most recent was Showtime's production of The Tudors. The program, now ended with the inevitable death of King Henry (no spoilers in history), portrayed the complicated realm of the Tudor Dynasty, which included two notable queens—sisters Mary and Elizabeth. This historic era, because of Queen Elizabeth, offers us a space to enter and critique how women were used for political gain, often not their own.

Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change

As the authors of Face It explain in the preface to their book, women who came of age during and after feminism's second wave were brought up to believe our looks don’t have to define who we are or determine our possibilities. What mattered more in this 'enlightened' new age were our brains, our talents, our degrees, our abilities, and our ambition.

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Many readers know literary wunderkind Zadie Smith for her raging success propelled by novels such as White Teeth and The Autograph Man.

When She Flew

In a fictionalized version of a true event that that happened a few years ago, an Iraq war vet and his young daughter are discovered living in the Oregon woods. When police officer Jessica Villareal hears that a young girl has been sighted in the woods and could be a runaway teen, she asks to be added to the search team. Jessica has always played by the rules, but finds herself heading towards forty and feeling like her job is the only thing she has going for her. She has an estranged teenage daughter and grandson who live close to her ex-husband, Rick in another state.

Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq

Sisters in War is a brilliant, convincing, and powerful story of three women from the same Iraqi Shia family: Zia is twenty-two years old, university educated, an outspoken and brave young woman when the story begins with the invasion of Iraq in 2001. Her younger sister, Nunu, a university student, is a quiet and traditional Muslim woman who hopes for an arranged marriage with a suitable man.

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.

It’s Never too Late to Be What You Might Have Been

The title of this book is drawn from an adage that is sometimes lost on the young. Youth is often painted as an open road with endless paths leading to infinite dreams. The challenge that we face as we get older is maintaining the attitude that life still holds an abundance of opportunities and that we are up to the task of conquering them.

Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat: A Story of Bulimia

When I was growing up, I thought of bulimia and anorexia as "White girl problems." Through the media and interaction with peers, I had been given the impression that Black women did not experience body image issues or struggle with eating disorders.

German for Travelers : A Novel in 95 Lessons

Norah Labiner's third novel German for Travelers reads a lot more like poetry than prose. Each chapter, which is framed as a lesson, begins with a seemingly disconnected sentence translated into English from German, before jumping to a different time period, country, character, or all three.

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

Twisted Triangle: A Famous Crime Writer, a Lesbian Love Affair, and the FBI Husband’s Violent Revenge

“Stranger than fiction” is the most accurate way to describe the premise for this book about married FBI agents. The wife has a lesbian affair with a crime novel author, and the husband kidnaps and later tries to kill his wife. And yet, it’s a true story!
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