Selected as a "2003 Notable Book" by the American Library AssociationIn the early 1900s, E.J. Bellocq photographed prostitutes in the red-light district... of New Orleans. His remarkable, candid photos inspired Natasha Trethewey to imagine the life of Ophelia, the subject of her stunning second collection of poems. With elegant precision, Ophelia tells of her life on display: her white father whose approval she earns by standing very still; the brothel Madame who tells her to act like a statue while the gentlemen callers choose; and finally the camera, which not only captures her body, but also offers a glimpse into her soul.

Pop culture, chaos theory and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula winning author of Doomsday Book.   Sandra... Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennet O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same   company.   When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a                                                                         series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions.        

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - OCD - is a problem that affects millions of Americans and people throughtout the world. Neil O'Donnell, well-known... author has battled OCD for much of his life and proves to the reader that a little courage and a little fight can cope with the situation. Not only cope, but actually use OCD to the person's own benefit.

For those wanting to shake and shimmy their way to a firmer body, this comprehensive guide to belly dancing offers instructions on how to make the most... of the hot belly-dancing-as-fitness trend. In addition to guiding the dancer to a trimmer waist, this how-to book helps put women in touch with their sensuality through the alluring moves of this ancient dance. Specific guidelines for pregnant women who wish to stay strong throughout the nine months and regain their prebaby belly are included. The history and culture of the art is also explored with a celebration of the pulsating music and shimmering costumes that make belly dancing a joy to watch. In Cairo there is a saying: "Every girl is born a dancer." With this guide, all women can be divas of the dance.

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the... questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link of the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky. With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.

Since the early 1990s, transnational adoptions have increased at an astonishing rate, not only in the United States, but worldwide. In Belonging in an... Adopted World, Barbara Yngvesson offers a penetrating exploration of the consequences and implications of this unprecedented movement of children, usually from poor nations to the affluent West. Yngvesson illuminates how the politics of adoption policy has profoundly affected the families, nations, and children involved in this new form of social and economic migration. Starting from the transformation of the abandoned child into an adoptable resource for nations that give and receive children in adoption, this volume examines the ramifications of such gifts, especially for families created through adoption and later, the adopted adults themselves. Bolstered by an account of the author’s own experience as an adoptive parent, and fully attuned to the contradictions of race that shape our complex forms of family, Belonging in an Adopted World explores the fictions that sustain adoptive kinship, ultimately exposing the vulnerability and contingency behind all human identity.

Who are the real citizens of America? Which people truly qualify for equality under the law? Two hundred years ago, an honest answer to these questions... would have excluded not only women, slaves, and Indians, but also Germans, Scotch-Irish, Catholics, and Jews. Yet the Declaration of Independence expresses a profound commitment to the ideal of equal citizenship. Throughout their history Americans have simultaneously believed in equality and accepted the subordination of groups of people--and both views have been reflected in American law. In this lively and original book a leading constitutional law scholar shows how American law has both reflected and defined what it means to be an American, to "belong to America." Kenneth L. Karst shows that the ideal of equal citizenship has long been a vital part of the culture of American public life, and tells a powerful story about how the idea of equality has developed in America, providing courtroom examples that range from Dred Scott to Brown versus Board of Education, from affimative action to gender discrimination, and from the treatment of American Indians to the status of Christianity. Karst explores the psychological impact of discrimination on those who have been its victims--who, in one way or another, have been told by society that they do not belong. And he argues that the principle of equal citizenship can and should guide the nation's future just as it has shaped its past.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a... lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a... lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

“Far greater even than the loss of land, or the relentless coercion to surrender cultural traditions, the deaths of over six hundred children by the... spring of 1864 were an unbearable tragedy. Nearly one hundred and fifty years after the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862, Dakota people are still struggling with the effects of this unimaginable loss.”Among the Dakota, the Beloved Child ceremony marked the special, tender affection that parents felt toward a child whose life had been threatened. In this moving book, author Diane Wilson explores the work of several modern Dakota people who are continuing to raise beloved children: Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan, an artist and poet; Clifford Canku, a spiritual leader and language teacher; Alameda Rocha, a boarding school survivor; Harley and Sue Eagle, Canadian activists; and Delores Brunelle, an Ojibwe counselor. each of these humble but powerful people teaches children to believe in the “genius and brilliance” of Dakota culture as a way of surviving historical trauma.Crucial to true healing, Wilson has learned, is a willingness to begin with yourself. Each of these people works to transform the effects of genocide, restoring a way of life that regards our beloved children as wakan, sacred. Diane Wilson, director of Dream of Wild Health Farm, is the author of Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, which won a Minnesota Book award. She is a Mdewakanton descendent; her mother was enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation. 

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman... haunted by the past.Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present.Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

"A masterwork . . . Wonderful . . . I can't imagine American literature without it!"-- John Leonard, Los Angeles Times Packaged with French flaps,... acid-free paper, and rough front.

Henri Nouwen, one of the most deeply loved spiritual teachers of recent times, reflects on themes that were central to his life and thought in this... rare, new, and previously unpublished interview. Beloved records a treasured conversation in written and spoken form. The included CD enables you to listen to Nouwens distinctive voice as he speaks about transforming loneliness, escaping the tyranny of always being too busy, the essence of prayer and choosing to live in ways that, moment by moment, remind us of who we are: the beloved of God. The conversation on these pages is studded with gems of spiritual wisdom that merit slow, contemplative reading. With suggestions for reflection or discussion, Beloved is a perfect accompaniment to an individual or group retreat as well as for personal listening and reading. Here is a depth of wisdom to turn to again and again.

It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D.... are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter, Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.

Artwork copyright Touchstone Pictures At the center of Toni Morrison's fifth novel, which earned her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is an almost... unspeakable act of horror and heroism: a woman brutally kills her infant daughter rather than allow her to be enslaved. The woman is Sethe, and the novel traces her journey from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil War. Woven into this circular, mesmerizing narrative are the horrible truths of Sethe's past: the incredible cruelties she endured as a slave, and the hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom. Just as Sethe finds the past too painful to remember, and the future just "a matter of keeping the past at bay," her story is almost too painful to read. Yet Morrison manages to imbue the wreckage of her characters' lives with compassion, humanity, and humor. Part ghost story, part history lesson, part folk tale, Beloved finds beauty in the unbearable, and lets us all see the enduring promise of hope that lies in anyone's future. Coming from Plume in April 1999, Toni Morrison's #1 New York Times bestseller...PARADISE