Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture,... Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic "truth."The book begins with short accounts of the process by which each of the authors became involved in anthropological field research. It then proceeds to describe the research itself, and the stories begin to connect as they become active collaborators. The scene shifts in the course of the narrative from China to America, and the relationship between the authors shifts from distant, wary, and somewhat hierarchical to close, egalitarian, and reciprocal.The authors share their histories through personal stories, not technical analyses; their aim is to entertain while addressing the process of ethnography and the dynamics of international and intercultural communication.Bamo Ayi is an anthropologist and scholar of comparative religion. She is deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Department, State Nationalities Commission, and professor of philosophy at Central Nationalities University, Beijing. Stevan Harrell is an anthropologist and translator. He is professor of anthropology at the University of Washington. Ma Lunzy is an ethnologist, historian, author, and curator. He is deputy director of Liangshan Minorities Research Institute. "I used Fieldwork Connections in my Chinese Ethnographies course last quarter, and the students really liked it. Both the students and I thought that it gave them a much better idea of field research methods and issues than other ethnographies had done. They also liked the comparison of different researchers experiences with each other, in China, and in the US. It sparked some very productive seminar discussion about research methods and ethics. I strongly recommend it. " - Melissa J. Brown, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Stanford University

Extensively revised and updated, this new edition of Fieldwork in Educational Settings will be welcomed by researchers and academics in education and... the social sciences. Embracing both sociological and anthropological approaches to qualitative research, the book covers education inside and beyond schools. It emphasises writing up ethnographic research and getting the project finished, and is packed with examples from research in progress.This new edition brings the original text right up to date for new researchers. There is an additional chapter on computer software for data handling and attention is given to the implications of postmodernism for writing up research. The examples given are taken from the latest research, replacing those from the first edition. This is an indispensable handbook by an author whose work on this subject is widely recognised as being an essential resource for the researcher in education.

FieldWorking, Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater's acclaimed textbook, is an engaging guide to the fundamentals of ethnographic study,... complete with practical help for research and writing. Emphasizing civic responsibility and community engagement, FieldWorking incorporates examples by professionals writers such as Mark Singer, Pico Iyer, Joan Didion, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as student research projects on topics as diverse as a local truck stop, dinner clubs, blogging, and a horse sales barn, to help students identify and define their own subcultures and communities. Because students are connected to their research, FieldWorking's ethnographic approach makes projects fascinating and empowering for all students as they learn to observe, listen, interpret, analyze, and write about the people and artifacts around them.

FieldWorking is a fun and practical guide to research and writing. This acclaimed text incorporates examples by professional writers such as Peter... Elbow, Joan Didion, Oliver Sacks, and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as student research projects on communities as diverse a truck stop, sports bar, homeless shelter, and horse sales barn, to help students identify and define their own subcultures and communities. In unique activities and comprehensive instruction, FieldWorking presents an ethnographic approach that empowers students to observe, listen, interpret, analyze, and write about the people and artifacts around them, while learning the essentials of college writing and research. FieldWorking is suitable for courses in English, anthropology, cultural studies, journalism — or in any discipline where research is required.

Called “the most influential Ukrainian book for the 15 years of independence,” Oksana Zabuzhko’s Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex became an... international phenomenon when it shot to number one on the Ukrainian bestseller list and remained there throughout the 1990s. The novel is narrated in first-person streams of thought by a sharp-tongued poet with an irreverently honest voice. She is visiting professor of Slavic studies at Harvard and her exposure to American values and behaviors conspires with her yearning to break free from Ukrainian conventions. In her despair over a recently ended affair, she turns her attention to the details of her lover’s abusive behavior. In detailing the power her Ukrainian lover wielded over her, and in admitting the underlying reasons for her attraction to him, she begins to see the chains that have defined her as a Ukrainian woman – and in doing so, exposes and calls into question her country’s culture of fear and repression at the very time that it wrestled its way toward independence.

While there is an expanding literature of qualitative studies with children, there is relatively little that examines the actual fieldwork process with... them. This book looks at fieldwork with children from a number of perspectives, and helps to address the needs of researchers working with children. Robyn M. Holmes overviews the study of children in the early chapters, discussing basic methodology and considering the school as the primary site for studying children. In later chapters, she examines closely how a researcher's personal attributes, such as gender and ethnicity, can and do effect research with children.

An important work on an essential subject, Fierce Angels explores and explodes the idea of the “strong black woman” as never before. Authoritative... yet deeply personal and daringly confessional, Sheri Parks’s bold new study of the black female’s role as communal savior and martyr will challenge and change anyone who reads it.    Fierce Angels exposes the overwhelming emotional costs—as well as the benefits—attached to this role. Parks, an esteemed scholar and popular media personality, provides exclusive interviews and astute analysis, as well as accounts of her own searing and inspiring experiences, to highlight the myths and the realities of black women’s lives.    Beginning with the oldest ongoing archetype, the Dark Feminine, Parks reveals the layered significance of the fertility of darkness—the abyss out of which the world was spoken into existence, the primordial creator in ancient Greek, Sumerian, and West African cultures, and the essence of Mother Earth herself. As these myths matured, they played critical parts in the assignment of maternal roles to women of African descent, the Dark Feminine acquiring a particularly acrid scent once she crossed the Atlantic Ocean in shackles, bound for a life of slavery.     Parks traces the development of the “strong black woman” throughout her life on Southern plantations and New York streets and in countless kitchens in between. From the Black Madonna celebrated by Italian Americans to the nurturing and selfless “Mammy” forced to nurse her master’s child before her own, these abiding symbols of fortitude and dependability only solidified the mold into which the powerful dark woman was cast and paved a path that her descendants would have no choice but to follow.    Fierce Angels follows the inheritors of this legacy of power, compassion, and familial devotion into today’s world, seeing her in Coretta Scott King, who relinquished her dreams for those of her husband, and in Angela Dawson, a mother in East Baltimore whose home was fire-bombed when she tried to save her community from drug dealers.  Parks also shares important examples from entertainment, cogently reexamined and in some cases surprisingly reclaimed, from Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind to the no-nonsense Lieutenant Anita Van Buren played by S. Epatha Merkerson on Law & Order.    Bringing it all home, Parks recalls the personal costs she’s paid for her own identity and fascinatingly captures those moments when she is expected to be all and know all, whether for her students at work or for strangers in the produce aisle in the supermarket. She investigates the support systems holding these stereotypes in place—latched onto by those both within and outside the traditional black community—and challenges readers, mothers, and daughters alike to examine how damaging and rewarding the assignment of this role can be and to take control of it within their lives.    Credible and cathartic, piercing and provocative, Fierce Angels is a book born of pain and introspection, a work sure to stir debate and become the primary source on this vital topic.

Piercing and provocative, Sheri Parks’s authoritative yet deeply personal study exposes the overwhelming emotional costs—as well as the... benefits—of the black female’s roles as communal savior and martyr. Parks traces the development of the “strong black woman,” from the oldest ongoing archetype, the Dark Feminine, in ancient Greek and West African cultures to the Black Madonna celebrated by Italian Americans, from the nurturing and selfless “Mammy” to such modern-day inheritors of this legacy as Coretta Scott King, who relinquished her dreams for those of her husband, and Angela Dawson, an East Baltimore mother whose home was fire-bombed when she tried to save her community from drug dealers.   Bringing it all home, Parks recalls the personal costs she’s paid for her own identity and captures those moments when she is expected to be all and know all. She challenges readers, mothers, and daughters alike to examine how damaging and rewarding this role can be and to take control of it in their lives.

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been... numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the prinicpal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond.Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick's struggle to find herself in love and in work.As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader's admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter's mother. Unsparing, deeply courageous, Fierce Attachments is one of the most remarkable documents of family feeling that has been written, a classic that helped start the memoir boom and remains one of the most moving examples of the genre.

The master teacher of positive change through powerful communication, Susan Scott, wants her readers to succeed. To do that, she explains, one must... transform everyday conversations employing effective ways to get the message across. In this guide, which includes exercises and tools to take you step by step through the Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations, Scott teaches readers how to: Overcome barriers to meaningful communication Expand and enrich conversations with colleagues, friends, and family Increase clarity and improve understanding Handle strong emotions-on both sides of the table

"Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe has written a book of poetry for her mother, Kathy Glover, a talented painter who left the body in 2008 from cancer. The... opening poem, In Body (Mama), the final lines: "...hear me trying to say/I love you/in the shape of/a poem." Every poem in this wonderful book extends these lines of love to her beloved mother. Sacred poems...so many beautiful, stunning moments to mention...when Hekate returns to comfort her Mother in the form of a cherished black dog. In one of the final poems in this collection, The Void (For Mama and My Child To Come), Ellen writes: "...even now/I am pregnant/with all/that love." Kathy Glover's complex, passionate and fierce paintings are also included- what a gift to the reader. From her paintings and from the fierce shimmer love of her daughter's poetry, I see Kathy Glover's death/transformation in Looking at Death: "Death raises her hands/palms out, fingers curled/in what looks like protest/but is truly reverence/for the woman/who dances/at the edge/before passing over."  This book is to be treasured, truly."  - ALMA Luz VILLANUEVA

It seems too good to be true. The most popular boy in school has asked Jane out -- and she's never even dated before. Stan is tall and good-looking,... friendly and hard-working -- everything Jane ever dreamed of. But is she ready for this?Suppose her parents won't let her go? What if she's nervous and makes a fool of herself? Maybe he'll think she's too young. If only she knew all the clever things to say. If only she were prettier. If only she were ready for this...With her usual warmth, perceptiveness, and humor, Beverly Cleary creates the joys and worries of a young girl's first crush.

Who were the poets of Mexico in the days of Aztec splendor? What were the poems of a culture so different from our own?In this first English-language... translation of a significant corpus of Nahuatl poetry into English, an expansion of his classic Trece poetas del mundo azteca, Miguel León-Portilla was assisted in his rethinking, augmenting, and rewriting in English by Grace Lobanov. Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English.The poets - fourteen men and one woman - lived in the central highlands of Mexico and spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Texcocans, Tlaxcalans, and several other chiefdoms. These authors of "flower and song" (a Nahuatl metaphor for poetry, art, and symbolism) lived during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Sources for the poems included indigenous "codices," books of songs" now unfortunately lost, and renditions of them preserved by the Nahuatl oral tradition, which survived the Spanish Conquest and were recorded by several young natives in two manuscripts.

This collection of essays takes a fresh and invigorating look at late-medieval English society by focusing not on how people lived but on how they saw... the world and their place in it. Alongside contributions on how different social groups saw themselves and were seen by others are more general discussions of key aspects of fifteenth-century life: attitudes to the rule of law, to the power of the ruler, to education, to honour and service, and finally to death.