Between Everything and Nothing

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Author :
Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 164009315X
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Everything and Nothing by : Joe Meno

Download or read book Between Everything and Nothing written by Joe Meno and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, this harrowing true story of two young men from Ghana and their quest for asylum highlights not only the unjust political system of their homeland, but the chaos of the United States’ failing immigration system. Long before their chance meeting at a Minneapolis bus station, Ghanaian asylum seekers Seidu Mohammed and Razak Iyal had already crossed half the world in search of a new home. Seidu, who identifies as bisexual, lived under constant threat of exposure and violence in a country where same–sex acts are illegal. Razak’s life was also threatened after corrupt officials contrived to steal his rightful inheritance. Forced to flee their homeland, both men embarked on separate odysseys through the dangerous jungles and bureaucracies of South, Central, and North America. Like generations of asylum seekers before, they presented themselves legally at the U.S. border, hoping for sanctuary. Instead they were imprisoned in private detention facilities, released only after their asylum pleas were denied. Fearful of returning to Ghana, Seidu and Razak saw no choice but to attempt one final border crossing. Their journey north to Canada in the harsh, unforgiving winter proved more tragic than anything they had experienced before. Based on extensive interviews, Joe Meno’s intimate, novelistic account builds upon the international media attention Seidu and Razak’s story has already received, highlighting the harrowing journey of asylum seekers everywhere while adding dimension to one of the greatest humanitarian concerns facing the world.

My Begging Chart

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Author :
Publisher : Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN 13 : 1770465383
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis My Begging Chart by : Keiler Roberts

Download or read book My Begging Chart written by Keiler Roberts and published by Drawn & Quarterly. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keiler Roberts mines the passing moments of family life to deliver an affecting and funny account of what it means to simultaneously exist as a mother, daughter, wife, and artist. Drawn in an unassuming yet charming staccato that mimics the awkward rhythm of life, no one’s foibles are left unspared, most often the author’s own. When Roberts considers whether or not to dust the ceiling fan, it’s effectively relevant. She can get lost in the rewarding melodrama of playing Barbies with her daughter and will momentarily snap out of her depression. Her harmless fibs to get through the moment are brought up by her daughter a year or two later, yet without hesitation Roberts will request that her daughter’s imaginary friend not visit when she is around. Her MS diagnosis lingers in the background, never taking center stage. In My Begging Chart, her most encompassing work yet, Keiler meditates on routine and stillness. The vignettes of her everyday life exude immense presence, making her comics thoroughly relatable and reflective of our all-too-human lives as they unfold with humour, sadness, and relieving joy. In transporting these stories onto paper, Keiler observes, and at times relishes, a fleeting present.

Madder

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781566896184
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (961 download)

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Book Synopsis Madder by : Marco Wilkinson

Download or read book Madder written by Marco Wilkinson and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madder, matter, mater--a weed, a state of mind, a material, a meaning, a mother. Poet and horticulturist Marco Wilkinson searches for the roots of myths and memories among plant families and family trees. "My life, these weeds." Marco Wilkinson's intimate vignettes of intergenerational migration, queer sexuality, and willful forgetting use the language of plants as both structure and metaphor--particularly weeds: invisible yet ubiquitous, unwanted yet abundant, out-of-place yet flourishing. Madder combines meditations on nature with memories of Wilkinson's Rhode Island childhood and glimpses of his maternal family's life in Uruguay. The son of a fierce immigrant mother who tried to erase his absent father from their lives, Wilkinson investigates his heritage with a mixture of anger and empathy as he wrestles with the ambiguity of the past. Using a verdant iconography rich with wordplay and symbolism, Wilkinsonoffers a mesmerizing portrait of finding belonging in an uprooted world.

Tales of Falling and Flying

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143130102
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis Tales of Falling and Flying by : Ben Loory

Download or read book Tales of Falling and Flying written by Ben Loory and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Mesmerizing and magical. . . . A stunning book.” —NPR.org “Short stories so imaginative — and yet so perplexingly familiar — they could have formed in a dream. . . . Taut, meticulously balanced and written in Loory’s direct, witty prose, his own stories take a page from Aesop: high-flying tales nonetheless boiled down to the essentials.” —The Los Angeles Times “Ben Loory’s stories are little gifts, strange and moving and wonderfully human. I devoured this book in one sitting.” —Ransom Riggs, author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children A dazzling new collection of stories from the critically acclaimed author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for The Day Ben Loory returns with a second collection of timeless tales, inviting us to enter his worlds of whimsical fantasy, deep empathy, and playful humor, in the signature voice that drew readers to his highly praised first collection. In stories that eschew literary realism, Loory’s characters demonstrate richly imagined and surprising perspectives, whether they be dragons or swordsmen, star-crossed lovers or long-lost twins, restaurateurs dreaming of Paris or cephalopods fixated on space travel. In propulsive language that brilliantly showcases Loory’s vast imagination, Tales of Falling and Flying expands our understanding of how fiction can work and is sure to cement his reputation as one of the most innovative short-story writers working today.

The Great Perhaps: A Novel

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Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393071375
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis The Great Perhaps: A Novel by : Joe Meno

Download or read book The Great Perhaps: A Novel written by Joe Meno and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-04-12 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This ambitious, adventurous writer . . . recalls Anton Chekhov with his amused appreciation of human foibles.”—Wendy Smith, Chicago Tribune The sky is falling for the Caspers, a family of cowards. When the parents decide to separate, this family is forced to appreciate the cloudiness of this modern age.

The Swells

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Publisher : House of Anansi
ISBN 13 : 1487009704
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (87 download)

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Book Synopsis The Swells by : Will Aitken

Download or read book The Swells written by Will Aitken and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this darkly hilarious satire by the inimitable Will Aitken, class war erupts aboard a luxury cruise ship. A boatload of white privilege, The Emerald Tranquility is the most luxurious cruise liner afloat, its passengers some of the richest people in the world. Meanwhile the ship’s crew, overworked and underpaid, live packed tightly together in airless below-deck cabins. The passengers encounter a great number of cataclysms at sea, but no matter the catastrophe, the great ship always sails on. Briony, a globetrotting luxury travel writer, emulates the rich — though homeless and penniless herself — as she hops from gig to all-expenses-paid gig. On her own personal voyage, she encounters Mrs. Moore, an enigmatic woman of advanced age clandestinely fomenting a mutiny on this bountiful ship. With the captain overthrown, roles quickly reverse: the crew become the ship’s new leisure class and the aged passengers learn how to mop floors and scrub toilets. Confused and terrified by the resultant chaos, Briony must decide which lot to cast her fate with in this savage satire of the way we live now.

Electric Arches

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Publisher : Haymarket Books
ISBN 13 : 1608468690
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Electric Arches by : Eve L. Ewing

Download or read book Electric Arches written by Eve L. Ewing and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electric Arches is an imaginative exploration of black girlhood and womanhood through poetry, visual art, and narrative prose. Blending stark realism with the fantastical, Ewing takes us from the streets of Chicago to an alien arrival in an unspecified future, deftly navigating boundaries of space, time, and reality with delight and flexibility.

The Mirror Thief

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Author :
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1612195156
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (121 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mirror Thief by : Martin Seay

Download or read book The Mirror Thief written by Martin Seay and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "Audaciously well written...the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it." Publishers Weekly raved that "with near-universal appeal . . . Seay’s debut novel is a true delight, a big, beautiful cabinet of wonders that is by turns an ominous modern thriller, a supernatural mystery, and an enchanting historical adventure story." Set in three cities in three eras, The Mirror Thief calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado. The core story is set in Venice in the sixteenth century, when the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination—was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?—the Venetian mirrors were state of the art technology, and subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. But for any of the development team to leave the island was a crime punishable by death. One man, however—a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose—has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . . Meanwhile, in two other Venices—Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today—two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . . All three stories will weave together into a spell-binding tour-de-force that is impossible to put down—an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.

Laziness Does Not Exist

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982140119
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis Laziness Does Not Exist by : Devon Price

Download or read book Laziness Does Not Exist written by Devon Price and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social psychologist uncovers the psychological basis of the "laziness lie," which originated with the Puritans and has ultimately created blurred boundaries between work and life with modern technologies and offers advice for not succumbing to societal pressure to "do more."

The Memory Palace

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439183325
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Memory Palace by : Mira Bartok

Download or read book The Memory Palace written by Mira Bartok and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gorgeous memoir about the 17 year estrangement of the author and her homeless schizophrenic mother, and their reunion.

He Came in With It

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Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 1684425131
Total Pages : 243 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (844 download)

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Book Synopsis He Came in With It by : Miriam Feldman

Download or read book He Came in With It written by Miriam Feldman and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “...a cleansing narrative that should inspire mothers—and other caregivers—to rise up, unite, and breathe hot new life into the drooping cause of mental healthcare reform.”— Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author. “To know that you are not alone in this loneliest and most emotionally difficult of all family situations is a great gift, a comfort and source of strength. And Mimi Feldman is the one you want as your mentor, your guide.”— Janet Fitch, New York Times best-selling author of White Oleander “...a compelling, moving story...It was an honor to read it.”— Jenny Allen, author of Would Everyone Please Stop In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations of families enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens permanently off the conventional course. Like the ten Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another, violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning...even cancer and a brain tumor...play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal of artmaking and drugs. With no time for hand-wringing, Miriam advances, convinced she can fix everything, while a devastated Craig retreats to their property in rural Washington State as home becomes a battlefield. It is while cleaning out a closet, that Miriam discovers a cache of drawings and journals written by Nick throughout his spiral into schizophrenia. She begins a solitary forensic journey into the lonely labyrinth of his mind. This is the story of how mental illness unspools an entire family. As Miriam fights to reclaim her son from the ruthless, invisible enemy, we are given an unflinching view into a world few could imagine. It exposes the shocking shortfalls of our mental health system, the destructive impact of stigma, shame and isolation, and, finally, the falsity of the notion of a perfect family. Throughout the book, it is the family’s ability to find humor in the absurdities of this life that saves them. It is a parable that illustrates the true definition of a good life, allowing for the blemishes and mistakes that are part of the universal human condition. He Came In With It is the legacy of, and for, her son Nick.

How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Writers

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Author :
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811229726
Total Pages : 103 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (112 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Writers by : Wislawa Szymborska

Download or read book How to Start Writing (and When to Stop): Advice for Writers written by Wislawa Szymborska and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once kind and hilarious, this compilation of the Nobel Prize-winning poet’s advice to writers is illustrated with her own marvelous collages In this witty “how-to” guide, Wislawa Szymborska has nothing but sympathy for the labors of would-be writers generally: “I myself started out with rotten poetry and stories,” she confesses in this collection of pieces culled from the advice she gave—anonymously—for many years in the well-known Polish journal Literary Life. She returns time and again to the mundane business of writing poetry properly, that is to say, painstakingly and sparingly. “I sigh to be a poet,” Miss A. P. from Bialogard exclaims. “I groan to be an editor,” Szymborska responds. Szymborska stubbornly insists on poetry’s “prosaic side”: “Let’s take the wings off and try writing on foot, shall we?” This delightful compilation, translated by the peerless Clare Cavanagh, will delight readers and writers alike. Perhaps you could learn to love in prose.

Mother Muse

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Publisher : Signal Editions
ISBN 13 : 9781550655988
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (559 download)

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Book Synopsis Mother Muse by : Lorna Goodison

Download or read book Mother Muse written by Lorna Goodison and published by Signal Editions. This book was released on 2022-04 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lorna Goodison's first poetry collection to be published in Canada in over nine years, Mother Muse heralds the return of a major voice. The poems in Goodison's new book move boldly and range widely; here are praise songs alongside laments; autobiography shares pages with the collective past. In her exquisitely lyrical evocations of Jamaican lore and tradition, Goodison has always shown another side of history. While celebrating a wide cross-section of women--from Mahalia Jackson to Sandra Bland--Mother Muse focuses on two under-regarded "mothers" in Jamaican music: Sister Mary Ignatius, who nurtured many of Jamaica's most gifted musicians, and celebrated dancer Anita "Margarita" Mahfood. These important figures lead a collection of formidable scope and intelligence, one that seamlessly blends the personal and the political.

White on White

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 059333051X
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (933 download)

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Book Synopsis White on White by : Aysegül Savas

Download or read book White on White written by Aysegül Savas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "marvelous" (Lauren Groff) and "gentle, mysterious and profound” (Marina Abramović) novel about a woman who has come undone. A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio. In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art - which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes's disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas. What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability. Alongside the research into human figures, the student is learning, from a cool distance, about the narrow divide between happiness and resentment, creativity and madness, contentment and chaos. White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.

Black Dog of Fate

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Author :
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786743700
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Dog of Fate by : Peter Balakian

Download or read book Black Dog of Fate written by Peter Balakian and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "His visions are burning -- his poetry heartbreaking," wrote Elie Wiesel of American poet Peter Balakian. Now, in elegant prose, the prize-winning poet who James Dickey called "an extraordinary talent" has written a compelling memoir about growing up American in a family that was haunted by a past too fraught with terror to be spoken of openly. Black Dog of Fate is set in the affluent New Jersey suburbs where Balakian -- the firstborn son of his generation -- grew up in a close, extended family. At the center of what was a quintessential American baby boom childhood lay the dark specter of a trauma his forebears had experienced -- the Ottoman Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 1915, the century's first genocide. In a story that climaxes to powerful personal and moral revelations, Balakian traces the complex process of discovering the facts of his people's history and the horrifying aftermath of the Turkish government's campaign to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against humanity. In describing his awakening to the facts of history, Balakian introduces us to a remarkable family of matriarchs and merchants, physicians, a bishop, and his aunts, two well-known figures in the world of literature. The unforgettable central figure of the story is Balakian's grandmother, a survivor and widow of the Genocide who speaks in fragments of metaphor and myth as she cooks up Armenian delicacies, plays the stock market, and keeps track of the baseball stats of her beloved Yankees. The book is infused with the intense and often comic collision between this family's ancient Near Eastern traditions and the American pop culture of the '50s and '60s.Balakian moves with ease from childhood memory, to history, to his ancestors' lives, to the story of a poet's coming of age. Written with power and grace, Black Dog of Fate unfolds like a tapestry its tale of survival against enormous odds. Through the eyes of a poet, here is the arresting story of a family's journey from its haunted past to a new life in a new world.

In the Land of Men

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Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062682431
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (626 download)

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Book Synopsis In the Land of Men by : Adrienne Miller

Download or read book In the Land of Men written by Adrienne Miller and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Vogue’s Best Books of the Year One of Esquire’s Best Books of the Year One of the Wall Street Journal’s Favorite Books of the Year One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year: Vogue, Parade, Esquire, Bitch, and Maclean’s A New York Times and Washington Post Book to Watch A fiercely personal memoir about coming of age in the male-dominated literary world of the nineties, becoming the first female literary editor of Esquire, and Miller's personal and working relationship with David Foster Wallace A naive and idealistic twenty-two-year-old from the Midwest, Adrienne Miller got her lucky break when she was hired as an editorial assistant at GQ magazine in the mid-nineties. Even if its sensibilities were manifestly mid-century—the martinis, powerful male egos, and unquestioned authority of kings—GQ still seemed the red-hot center of the literary world. It was there that Miller began learning how to survive in a man’s world. Three years later, she forged her own path, becoming the first woman to take on the role of literary editor of Esquire, home to the male writers who had defined manhood itself— Hemingway, Mailer, and Carver. Up against this old world, she would soon discover that it wanted nothing to do with a “mere girl.” But this was also a unique moment in history that saw the rise of a new literary movement, as exemplified by McSweeney’s and the work of David Foster Wallace. A decade older than Miller, the mercurial Wallace would become the defining voice of a generation and the fiction writer she would work with most. He was her closest friend, confidant—and antagonist. Their intellectual and artistic exchange grew into a highly charged professional and personal relationship between the most prominent male writer of the era and a young woman still finding her voice. This memoir—a rich, dazzling story of power, ambition, and identity—ultimately asks the question “How does a young woman fit into this male culture and at what cost?” With great wit and deep intelligence, Miller presents an inspiring and moving portrayal of a young woman’s education in a land of men. “The memoir I’ve been waiting for: a bold, incisive, and illuminating story of a woman whose devotion to language and literature comes at a hideous cost. It’s Joanna Rakoff’s My Salinger Year updated for the age of She Said: a literary New York now long past; an intimate, fiercely realist portrait of a mythic literary figure; and now, a tender reckoning with possession, power, and what Jia Tolentino called the ‘Important, Inappropriate Literary Man.’ A poised and superbly perceptive narration of the problems of working with men, and of loving them.”— Eleanor Henderson, author of 10,000 Saints

Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes

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Author :
Publisher : Milkweed Editions
ISBN 13 : 157131749X
Total Pages : 78 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (713 download)

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Book Synopsis Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes by : Nicky Beer

Download or read book Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes written by Nicky Beer and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is illusion—a deception, or a revelation? What is a poem—the truth, or “a diverting flash, / a mirror showing everything / but itself”? Nicky Beer’s latest collection of poems is a labyrinthine academy specializing in the study of subterfuge; Marlene Dietrich, Dolly Parton, and Batman are its instructors. With an energetic eye, she thumbs through our collective history books—and her personal one, too—in an effort to chart the line between playful forms of duplicity and those that are far more insidious. Through delicious japery, poems that can be read multiple ways, and allusions ranging from Puccini’s operas to Law & Order, Beer troubles the notion of truth. Often, we settle for whatever brand of honesty is convenient for us, or whatever is least likely to spark confrontation—but this, Beer knows, is how we invite others to weigh in on what kind of person we are. This is how we trick ourselves into believing they’re right. “Listen / to how quiet it is when I lose the self-doubt played / for so long I mistook it for music.” Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes asks us to look through the stereoscope: which image is the real one? This one—or this one, just here? With wisdom, humility, and a forthright tenderness, Nicky Beer suggests that we consider both—together, they might contribute to something like truth.