Song of the Shank

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Publisher : Graywolf Press
ISBN 13 : 1555970923
Total Pages : 567 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (559 download)

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Book Synopsis Song of the Shank by : Jeffery Renard Allen

Download or read book Song of the Shank written by Jeffery Renard Allen and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2014-06-17 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A contemporary American masterpiece about music, race, an unforgettable man, and an unreal America during the Civil War era At the heart of this remarkable novel is Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth-century slave and improbable musical genius who performed under the name Blind Tom. Song of the Shank opens in 1866 as Tom and his guardian, Eliza Bethune, struggle to adjust to their fashionable apartment in the city in the aftermath of riots that had driven them away a few years before. But soon a stranger arrives from the mysterious island of Edgemere—inhabited solely by African settlers and black refugees from the war and riots—who intends to reunite Tom with his now-liberated mother. As the novel ranges from Tom's boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. In his symphonic novel, Jeffery Renard Allen blends history and fantastical invention to bring to life a radical cipher, a man who profoundly changes all who encounter him.

The Political Force of Musical Beauty

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 082237675X
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis The Political Force of Musical Beauty by : Barry Shank

Download or read book The Political Force of Musical Beauty written by Barry Shank and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Political Force of Musical Beauty, Barry Shank shows how musical acts and performances generate their own aesthetic and political force, creating, however fleetingly, a shared sense of the world among otherwise diverse listeners. Rather than focusing on the ways in which music enables the circulation of political messages, he argues that communities grounded in the act and experience of listening can give rise to new political ideas and expression. Analyzing a wide range of "beautiful music" within popular and avant-garde genres—including the Japanese traditions in the music of Takemitsu Toru and Yoko Ono, the drone of the Velvet Underground, and the insistence of hardcore punk and Riot grrrl post-punk—Shank finds that when it fulfills the promise of combining sonic and lyrical differences into a cohesive whole, musical beauty has the power to reorganize the basis of social relations and produce communities that recognize meaningful difference.

Rails Under My Back

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Publisher : Graywolf Press
ISBN 13 : 9781555977238
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (772 download)

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Book Synopsis Rails Under My Back by : Jeffery Renard Allen

Download or read book Rails Under My Back written by Jeffery Renard Allen and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Will put Allen in the company of writers such as James Joyce, August Wilson, and Ralph Ellison." —The Philadelphia Inquirer When it was first published fifteen years ago, Jeffery Renard Allen's debut novel, Rails Under My Back, earned its author comparisons to some of the giants of twentieth-century modernism. The publication of Allen's equally ambitious second novel, Song of the Shank, cemented those lofty claims. Now, the book that established his reputation is being restored to print in its first Graywolf Press edition. Together, the two novels stand as significant achievements of twenty-first-century literature. Rails Under My Back is an epic that tracks the interwoven lives of two brothers, Lucius and John Jones, who are married to two sisters, Gracie and Sheila McShan. For them, their parents, and their children, life is always full of departures; someone is always fleeing town and leaving the remaining family to suffer the often dramatic, sometimes tragic consequences. The multiple effects of the comings and goings are devastating: These are the almost mythic expression of the African American experience in the half century that followed the Second World War. The story ranges, as the characters do, from the city, which is somewhat like both New York and Chicago, to Memphis, to the West, and to many "inner" and "outer" locales. Rails Under My Back is a multifaceted, brilliantly colored, intensely musical novel that pulses with urgency and originality.

The Art of Songwriting

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780998130200
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis The Art of Songwriting by : Ed Bell

Download or read book The Art of Songwriting written by Ed Bell and published by . This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Art of Songwriting' is a comprehensive guide to life, art and making great songs.It's not about chasing a hit song. It's not about theories that are interesting but no use filling the blank page. And most of all -- it's not just about the craft of songwriting.It's about how to create, think and live like a songwriter. It's about being resilient, innovative and passionate about what you make. It's about how artists can change the world -- and why they should.

Dissonant Identities

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Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
ISBN 13 : 0819572675
Total Pages : 315 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (195 download)

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Book Synopsis Dissonant Identities by : Barry Shank

Download or read book Dissonant Identities written by Barry Shank and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music of the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas has long been recognized as defining one of a dozen or more musical "scenes" across the country. In Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank, himself a musician who played and lived in the Texas capital, studies the history of its popular music, its cultural and economic context, and also the broader ramifications of that music as a signifying practice capable of transforming identities. While his focus is primarily on progressive country and rock, Shank also writes about traditional country, blues, rock, disco, ethnic, and folk musics. Using empirical detail and an expansive theoretical framework, he shows how Austin became the site for "a productive contestation between two forces: the fierce desire to remake oneself through musical practice, and the equally powerful struggle to affirm the value of that practice in the complexly structured late-capitalist marketplace."

Funny Once

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620408635
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis Funny Once by : Antonya Nelson

Download or read book Funny Once written by Antonya Nelson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Chabon once said, “I scan the tables of contents of magazines, looking for Antonya Nelson's name, hoping that she has decided to bless us again.” And now she has blessed us again, with a bounty of the stories for which she is so beloved. Her stories are clear-eyed, hard-edged, beautifully formed. In the title story, “Funny Once,” a couple held together by bad behavior fall into a lie with their more responsible friends. In “The Village,” a woman visits her father at a nursing home, recalling his equanimity at her teenage misdeeds and gaining a new understanding of his own past indiscretions. In another, when a troubled girl in the neighborhood goes missing, a mother worries increasingly about her teenage son's relationship with a bad-news girlfriend. In the novella “Three Wishes,” siblings muddle through in the aftermath of their elder brother's too-early departure from the world. The landscape of this book is the wide open spaces of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. Throughout, there is the pervasive desire to drink to forget, to have sex with the wrong people, to hit the road and figure out later where to stop for the night. These characters are aging, regretting actions both taken and not, inhabiting their extended adolescences as best they can. And in Funny Once, their flawed humanity is made beautiful, perfectly observed by one of America's best short story writers.

Child of the Mountains

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Publisher : Yearling
ISBN 13 : 0375873317
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (758 download)

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Book Synopsis Child of the Mountains by : Marilyn Sue Shank

Download or read book Child of the Mountains written by Marilyn Sue Shank and published by Yearling. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's about keeping the faith. Growing up poor in 1953 in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia doesn't bother Lydia Hawkins. She treasures her tight-knit family. There's her loving mama, now widowed; her whip-smart younger brother BJ, who has cystic fibrosis; and wise old Gran. But everything falls apart after Gran and BJ die and Mama is jailed unjustly. Suddenly Lydia has lost all those dearest to her. Moving to a coal camp to live with her uncle William and aunt Ethel Mae only makes Lydia feel more alone. She is ridiculed at her new school for her outgrown homemade clothes and the way she talks, and for what the kids believe her mama did. And to make matters worse, she discovers that her uncle has been keeping a family secret—about her. If only Lydia, with her resilient spirit and determination, could find a way to clear her mother's name. . . .

Black Celebrity

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1644532468
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (445 download)

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Book Synopsis Black Celebrity by : Emily Ruth Rutter

Download or read book Black Celebrity written by Emily Ruth Rutter and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Celebrity examines representations of postbellum black athletes and artist-entertainers by novelists Caryl Phillips and Jeffery Renard Allen and poets Kevin Young, Frank X Walker, Adrian Matejka, and Tyehimba Jess. Inhabiting the perspectives of boxer Jack Johnson and musicians “Blind Tom” Wiggins and Sissieretta Jones, along with several others, these writers retrain readers’ attention away from athletes’ and entertainers’ overdetermined bodies and toward their complex inner lives. Phillips, Allen, Young, Walker, Matejka, and Jess especially plumb the emotional archive of desire, anxiety, pain, and defiance engendered by the racial hypervisibility and depersonalization that has long characterized black stardom. In the process, these novelists and poets and, in turn, the present book revise understandings of black celebrity history while evincing the through-lines between the postbellum era and our own time.

Holding Pattern

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Publisher : Graywolf Press
ISBN 13 : 1555973477
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (559 download)

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Book Synopsis Holding Pattern by : Jeffery Renard Allen

Download or read book Holding Pattern written by Jeffery Renard Allen and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world of Jeffery Renard Allen's stunning short-story collection is a place like no other. A recognizable city, certainly, but one in which a man might sprout wings or copper pennies might fall from the skies onto your head. Yet these are no fairy tales. The hostility, the hurt, is all too human. The protagonists circle each other with steely determination: a grandson taunts his grandmother, determined to expose her secret past; for years, a sister tries to keep a menacing neighbor away from her brother; and in the local police station, an officer and prisoner try to break each other's resolve. In all the stories, Allen calibrates the mounting tension with exquisite timing, in mesmerizing prose that has won him comparisons with Joyce and Faulkner. Holding Pattern is a captivating collection by a prodigiously talented writer.

The Cold Song

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Publisher : Other Press, LLC
ISBN 13 : 1590516680
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cold Song by : Linn Ullmann

Download or read book The Cold Song written by Linn Ullmann and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named in the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2014! Ullmann’s characters are complex and paradoxical: neither fully guilty nor fully innocent Siri Brodal, a chef and restaurant owner, is married to Jon Dreyer, a famous novelist plagued by writer’s block. Siri and Jon have two daughters, and together they spend their summers on the coast of Norway, in a mansion belonging to Jenny Brodal, Siri’s stylish and unforgiving mother. Siri and Jon’s marriage is loving but difficult, and troubled by painful secrets. They have a strained relationship with their elder daughter, Alma, who struggles to find her place in the family constellation. When Milla is hired as a nanny to allow Siri to work her long hours at the restaurant and Jon to supposedly meet the deadline on his book, life in the idyllic summer community takes a dire turn. One rainy July night, Milla disappears without a trace. After her remains are discovered and a suspect is identified, everyone who had any connection with her feels implicated in her tragedy and haunted by what they could have done to prevent it. The Cold Song is a story about telling stories and about how life is continually invented and reinvented.

As Lie Is to Grin

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Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1936787601
Total Pages : 104 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (367 download)

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Book Synopsis As Lie Is to Grin by : Simeon Marsalis

Download or read book As Lie Is to Grin written by Simeon Marsalis and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2017 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize “Simeon Marsalis’s As Lie Is to Grin is not a satire meant to teach us lessons, nor a statement of hope or despair, but something more visionary—a portrait of a young man’s unraveling, a depiction of how race shapes and deforms us, a coming–of–age story that is also a confrontation with American history and amnesia. The book achieves more in its brief span than most books do at three times the length.” —Zachary Lazar, author of I Pity the Poor Immigrant David, the narrator of Simeon Marsalis’s singular first novel, is a freshman at the University of Vermont who is struggling to define himself against the white backdrop of his school. He is also mourning the loss of his New York girlfriend, whose grandfather’s alma mater he has chosen to attend. When David met Melody, he lied to her about who he was and where he lived, creating a more intriguing story than his own. This lie haunts and almost unhinges him as he attempts to find his true voice and identity. On campus in Vermont, David imagines encounters with a student from the past who might represent either Melody’s grandfather or Jean Toomer, the author of the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance novel Cane (1923). He becomes obsessed with the varieties of American architecture “upon land that was stolen,” and with the university’s past and attitudes as recorded in its newspaper, The Cynic. And he is frustrated with the way the Internet and libraries are curated, making it difficult to find the information he needs to make connections between the university’s history, African American history, and his own life. In New York, the previous year, Melody confides a shocking secret about her grandfather’s student days at the University of Vermont. When she and her father collude with the intent to meet David’s mother in Harlem—craving what they consider an authentic experience of the black world—their plan ends explosively. The title of this impressive and emotionally powerful novel is inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask” (1896): “We wear the mask that grins and lies . . .”

Woody Guthrie

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135769354
Total Pages : 175 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (357 download)

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Book Synopsis Woody Guthrie by : Ronald D. Cohen

Download or read book Woody Guthrie written by Ronald D. Cohen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Woody Guthrie is the most famous and influential folk music composer and performer in the history of the United States. His most popular song, "This Land is Your Land" has become the country's unofficial national anthem, known to every school child since the 1960s. His influence exceeded the realm of American music, reaching American politics. Guthrie’s music became the soundtrack to the Great Depression, and iconic of the Dust Bowl migrants. Guthrie and his music came to represent those disenfranchised people who remained committed to making better lives for themselves through the promise of the American Dream. Here, in a short, accessible biography, bolstered with primary documents, including letters, autobiographical excerpts, and reflections by Pete Seeger, Cohen introduces Guthrie’s life and music influence to students of American history and culture.

Living the Farm Sanctuary Life

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Publisher : Rodale Books
ISBN 13 : 1623364906
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (233 download)

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Book Synopsis Living the Farm Sanctuary Life by : Gene Baur

Download or read book Living the Farm Sanctuary Life written by Gene Baur and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award! Gene Baur, the cofounder and president of Farm Sanctuary, the nation's leading farm animal protection organization, knows that the key to happiness lies in aligning your beliefs with your actions. In this definitive vegan and animal-friendly lifestyle guide, he and Gene Stone, author of Forks Over Knives, explore the deeply transformative experience of visiting the sanctuary and its profound effects on people's lives. The book covers the basic tenets of Farm Sanctuary life—such as eating in harmony with your values, connecting with nature wherever you are, and reducing stress—and offers readers simple ways to incorporate these principles into their lives. Living the Farm Sanctuary Life also teaches readers how to cook and eat the Farm Sanctuary way, with 100 extraordinarily delicious recipes selected by some of the organization's greatest fans—chefs and celebrities such as Chef AJ, Chloe Coscarelli, Emily Deschanel, and Moby. Coupled with heartwarming stories of the animals that Farm Sanctuary has saved over the years, as well as advice and ideas from some of the organization's biggest supporters, Living the Farm Sanctuary Life is an inspiring, practical book for readers looking to improve their whole lives and the lives of those around them—both two- and four-legged.

The B Side

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0698172515
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (981 download)

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Book Synopsis The B Side by : Ben Yagoda

Download or read book The B Side written by Ben Yagoda and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-01-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an acclaimed cultural critic, a narrative and social history of the Great American Songwriting era. Everybody knows and loves the American Songbook. But it’s a bit less widely understood that in about 1950, this stream of great songs more or less dried up. All of a sudden, what came over the radio wasn’t Gershwin, Porter, and Berlin, but “Come on-a My House” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Elvis and rock and roll arrived a few years later, and at that point the game was truly up. What happened, and why? In The B Side, acclaimed cultural historian Ben Yagoda answers those questions in a fascinating piece of detective work. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources and on scores of interviews—the voices include Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Linda Ronstadt, and Herb Alpert—the book illuminates broad musical trends through a series of intertwined stories. Among them are the battle between ASCAP and Broadcast Music, Inc.; the revolution in jazz after World War II; the impact of radio and then television; and the bitter, decades-long feud between Mitch Miller and Frank Sinatra. The B Side is about taste, and the particular economics and culture of songwriting, and the potential of popular art for greatness and beauty. It’s destined to become a classic of American musical history.

Follow The Flickering Down

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780578600659
Total Pages : 78 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Follow The Flickering Down by : Theodore Shank

Download or read book Follow The Flickering Down written by Theodore Shank and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THEODORE SHANK's Follow The Flickering Down blurs the distinctions between memoir, poetry, short story, and song. It oscillates through the Santa Cruz mountains and coastal communities of Capitola and Live Oak, California, diving into the energy and mystery of life's moments as they quiver in the cauldron of memory. Follow The Flickering Down cuts directly into memories and images, exposing the raw energy, emotion, and power of various levels of human experience. Its language sparkles with simplicity and directness, creating a musical atmosphere of truth and honesty.

The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 9780749398200
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (982 download)

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Book Synopsis The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop by : Robert Coover

Download or read book The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop written by Robert Coover and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1992-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Mystical Land of Myrrh

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781733581905
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (819 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mystical Land of Myrrh by : MaryAnn Shank

Download or read book The Mystical Land of Myrrh written by MaryAnn Shank and published by . This book was released on 2019-06 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critically acclaimed tales of a forbidden country .. a young Peace Corps woman, a lesbian .. mystery .. romance .. adventure. All these come together in these stories about Somalia. Over it all is Arawello, the Somali Goddess Queen who once led her people out of disaster, as may be called upon to do so again soon.