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Breaking the Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism
by David IkardCan black males offer useful insights on black women and patriarchy? Many black feminists are doubtful. Their skepticism derives in part from a history of explosive encounters with black men who blamed feminism for stigmatizing black men and undermining racial solidarity and in part from a perception that black male feminists are opportunists capitalizing on the current popularity of black women's writing and criticism. In Breaking the Silence, David Ikard goes boldly to the crux of this debate through a series of provocative readings of key African American texts that demonstrate the possibility and value of a viable black male feminist perspective.Seeking to advance the primary objectives of black feminism, Ikard provides literary models from Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go, James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Toni Morrison's Paradise, Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, and Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Walkin' the Dog that consciously wrestle with the concept of victim status for black men and women. He looks at how complicity across gender lines, far from rooting out patriarchy in the black community, has allowed it to thrive. This complicity, Ikard explains, is a process by which victimized groups invest in victim status to the point that they unintentionally concede power to their victimizers and engage in patterns of behavior that are perceived as revolutionary but actually reinforce the status quo.While black feminism has fostered important and necessary discussions regarding the problems of patriarchy within the black community, little attention has been paid to the intersecting dynamics of complicity. By laying bare the nexus between victim status and complicity in oppression, Breaking the Silence charts a new direction for conceptualizing black women's complex humanity and provides the foundations for more expansive feminist approaches to resolving intraracial gender conflicts.
Breaking the Sound Barrier
by Amy GoodmanThe host of Democracy Now! breaks through the corporate media&’s lies, sound bites, and silence in this New York Times–bestselling collection of articles. In place of the usual suspects—the &“experts&” who, in Amy Goodman&’s words, &“know so little about so much, explain the world to us, and get it so wrong&”—this accessible, lively collection allows the voices the corporate media exclude and ignore to be heard loud and clear. From community organizers in New Orleans, to the courageous American soldiers who&’ve said &“no&” to Washington&’s wars, to victims of torture and police violence, we are given the extraordinary opportunity to hear ordinary people standing up and speaking out. Written with all of the fierce intelligence and passion for truth that millions have come to expect from Amy Goodman&’s reportage, Breaking the Sound Barrier proves the power that independent journalism can have in the struggle for a better world, one in which ordinary citizens are the true experts of their own lives and communities. Praise for Amy Goodman and Breaking the Sound Barrier &“Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new heights.&” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects &“Amy, as you will discover on every page of this book, knows the critical question for journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they are to power.&” —From the foreword by Bill Moyers, author of Moyers on America &“What journalism should be: beholden to the interests of people, not power and profit.&” —Arundhati Roy, author of The End of Imagination &“Those unfamiliar with Goodman&’s work will discover a bold voice that refuses to mince words regardless of the topic or target, along with a wealth of behind-the-headlines reporting.&” —Publishers Weekly
Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld (Boss Fight Books)
by David SudnowIn 1997, game studio Running With Scissors released its debut title, Postal, an isometric shooter aimed at shocking an imagined pearl-clutching public. The game was crass, gory, and dumb—all of which might have been forgivable if the game had been any fun to play. Postal gained enough notoriety from riding the wave of public outrage to warrant a sequel. And DLC. And a remake. And, perhaps most surprising of all, a Golden-Raspberry-winning feature film adaptation directed by the infamous Uwe Boll. In this thoughtful and hilarious tag-team performance, Brock Wilbur & Nathan Rabin probe the fascinatingly troubled game and film for what each can tell us about shock culture & mass shootings, interviewing the RWS team and even Boll himself for answers. Like it or not, Postal is the franchise that won't die—no matter how many molotov cocktails you throw at it.
Breakthroughs in Writing and Language (Breakthroughs Series)
by Joan Maruskin-Mott<P>"Contemporary's Breakthroughs in Writing and Language is designed to help students develop a firm basis in writing and language skills. Both the process of writing and conventions of English are covered. In particular, there are three features to note: <P>- The ""Journal Writing"" feature provides students with a variety of ideas for writing in their journals. Its main purpose is to help students start to feel comfortable as writers. In this section only, grammar and spelling are not emphasized. <P>- ""Putting Your Skills to Work,"" a highly structured writing activity, appears following language skills exercises. The writing focuses on the grammar point that was just taught. This feature helps students to understand grammar in the context of their own writing. <P>- Somewhat less structured than ""Putting Your Skills to Work,"" ""Your Turn to Write"" gives students a choice of topics and some suggestions about how to approach the topic. ""Your Turn to Write"" is followed by a checklist of a few of the major grammar and usage points in the chapter. The checklist guides students in editing their own writing."
Breastfeeding in American Women’s Literature: Latching On (Routledge Research in Women's Literature)
by Wendy Whelan-StewartRather than rarities, literary depictions of women breastfeeding infants are more common in American literature than recognized. In some cases, readers have dismissed such portrayals as scenic background or strokes of verisimilitude. In other cases, we have failed to register them at all. By cataloging and closely reading scenes of characters breastfeeding across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, this book decodes the beliefs of writers as celebrated as Willa Cather, Toni Morrison, and Louise Erdrich and as current as Camille Dungy, Maggie Nelson, and Torrey Peters. It traces in these authors’ fantasies and fears the consistent and sometimes competing cultural ideologies that accrue over decades and find expression in breastfeeding scenes. Despite the different historical and cultural expectations of what a mother should be and do, twentieth and twenty-first-century women writers have consistently singled out maternal pleasure—a mother’s privileging of her own desire—as the most important theme attending scenes of breastfeeding.
Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter
by Jan SchreiberBreath Lines takes a fresh and down-to-earth approach to encounters with poetry. In these accessible, non-technical essays, Jan Schreiber offers insightful strategies for reading and understanding works that many people have found challenging. The essays address critical areas of poetic craft and interpretation: the content of poems, including narrative techniques and the voices a poet creates; the character and power of verse lines and the problems attending the translation of metrical poems; challenges of interpretation, including complex philosophies and obscure references; and a look at the future of the art, hinted by the competing styles and allegiances of contemporary writers. Each essay offers pertinent verse examples to illustrate metrical, rhetorical, and stylistic issues. Schreiber’s commentaries explain how a reader’s careful attention can be rewarded with a deeper understanding of the multiple meanings embedded in apparently simple poems—and how readers can thereby experience an emotional impact not always perceived on a first reading. Designed for writers, students, and passionate readers, Breath Lines: How Poems Work and Why They Matter offers guidance into some of the art form’s more arcane mysteries, written by a distinguished poet and critic.
Breath, Eyes, Memory (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series)
by SparkNotesBreath, Eyes, Memory (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Edwidge Danticat Making the reading experience fun! Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster.Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides:chapter-by-chapter analysis explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols a review quiz and essay topicsLively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers.
Breathing Aesthetics
by Jean-Thomas TremblayIn Breathing Aesthetics Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive capitalism, imperialism, and structural racism are embodied and experienced through respiration. They identify responses to the crisis in breathing in aesthetic practices ranging from the film work of Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta to the disability diaries of Bob Flanagan, to the Black queer speculative fiction of Renee Gladman. In readings of these and other minoritarian works of experimental film, endurance performance, ecopoetics, and cinema-vérité, Tremblay contends that articulations of survival now depend on the management and dispersal of respiratory hazards. In so doing, they reveal how an aesthetic attention to breathing generates historically, culturally, and environmentally situated tactics and strategies for living under precarity.
Breathing Life into Your Characters: How to Give You Characters Emotional and Psychological Depth
by Rachel BallonIt's the question that eternally plagues all good writers: How can you describe the thoughts and feelings of characters who have backgrounds or psychological aberrations with which you have no personal experience? How can you describe the feelings of a drug addict if you've never been one? How can you write about being a prisoner if you've never been to jail? You can do all the research you want, but the question still remains: How do you convincingly portray characters if you've never lived in their skin? In Breathing Life Into Your Characters, writing consultant and professional psychotherapist Rachel Ballon, Ph.D., shows you how to get in touch with the thoughts and feelings necessary to truly understand your characters, no matter what their background or life experiences. She'll show you how to: Develop a psychological profile for every character; Turn archetypes into conflicted characters; Think like a criminal to convincingly write one; Reveal personalities through the use of nonverbal communication. In addition, you'll learn how to effectively use Ballon's "Method Writing" system, taught previously only in her writing workshops, to explore your own feelings, memories, and emotions to create characters of astonishing depth and complexity!
Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Survive, and Get Back to the Fight
by Kimberly Dozier&“A harrowing tale of courage, survival, determination, fellowship and the high price of covering a war . . . a master storyteller and one tough journalist.&” —Tom BrokawCBS Foreign Correspondent Kimberly Dozier shares her compelling story from being injured in Iraq to her recovery . . . shedding light on the ordeal faced by countless combat veterans and civilians. In a flash, Kimberly Dozier&’s life changed. As an award-winning CBS News reporter, Dozier had devoted her career to being in the right place at the right time to capture the story. Suddenly, in the wrong place at the worst time, she became the story, as a deadly explosion tore through her team and the troops they were following, and a word spread worldwide. That Memorial Day in 2006, a routine mission ended with Dozier in a pool of blood on a Baghdad street, a victim of a car bomb that killed her team, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, as well as U.S. Army Captain James Alex Funkhouser and his translator. Critically injured, Dozier woke to find herself fighting first for survival, then for recovery, and finally to return to the field. Breathing the Fire tracks one woman&’s relentless determination to get the story, to get it right, and to get well again after everything went wrong. The paperback was produced at the request of hospital caregivers, who find the book helps trauma patients and the families supporting them. The author&’s profits go to wounded warrior charities.&“A rare, personal view—with all the attention to detail a great reporter brings to bear—into an experience shared by thousands of wounded Iraq veterans.&” —Dan Rather
Breathless: Sound Recording, Disembodiment, and The Transformation of Lyrical Nostalgia
by Allen S. WeissExplores how early radio and sound recording influenced modernist literature.Breathless explores early sound recording and the literature that both foreshadowed its invention and was contemporaneous with its early years, revealing the broad influence of this new technology at the very origins of Modernism. Through close readings of works by Edgar Allan Poe, Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Cros, Paul Valéry, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Jules Verne, and Antonin Artaud, Allen S. Weiss shows how sound recording's uncanny confluence of human and machine would transform our expectations of mourning and melancholia, transfiguring our intimate relation to death. Interdisciplinary, the book bridges poetry and literature, theology and metaphysics. As Breathless shows, the symbolic and practical roles of poetry and technology were transformed as new forms of nostalgia and eroticism arose.
Brecht in India: The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre
by PrateekBrecht in India analyses the dramaturgy and theatrical practices of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht in post-independence India. The book explores how post-independence Indian drama is an instance of a cultural palimpsest, a site celebrating a dialogue between Western and Indian theatrical traditions, rather than a homogenous and isolated canon. Analysing the dissemination of a selection of Brecht’s plays in the Hindi belt between the 1960s and the 1990s, this study demonstrates that Brecht’s work provided aesthetic and ideological paradigms to modern Hindi playwrights, helping them develop and stage a national identity. The book also traces how the reception of Brecht was mediated in India, how it helped post-independence Indian playwrights formulate a political theatre, and how the dissemination of Brechtian aesthetics in India addressed the anxiety related to the stasis in Brechtian theatre in Europe. Tracking the dialogue between Brechtian aesthetics in India and Europe and a history of deliberate cultural resistance, Brecht in India is an invaluable resource for academics and students of theatre studies and theatre historiography, as well as scholars of post-colonial history and literature.
Brecht's Tradition
by Max SpalterOriginally published in 1967. Literary scholars often acknowledge that Brecht borrowed from a variety of traditions, including Goethe, Schiller, expressionists, naturalists, and realists, all of whom affected his work. However, they tend not to address any single tradition as exclusively Brecht's. From these various literary traditions, Brecht borrowed formal elements only; compared with other writers to whom he is indebted, Brecht exceeds them in cynicism. They do not convey anything like his pitiless debunking attitude, his corrosive anti-romanticism, his hardheaded refusal to idealize or glorify, and his suspicion of all sentimentalities. This book discusses what the author identifies as the "Brechtian sensibility." Chroniclers of drama have not totally ignored the Brechtian tradition, but too often they are content to note merely that Brecht shared with some writers—particularly Büchner and Wedekind—a proclivity for open drama and episodes of racy realism tinged with poetic feeling. Other critics have not closely studied the various plays of this tradition in order to show how they constitute a distinctive and well-defined species of theater to which Brecht unmistakably belongs.
Breeches and Metaphysics: Thackeray's German Discourse
by S. S. Prawer"This study traces the successive stages of Thackeray's contact with the German world and analyses the discourse he developed as a result. The author is concerned with the fiction and criticism of Thackeray's :Paris Sketch Book"" and the impressions related by the cockney traveller in ""Irish Sketch Book"" and ""Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo"". Thackeray's own pictorial illustrations of his writings and those by Cruikshank, Doyle and Walker, which he supervised and supplemented, are recognized as an integral part of his German discourse. The study is a chronological one, setting Thackeray's construction of ""German"" and ""the Germans"" against the background of his own development and of the social, industrial, cultural and political history of Britain and its continental neighbours."
Brendan
by Frederick BuechnerAn acclaimed author interweaves history and legend to re-create the life of a complex man of faith fifteen hundred years ago. Winner of the 1987 Christianity and Literature Book Award for Belles-Lettres.
Bret Easton Ellis
by Georgina ColbyThis book reads the whole of Bret Easton Ellis's oeuvre to date from "Less Than Zero" to "Imperial Bedrooms. "Colby recasts Ellis as a social critic anda literary figure who enables us to think differently about the cultural climates of the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the twenty-first century. "
Breve Historia de la Literatura Argentina
by Martín PrietoEste libro ofrece al lector una historia informativa, descriptiva, explicativa, crítica y valorativa de la literatura argentina, desde las crónicas escritas sobre el territorio que más de tres siglos después ocupará la República Argentina hasta la producción literaria actual. La decisión de condensar todos estos contenidos en un volumen requiere necesariamente exclusiones y recortes. La obra, guiada por criterios claros y comprometidos, da cuenta de los principales textos, autores, movimientos, tendencias y géneros que dibujan el corpus literario argentino en forma sucinta pero rigurosa y funcional. Escrita por un solo autor -un especialista con perspectivas y juicios sólidos y definidos-, goza de una unidad y una coherencia que la hacen un útil instrumento para un público amplio, no restringido a los expertos, objetivo al que apunta también su lenguaje claro y despojado de tecnicismos. Dejando de lado otros criterios, esta Breve historia... elige poner el eje en el valor literario de los textos -ya resida éste en su dimensión estética, su novedad o su proyección-, constituyendo así un instrumento decisivo para conocer, valorar y disfrutar la literatura argentina.
Breve acercamiento a la lingüística
by Pascual Hernández del MoralEl lenguaje es lo que nos hace humanos. En este Breve acercamiento a la lingüística general se ha pretendido hacer un repaso a las diferentes teorías que se han sucedido a lo largo del tiempo, a través de la obra de los distintos lingüistas, a los que se les cita a través de sus obras, lo que, a veces hace al texto un tanto enojoso. <P><P>Tras hacer un repaso a las generalidades del lenguaje y de la lengua, como entidades distintas, y apuntar las principales características que definen ambos conceptos, se acerca a una definición de la lingüística como disciplina, que intenta unir la explicación del lenguaje y de la lengua, a través del término Lingüística General y de las ciencias afines que aportan conceptos esenciales a la disciplina lingüística. <P>Presenta una breve historia de la lingüística desde el siglo III a.C., hasta principios del siglo XXI, presentando, a través de los principales autores, los fundamentos de las superaciones teóricas de la teoría lingüística. Se acaba con un glosario de los términos más importantes, presentados a través de las distintas acepciones que los autores les han dado.
Breve diccionario clínico del alma
by Jesús Ramírez-BermúdezUn audaz ensayo sobre las profundas relaciones entre la literatura y la psiquiatría, a través de la narración de varios casos clínicos. Breve diccionario clínico del alma es una aproximación al complejo fenómeno de las enfermedades del cerebro y la mente. Mediante casos clínicos, notas históricas y reflexiones filosóficas, el diccionario aborda los enigmas de la neuropsiquiatría contemporánea, como la autoscopía, los delirios de parasitosis, las alucinaciones visuales de las personas ciegas, los síndromes de Cotard y Capgras. Más que una explicación definitiva, Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez plantea las interrogantes diarias del trabajo clínico, así como el intenso debate entre ciencias y humanidades en torno a problemas descritos desde la antigüedad, como la manía, la melancolía y la epilepsia, o frente a los conceptos que forman la psicopatología moderna: esquizofrenia, paranoia, delirios, obsesiones. Con los recursos de la narrativa, la reflexión filosófica y el rigor científico, el Breve diccionario clínico del alma explora la correspondencia oculta entre la creatividad artística y la enfermedad mental, entre la filosofía de la mente y la neurología de la conducta, entre la ciencia y el arte.
Breve historia de la literatura argentina
by Martín PrietoLa obra, guiada por criterios claros y comprometidos, da cuenta de los principales textos, autores, movimientos, tendencias y géneros que dibujan el corpus literario argentino en forma sucinta pero rigurosa y funcional. Este libro ofrece al lector una historia informativa, descriptiva, explicativa, crítica y valorativa de la literatura argentina, desde las crónicas escritas sobre el territorio que más de tres siglos después ocupará la República Argentina hasta la producción literaria actual. La decisión de condensar todos estos contenidos en un volumen requiere necesariamente exclusiones y recortes. Escrita por un solo autor -un especialista con perspectivas y juicios sólidos y definidos-, goza de una unidad y una coherencia que la hacen un útil instrumento para un público amplio, no restringido a los expertos, objetivo al que apunta también su lenguaje claro y despojado de tecnicismos. Dejando de lado otros criterios, esta Breve historia elige poner el eje en el valor literario de los textos -ya resida éste en su dimensión estética, su novedad o su proyección-, constituyendo así un instrumento decisivo para conocer, valorar y disfrutar la literatura argentina.
Breviario para políticos
by Giulio MazarinoLos mejores libros jamás escritos. «Solo el azar determina las acciones de los hombres.» El cardenal Giulio Mazarino presenta en su Breviario para políticos una particular concepción sociopolítica de la época que le tocó vivir y eligió protagonizar. Desarrolla así, escueta y precisamente, un agudo análisis de la condición humana. A lo largo de sus páginas, se ofrecen al lector directrices y consejos de un pragmatismo atroz, lindante de la inmoralidad, cuyo único objetivo es la obtención de más y más poder. Inteligente, aguda y, por encima de todo, tremendamente sincera, la presente es una obra imprescindible para historiadores, para literatos y, por supuesto, para políticos. En la palpitante versión de María Pons Irazazábal, este lacerante epítome se revela no solo como el retrato de uno de los hombres más poderosos de su tiempo, sino, en palabras del maestro Umberto Eco, firmante de la introducción que abre el volumen, como «un retrato robot de uso diario, para vuestra actividad cotidiana».
Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook
by David GalefIn Brevity, David Galef provides a guide to writing flash fiction, from tips on technique to samples by canonical and contemporary authors to provocative prompts that inspire powerful stories in a little space. Galef traces the genre back to its varied origins, from the short-short to nanofiction, with examples that include vignettes, prose poems, character sketches, fables, lists, twist stories, surrealism, and metafiction. The authors range from the famous, such as Colette and Borges, to today's voices, like Roxane Gay and Bruce Holland Rogers. A writer and longtime creative writing teacher, Galef also shows how flash fiction skills translate to other types of writing. Brevity is an indispensable resource for anyone working in this increasingly popular form. For more information, see davidgalef.com/brevity.
Brexit and Literature: Critical and Cultural Responses
by Robert EaglestoneBrexit is a political, economic and administrative event: and it is a cultural one, too. In Brexit and Literature, Robert Eaglestone brings together a diverse range of literary scholars, writers and poets to respond to this aspect of Brexit. The discipline of ‘English’, as the very name suggests, is concerned with cultural and national identity: literary studies has always addressed ideas of nationalism and the wider political process. With the ramifications of Brexit expected to last for decades to come, Brexit and Literature offers the first academic study of its impact on and through the humanities. Including a preface from Baroness Young of Hornsey, Brexit and Literature is a bold and unapologetic volume, focusing on the immediate effects of the divisive referendum while meditating on its long-term impact.
Brexit, Language Policy and Linguistic Diversity (Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics)
by Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost Matteo BonottiThis book argues that Brexit will wholly re-shape the legal framework and public policy norms relating to linguistic diversity that have dominated public life in the UK and the EU since the Treaty on European Union in 1993. First, Brexit de-anchors the linguistic actors engaged with sub-state nationalisms in the UK (in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland) from the ethno-linguistic imaginary of the so-called ‘Europe of the regions’. This strengthens the case both for the de jure recognition of English as the official language of the UK and for embedding autochthonous minority language rights and freedoms in a transformed UK constitution. Second, Brexit strengthens the normative case for English as the lingua franca of the EU, by reducing the injustices associated with the rise of English as the EU and global lingua franca. The book will appeal to students and scholars across the fields of political science, political theory, law, language policy and planning, and sociolinguistics.
Brexitspeak: Demagoguery and the Decline of Democracy
by Paul ChiltonWere we talked into Brexit? And who is 'we'? It's impossible to do politics without words and a context to use them in. And it's impossible to make sense of the phenomenon of Brexit without understanding how language was used – and misused – in the historical context that produced the 2016 referendum result. This interdisciplinary book shows how the particular idea of 'the British people' was maintained through text and talk at different levels of society over the years following World War II, and mobilised by Brexit propagandists in a socially, economically and culturally divided polity. The author argues that we need the well-defined tools of linguistics and language philosophy, tied in with a political science framework, to understand a serious, modern concept of demagoguery. Written in an accessible manner, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to probe the social, political and ideational contexts that generated Brexit.