#paperback #memoir #feminism #politics #history #antigua #antiracism 

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author ofAnnie John

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ."

So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up.

Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode,A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.

Small Place

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Poems

Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief and love. Martín Espada is a poet who "stirs in us an undeniable social consciousness," says Richard Blanco. Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry. Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the "I’m 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise. The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl’s gently racist question. Whether celebrating the visionaries—the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets—or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father’s Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.

Floaters

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#paperback #fiction #shortstory #classic 

A humane scientist attempts to explore the most loathsome forces of evil behind the doors of his London laboratory

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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History

What happens when a dreamer explores perverse and imperfect origins? An anthropoetic meditation on colonial racial violence in Central America.

Skins of Columbus

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#paperback #nonfiction #tonimorrison #literarycriticism #literature #nobelprize 

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race--and promises to change the way we read American literature--from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner

Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. 

Written with the artistic vision that has earned the Nobel Prize-winning author a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark is an invaluable read for avid Morrison admirers as well as students, critics, and scholars of American literature.

Playing in the Dark

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Poetry. SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT by the anonymous Gawain-Poet (or Pearl-Poet) is, like Beowulf, one of the greatest classics of English literature. Hailed as the finest Arthurian romance, this technically brilliant tale of enchantment, faith, temptation, and chivalry is tautly constructed, with a wonderfully rich vocabulary and vivid language that blends sophisticated atmosphere with psychological depth. John Ridland's new Modern English translation, unlike most presentations, is complete, covering every passage and word of the Middle English, Northwest Midland dialect original with the same line numbering, contents and meaning. His is the only version written in a familiar modern meter--pleasurable to modern ears, yet retaining the spirit of repetition and alliteration of the medieval original. And Dr. Ridland's introduction and notes are enlightening. This translation is a must-have for unlocking all the pleasures and delights of the original classic.



"With his loving rendition of a great classic into vigorous metrical lines, John Ridland has given SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT a fresh lease on life. I've seen several other versions of this masterpiece, but none so engagingly readable as Ridland's. His preface, too, is useful and illuminating. Here is a book to enjoy right now and to cherish forever."--X.J. Kennedy



"John Ridland gives us a recognizably English GAWAIN, and a very pleasurable one at that. The language is ours. It is slightly elevated, as befits a work so finely crafted, but only enough to demand our attention. Originally written in the same alliterative verse as Beowulf, SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT was archaic in its own day; now, over six-hundred years later, alliterative verse can be as inaccessible as the pentatonic harp tunes that apparently accompanied it. Ridland gives the poem a long, loose line that sings in the lyrical passages, creeps in the spooky ones, and cavorts in the comic ones. Just as important, the densely mythic ethos, fully intact, enriches every word."--Richard Wakefield



"Panoramas of banqueting and hunting, closely observed rituals of dressing, arming, and game preparation, and rich descriptions of landscape and weather--Ridland's translation presents these in all their delightful, over-the-top particularity."--Maryann Corbett



"The language in which the consummate poet and translator John Ridland serves up this delicious story in verse is exactly what it deserves. The descriptions are exuberant, the narrative flows and exhilarates like the wine at the courts we're asked to imagine, and the exchanges between complex characters so subtly flavored by intelligent diplomacy that it makes the dialogue of much current fiction seem, by contrast, like a six-pack on the front stoop. Read this book. I suspect that, like all enchantments, it shifts and assumes different forms to different eyes. But I do guarantee surprises, and inexhaustible delight."--Rhina P. Espaillat

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (a New Verse Translation in Modern English)

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#paperback #beowulf #classics #seamushenry #gilmoregirls #literature

Presents a new translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic chronicling the heroic adventures of Beowulf, the Scandinavian warrior who saves his people from the ravages of the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother.

Beowulf a New Verse Translation Bilingual Edition

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#memoir #sarahmbroom #paperback #newyorktimesbestseller

A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.

The Yellow House

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English

Norton Critical Edition

Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane remains an innovative literary work--part drama, party poetry, part fiction. This revised Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was edited by the late Darwin T. Turner, a pioneering scholar in the field of African American studies. The Second Edition begins with the editors' introduction, a major work of scholarship that places Toomer within the context of American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. The introduction provides groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer and examines his complex, contradictory racial position as well as his own pioneering views on race. Illustrative materials include government documents containing contradictory information on Toomer's race, several photographs of Toomer, and a map of Sparta, Georgia--the inspiration for the first and third parts of Cane. The edition reprints the 1923 foreword to Cane by Toomer's friend Waldo Frank, which helped introduce Toomer to a small but influential readership. Revised and expanded explanatory annotations are also included.

"Backgrounds and Sources" collects a wealth of autobiographical writing that illuminates important phases in Jean Toomer's intellectual life, including a central chapter from The Wayward and the Seeking and Toomer's essay on teaching the philosophy of Russian psychologist and mystic Georges I. Gurdjieff, "Why I Entered the Gurdjieff Work." The volume also reprints thirty of Toomer's letters from 1919-30, the height of his literary career, to correspondents including Waldo Frank, Sherwood Anderson, Claude McKay, Horace Liveright, Georgia O'Keeffe, and James Weldon Johnson.

An unusually rich "Criticism" section demonstrates deep and abiding interest in Cane. Five contemporary reviews--including those by Robert Littell and W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke--suggest its initial reception. From the wealth of scholarly commentary on Cane, the editors have chosen twenty-one major interpretations spanning eight decades including those by Langston Hughes, Robert Bone, Darwin T. Turner, Charles T. Davis, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Barbara Foley, Mark Whalan, and Nellie Y. McKay.

A Chronology, new to the Second Edition, and an updated Selected Bibliography are also included.

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Books Listed

Following

Followers

Jamaica Kincaid

Small Place

Martín Espada

Floaters

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Edgar Garcia

Skins of Columbus

Toni Morrison

Playing in the Dark

John Ridland

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (a New Verse Translation in Modern English)

Seamus Heaney

Beowulf a New Verse Translation Bilingual Edition

Sarah M. Broom

The Yellow House

Jean Toomer; Rudolph P. Byrd (Editor); Henry Louis Gates (Editor)

Cane

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Jamaica Kincaid

Small Place

Martín Espada

Floaters

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Edgar Garcia

Skins of Columbus

Toni Morrison

Playing in the Dark

John Ridland

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (a New Verse Translation in Modern English)

Seamus Heaney

Beowulf a New Verse Translation Bilingual Edition

Sarah M. Broom

The Yellow House

Jean Toomer; Rudolph P. Byrd (Editor); Henry Louis Gates (Editor)

Cane

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