Author: Langston Hughes Publisher: Courier Corporation ISBN: 0486113906 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
Poet Langston Hughes' only novel, a coming-of-age tale that unfolds amid an African American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.
Author: Black Ladies Brunch Collective Publisher: ISBN: 9780996103725 Category : American poetry Languages : en Pages : 84
Book Description
Poetry. African & African American Studies. The Black Ladies Brunch Collective's poetry anthology, NOT WITHOUT OUR LAUGHTER, (Mason Jar Press, 2017) is a collection of humorous and joyful poems, riffing on Langston Hughes's novel Not Without Laughter. It explores topics of family, work, love and sexuality. The women of BLBC believe, like Hughes, that even in these currently tense racial times, laughter and the celebration of life is crucial. Historically, it is what African Americans have done and will continue to do, no matter what challenges face them.
Author: Rita Williams-Garcia Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061975753 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
In this groundbreaking novel, Coretta Scott King Award winner Rita Williams-Garcia uses her vividly realistic voice to highlight an often taboo practice that affects millions of girls around the world every year, and to explore a perspective not often depicted in YA fiction. Even though they were born in different countries, Akilah and Victoria are true best friends. But Victoria has been acting strange ever since she returned from her summer in Nigeria, where she had a special coming-of-age ceremony. Why does proud Victoria, named for a queen, slouch at her desk and answer the teacher's questions in a whisper? And why won't she laugh with Akilah anymore? Akilah's name means "intelligent," and she is determined to find out what's wrong. But when she learns the terrible secret Victoria is hiding, she suddenly has even more questions. The only problem is, they might not be the kind that have answers.
Author: Milan Kundera Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0063290693 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
"An absolutely dazzling entertainment. . . . Arousing on every level—political, erotic, intellectual, and above all, humorous." —Newsweek "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting calls itself a novel, although it is part fairy tale, part literary criticism, part political tract, part musicology, and part autobiography. It can call itself whatever it wants to, because the whole is genius." —New York Times Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reordered and emphasized, newly examined, analyzed, and experienced.
Author: Donna M. Goldstein Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520276043 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
Drawing on the author's experience in Brazil, this text provides a portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas - a portrait that challenges much of what we think we know about the 'culture of poverty'. It helps us understand the nature of joking and laughter in the shantytown.
Author: Anca Parvulescu Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262514745 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
Uncovering an archive of laughter, from the forbidden giggle to the explosive guffaw. Most of our theories of laughter are not concerned with laughter. Rather, their focus is the laughable object, whether conceived of as the comic, the humorous, jokes, the grotesque, the ridiculous, or the ludicrous. In Laughter, Anca Parvulescu proposes a return to the materiality of the burst of laughter itself. She sets out to uncover an archive of laughter, inviting us to follow its rhythms and listen to its tones. Historically, laughter—especially the passionate burst of laughter—has often been a faux pas. Manuals for conduct, abetted by philosophical treatises and literary and visual texts, warned against it, offering special injunctions to ladies to avoid jollity that was too boisterous. Returning laughter to the history of the passions, Parvulescu anchors it at the point where the history of the grimacing face meets the history of noise. In the civilizing process that leads to laughter's “falling into disrepute,” as Nietzsche famously put it, we can see the formless, contorted face in laughter being slowly corrected into a calm, social smile. How did the twentieth century laugh? Parvulescu points to a gallery of twentieth-century laughers and friends of laughter, arguing that it is through Georges Bataille that the century laughed its most distinct laugh. In Bataille's wake, laughter becomes the passion at the heart of poststructuralism. Looking back at the century from this vantage point, Parvulescu revisits four of its most challenging projects: modernism, the philosophical avant-gardes, feminism, and cinema. The result is an overview of the twentieth century as seen through the laughs that burst at some of its most convoluted junctures.
Author: Lance Rubin Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers ISBN: 0525644679 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
A tragicomic story of bad dates, bad news, bad performances, and one girl's determination to find the funny in high school from the author of Denton Little's Deathdate. Winnie Friedman has been waiting for the world to catch on to what she already knows: she's hilarious. It might be a long wait, though. After bombing a stand-up set at her own bat mitzvah, Winnie has kept her jokes to herself. Well, to herself and her dad, a former comedian and her inspiration. Then, on the second day of tenth grade, the funniest guy in school actually laughs at a comment she makes in the lunch line and asks her to join the improv troupe. Maybe he's even . . . flirting? Just when Winnie's ready to say yes to comedy again, her father reveals that he's been diagnosed with ALS. That is . . . not funny. Her dad's still making jokes, though, which feels like a good thing. And Winnie's prepared to be his straight man if that's what he wants. But is it what he needs? Caught up in a spiral of epically bad dates, bad news, and bad performances, Winnie's struggling to see the humor in it all. But finding a way to laugh is exactly what will see her through. **A Junior Library Guild Selection**
Author: Jennifer Arnold Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476794715 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
From the beloved stars of TLC’s The Little Couple comes an uplifting and moving behind-the-scenes account of how the pair met, fell in love, and overcame huge obstacles to become successful professionals and parents. Jennifer Arnold and Bill Klein have inspired millions as stars of TLC’s hit show The Little Couple. Though they both have dwarfism, they have knocked down every obstacle they have encountered together with a positive, can-do attitude. The show has featured the lives of Jennifer (a respected neonatologist) and Bill (a successful entrepreneur) from their marriage in 2009, to the launch of their pet shop, to the adoption of their children, to Jen’s overcoming cancer. Now, for the first time Jen and Bill are letting readers into their private lives with behind-the-scenes, never-before-told stories about how they fell in love, what inspires them, and the passions that drive their success. They will open up about their struggles with cancer, infertility, adoption, and simply living life in a challenging world. Jen and Bill have a simple purpose in life: make the world a better place through encouragement and education. A must-have for fans of the show or anyone who has ever faced a difficult obstacle, Life Is Short (No Pun Intended) gives readers a glance at what inspires these positive people to approach life with such optimism and share their lives with the public every day.
Author: Denis Johnson Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374709238 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 241
Book Description
Denis Johnson's New York Times bestseller, The Laughing Monsters, is a high-suspense tale of kaleidoscoping loyalties in the post-9/11 world that shows one of our great novelists at the top of his game. Roland Nair calls himself Scandinavian but travels on a U.S. passport. After ten years' absence, he returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend Michael Adriko. They once made a lot of money here during the country's civil war, and, curious to see whether good luck will strike twice in the same place, Nair has allowed himself to be drawn back to a region he considers hopeless. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune and who claims to have served, at various times, the Ghanaian army, the Kuwaiti Emiri Guard, and the American Green Berets. He's probably broke now, but he remains, at thirty-six, as stirred by his own doubtful schemes as he was a decade ago. Although Nair believes some kind of money-making plan lies at the back of it all, Adriko's stated reason for inviting his friend to Freetown is for Nair to meet Adriko's fiancée, a grad student from Colorado named Davidia. Together the three set out to visit Adriko's clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland—but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Nair, Adriko, and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.
Author: Langston Hughes
Author: Black Ladies Brunch Collective
Author: Rita Williams-Garcia
Author: Milan Kundera
Author: Donna M. Goldstein
Author: Anca Parvulescu
Author: Langston Hughes
Author: Lance Rubin
Author: Jennifer Arnold
Author: Denis Johnson