Author: Ruth MoorePublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
Spoonhandle
Author: Ruth MooreThe Kitchen Spoon's Handle
Author: Michele Ruth GamburdPublisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801486449
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
A common Sinhala proverb states, "A woman's understanding reaches only the length of the kitchen spoon's handle." In this beautifully written book on the effects of female migration from Sri Lanka, Michele Ruth Gamburd shows that the length of that handle now spans several thousand miles, rather than a mere twelve inches.During the past twenty years, a great many Sri Lankan women have left their homes and families to work as housemaids in the wealthy oil-producing states of the Middle East. Gamburd explores global and local, as well as personal, reasons why so many women leave to work so far away. Focusing primarily on the home community, rather than on the experiences of the workers abroad, she vividly illustrates the impact of the migration on those left behind and on the migrants who return.As migrant women take on the formerly masculine role of breadwinner, Gamburd explains, traditional concepts of the value of "women's work" are significantly altered. She examines the effects of female migration on caste hierarchies, class relations, gender roles, and family interactions.The Kitchen Spoon's Handle skillfully blends the stories and memories of returned migrants and their families and neighbors with interviews with government officials, recruiting agents, and moneylenders. The book provides a rich and sensitive portrait of the confluence of global and local processes in the lives of the villagers. Gamburd presents a sophisticated, yet very readable, discussion of current theories of power, agency, and identity.
Hidden Places
Author: Joseph ConfortiPublisher: Down East Books
ISBN: 1608937291
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Across decades, Maine has produced nationally-recognized novelists of place-based fiction. From the late nineteenth century to the present, writers have explored the experiences of living in far-flung settings: island and coastal villages; northwoods lumbering communities; unincorporated townships; backcountry hamlets; and mill cities and towns. Taken together their body of work composes a remarkable literary map of a diverse and changing Maine. Hidden Places explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they captured at moments in time. Hidden Places traces the work of these writers to provoke readers into seeing and understanding Maine places with new awareness. These Maine writers construe place as both a territory on the ground and a country of the imagination. They help insiders see more clearly what is distinctive about their communities and encourage outsiders to better understand what might seem quaint or odd about the state. Like a well-drawn atlas, Hidden Places seeks to capture a diverse state at the granular level one representation at a time. It explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they wrote of.
Middlesex
Author: Jeffrey EugenidesPublisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307401944
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.
Speak to the Winds
Author: Ruth MooreSpoonhandle
Author: Ruth MoorePublisher: Islandport Press
ISBN: 9781944762957
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
Spoonhandle, Ruth Moore's second novel, spent 14 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List and was made into the movie Deep Waters. Spoonhandle is about Maine, brilliantly authentic, but the story told is universal, as old as time as it deals with the struggle between love and meanness of spirit, between human dignity and greed.
The Weir
Author: Ruth MoorePublisher: Islandport Press
ISBN: 9781944762940
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
The Weir, written in 1943, takes place on a small island fishing village in the years before World War II, set against a backdrop of handwork and struggle. Ruth Moore, one of the great regional novelists of the twentieth century, brilliantly and authentically captures not only the specific characteristics of coastal Maine, but chronicles universal human drama as the two primary families feud, gossip, and struggle all while being battered by the relentless tides of change sweeping over their community and their entire way of life. This reissue of Ruth Moore's debut novel includes a new introduction.
Plum Wine
Author: Angela Davis-GardnerPublisher: Terrace Books
ISBN: 9780299211608
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching in Tokyo in the 1960s, is set on a life-changing quest when her Japanese surrogate mother, Michi, dies, leaving her a tansu of homemade plum wines wrapped in rice paper. Within the papers Barbara discovers writings in Japanese calligraphy that comprise a startling personal narrative. With the help of her translator, Seiji Okada, Barbara begins to unravel the mysteries of Michi's life, a story that begins in the early twentieth century and continues through World War II and its aftermath. As Barbara and Seiji translate the plum wine papers they form an intimate bond, with Michi a ghostly third in what becomes an increasingly uneasy triangle. Barbara is deeply affected by the revelation that Michi and Seiji are hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, and even harder for her to understand are the devastating psychological effects wrought by war. Plum Wine examines human relationships, cultural differences, and the irreparable consequences of war in a story that is both original and timeless. 2007 A Notable Fiction Book of 2007, selected by the Kiriyama Prize Committee Winner, Fiction Award, Southern Independent Bookstore Alliance Notable Fiction, Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
Unbecoming
Author: Rebecca SchermPublisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0143128310
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
After a heist she planned lands two men she loves in prison, a woman flees Paris and assumes a new identity, furtively checking news from her hometown as her web of deception unravels.
House Documents, Otherwise Publ. as Executive Documents
Author: United States. Congress. HousePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 916
Book Description