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The British Army is approaching, and the Indians in the area seem ready to attack. Joseph Bruchac Lexile: 810L multiple books, P, 1998įor young Samuel Russell, the summer of 1777 is a time of fear. Now it's up to Saxso, on his own, to track the raiders and bring his family back home. Many people are killed, but some, including Saxso's mother and two sisters, are taken hostage. Without enough warriors to defend their homes, Saxso's village is burned to the ground. It's 1759, and war is raging in the northeast between the British and the French, with the Abenaki people? Saxso's people-by their side. Saxso is fourteen when the British attack his village. Joseph Bruchac Lexile: 800L multiple books, IJ, 2004 Joseph Bruchac Lexile: 860L multiple books, IJ, 2007Īlthough the littlest student in his class, thirteen-year-old Baron Braun calls upon the strength and wisdom of his Mohawk ancestors to face both man and beast when he tries to get help for his classmates, who are being terrorized during a school field trip in the Adirondacks. Joseph Bruchac Lexile: 820L multiple books, IJ, 2004Īfter he feels a mysterious pull drawing him toward a dark, shadowy pond in the woods, Armie looks to old Native American tales for guidance about the dangerous monster lurking in the water.
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Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe7/7/2023 Of course, explaining jokes is a task fraught with danger, but here goes. Part of the point is that you learn a little. If that all seems a bit challenging, there is even an “ Explain XKCD” site, which walks you through the science, technology or general knowledge needed to “get” each of Munroe’s jokes. There are comic strips with mathematical symbols, strips containing programming code, strips where you really need to know what a “clockwise polar plot” is to understand the joke. It’s delightful, good-humoured and never talks down to its readers the opposite, if anything. (The name, incidentally, is simply a set of letters that don’t appear in any English words in that order, so are easy to Google.) Drawn in a simple, elegant and clean style, it tells jokes for people who know something about science and maths. XKCD, the “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language” written for the past 10 years by Randall Munroe, is a geek phenomenon.
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The piano lesson7/6/2023 A further family member even was killed for stealing, or rather returning, the piano to a family blown apart by the cruelty of slavery.īoy Willie sees only money. Boy Willie, who has learned under duress to be a schemer, intends to effect the sale of the family heirloom, as carved by an enslaved ancestor under the orders of a slave owner whose wife missed the enslaved people he had sold and wanted a reminder. A young man named Boy Willie (Washington) arrives in Pittsburgh’s Hill District (the site of all but one of Wilson’s plays) with his countrified friend, Lymon (Ray Fisher) escaping the racist legal system of Mississippi. Wilson, of course, wrote a play for each decade of the Black experience and “The Piano Lesson,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, covers the 1930s. I’ve seen “The Piano Lesson” several times, but never with such a grand upright piano, replete with the faces of long-dead enslaved people staring out at a Broadway audience. And the titular prop piano, which Wilson employed as a modest symbol for the ancestral sacrifices of those who perished on the Middle Passage and plantation fields beyond, has such elaborate and detailed carvings that you can imagine it being stored and later used on a soundstage for an upcoming movie, even if a modest one already was made.
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Incognegro by Mat Johnson7/6/2023 And then you have legal test case of who you are,” Johnson said. You have the larger community, how that larger community sees who you are. The series is titled “The Loving Generation.”įrom Melissa Harris-Perry to Mat Johnson, and Panama Jackson, “The Loving Generation” features a diversity of voices examining the borderland between “blackness” and “whiteness.” And it would take nearly a decade before all state laws prohibiting interracial marriage were struck down.Ī new series from tells the story of Americans born to one black parent and one white parent after the 1967 Supreme Court decision. And he told us to get up and that we was under arrest.” “And I woke up and it was a policeman standing beside the bed. and I saw these lights,” Mildred recalled. “ The night we were arrested, I guess it was about 2 a.m. About four months after their marriage, the Virginia county they lived in issued a criminal indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage. In 1958, a Virginia couple, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, married in the District of Columbia.
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Arthur golden author7/6/2023 "Like a stray cat on the street without a master to feed it." "Like a pig trying to survive in a slaughterhouse." "Like water bugs kicking along the surface." "My poor scalp felt the way clay must feel after the potter has scored it with a sharp stick." "I felt as sore as a rock must feel when the waterfall has pounded on it all day long." "I felt as a dam must feel when it's holding back an entire river." Please notice and enjoy how natural this way of thinking sounds : Because I was so sick and tired of reading for the 40th time how something is LIKE a bird or a snake or whatever, I made a list. It feels forced and weird and and it's very annoying, as it slows down the pacing (which is already very slow) and frequently interrupts the narrator's flow of thoughts.Įxamples? Yes, yes. Ironically, it doesn't feel natural at all. It feels like Golden thought it would be a good idea to emphasize all the Japan-and-nature clichés to the point of ridiculousness : I still can't believe how many times he compares something to the nature. In some sort of weird combination, the writing is both superficial and cliché. It's pretentious and superficial, and sloooooww and it goes on and on and on and on and on and still, very little happens. The writing was what bothered me the most. It's supposed to be awesome, and deep, and beautiful, right? I had heard so many good things about it. I'd been wanting to read that one for a very long time.
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Mema by Daniel M. Mengara7/6/2023 African civilization(s) and literature(s) in French and/or in English MA, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, 1991īA, Omar Bongo University of Libreville, Gabon, 1990 MA, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, 1996įrench Studies, specializing in second/foreign language pedagogy (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies), Anglophone Studies (Concentration: African Literatures and Civilizations/Postcolonial Studies, 1992 Ph.D., University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, 1995Īnglophone Studies, specializing in African literatures and civilizations/postcolonial studiesĭ.E.A. Professor of French and Francophone Studiesĭepartment of World Languages and Culturesĭepartment of World Languages & Cultures (Interim = Fall 2022-Spring 2023 only)Įxecutive Director of SORAC (Society of Research on African Cultures)Įditor-in-Chief: SORAC Journal of African Studies Simply connect to my Zoom link above at the day and time of your appointment. IMPORTANT: Due to Covid-19, I prefer Zoom appointments. NOTE: You need to book a time to secure an appointment.
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Missing by karin alvtegen7/5/2023 What little we learn of them is via the ever-helpful media, through TV and newspaper reports. There are crimes, several murders in fact, but they’re all in the background. That’s not the case with Missing but to be fair Missing is less of a detective novel than it is a psychological thriller. What I liked about Shadow is that it was a detective novel without a detective, either a world-weary professional or an annoyingly enthusiastic amateur sleuth. In fact you could even get away without any special effects, dead bodies or anything. A shame because her novel is eminently adaptable it has a small cast and could be as easily filmed in the back streets of Glasgow as it could be in Stockholm where the book is set. What I was unaware of at the time was the fact that Alvtegen's novel Missing had in fact been adapted for the small screen (by Scottish Television of all people) but I had no recollection of having seen it. When I reviewed Karin Alvtegen's novel, Shadow a couple of years ago I fessed up to the fact my knowledge of the crime fiction is based almost solely on TV and film adaptations.
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Yaa gyasi's transcendent kingdom7/5/2023 Operation Block Ivanka: 'Melania & Me' excerpts reveal battle between first lady, president's daughterĤ. 'Decolonize your bookshelf': Little libraries, book boxes promote conversation about race in America The buzz: “Clarke is writing about dying, but also, eloquently, about living,” says The Guardian, calling the book “heart-wrenchingly tender and candid.” What it’s about: A palliative care specialist shares her professional and personal journey to understand death and dying as she worked to improve the quality of her patients’ final days. “Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love and Loss,” by Rachel Clarke (Thomas Dunne, nonfiction, on sale Sept. The buzz: “Integrating science, history, philosophy, and religion, Marchant’s epic account is one for readers to savor,” says a starred review in Publishers Weekly.ģ. What it's about: Marchant charts the history of humanity’s fascination with the night sky and explores the way the stars have shaped art, faith, science and society, and what our modern disconnect from the stars has cost us. “The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars,” by Jo Marchant (Dutton, nonfiction, on sale Sept.
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Thelma golden black male7/5/2023 He wears a dancer's top that strains to reach his belly button, and a lengthy piece of tulle luxuriously flows from his waist like a dancer's tutu, except where he rolled it up, revealing his penis. Amongst all the heavy-hitters of the day: David Hammons, Adrian Piper, Lorna Simpson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andres Serrano, Robert Colescott - here was a young Harris, standing tall with all the bravado in the world.įour photographs: two forward-facing, two from behind, Harris nude or nearly nude in the solitude of a studio, floating in the space between a crude backdrop and the camera. Debates spilled out through the museum doors and into mainstream media (see YouTube for Golden on Charlie Rose). Before the show had opened, audiences made up their minds: perhaps equal parts applause and pointed opposition. It was a hallmark for greater museum inclusion. This was Golden's first museum group exhibition, and she conceived a show about race, but not all of the artists were of the same race, ethnicity or gender. The exhibition marked a seminal moment in art history and Harris was one of the show's bright stars. This work was selected for the pioneering exhibition, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, curated by Thelma Golden at the Whitney Museum. In 1989, in just his second semester of the MFA program at the California Institute of the Arts, Harris worked on a groundbreaking series called Constructs. Lyle Ashton Harris has had a knack for being part of groundbreaking exhibitions from a young age.
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Eversion by Alastair Reynolds7/5/2023 Within the fissure rears a massive stone construction, provenance unknown, that reportedly contains something of immense value. In his first tale, set in the 18th century, the Demeter is a sloop searching for an unmarked fissure in the cliffs along the north Norwegian coast, based on alleged intelligence from the Europa. Silas, the Demeter’s doctor, narrates the story in a series of first-person episodes. To say more would be to give spoilers, but I will tell you the reveals are well-timed and powerful, the novel’s conclusion both satisfying and thought-provoking. Ingeniously, Reynolds also evokes “eversion” in the novel’s structure, a nested set of fictions that led me far from my initial understanding of what was happening to the protagonists. The titular “eversion” refers to both the topological paradox of a sphere being turned inside out without tears or creases and the physical situation of the knowledge-sucking mind-spider lurking at the heart of the edifice. In Eversion, his twentieth novel, Alastair Reynolds interleaves reflections on selfhood, agency, and the possibilities of narrative within a cracking yarn of nautical adventure and a mysterious edifice. |