The Autobiography Of My Mother

The Autobiography of My Mother

Literature & Fiction

jamaica-kincaid

Literary

Farrar Straus & Giroux (T)

From the publication of his first book in 1965, Les Murray has been the central figure in Australian literature. Scholars have faulted his proposals for an Australian canon; writers have bristled after receiving his brisk critiques of their work on the backs of postcards; feminists have scolded him for his traditional views on religion and morality. Yet when Murray, already mired in depression -- the black dog, he calls it -- suffered a stroke and fell into a coma, the whole nation awaited news of his recovery.Peter F. Alexander reveals in this eloquent biography the source and stimulus for Murray's poetry, a life that has been, from the beginning, an alternating sequence of exhilaration and calamity. His mother died of injuries sustained when she gave birth to him; his father, a farmer, withdrew into grief, in some ways neglecting his young son. Even so, by the time Murray reached university in Sydney he was recognized as an odd genius. He could not add -- he remains practically innumerate -- but could learn languages overnight and wrote stunning poetry. Though prone to depression, which led him to live hand-to-mouth for long stretches, he gathered many friends around him, married a beautiful Italian expatriate, and fathered four children, one stricken with autism. Les Murray: A Life in Progress tells the fascinating story of the lifework of a beloved poet.

Les Murray: A Life in Progress

Biographies & Memoirs

Peter F. Alexander

Arts & Literature

In the first book on William Faulkner by a major black writer, Edouard Glissant sees the racial complexities of Faulkner's work as the key to his influence and presents him as the progenitor of Flannery O'Connor, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison.

Faulkner Mississippi

Spanning a wide geographical range, Under African Skies features prominent as well as younger African writers, including many women, from Chinua Achebe and Bessie Head to Ben Okri and Sindiwe Magona. Written originally in English, Portuguese, and French, the stories take us from colonial to post-colonial Africa, from civil war to struggles with apartheid and AIDS, to a new South Africa of cellular phones and middle-class angst. Reflecting the stunning diversity in African literaturefrom that based on traditional storytelling to a very African magical realism - the stories include Ken Saro-Wiwa's apocalyptic portrait of the innocent martyr; Amos Tutuola's hilariously surreal story of a woman who becomes bewitched by a "complete gentleman" who is, in fact, only a skull on borrowed limbs; Es'kia Mphahlele's story of an African "madam" who has a peculiar relationship with her dog; and Mandla Langa's comic account of a man who turns hair loss into business success. Under African Skies gives rich testimony to the resilience of this century's African writers, too many of whom have faced censorship, exile, even death. The collection includes detailed biographical notes and, wherever possible, textual commentaries by the writers themselves.

Under African Skies: Modern African Short Stories

Charles R. Larson

Contemporary

Live from the Hong Kong Nile Club: Poems 1975-1990

August Kleinzahler

Poetry

This remarkable collection of twenty stories about motherhood by writers who are mothers evokes every stage of the journey, from pregnancy and birth through the childhood years, adolescence, and adulthood. Together they depict the complexity of mothering in America today as woman are actually experience it. The works gathered here constitute a step toward a new mothers literature that puts to rest the long-held myth that has separated motherhood from a woman's creativity. In these pages women from all walks of life, single, married, divorced or just out of their teens and well into their eighties, rich and poor, black and white, grapple with the realities of motherhood – sacrifice and boundless joy, self-doubt and miracles of the every day. Whether you are a new mother, a seasoned mother, or a grandmother many times over you will find yourself in this book. Contributors: Mary Grimm, Laurie Colwin, Perri Klass, Kate Braverman, Molly Giles, Mary Gordon, Ronnie Sandroff, Roxana Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Marian Thurm, Paula K. Gover, Marsha Lee Berkman, Melissa Pritchard, Jane Shapiro, Julia Whitty, Alice Elliott Dark, J. California Cooper, Sue Miller, Eileen Fitzgerald.

Mothers: Twenty Stories of Contemporary Motherhood

The second book of an extravagant work in progress What's Joel Got to do but let the jewel Hatch The light and hook It to the flesh It will outlast And point the staring woman At a mirror? --from "The Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal" Dante's Divine Comedy begins with a journey through Hell and ends in Heaven. Frederick Seidel's Cosmos Poems trilogy begins in the heavens, with The Cosmos Poems, and descends. Life on Earth is the second book in this trilogy. It includes natural and human history, which are the history of the self, and biography, which is the history of everything else, told in vignettes of beauty, sublimity, horror, and regret.

Life on Earth

Frederick Seidel

The attacks on September 11, 2001, shook the rich West out of its complacency; suddenly, peace seemed to be in peril. Already it had become clear that prosperity was endangered. What will the twenty-first century be like now? Bill Emmott, the Editor in Chief of The Economist, the world's leading current affairs weekly, answers these questions by looking back at the past, isolating the forces that have shaped our world, and showing how they determine whether we are at peace or at war, in a state of liberty or repression, in a period of prosperity or depression. Set in a global framework, Emmott's analysis of two centuries--one just past, one beginning--is eye-opening, wise, and indispensible.

Twenty Twenty One Vision: Glassbook

Business & Money

Emmott, Bill

Economics

With all the adventure, derring-do, and bloodcurdling battle scenes of his earlier book, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, acclaimed historian Giles Milton dazzles readers with the true story of William Adams—the first Englishman to set foot in Japan (and the inspiration for James Clavell’s bestselling novel Shogun). Beginning with Adams’s startling letter to the East India Company in 1611—more than a decade after he’d arrived in Japan—Samurai William chronicles the first foray by the West  into that mysterious closed-off land. Drawing upon the journals and letters of Adams as well as the other Englishmen who came looking for him, Samurai William presents a unique glimpse of Japan before it once again closed itself off from the world  for another two hundred years.

Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened the East

History

Unknown, Author

Asia

In America

SUSAN SONTAG

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