(Interior pages with greyscale images) Back from the Crocodile's Belly is a celebration of the beauty, richness, and diversity of indigenous ways of being as revealed in the critical studies and creative performances of living native traditions in the Philippines and in the United States diaspora. Through the use of primary and secondary research, the re-reading of historical and cultural archives, and the articulation of silenced stories, the book seeks to open up space for an alternative discourse on indigenous knowledge that does not merely reproduce progressivist and social evolutionary paradigms that invariably position the Indigenous Subject as "primitive," "barbaric," and nothing more than a "quaint relic of the past." In revealing the beauty and vibrancy of native Filipino cultures, the book lays claim to the relevance and power of indigenous epistemologies in healing colonial and civilizational trauma brought on by the violent conscription of native peoples into the project of Modernity. In the face of growing economic, spiritual, and ecological crises portending global collapse, the book affirms that the abjected "Primitive," who now stands as Modernity's only remaining Other, has much to teach us not only about survival but about living generously and fiercely "with all our relations."

All of the animals are afraid of the Selfish Crocodile - he never let's them into his river, and he's always so snappy! And so when the Selfish Crocodile finds himself in terrible pain, no-one wants to help him - after all, what if he gobbles them up? But, to everyone's surprise, there is one animal in the forest who is willing to help . . . A brilliant tale of friendship, The Selfish Crocodile has become a picture book classic.

On die-cut pages to accommodate the attached hand puppet.

Bound together in mystical crocodile skin, two unforgettably singular novellas

A moving lyric meditation on the Congo River that explores the identity, chaos, and wonder of the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as race and the detritus of colonialism. With The River in the Belly, award-winning Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila seeks no less than to reinitiate the Congo River in the imaginary of European languages. Through his invention of the “solitude”—a short poetic form lending itself to searing observation and troubled humor, prone to unexpected tonal shifts and lyrical u-turns—the collection celebrates, caresses, and chastises Central Africa’s great river, the world’s second largest by discharge volume. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Soviet history, Congolese popular music, international jazz, and everyday life in European exile, Mwanza Mujila has fashioned a work that can speak to the extraordinary hopes and tragedies of post-independence Democratic Republic of the Congo while also mining the generative yet embattled subject position of the African diasporic writer in Europe longing for home. Fans of Tram 83 will discover in River the same incandescent, improvisatory verbal energy that so dazzled them in Mwanza Mujila’s English-language debut.

Writer Jim Arnosky describes his trip into the Florida Everglades in search of the elusive American crocodile, an animal which has inhabited the earth since the days of the dinosaurs.

Lift the flaps to find the sounds animals make.