"We are all now writing stories. Sometimes in memory, sometimes in air. The wind lifts and passes us in gusts. Our stories scatter over continents, camouflaged histories we cannot share." In Being Here, Manini Nayar brings together a finely crafted collection of interconnected stories that follow "the daily miracle" of her characters' inner lives. Nayar brings to the forefront immigrant women making their way in the world as mothers, as wives, as outliers, and as rebels. She writes about their insistence on autonomy, the absurdity of the struggles they face, and their occasional triumphs. These stories loop and double back across time and locales, linking characters through memory while illumining lives forever changed by an offhand phrase, an act of will, or an unsought encounter. Readers will meet a wide array of characters, but it is Nina with whom they will become most familiar, as she appears throughout the collection: first, as a young wife brought to the US by her husband, Siddharth Vellodi; second, as an older sister; and third, as a divorced mother whose daughter's fateful rebellion remains the mysterious and incandescent center of the stories. Nayar's exploration of inward lives as the locus of dramatic action and events allows both characters and readers to grapple with simply being. In doing so, Nayar reveals the performative aspects of language—particularly its ability to create, destroy, and heal connections. In poetic and eloquent prose, Being Here constructs a luminous collage of restless immigrants united by their shared deference to a brave new journey. In their burgeoning voices another America is found, both latent and radiantly alive.

‘A luminous tale about the courage of the lone female artist.’ Joan London Born in Germany in 1876, Paula Modersohn-Becker was the first female artist to paint herself not only naked but pregnant. Being Here is a moving account of the life of this ground-breaking Expressionist painter, by the acclaimed French writer Marie Darrieussecq. As her art evolves, Paula is torn between Paris and her home in northern Germany. In Paris she can focus on her work, and mix with artists like Rodin and Monet, or her close friend the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. But Germany is home, and that’s where her painter husband Otto lives. Darrieussecq thrillingly describes Paula’s discovery of her style and choice of subjects—women, babies, domestic life. She tells the story of her fraught marriage, her ambivalence about combining her passion for her career as an artist with motherhood. And she recounts her tragic death at thirty-one, days after giving birth. Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne in 1969 and and is recognized as one of the leading voices of contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. In 2013 she was awarded the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix. Text publishes her three most recent novels, Tom Is Dead, All the Way and Men, as well as Being Here, The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker. ‘Marie Darrieussecq reads the testament of Modersohn-Becker—the letters, the diaries, and above all the paintings—with a burning intelligence and a fierce hold on what it meant and means to be a woman and an artist.’ J.M. Coetzee ‘There are few writers who may have changed my perception of the world, but Darrieussecq is one of them.’ The Times ‘The internationally celebrated author who illuminates those parts of life other writers cannot or do not want to reach.’ Independent ‘Penny Hueston’s translation from the original French, reads strangely—and in a good way—like true crime...Heartbreaking.’ West Australian ‘A brief, powerful artistic life that went painfully unrewarded—until after the painter’s death.’ Julian Barnes, Best Summer Holiday Reads, Guardian [UK] ‘Darrieussecq has written this painful story because of her own sorrow at not knowing Paula Modersohn-Becker and of not knowing of her; sorrow, too, at her early death and truncated creativity. Darrieussecq looks squarely at a subject that is often too brutal to explore.’ Monthly ‘Lyrical and touching... Blending historical fact with imaginative flair, Darrieussecq brings her figures to life, imbuing them with emotion, character, and power...Being Here feels almost effortlessly beautiful, a short work of non-fiction told like a flowing piece of fictional prose.’ AU Review ‘Translated elegantly by Penny Hueston, the study retains some of the spacious, if not capacious quality of the French language and its ability to articulate the phenomena of presence and absence—the continued aliveness of the paintings and the sad and sudden death of the painter.’ Conversation ‘In Darrieussecq’s hands, Modersohn-Becker’s story is both individual and exemplary: a frightening, energising fable’ Guardian ‘Darrieussecq animates the short life of a passionate German artist with vivid, spare prose...This taut biography, written in the present tense, has the urgency and poignancy of the best novels.’ Suzy Freeman-Greene, Best Books of 2017, Australian Book Review ‘One of those books that catches you by surprise, Being Here is art history that feels like a beautifully crafted novel...It’s effortlessly beautiful, and highlights the ever more important need to tell the stories of women in art.’ AU Review, Top Ten Books of 2017

Exploring the lifeworlds of Halima, Omar and Mohamed, three middle-aged Somalis living in Melbourne, Australia, the author discusses the interrelated meanings of emplacement and displacement as experienced in people’s everyday lives. Through their experiences of displacement and placemaking, Being-Here examines the figure of the refugee as a metaphor for societal alienation and estrangement, and moves anthropological theory towards a new understanding of the crucial existential links between Sein (Being) and Da (Here).

About 10 years after Jake Band’s accident, an emergency room doctor told him that due to all of his post-accident accomplishments, he was one in a billion. The number of zeros increased upon every achievement. Since then, he has graduated college, gotten married, and much more. In addition to the things Band learned in rehab and in the “real world”, Being-Here also includes information he acquired from college, other survivors, and plenty of graduate school research in rehabilitation journals. Being-Here is about facing your new world and life after surviving your TBI. Nobody, outside of the circle of survivors, can possibly have a clue what your life is like now. Band explains the unique things he did to face his new world. This was not only done with the hope that it could help you face similar, but unique deficits, but Band’s purpose for writing Being-Here was to convince you not to give up, even if people, such as “rehabilitation professionals”, pre-accident “friends”, and even family members give up on you and/or your future. Being-Here is a place to go for encouragement, to hear or read some positive words, and to find some of the needed fuel for your life-long journey and discovery.

“What is prayer? It’s not a passport to heaven. If anything, it’s a way of seeing here, a way of being here.” In Being Here, acclaimed poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama offers a thoughtful collection of prayers and essays to focus attention in a world full of distractions. Featuring thirty-one collects—an ancient five-fold form of prayer—this unconventional devotional invites readers into a daily rhythm of connection and creativity. “The hope is that you can turn to a prayer with the story of your life, and in the little emptiness you create there, hear something, discern something, feel something that’s connecting you to other things seeking out connection with you.” Each day’s prayers are presented alongside Scripture and illuminating literary texts. The book concludes with four incisive essays on politics, community, and the contours of contemporary life as seen through biblical literature. Pádraig also teaches readers how they can embrace poetic form to expand their practice of prayer. In these pages, spiritual wayfarers will find a place both to rest and to grow their capacity for curiosity, justice, and love. This is a way of living / That’s worth living daily.

Arabic is unconditionally the national language of Palestinians, but for many it is no longer their mother-tongue. More than a century after the early waves of immigration to the Americas, and more than seven decades after the Nakba of 48, generations of Palestinians have grown up in a variety of different contexts within Israel-Palestine and the world at large. This ongoing scattered state has led to the proliferation of Palestinian culture as it is simultaneously growing in multiple directions, depending on geographical, political, and lingual contextualization. The Palestinian story no longer exists exclusively in Arabic. A new generation of Palestinian and Palestinian-descended writers and artists from both Latin and North America, Scandinavia, and Europe at large, as well as Israel-Palestine are bringing stories of their heritage and the Palestinian nation into a variety of languages such Spanish, Italian, English, Danish, and Hebrew—among so many other languages. Being There, Being Here is the product of an eight-year long journey in which Maurice Ebileeni explores how the Palestinian homeland is being imagined in multiple languages from a variety of positions both locally and globally. The book poses unsettling questions about this current situation and also looks to the future to speculate about how a Palestinian nation might still house the notion of home for an increasingly diverse Palestinian population.

In On Being Here to Stay, Asch retells the story of Canada with a focus on the relationship between First Nations and settlers.

This inspiring and educational book presents examples of LGBTQ+ activism throughout Wisconsin’s history for young people to explore and discuss. Drawing from a rich collection of primary sources—including diary entries, love letters, zines, advertisements, oral histories, and more—the book provides a jumping-off point for readers who are interested in learning more about LGBTQ+ history and activism, as well as for readers who want to build on the work of earlier activists. We Will Always Be Here shines a light on powerful and often untold stories from Wisconsin’s history, featuring individuals across a wide spectrum of identities and from all corners of the state. The LGBTQ+ people, allies, and activists in this guide changed the world by taking steps that young people can take today—by educating themselves, telling their own stories, being true to themselves, building communities, and getting active. The aim of this celebratory book is not only to engage young people in Wisconsin’s LGBTQ+ history, but also to empower them to make positive change in the world.

A friendship blossoms when 16-year-old Carly interviews feisty 93-year-old Leah for her local history project and Leah shares her fascinating life's story-of a girl whose rich imagination rescues her from a grim reality, and an unlikely boy who changes everythingThe boy sat in the branches of the fifth tree on the left, his scuffed boots dangling. Leah turned her eyes up. His face was heavily freckled, his eyes large, brown and almond-shaped. His hair stuck out at wild angles. 'Hello,' she said. When Leah Cartwright was five years old her father went to the barn, put a shotgun in his mouth, an

What if you lived your entire life by the plan you'd laid out when you were thirteen years old? Being Here: Reflections on Life, Love, Faith, and Turning Thirty tells one woman's journey from living the life she had planned to learning to live each day to the fullest. A no-holds-barred look at author, Lindsey Brunette's, story of recovery from her own demons, it asks the question, "Who am I if I am not..." This compelling memoir looks deeply at faith, divorce, self-identity, and the idea that we're all just doing the best we can. ...A compulsively readable writer ""Lauren Miller, author of Free to Fall, Parallel, and All Things New.