The arrival of English settlers in the American Southeast in 1670 brought the British and the Native Americans into contact both with foreign peoples and with unfamiliar gender systems. In a region in which the balance of power between multiple players remained uncertain for many decades, British and Native leaders turned to concepts of gender and family to create new diplomatic norms to govern interactions as they sought to construct and maintain working relationships. In Brothers Born of One Mother, Michelle LeMaster addresses the question of how differing cultural attitudes toward gender influenced Anglo-Indian relations in the colonial Southeast. As one of the most fundamental aspects of culture, gender had significant implications for military and diplomatic relations. Understood differently by each side, notions of kinship and proper masculine and feminine behavior wielded during negotiations had the power to either strengthen or disrupt alliances. The collision of different cultural expectations of masculine behavior and men's relationships to and responsibilities for women and children became significant areas of discussion and contention. Native American and British leaders frequently discussed issues of manhood (especially in the context of warfare), the treatment of women and children, and intermarriage. Women themselves could either enhance or upset relations through their active participation in diplomacy, war, and trade. Leaders invoked gendered metaphors and fictive kinship relations in their discussions, and by evaluating their rhetoric, Brothers Born of One Mother investigates the intercultural conversations about gender that shaped Anglo-Indian diplomacy. LeMaster's study contributes importantly to historians’ understanding of the role of cultural differences in intergroup contact and investigates how gender became part of the ideology of European conquest in North America, providing a unique window into the process of colonization in America.

"Tapir lives in the jungle. Pig lives in the village. But when they meet at the waterhole, they discover they are the same in so many ways. They might even be brothers from a different mother!"

What is a family? Who is a family? Either a lot or a few is a family; But whether there's ten or there's two in your family, All of your family plus you is a family! There is something for everyone in this celebration of families - poems about families of all sizes and configurations, about brothers and sisters, adoptees and stepsiblings, parents and grandparents, even a special ode to the only child. Both poems and Hafner's warm expressive illustrations convey the sense of what makes family life at once so wonderful and so unpredictable. Told from a child's point of view, the poems are perfect for reading alone or in the classroom and for family story times as well.

Jarrett doesn't trust Kevon.But he's got to share a room with him anyway. It was one thing when Jarrett's mom took care of foster babies who needed help. But this time it's different. This time the baby who needs help has an older brother -- a kid Jarrett's age named Kevon.Everyone thinks Jarrett and Kevon should be friends -- but that's not gonna happen. Not when Kevon's acting like he's better than Jarrett -- and not when Jarrett finds out Kevon's keeping some major secrets.Jarrett doesn't think it's fair that he has to share his room, his friends, and his life with some stranger. He's gotta do something about it -- but what?From award-winning author Coe Booth, KINDA LIKE BROTHERS is the story of two boys who really don't get along -- but have to find a way to figure it out.

How I Met My Mother is the true story of how seemingly random and unrelated incidents nudged a son towards an amazing reunion with his biological mother. Living his life wondering who his real parents were while unaware that he was working directly across the street from his biological father is just one of the many uncanny coincidences described in this book. This is the story of a reunion that happened in the most unconventional way -- a reunion that answered years of questions and speculations, and changed several lives forever! Not knowing his history or heritage for almost four decades, Charles Cornacchio's past was suddenly revealed. For anyone who wonders what "could have been" if life took a different turn, this is a must-read! For anyone who has been adopted and always fantasized about meeting their biological parents, this is a must-read! For anyone who enjoys a true story, peppered with unbelievable circumstances, this book is a must-read! How I Met My Mother … And the Four Brothers I Never Knew I Had is the story of a reunion thirty-eight years in the making. If you've ever found yourself wondering what might have been if life had taken a different turn, Charles's tale of family and destiny will capture your imagination.

The story of Dave Pelzer is a legend in our times: the shattering tale of the child called 'It' who was forced to live in the basement; the 'Him' the other children were taught to hat; the 'Freak' who wasn't allowed to speak. his mother was the perpetrator of the horror, but she had a willing accomplice. It was Dave's little brother Richard - the author of this book.

“You don’t look like brothers . . .” Peace activist and cofounder of the Enough Project, John Prendergast is known as a champion of human rights in Africa. But the not-so-public face of J.P. is the life he’s led as a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks. As a curious, driven, and emotionally wounded twenty-year-old, J.P. made the life-changing decision to form a “Big Brother/Little Brother” relationship with then seven-year-old Michael, who was living out of plastic bags and drifting from one homeless shelter to the next with his mother and siblings. Lacking a connection with his own brother and distancing himself from a disastrous relationship with his father, J.P. formed a unique bond with Michael the moment they met. Michael and J.P. became like family, with Michael and some of his siblings even living with J.P. one summer. In the years that followed, J.P. took Michael and his brothers on outings, whether it was fishing, playing basketball, patronizing cheap restaurants, or going on road trips. This friendship would continue for over twenty-five years as the two coped with varying degrees of violence, instability, and trauma in their own lives. Told in duet, Unlikely Brothers follows Michael as he grows up on the tough streets of Washington, D.C., where as a young teenager he watched his best friend get shot, dropped out of school, and started dealing crack cocaine shortly thereafter. By sixteen, Michael had become the kingpin of his neighborhood, guns and drugs always close at hand. Meanwhile, J.P. was traveling to and from African war zones. J.P. offered Michael a refuge from the streets, never really confronting the gravity of what Michael was going through in his adolescence. In turn, Michael afforded J.P. an escape from his own turbulent personal and professional life. As the years go by, the two swoop in and out of each other’s lives, slowly disconnecting as they disappear into their respective worlds, but making their way back to each other at a critical moment for both of them. The effect the two have on each other is extremely significant to both of their paths to redemption. Inspirational and deeply moving, Unlikely Brothers beautifully showcases how life’s most random moments can often be the most profound.

"A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life." --Marlon James "Highly recommend Brother by David Chariandy--concise and intense, elegiac short novel of devastation and hope." --Joyce Carol Oates, via Twitter WINNER--Toronto Book Award WINNER--Rogers' Writers' Trust Fiction Prize WINNER--Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction In luminous, incisive prose, a startling new literary talent explores masculinity, race, and sexuality against a backdrop of simmering violence during the summer of 1991. One sweltering summer in the Park, a housing complex outside of Toronto, Michael and Francis are coming of age and learning to stomach the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. While their Trinidadian single mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home, Francis helps the days pass by inventing games and challenges, bringing Michael to his crew's barbershop hangout, and leading escapes into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves. Propelled by the beats and styles of hip hop, Francis dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow. Honest and insightful in its portrayal of kinship, community, and lives cut short, David Chariandy's Brother is an emotional tour de force that marks the arrival of a stunning new literary voice.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER When they were kids in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1950s, Diane Keaton and her younger brother, Randy, were best friends and companions. But as they grew up, Randy became troubled, then reclusive. Before he was thirty, he was divorced, an alcoholic, a man who couldn’t hold on to full-time work—his life a world away from his sister’s, and from the rest of their family. Now Diane delves into the nuances of their shared, and separate, pasts to confront the difficult question of why and how Randy ended up living his life on “the other side of normal.” In beautiful and fearless prose intertwined with journal entries, letters, and poetry—much of it Randy’s own—and supplemented by personal photographs and artwork, this insightful, heartfelt memoir contemplates the inner workings of a family, the ties of love and responsibility that hold it together, and the special bond between siblings—even those who are pulled far apart.

The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back. The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars." Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today.