Bridging many disciplines, Hope and Despair is a major contribution to our knowledge of human behavior.

Reading the philosophy of Immanuel Levinas against postcolonial theories of difference, particularly those of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Édouard Glissant, and Subcommandante Marcos, John E. Drabinski reconceives notions of difference, language, subjectivity, ethics, and politics and provides new perspectives on these important postcolonial theorists. He also underscores Levinas's relevance to related disciplines concerned with postcolonialism and ethics.

The inspiring story of Monia Mazigh’s courageous fight to free her husband, Maher Arar, from a Syrian jail. On September 26, 2002, Maher Arar boarded an American Airlines plane bound for New York, returning early from vacation with his family because a work project needed his attention. He was a Canadian citizen, a telecommunications engineer and entrepreneur who had never been in trouble with the law. His nightmare began when he was pulled aside by Immigration officials at JFK airport, questioned, held without access to a lawyer, and ultimately deported to Syria on the suspicion that he had terrorist links. He would remain there, tortured and imprisoned for over one year. Meanwhile his wife, Monia, and their two children stayed on visiting family in Tunisia, unaware that their lives were about to be torn apart. Upon her return to Canada, Monia was horrified at the media’s and public’s willingness to assume that the Canadian police and intelligence agencies, and their American counterparts, take on her husband as a terrorist was correct. She began a tireless campaign to bring public attention and government action to her husband’s plight, eventually turning the tide of public opinion in Arar’s favour, and gaining his release and return to Canada. Of her willingness to speak out, she has said that she was never afraid: “I had lost my life. I didn’t have more to lose.” This is a remarkable story of personal courage, and of an extraordinary woman who lets us into her life so that other Canadians can understand the denial of rights and the discarding of human rights her family suffered. Candid, poignant, and inspiring, this is the most important book of the season.

On December 12, 1963, people across Kenya joyfully celebrated independence from British colonial rule, anticipating a bright future of prosperity and social justice. As the nation approaches the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, however, the people's dream remains elusive. During its first five decades Kenya has experienced assassinations, riots, coup attempts, ethnic violence, and political corruption. The ranks of the disaffected, the unemployed, and the poor have multiplied. In this authoritative and insightful account of Kenya's history from 1963 to the present day, Daniel Branch sheds new light on the nation's struggles and the complicated causes behind them.Branch describes how Kenya constructed itself as a state and how ethnicity has proved a powerful force in national politics from the start, as have disorder and violence. He explores such divisive political issues as the needs of the landless poor, international relations with Britain and with the Cold War superpowers, and the direction of economic development. Tracing an escalation of government corruption over time, the author brings his discussion to the present, paying particular attention to the rigged election of 2007, the subsequent compromise government, and Kenya's prospects as a still-evolving independent state.

At the end of a century of unfathomable suffering, societies are facing anew the question of how events that shock, resist assimilation, and evoke contradictory and complex responses should be remembered. Between Hope and Despair specifically examines the pedagogical problem of how remembrance is to proceed when what is to be remembered is underscored by a logic difficult to comprehend and subversive of the humane character of existence. This pedagogical attention to practices of remembrance reflects the growing cognizance that hope for a just and compassionate future lies in the sustained, if troubled, working through of these issues.

Hope or Despair? asks what promotes and what holds back student learning in Pakistan's government-sponsored primary schools. Using a national sample of schools, students, teachers, and supervisors, it shows how learning is affected by student background, teachers and teaching, school supervision, facilities, and innovation. It is the first book to use achievement tests based on the national curriculum to show influences on learning in the primary schools of an entire developing country. The study also explores why some students complete primary school and others do not. The overall quality of education in Pakistan's government primary schools is low, but student learning rises with the teacher's formal education and with certain teaching practices. Student social class, a strong influence on learning in the United States, makes little difference in Pakistan. Whether the teacher is male or female has no relationship to learning in science, but it does affect achievement in mathematics. Neither supervision nor school facilities are related to achievement. This unique study will be of great interest to those concerned with schooling effectiveness in developing countries as well as to economists, sociologists, and political scientists interested in human resources in those countries.

How do experiences of hope and despair impact upon our capacity to meet life's challenges in narrative and family therapy? Clients' experiences of hope and despair can be complex, reflecting individual and family histories, current patterns and dynamics, the stresses of everyday life, and the social contexts of families' lives. This book analyses how therapists meet and engage with these dichotomous aspects of human experience. The editors place the themes of hope and despair at the centre of a series of reflections on practice and theory. Contributors from all over the world are brought together, incorporating a range of perspectives from narrative, systemic and social constructionist frameworks. The book is divided into three sections, covering: reflections on hope and despair facing adversity: practices of hope reflections on reconciliation and forgiveness. Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy looks at the importance of hope in bringing about positive therapeutic change. This book will be of great use to family therapists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and students on therapeutic training courses.

Relying on a wealth of ethnographic and statistical data, this groundbreaking volume documents the many constraints and social forces that prevent Mexican-origin adolescents from constructing the kinds of networks that provide access to important forms of social support. Special attention is paid to those forms of support privileged youth normally receive and working-class youth do not, such as expert guidance regarding college opportunities. The author also reveals how some working-class ethnic minority youth become the exception, weaving social webs that promote success in school as well as empowering forms of resiliency. In both cases, the role of social networks in shaping young people’s chances is illuminated. “In this badly needed alternative to the individualism that pervades most debates about American education, Stanton-Salazar explores how Latino teenagers’ lives are embedded within social networks from home, community, and school. This grand work shows how school programs can confound or can draw from the strengths of such networks to build better lives for all.” —Bruce J. Biddle, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Sociology, University of Missouri–Columbia “A beautifully written and inspiring book that announces a new generation of Mexican/Latino scholars. . . . This is a book which tells the tale about Mexican/Latino adolescents but, in reality, it is a book about how working-class adolescent life is socially constructed, defined, and elaborated in the United States. An eloquent rendering, indeed.” —Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Presidential Chair in Anthropology, University of California, Riverside “Using creative theorizing and rigorous methodology, Manufacturing Hope and Despair illuminates brilliantly the supposed mystery of persistent race/class inequities in American society.” —Walter R. Allen, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

A feast of sensuality, Payne's third epic novel narrates the story of the beautiful young Nadja, and her brooding lover Nikolai, as the two come of age in a springtime garden. When their world of earthly delights fades with the dying season, the two are exiled from their pastoral romance into a fiery world of seedy urban haunts, intoxicated dreams and electric lights. When tragedy heralds the birth of a new day, light is shed on everyone's fate as the greatest adventure of all begins: a cunning swindler sets off on a heroic voyage to find the love of his youth. Through tears of hope and despair, the landscape of this novel unfolds before us in a vast panorama of poetic prose, delighting the senses and the imagination about what is possible, what is beautiful, and what is maddening about this world. ""Charged with passion, these pages sing to us their erotic melancholy; 'Hope and Despair' is both loving and frightening, a pleasure to read once and again!""