Margo Hastings was miraculously healed of incurable Lupus Disease many years ago. As a result, she prayed for a greater walk with God in the power of his Holy Spirit. Now, Margo invites you on a spiritual awakening with poems and reflections from the heart in her book, In Search of Higher Ground. Whether you read her poems as a prayer to your Father or need help learning to see the hand of God in every situation, Margo's inspirational words and powerful stories will transform and revive your life through the guidance of the precious Holy Spirit. Don't wait to begin your journey In Search of Higher Ground.

In this book Adam Banks uses the concept of the Digital Divide as a metonym for America's larger racial divide, in an attempt to figure out what meaningful access for African Americans to technologies and the larger American society can or should mean. He argues that African American rhetorical traditions--the traditions of struggle for justice and equitable participation in American society--exhibit complex and nuanced ways of understanding the difficulties inherent in the attempt to navigate through the seemingly impossible contradictions of gaining meaningful access to technological systems with the good they seem to make possible, and at the same time resisting the exploitative impulses that such systems always seem to present. Banks examines moments in these rhetorical traditions of appeals, warnings, demands, and debates to make explicit the connections between technological issues and African Americans' equal and just participation in American society. He shows that the big questions we must ask of our technologies are exactly the same questions leaders and lay people from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X to slave quilters to Critical Race Theorists to pseudonymous chatters across cyberspace have been asking all along. According to Banks the central ethical questions for the field of rhetoric and composition are technology access and the ability to address questions of race and racism. He uses this book to imagine what writing instruction, technology theory, literacy instruction, and rhetorical education can look like for all of us in a new century. Just as Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground is a call for a new orientation among those who study and profess African American rhetoric, it is also a call for those in the fields that make up mainstream English Studies to change their perspectives as well. This volume is intended for researchers, professionals, and students in Rhetoric and Composition, Technical Communication, the History of Science and Society, and African American Studies.

Hurricane Katrina of August-September 2005, one of the most destructive natural disasters in U.S. history, dramatically illustrated the continuing racial and class inequalities of America. In this powerful reader, Seeking Higher Ground, prominent scholars and writers examine the racial impact of the disaster and the failure of governmental, corporate and private agencies to respond to the plight of the New Orleans black community. Contributing authors include Julianne Malveaux, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Ronald Walters, Chester Hartman, Gregory D. Squires, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Alan Stein, and Gene Preuss. This reader is the second volume of the Souls Critical Black Studies Series, edited by Manning Marable, and produced by the institute for Research in African-American Studies of Columbia University.

While much of the global warming conversation rightly focuses on reducing our carbon footprint, the reality is that even if we were to immediately cease emissions, we would still face climate change into the next millennium. In Finding Higher Ground, Amy Seidl takes the uniquely positive—yet realistic—position that humans and animals can adapt and persist despite these changes. Drawing on an emerging body of scientific research, Seidl brings us stories of adaptation from the natural world and from human communities. She offers examples of how plants, insects, birds, and mammals are already adapting both behaviorally and genetically. While some species will be unable to adapt to new conditions quickly enough to survive, Seidl argues that those that do can show us how to increase our own capacity for resilience if we work to change our collective behavior. In looking at climate change as an opportunity to establish new cultural norms, Seidl inspires readers to move beyond loss and offers a refreshing call to evolve.

An insightful music writer brilliantly reinterprets the lives of three pop geniuses and the soul revolution they launched. Soul music is one of America's greatest cultural achievements, and Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Curtis Mayfield are three of its most inspired practitioners. In midcentury America it was soul music—particularly the dazzling stream of recordings made by these three stars—that helped bring the gospel vision of the black church into the mainstream, energizing the era’s social movements and defining a new American gospel where the sacred and the secular met. What made this gospel all the more amazing was that its most influential articulators were the sons and daughters of sharecroppers, storefront preachers, and single parents in the projects, whose genius gave voice to a new vision of American possibility. Higher Ground seamlessly weaves the specific and intensely personal narratives of Stevie, Aretha, and Curtis’s lives into the historical fabric of their times. The three shared many similarities: They were all children of the great migration and of the black church. But Werner goes further and ties them together with a provocative thesis about American history and culture that compels us to reconsider both the music and the times. And aside from the personalities and the history, he writes beautifully about music itself, the nuts and bolts of its creation and performance, in a way that brings a new awareness and understanding to the most familiar music, forcing you to listen to songs you've heard a thousand times with fresh ears. In Higher Ground, Werner illuminates the lives of three unparalleled American artists, reminding us why their music mattered then and still resonates with us today.

Life for people on atolls is hard, affected by droughts, rough seas, and other adverse climatic conditions, and now, rise in sea level threatens their very inhabitance. No wonder kinship is the foundation of atoll societies, traditional and modern! This book presents a multidisciplinary, retrospective analysis of a Pacific Atoll People living in several countries but held together as a diaspora through notions of kinship.The People have ancestral, cultural, social and continuing residential connections with Nikunau Atoll, at the center of the Pacific Ocean and once a Cinderella of the British Empire. The analysis explicates their present diasporic circumstances and the pathways through which these arose historically. The intention is to provide a basis for better prospects for succeeding generations from a critical, better-informed standpoint.The analysis relies on the partisan stance of the author, whose kinship ties with I-Nikunau (= people who identify with Nikunau) are affinal, and his 30-year immersion among the People in question. In addition, a large quantity of literature sources and other secondary data are woven into the analysis, as situations and events are grappled with, articulated, interpreted, and written into the book.The circumstances are analyzed under 14 themes, namely, geographical, demographical, economic, environmental, cultural, societal, etc. The analysis should stir the waters of recent research about Nikunau and Kiribati, much of it concerned with environmental changes making uninhabitable Nikunau, Tarawa, and other atolls where I-Nikunau reside, and imagining their resettlement on higher ground, for example, New Zealand, where several diasporic communities exist already.This recent research refers frequently to the social, cultural and economic matters covered in this book, indicating how relevant and important these matters are to the future of I-Nikunau and I-Kiribati. Furthermore, this relevance and importance may apply to the future of other peoples still inhabiting the world's atolls and facing whatever challenges this future may bring, climate-related and otherwise.Abstract in Gilbertese:Te Abam'akoro ae Nikunau, e riki inanon ana tai Te Tia Karikib'ai ae Nareau ngke e tabe n anenea kunana ni katabwenaa te Boo ma Te Maaki. Mai ikanne ao a tia ni maeka anti ma aomata ma aomata ake a bungiaki iaona. A m'akuriia abaia b'a ana toronib'ai man inaomata ao ni kukurei. Kaaro ma tiibu a wantongaia ataei karakinan Nikunau, katein Nikunau ao karinean tuan M'aneaban Nikunau. Rikiaia naba kain Nikunau b'a te boborau n taai akekei ni karokoa ngkai. Te nako Tarawa, Nutiran, Buritan ao ai aaba aika raroa nako. Ana kamateb'ai Te -Imatang aei e boboto iaon karakinan te I-Nikunau ma ana kakam'akuri ma ana waaki iaon abana ae Nikunau AO ni boboto riki iaon m'am'a nangaia nakon aaba ake itinanikun Nikunau ike a riki b'a ianena ao tera aroia ni kakam'akuri mani waaki ngkai ai te naan I-Abatera ngaiia.

In this beautiful book, Pulitzer Prize—winning musician and composer Wynton Marsalis draws upon lessons he’s learned from a lifetime in jazz–lessons that can help us all move to higher ground. With wit and candor he demystifies the music that is the birthright of every American and demonstrates how a real understanding of the central idea of jazz–the unique balance between self-expression and sacrifice for the common good exemplified on the bandstand–can enrich every aspect of our lives, from the bedroom to the boardroom, from the schoolroom to City Hall. Along the way, Marsalis helps us understand the life-changing message of the blues, reveals secrets about playing–and listening–and passes on wisdom he has gleaned from working with three generations of great musicians. Illuminating and inspiring, Moving to Higher Ground is a master class on jazz and life, conducted by a brilliant American artist.

On African-American Rhetoric traces the arc of strategic language use by African Americans from rhetorical forms such as slave narratives and the spirituals to Black digital expression and contemporary activism. The governing idea is to illustrate the basic call-response process of African-American culture and to demonstrate how this dynamic has been and continues to be central to the language used by African Americans to make collective cultural and political statements. Ranging across genres and disciplines, including rhetorical theory, poetry, fiction, folklore, speeches, music, film, pedagogy, and memes, Gilyard and Banks consider language developments that have occurred both inside and outside of organizations and institutions. Along with paying attention to recent events, this book incorporates discussion of important forerunners who have carried the rhetorical baton. These include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Cade Bambara, Molefi Asante, Alice Walker, and Geneva Smitherman. Written for students and professionals alike, this book is powerful and instructive regarding the long African-American quest for freedom and dignity.