Poetry. Asian Studies. "Kanae's first book, SISTA TONGUE, is about her first love: language. It's a brief social history of Pidgin English in Hawaii intertwined with a personal story about a little brother who was a late talker and was stigmatized for it. Within its pages, Kanae has created what she calls a collage of poetry and prose, layered and patchworked in a way as to entice-and require-the reader's careful attention, especially as presented by graphic designer Kristin Kaelinani Gonzales"-Wanda A. Adams, Gannett News Service. Kanae's work can be found in BAMBOO RIDGE, HYBOLICS, and TINFISH. She is currently an English lecturer at Kapiolani Community College and serves as an editorial assistant for OIWI: A NATIVE HAWAIIAN JOURNAL. Saddlestapled chapbook.

Exploring the unsteady foundations of American literary history, Race in American Literature and Culture examines the hardening of racial fault lines throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth while considering aspects of the literary and interrelated traditions that emerged from this fractured cultural landscape. A multicultural study of the influential and complex presence of race in the American imagination, the book pushes debate in exciting new directions. Offering expert explorations of how the history of race has been represented and written about, it shows in what ways those representations and writings have influenced wider American culture. Distinguished scholars from African American, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, and white American studies foreground the conflicts in question across different traditions and different modes of interpretation, and are thus able comprehensively and creatively to address in the volume how and why race has been so central to American literature as a whole.

Charlotte Morley's visit with her grandparents is about to wind down, but not before she starts receiving a series of letters from her aunt, who is in prison for murder and ready to tell it all. Helping her sift through the startling letters is Hiawatha, an old childhood buddy and the son of the wisecracking Sista Jones. Before long, Charlotte discovers a few skeletons in the family's closet and learns that sometimes dead men do tell tales. Follow Charlotte as she, along with a host of family and friends, works through zany situations, shattering revelations and searching for forgiveness. How can a book filled with sad social issues be so hilariously entertaining? Simple: Such is life. And such is the power of God's mercy and grace to get through.

The Prodigal Tongue takes a look at the wild, wacky and sometimes baffling road our language–English and others–is taking in its evolution. Where in the world will it end up?! Mark Abley, author of Spoken Here, has created an entertaining and informative exploration of the way that languages–English, Japanese, French, Arabic and other major tongues–are likely to transform and be transformed by their speakers during the twenty-first century. Grammar and vocabulary are just the beginning; more importantly, this book is about people. In places like Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore and Oxford, Abley encounters hip-hop performers and dictionary makers, bloggers and translators, novelists and therapists. He talks to a married couple who were passionately corresponding online before they met in “meatspace.” And he listens to teenagers, puzzling out the words they coin in chatrooms and virtual worlds. Everywhere he goes, he asks what the future is likely to hold for the ways we communicate. Abley balances a traditional concern for honesty and accuracy in language with an untraditional delight in newly minted expressions. Lively, evocative, passionate and playful, this is a book for everyone who cherishes the words we use.

Cultural Writing. Literary Criticism. ANTIPHONIES is a primer on some of the most exciting work in contemporary Canadian poetry. These essays discuss a wide range of work, from books already acclaimed as modern classics--such as Erin Moure's O Cidadan, Lisa Robertson's DEBBIE: AN EPIC, and Karen MacCormack's IMPLEXURES--to the equally remarkable work of Susan Clark, Catriona Strang, Lissa Wolsak, Christine Stewart, Deanna Ferguson, Lise Downe, Nancy Shaw, a. rawlings, Marie Annharte Baker and others. The essays are complemented by brief selections of poems and poetics statements.

Poetry. Essay. Asian American Studies. "Sinavaiana-Gabbard draws her imaginative strength and mana from the fertile depths of her Samoan people's mythologies, past, and wisdom, as well as from the cultural soil of North American and Tibetan Buddhism. Her voice is a new blend of Samoan, American, and widely ranging poetic and philosophical languages. A unique, vibrant, undeniable voice which shapes the now fearlessly, with profound understanding and forgiveness"--Albert Wendt, University of Auckland. Published by Subpress/Tinfish/Institute of Pacific Studies.

Candice Brathwaite's much-anticipated second book about all the things she wishes she'd been told when she was young and needed guidance. I Am Not Your Baby Mother was a landmark publication in 2020. A thought-provoking, urgent and inspirational guide to life as a Black British mum, it was an important call-to-arms allowing mothers to take control and scrap the parenting rulebook to do it their own way. It was a Sunday Times top five bestseller. Sista Sister goes further. It is a compilation of essays about all the things Candice wishes someone had talked to her about when she was a young Black girl growing up in London. From family and money to Black hair and fashion, as well as relationships between people of different races and colourism, this will be a fascinating read that will have another profound impact on conversations about Black Lives Matter. Written in Candice's trademark straight-talking, warm and funny style, it will delight her fans, old and new.

".....I looked through the historical catalog depicting the classic American beauty and could not find an image of the Nubian Booty....." "....so I made an unrehearsed approach, but my mind went blind and I stumbled on my lines...." "......gritted my teeth in deference to Democracy and did hard, hard time at Fox, then hours and hours in detox at CNN and MSNBC...."

In 1956 W. E. B. Du Bois was denied a passport to attend the Présence Africaine Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris. So he sent the assembled a telegram. “Any Negro-American who travels abroad today must either not discuss race conditions in the United States or say the sort of thing which our State Department wishes the world to believe.” Taking seriously Du Bois’s allegation, Juliana Spahr breathes new life into age-old questions as she explores how state interests have shaped U.S. literature. What is the relationship between literature and politics? Can writing be revolutionary? Can art be autonomous, or is escape from nations and nationalisms impossible? Du Bois’s Telegram brings together a wide range of institutional forces implicated in literary production, paying special attention to three eras of writing that sought to defy political orthodoxies by contesting linguistic conventions: avant-garde modernism of the early twentieth century; social-movement writing of the 1960s and 1970s; and, in the twenty-first century, the profusion of English-language works incorporating languages other than English. Spahr shows how these literatures attempted to assert their autonomy, only to be shut down by FBI harassment or coopted by CIA and State Department propagandists. Liberal state allies such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations made writers complicit by funding multiculturalist works that celebrated diversity and assimilation while starving radical anti-imperial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist efforts. Spahr does not deny the exhilarations of politically engaged art. But her study affirms a sobering reality: aesthetic resistance is easily domesticated.