From television shows like Transparent, to the real-life struggles of Caitlyn Jenner splashed across the headlines, transgender visibility is on the rise. But what was it like to live as a transgender person before this transgender boom in television? While pop culture imaginations flourish and shape audience's perceptions of transgender identities, what does this new media visibility mean for transgender individuals themselves? Struggling for Ordinary answers these questions, offering a snapshot of how transgender individuals made their way toward a sense of ordinary life by integrating available media into their everyday experiences. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender communities, Andre Cavalcante offers a detailed account of how the media impacts the lives of transgender individuals, examining the emotional toll that media takes on this population, along with their resilience in the face of disempowerment. Deeply rooted in the life stories of transgender people, the book shows how media and technology operate as a medium through which transgender individuals are able to cultivate an understanding of their identities, build inhabitable worlds, and achieve the routine affordances of everyday life from which they are often excluded. Expertly researched and eloquently argued, Struggling for Ordinary sheds new light on the struggles to make a life in which transgender identity is fully integrated into the ordinary.

An in-depth look at the role of media in the struggle for transgender inclusion From television shows like Orange is the New Black and Transparent, to the real-life struggles of Caitlyn Jenner splashed across the headlines, transgender visibility is on the rise. But what was it like to live as a transgender person in a media environment before this transgender boom in television? While pop culture imaginations of transgender identity flourish and shape audience’s perceptions of trans identities, what does this new media visibility mean for transgender individuals themselves? Struggling for Ordinary engagingly answers these questions, offering a snapshot of how transgender individuals made their way toward a sense of ordinary life by integrating available media into their everyday experiences. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender communities, Andre Cavalcante offers a richly detailed account of how the media impacts the lives and experiences of transgender individuals. He grippingly looks at the emotional toll that media takes on this population along with their resilience in the face of disempowerment. Deeply rooted in the life stories of transgender people, the book uses everyday circumstances to show how media and technology operate as a medium through which transgender individuals are able to cultivate an understanding of their identities, build inhabitable worlds, and achieve the routine affordances of everyday life from which they are often excluded. Expertly researched and eloquently argued, Struggling for Ordinary sheds a fascinating new light of the everyday struggles of individuals and communities, to seek a life in which transgender identity is fully integrated into the ordinary.

An inspiring and timely debut novel from Lisa Williamson, The Art of Being Normal is about two transgender friends who figure out how to navigate teen life with help from each other. David Piper has always been an outsider. His parents think he's gay. The school bully thinks he's a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth: David wants to be a girl. On the first day at his new school Leo Denton has one goal: to be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in his class is definitely not part of that plan. When Leo stands up for David in a fight, an unlikely friendship forms. But things are about to get messy. Because at Eden Park School secrets have a funny habit of not staying secret for long , and soon everyone knows that Leo used to be a girl. As David prepares to come out to his family and transition into life as a girl and Leo wrestles with figuring out how to deal with people who try to define him through his history, they find in each other the friendship and support they need to navigate life as transgender teens as well as the courage to decide for themselves what normal really means.

Discover simple habits and easy-to-implement daily rhythms that will help you find meaning beyond the chaos of family life as you create a home where kids and parents alike practice how to love God and each other. You long for tender moments with your children--but do you ever find yourself too busy to stop, make eye contact, and say something you really mean? Daily habits are powerful ways to shape the heart--but do you find yourself giving in to screen time just to get through the day? You want to parent with purpose--but do you know how to start? Award-winning author and father of four Justin Whitmel Earley understands the tension between how you long to parent and what your daily life actually looks like. In Habits of the Household, Earley gives you the tools you need to create structure--from mealtimes to bedtimes--that free you to parent toddlers, kids, and teens with purpose. Learn how to: Develop a bedtime liturgy to settle your little ones and ground them in God's love Discover a new framework for discipline as discipleship Acquire simple practices for more regular and meaningful family mealtimes Open your eyes to the spirituality of parenting, seeing small moments as big opportunities for spiritual formation Develop a custom age chart for your family to more intentionally plan your shared years under the same roof Each chapter in Habits of the Household ends with practical patterns, prayers, or liturgies that your family can put into practice right away. As you create liberating rhythms around your everyday routines, you will find your family has a greater sense of peace and purpose as your home becomes a place where, above all, you learn how to love.

How Bill de Blasio’s mayoral victory triggered a seismic shift in the nation’s urban political landscape—and what it portends for our cities in the future In November 2013, a little-known progressive stunned the elite of New York City by capturing the mayoralty by a landslide. Bill de Blasio's promise to end the "Tale of Two Cities" had struck a chord among ordinary residents still struggling to recover from the Great Recession. De Blasio's election heralded the advent of the most progressive New York City government in generations. Not since the legendary Fiorello La Guardia in the 1930s had so many populist candidates captured government office at the same time. Gotham, in other words, had been suddenly reclaimed in the name of its people. How did this happen? De Blasio's victory, journalist legend Juan González argues, was not just a routine change of government but a popular rebellion against corporate-friendly policies that had dominated New York for decades. Reflecting that broader change, liberal Democrats Bill Peduto in Pittsburgh, Betsy Hodges in Minneapolis, and Martin Walsh of Boston also won mayoral elections that same year, as did insurgent Ras Baraka in Newark the following year. This new generation of municipal leaders offers valuable lessons for those seeking grassroots reform.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • This dazzling memoir from the former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Life on Mars is the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America. "Engrossing in its spare, simple understatement.... Evocative ... luminous." —The Washington Post In Ordinary Light, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her remarkable story, giving us a quietly potent memoir that explores her coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter.

Shortlisted for the SYRCA 2013 Diamond Willow Award, selected as an American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Book, a Booklist Editors' Choice, nominated for the OLA Golden Oak Tree Award, and a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Awards: Young Adult/Middle Reader Award, the Governor General's Literary Awards: Children's Text and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award There's not much that upsets young Valli. Even though her days are spent picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror are the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. Valli and the other children throw stones at them. No matter how hard her life is, she tells herself, at least she will never be one of them. Then she discovers that she is not living with family after all, that her "aunt" was a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family's hands. She decides to leave Jharia ... and so begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods. It's not so bad. Valli finds that she really doesn't need much to live. She can "borrow" the things she needs and then pass them on to people who need them more than she does. It helps that though her bare feet become raw wounds as she makes her way around the city, she somehow feels no pain. But when she happens to meet a doctor on the ghats by the river, Valli learns that she has leprosy. Despite being given a chance to receive medical care, she cannot bear the thought that she is one of those monsters she has always feared, and she flees, to an uncertain life on the street. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6 Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

A study of how ordinary people deal with everyday problems through self-mastery and mental health care practices. Everyday suffering—those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone’s lives—is something that humans have grappled with for millennia. But the last decades have seen a drastic change in the way we approach it. In the past, a person going through a time of difficulty might keep a journal or see a therapist, but now the psychological has been replaced by the biological: instead of treating the heart, soul, and mind, we take a pill to treat the brain. Chemically Imbalanced is a field report on how ordinary people dealing with common problems explain their suffering, how they’re increasingly turning to the thin and mechanistic language of the “body/brain,” and what these encounters might tell us. Drawing on interviews with people dealing with struggles such as underperformance in school or work, grief after the end of a relationship, or disappointment with how their life is unfolding, Joseph E. Davis reveals the profound revolution in consciousness that is underway. We now see suffering as an imbalance in the brain that needs to be fixed, usually through chemical means. This has rippled into our social and cultural conversations, and it has affected how we, as a society, imagine ourselves and envision what constitutes a good life. Davis warns that what we envision as a neurological revolution, in which suffering is a mechanistic problem, has troubling and entrapping consequences. And he makes the case that by turning away from an interpretive, meaning-making view of ourselves, we thwart our chances to enrich our souls and learn important truths about ourselves and the social conditions under which we live. Praise for Chemically Imbalanced “Chemically Imbalanced is an excellent addition to the works in social sciences and humanities that examine the distress of ordinary Americans from the second half of the twentieth century onward, a period when commercialized pills and the psychology-based notion of self-improvement entered the minds of Americans.” —Metascience “Chemically Imbalanced raises important questions, offers new insight into the power and reach of the biomedical model and neurobiological thinking, and I highly recommend it. I encourage readers to assign it, especially in graduate-level mental health and illness classes—or any class looking for a discussion on people’s experiences with suffering and the broad impacts of biomedical thinking and treatment.” —Social Forces

This book examines everyday borders in the UK and Calais as sites of ethical political struggle between segregation and solidarity. In an age of mobility, borders appear to be everywhere. Encountered more and more in our everyday lives, borders locally enact global divisions and inequalities of power, wealth, and identity. Critically examining everyday borders in the UK and Calais, Tyerman shows them to be sites of ethical political struggle. From the Calais ‘jungle’ to the UK’s ‘hostile environment’, it shows how borders are carried out through practices of everyday segregation that make life for some but not others unliveable. At the same time, it reveals the practices of everyday solidarity with which people on the move confront these segregating borders. This book sheds light on the complex ways borders entrench themselves in our lives, the complicity of ordinary people in their enactment, and the seductive power they continue to assert over our political imaginations. Of general interest to scholars and students working on issues of migration, borders, citizenship, and security in international politics, sociology, and philosophy this book will also appeal to practitioners in areas of migrant rights, asylum advocacy, anti-detention or deportation campaigning, human rights, direct democracy, and community organising.

I am Comet Caldwell. And I sort of, kind of, absolutely hate my name. People expect extraordinary things from a girl named Comet. That she’ll be effortlessly cool and light up a room the way a comet blazes across the sky. But from the shyness that makes her book-character friends more appealing than real people to the parents whose indifference hurts more than an open wound, Comet has never wanted to be the center of attention. She can’t wait to graduate from her high school in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the only place she ever feels truly herself is on her anonymous poetry blog. But surely that will change once she leaves to attend university somewhere far, far away. When new student Tobias King blazes in from America and shakes up the school, Comet thinks she’s got the bad boy figured out. Until they’re thrown together for a class assignment and begin to form an unlikely connection. Everything shifts in Comet’s ordinary world. Tobias has a dark past and runs with a tough crowd—and none of them are happy about his interest in Comet. Targeted by bullies and thrown into the spotlight, Comet and Tobias can go their separate ways…or take a risk on something extraordinary. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Impossible Vastness of Us and the On Dublin Street series comes a heartfelt and beautiful new young adult novel, set in Scotland, about daring to dream and embracing who you are.