"The book is informed by the Vietnamese immigrations of the nineteen–seventies but is filled with social observation of contemporary middle–class culture and indie sensibility . . . Quietly beautiful, Strom's stories are hip without being ironic." —The New Yorker When The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys was first published in 2006, it was groundbreaking in its depiction of contemporary young Vietnamese women living in the United States, centering their ordinary lives as mothers, lovers, friends, and daughters against the backdrop of immigration and assimilation. Available now for the first time in paperback and featuring an introduction by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud and a new preface by the author, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys is a beautifully written, psychologically astute foray into the rite of female passage.

A Library Journal Best Reference Book of 2022 This book represents the culmination of over 150 years of literary achievement by the most diverse ethnic group in the United States. Diverse because this group of ethnic Americans includes those whose ancestral roots branch out to East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Western Asia. Even within each of these regions, there exist vast differences in languages, cultures, religions, political systems, and colonial histories. From the earliest publication in 1887 to the latest in 2021, this dictionary celebrates the incredibly rich body of fiction, poetry, memoirs, plays, and children’s literature. Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 700 cross-referenced entries on genres, major terms, and authors. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this topic.

In pleasant contrast to the recent flood of haunted childhood memoirs, A Girl’s Life is about growing up in a functional family, about nurture, serenity, wonderment, and the stabilizing contributions an unencumbered heart makes in the life of an observant child. Marianne Gingher makes the events of a “normal” girlhood not only engaging but distinctly illuminating and explores rites of passage that are as persuasive in shaping an artist’s sensibilities as are privations. A meditation on the comforts of homeplace and family, A Girl’s Life celebrates the last era in America, the 1950s and 1960s, when it was still possible to enjoy a cynicism-free girlhood—when “it was still safe for children to take gifts from strangers and not yet unwise for them to leave the doors of their hearts unlocked.” As Eudora Welty wrote in her autobiographical memoir One Writer’s Beginnings, “A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.” The seventeen personal narratives collected here corroborate Welty’s conviction. Arranged in a loose chronology, the tales document a southern white girl’s middle-class initiation into the adult world. The first section, “Sanctuary,” recalls Gingher’s earliest impressions of family dynamics and shelter, a child’s yearnings and resourcefulness. “Truths and Grit,” the second section, deals with the tempering of bliss, a young girl’s first encounters with corruption and mortality. In the final group of essays, “Metaphors and Pies,” Gingher explores the contributions her recollections of childhood make in her ongoing trials as a parent and a writer. That her own childhood still permeates and inspires her present life is perhaps its greatest legacy. Did the way Marianne Gingher grow up compel her toward the writing life? Certainly the impact of that distant time, specific people and events, sensory-steeped moments, and the privilege of being allowed to dream as well as do enriched and fostered the writer’s imagination. By turns funny, provocative, jubilant, and tender, A Girl’s Life is perhaps most notable for both exalting and justifying the place of happiness in a writer’s development.

If recent bestsellers such as The Bitch in the House and Midlife Crisis at Thirty serve as any indication of how women are experiencing their thirties, who can blame women embarking upon this decade in their life for panicking? Yet, as the contributors to this thoughtful and inspiring book attest, it doesn't have to be so scary. In The May Queen, a wide array of women-including bestselling author Jennifer Weiner and star of the hit independent film Kissing Jessica Stein Heather Juergensen-describe the conflicting emotions they've felt in response to the "anything is possible" message women of their generation receive. And yet, all of the women featured in this book have found their thirties to be a time of great opportunity-a period in their lives in which they're taking the time to consider what they have lost, what they have gained, and what they still need to learn. This book gives a powerful voice to a new generation of women beginning to make its mark on the world.

"A memoir in text, image, and song. In this unique hybrid work, author/musician Dao Strom navigates the spaces between shores, mother and father, two cultures. The daughter of writers, she fled Vietnam with her mother at the end of the war. It was not until years later that she learned her father was still alive and had spent a decade in Communist "reeducation" camps as persecution for his work as a writer in the pre-1975 era of Saigon. This rift--caught between the forward-looking mother who severed ties with the past, and the only tenuous presence of a father who could not turn away from the past--is the initiating ethos behind this memoir, which renders itself also as an experiment in literary multimedia, combining text, image, and song to express the nuances and buried emotions of aftermath" --

The four titles in the 'Sexual Education Series' have been designed to help parents & teachers tackle this difficult subject with young children. To get the child's attention each book has fold-outs & interactive games. At the end of each book there is a special game that checks how much the child has understood.

Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader is a much-needed exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and gender identity. Its multidisciplinary approach provides fascinating perspectives from the sciences, social sciences and humanities, as well as biology, neuroscience, medicine, law, sociology and English literature. The 15 chapters are original contributions, authored by scholars who are leaders in their respective fields. This thought-provoking collection offers significant methodological, theoretical and empirical insights into one of the most fraught debates in contemporary politics and academia. It provides a broad-ranging introduction to the issues central to questions about how and why sex matters from a range of disciplinary perspectives, drawing out the social, political and legal implications. Questions addressed include: Is sex binary? What is a woman? Why do we need data on sex? Also discussed are topics widely debated today such as sports, feminism, sex and inequality, sex-based rights, puberty suppression, criminal justice and gender dysphoria. Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader is a timely introduction to contemporary debates on sex and gender. It is an accessible text for both general readers and for students of gender issues across a wide range of disciplines including sociology, education, history, philosophy and gender studies.

The task is simple: Don a disguise. Survive the labyrinth . . . Best the boys. Every year for the past fifty-four years, the residents of Pinsbury Port have received a mysterious letter inviting all eligible-aged boys to compete for an esteemed scholarship to the all-male Stemwick University. The poorer residents look to see if their names are on the list. The wealthier look to see how likely their sons are to survive. And Rhen Tellur opens it to see if she can derive which substances the ink and parchment are created from, using her father’s microscope. In the province of Caldon, where women train in wifely duties and men pursue collegiate education, sixteen-year-old Rhen Tellur wants nothing more than to become a scientist. As the poor of her seaside town fall prey to a deadly disease, she and her father work desperately to find a cure. But when her mum succumbs to it as well? Rhen decides to take the future into her own hands—through the annual all-male scholarship competition. With her cousin, Seleni, by her side, the girls don disguises and enter Mr. Holm’s labyrinth, to best the boys and claim the scholarship prize. Except not everyone is ready for a girl who doesn’t know her place. And not everyone survives the deadly maze. Welcome to the labyrinth. Praise for To Best the Boys: “Atmospheric, romantic, inspiring.” —KRISTEN CICCARELLI, internationally bestselling author of The Last Namsara "Smart, determined, and ready to take on the world: Rhen Tellur is an outstanding heroine with every reason to win a competition historically intended for boys." —Jodi Meadows, New York Times bestselling author of The Incarnate Trilogy and coauthor of My Lady Jane A “Hunger Games/Handmaid’s Tale mash-up.” —BN Teen Blog

What if women unraveled the evils of patriarchy? With men safely “gentled” in a worldwide Liberation, the matriarchy of Nedé has risen from the ashes. Seventeen-year-old Reina Pierce has never given a thought to the Brutes of old. Itching to escape her mother’s finca and keeping her training for the Alexia and her forbidden friendship a secret, her greatest worry is which Destiny she’ll choose on her next birthday. But when she’s selected as a candidate for the Succession instead, competing to become Nedé’s ninth Matriarch, she discovers their Eden has come at a cost she’s not sure she’s willing to pay. Jess Corban’s debut novel presents a new twist to the dystopian genre, delivering heart-pounding action, thought-provoking revelations, and a setting as lush as the jungles of Central America.

A Vietnamese family flees its war-torn home and resettles in California, in a novel that offers a “brilliant exploration of exile, loss, and identity” (Robert Olen Butler). Told from multiple perspectives and spanning several decades, Grass Roof, Tin Roof begins with the story of Tran, a Vietnamese writer facing government persecution, who flees her homeland during the exodus of 1975 and brings her two children to the West. Here, she marries a Danish American man who has survived a different war. He promises understanding and guidance—but the psychic consequences of his past soon hinder his relationships with the family, as the children, for whom the war is now a distant shadow, struggle to understand the world around them on their own terms. In delicate, innovative prose, Strom’s characters experience the collision of cultures and the spiritual aftermath of war on the most visceral level. Grass Roof, Tin Roof is “an affecting study on the slippery nature of home” (Los Angeles Times). “[Strom] explores the mysteries of loss, culture and identity, with skill, poignancy and imagination.” —Detroit Free Press