Expressed through poetry, essays, and short stories, Voices from a Black Heart Speak examines deep-seated beliefs, perspectives, and emotional feelings derived from the cultural development of black people in the United States. We live in a world where television tells us what to want, how we want to live, and what we want to do. We live in a world where fear of the unknown is to be feared and that's considered normal. It may be considered normal and acceptable, but it's totally irrational as our entire lives and world is based on the unknown. We slide through life on a hope and wish that our lives work out as we planned them. If we look at the major earthquake in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 that created a Tsunami or Great Wave that killed over 100,000 people and destroyed towns, cities and property in the billions in Asia, we can realize the truth of the fact is that we live our lives in the unknown from moment to moment. The one thing that sustains us is our faith as we journey through life.

20-year-old Isabella from the state of Louisiana, USA, suffers from chronic heart muscle inflammation, which almost led to her death. It was only through the transplantation of the heart of a Mississippi housekeeper who died in a car accident that Isabella was given a second life. Even before the surgery, she felt this intense feeling in her heart of missing someone. This feeling gives her the idea to search for her unknown grandmother and eventually leads her to the neighboring state of Mississippi. There she meets 80-year-old Ava. A life-experienced, well-known writer with a sad past, of which no one suspects. It is only through Isabella's search for her biological grandmother that Ava's past slowly rises to the surface and is revealed, albeit not entirely voluntarily, thanks to Isabella's persistence.

The latest installment in the highly acclaimed, internationally bestselling Strike series finds Cormoran and Robin ensnared in another winding, wicked case. When frantic, disheveled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn’t know quite what to make of the situation. The cocreator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie’s true identity. Robin decides that the agency can’t help with this—and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery, the location of The Ink Black Heart. Robin and her business partner, Cormoran Strike, become drawn into the quest to uncover Anomie’s true identity. But with a complex web of online aliases, business interests and family conflicts to navigate, Strike and Robin find themselves embroiled in a case that stretches their powers of deduction to the limits – and which threatens them in new and horrifying ways . . . A gripping, fiendishly clever mystery, The Ink Black Heart is a true tour-de-force. *Some of the more complex layouts in the book are rendered as images in the ebook version so that you can enlarge on your preferred reading device*

Originally published in 1986. William Faulkner’s major novels represent one of the earliest American explorations into the paradoxes inherent in both literary discourse and racial segregation in the American South. Figures of Division demonstrates that these works reject conventional divisions and a social and linguistic deception, and discover a reality where people merge across social boundaries. This analysis of Faulkner’s narrative discourse shows for the first time that the mechanisms of social division profoundly affect both the content and the form of his major novels.

How communication technologies meant to empower people with speech disorders—to give voice to the voiceless—are still subject to disempowering structural inequalities. Mobile technologies are often hailed as a way to “give voice to the voiceless.” Behind the praise, though, are beliefs about technology as a gateway to opportunity and voice as a metaphor for agency and self-representation. In Giving Voice, Meryl Alper explores these assumptions by looking closely at one such case—the use of the Apple iPad and mobile app Proloquo2Go, which converts icons and text into synthetic speech, by children with disabilities (including autism and cerebral palsy) and their families. She finds that despite claims to empowerment, the hardware and software are still subject to disempowering structural inequalities. Views of technology as a great equalizer, she illustrates, rarely account for all the ways that culture, law, policy, and even technology itself can reinforce disparity, particularly for those with disabilities. Alper explores, among other things, alternative understandings of voice, the surprising sociotechnical importance of the iPad case, and convergences and divergences in the lives of parents across class. She shows that working-class and low-income parents understand the app and other communication technologies differently from upper- and middle-class parents, and that the institutional ecosystem reflects a bias toward those more privileged. Handing someone a talking tablet computer does not in itself give that person a voice. Alper finds that the ability to mobilize social, economic, and cultural capital shapes the extent to which individuals can not only speak but be heard.

At last available in a single volume: comprehensive overviews and concise analyses of the key critical texts and approaches to the most-studied works of literature. By assembling extracts from essays, reviews, and articles, the columbia critical guides provide students with ready access to the most important secondary writings on one or more texts by a given writer. each volume: -- Offers a balanced and nuanced approach to criticism, drawing on a wide array of British and American sources -- Explains criticism in terms of key approaches, allowing students to grasp the central issues for each work -- Is edited by a noted scholar who specializes in the writer or work in question -- Includes notes and a comprehensive bibliography and index. Now recognized as two of Faulkner's greatest novels, the sound and the fury (1929) and as i lay dying (1930) were commercial failures in the decade following their publication. By the end of the Second World War, however, the reputation of both novels had grown, and Faulkner's great fictional creation, Yoknapatawpha County, had become as much a part of America as any real area of the Mississippi landscape. This guide explores the wealth of critical material generated by these two exceptional works of modern fiction. From the initially mixed critical responses to the novels in the early 1930s, the guide follows the enormous growth of interest in Faulkner's work across six decades. New writings shaped by a range of critical theories are discussed, offering the reader a clear view of the place now given to one of America's most innovative and influential novelists.

Oysters are humble animals yet very important. Vital to the health of our coast, this keystone species helps filter coastal waters and protects shorelines from undue erosion. In addition, oysters are a source for both food and physical shelter for a wide array of other animals as well as some plants. This book began with a federal grant to create a living shoreline, a manmade slope carefully engineered to provide optimal living conditions for oysters and that will function as a seamless part of the natural environment. Such living shorelines allow oysters to thrive while they also help protect the land from some of the problems that are increasing because of climate change. Why add a children’s book to an ecological building project? Learning about oysters and their role in the environment will help our young people grow into adults who are good stewards of our planet. Understanding life cycles and the interconnections between species, no matter how small, are crucial to that outcome, and oysters are a fascinating and compelling way to explore those concepts. INCLUDES: Full-page color illustrations throughout Inset illustrations highlighting associated species, life-cycle stages, ecological insights, and human uses of oysters Amazing oyster facts Ways to help support oysters Further reading

David Lloyd’s poetry abides in a lineage of poetic modernism, often in dialogue with poets like César Vallejo, Paul Celan, and Mahmoud Darwish. The poems in The Harm Fields are rich in imagery, their language a fluent mix of registers, from colloquial idioms to technical language and literary citation, and replete with multilingual puns and portmanteaux. These poems carry forward the musical values and the questioning project of the modernist lyric, but their concerns are contemporary, haunted by the ongoing brutality of the times, from Ireland to Palestine, and reaching for a language adequate to mourning, persistence, and utopian possibility.

Best Book of the Year NPR • The Washington Post • Boston Globe • TIME • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Real Simple • Parade • Buzzfeed • Electric Literature • LitHub • BookRiot • PopSugar • Goop • Library Journal • BookBub • KCRW • Finalist for the National Book Award • One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year • One of the New York Times Best Historical Fiction of the Year • Instant New York Times Bestseller A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony. With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr., fiercely summons the voices of slaver and enslaved alike, from Isaiah and Samuel to the calculating slave master to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of centuries—of ancestors and future generations to come—culminates in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets fearlessly reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love.