Motherhood can be the toughest – and funniest – job you’ll ever have. Raising kids is hard work, but humor can make the journey a little easier - even if you just have to laugh to keep from crying. In The Motherhood Diaries 2, National Bestselling Author, ReShonda Tate Billingsley, uses personal anecdotes from her zoo - formerly known as a family - to show how humor helps her navigate the minefield of motherhood. This laugh-out-loud read portrays the truths about motherhood that we are either too ashamed or too proud to admit. Through heartwarming and hilarious tales of motherhood, ReShonda and other mothers share their joys, pains, and everything in between. From Tia McCollors, who shows you how to pull life lessons from embarrassing moments; to Gina Johnson, whose circus puts Ringling Brothers to shame; to Janoah White, who learned to let laughter help her deal with a son who has autism; to Denise Leora Madre’s hilarious story on how motherhood shattered her naiveté - there’s something relatable for mothers from all walks of life. Then, stories from mothers like Naleighna Kai will show you how to find faith in the midst of motherhood; Nikki Woods, whose inspiring story will have you wanting to rethink your family legacy; and Regina Cooper, whose Diary of a Mortified Mom will have you double-checking those locks the next time you want to squeeze in quality time with your mate. In all, twenty-five mothers share stories that will help you accept the insanity of motherhood and learn to laugh about it in the process. Finding humor in the raw honesty of life as a mother is a survival mechanism for most of us, and these moms will help you see you’re not alone in this refreshing, hilarious take on motherhood.

Billingsley openly shares stories about her children: twelve-year-old Mya, the diva who searched the internet for the president of Justice department store, then called his personal line to tell him why would be crazy not to let her model for him'; to ten-year-old Morgan, who has a serious case of middle-child syndrome and a knack for falling asleep in the strangest places (the pantry, the dryer, the attic); and finally, five-year-old Myles, who as his grandmother says, 'has been here before.''

Cartoon Cathy meets Erma Bombeck in this hilarious collection of short stories that will keep you laughing and crying from cover to cover. Christine Hohlbaum reels you into the world of child mayhem as she recounts tales of life with small children. From potty-training to the magic of Santa Claus, this book tells all about the ups and downs of parenting. A splendid addition to your leisure reading list!

A raw, funny, and fiercely honest account of becoming a mother before feeling like a grown up. When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed -- a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood -- didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself. And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the fantasies of a "natural" birth experience that erode maternal self-esteem, post-partum body and sex issues, and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. Channeling fears and anxieties that are still taboo and often unspoken, And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and visceral motherhood story for our times, about having a baby and staying, for better or worse, exactly yourself. Smart, funny, and true in all the best ways, this book made me ache with recognition." -- Cheryl Strayed

The funniest, most popular kid in school, Charles Aubrey Rogers suffered from depression and later addiction, then ultimately died by suicide. "Diary of a Broken Mind" focuses on the relatable story of what lead to his suicide at age twenty and answers the "why" behind his addiction and this cause of death, revealed through both a mother's story and years of Charles' published and unpublished song lyrics. The closing chapters focus on hope and healing-and how the author found her purpose and forgave herself.

"Another book! He hasn't been as tenacious as this since we kicked him out of house at sixteen and he spent an hour trying to get back in." - his mother. "He reckons he's been writing this junk for five years. Anyone with a single grain of propriety would have stopped after the first one - or even before." - Graham Windlass, Nottingham. "We've been waiting for this. I had the last one sent through the post because someone, probably him, said it would be worth a read. I knew I wasn't wasting my time nailing shut our letterbox." - Name supplied, Swindon. "If Edward Snowden had found this stuff in the darkened recesses of some government top secret files he would have left it there." - R. Griffiths, Northants.

A Mother's Diary: How to Survive the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is a firsthand account of one woman's journey. It represents the struggle of thousands of women every year whose babies begin life in the N.I.C.U. Menetra Hathorn writes the entire book from her perspective - a mother's point of view. She begins by introducing you, the reader, to her world and giving some background information about how her journey began. Next, you walk with her the rest of the way - through a slow and tedious hospitalization. Then, she names and discusses 10 strategies that will help you survive the N.I.C.U. (and beyond). Finally, she shares some valuable insight with relatives and friends while recommending a variety of ways that they can help. A Mother's Diary: How to Survive the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit was written because Mrs. Hathorn was unable to find anything like it during her third child's 119-day hospitalization. She wanted to know that she wasn't alone, and she needed some common sense strategies she could implement to help save herself from drowning in a sea of grief, depression, and anxiety.

The first dedicated volume of its kind, Visualizing Digital Discourse brings together sociolinguists and discourse analysts examining the role of visual communication in digital media. The volume showcases work from leading, established and emerging scholars from across Europe, covering a diverse range of digital media platforms such as messaging, video-chat, gaming and wikis; visual modalities such as emojis, video and layout; methodologies like discourse analysis, ethnography and conversation analysis; as well as data from different languages. With an opening chapter by Rodney Jones, the volume is organized into three parts: Besides Words and Writing, The Social Life of Images, and Designing Multimodal Texts. From the perspective of these broad domains, chapters tackle some of the major ideological, interactional and institutional implications of visuality for digital discourse studies. The first part, beginning with a co-authored chapter by Crispin Thurlow, focuses on micro-level visual practices and their macro-level framing – all with particular regard for emojis. The second part, beginning with a chapter from Sirpa Leppänen, examines the ways visual resources are used for managing personal relations, and the wider cultural politics of visual representation in these practices. The third part, beginning with a chapter by Hartmut Stöckl, considers organizational contexts where users deploy visual resources for more transactional, often commercial ends.

NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY: Buzzfeed • The Boston Globe • The Millions • InStyle • Southern Living • Vogue • Popsugar • Kirkus • The Washington Post • Library Journal • Real Simple • NPR “With his unerring eye for nuance and unsparing sense of irony, Rumaan Alam’s second novel is both heartfelt and thought-provoking.” — Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere From the bestselling author of Leave the World Behind, a novel about the families we fight to build and those we fight to keep Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help—Priscilla Johnson—and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny. Priscilla’s presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca’s perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. She feels profoundly connected to the woman who essentially taught her what it means to be a mother. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son. As she soon learns, navigating motherhood for her is a matter of learning how to raise two children whom she loves with equal ferocity, but whom the world is determined to treat differently. Written with the warmth and psychological acuity that defined his debut, Rumaan Alam has crafted a remarkable novel about the lives we choose, and the lives that are chosen for us.

This stimulating book is a comprehensive record of the antebellum period. It examines various aspects of social history and intellectual history of that period in the context of the 19th century's "cult of domesticity." The development of the ideology of domesticity in this period and its implications are clearly explored in this startling and important feminist work.