A debut collection by the winner of the 1999 James Laughlin Award, reissued in a new design, traverses the dimensions of the writer's psyche and addresses AIDS as a central topic of personal exploration. Reissue.

This book is about silence and power and how they interact. It argues that only by studying how silence works—how it is implicated in the construction of meaning—can we arrive at the elusive roots of power in all its dimensions. Silence becomes the currency of power by delineating the margins or what we perceive and through a sleight of hand wherein behaviors undertaken in the service of self-interest appear instead as inevitable and devoid of human agency. The theoretical load of this argument is carried by vivid ethnographic material dealing with music, linguistic behavior, racial conflicts, work dislocations, and the construction of anthropological subjects and texts.

IN THIS AGE OF CONFUSION, FEAR, AND CONFLICT, SPEAKING UP IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER. If you've ever felt like you don't have enough information about an issue, that you should wait to see what others do first, or that your voice won't make a difference, you're not alone. Silence Is Not the Answer is a collection of prophetic voices urging us to wake up, notice what is happening, and take a stand. The book offers viewpoints from a variety of writers who call us to make our voices heard on critical justice issues. Walter Brueggemann, Bishop Herbert Chilstrom, Christine M. Smith, John Cobb, Jim Wallis, and others encourage us to break the silence‚"‚€‚"not by shouting down others but by starting a real conversation. Here's your chance to speak up, make better choices, and make your voice heard. Even one voice can start an avalanche of change. We need to read and listen and then speak out for causes that we think are important.

Silence is NOT an option - use your voice for change. This book will empower you to navigate your world and help to create a morepositive society.

A personal and cultural exploration of silence and its value in our lives—“[an] artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation, and essay” (Independent, UK). In her late forties, after a noisy upbringing as one of six children and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland found herself living alone in the country and, to her surprise, falling in love with silence. In this fascinating, intelligent, and beautifully written book, Maitland describes how she began to explore this new love, spending periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Scottish hills, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. Maitland also delves deep into the rich cultural history of silence, exploring its significance in fairy tale and myth, its importance to the Western and Eastern religious traditions, and its use in psychoanalysis and artistic expression. Her story culminates in her building a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway. “Her book is probably unique in its subject, and timely, because good, healing silence is becoming hard to find, and we may not know we need it” (Guardian, UK).

A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos. For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations by seeking to redefine love, sex, and gender roles in their lives, and when a businessman opens a shop and befriends Hagos, they cast off those pressures and make an unconventional choice. With this cast of complex, beautifully drawn characters, Sulaiman Addonia details the textures and rhythms of everyday life in a refugee camp, and questions what it means to be an individual when one has lost all that makes a home or a future. Intimate and subversive, Silence Is My Mother Tongue dissects the ways society wages war on women and explores the stories we must tell to survive in a broken, inhospitable environment.

Every day the news is filled with horror stories of war, atrocities, and other unspeakable acts. Yet how many are willing to consider that the source of these violent acts in a violent world is fear and, therefore, only different in form from our own hateful thoughts and unkind deeds toward ourselves and others? Silence Is the Answer not only explains the undeniable connection, but directs the reader toward the repair of the only world that needs fixing — one's own mind.Author Robert E. Draper culls countless examples from ancient history to the present day to demonstrate how often this world built on separation and fear makes no sense. Explaining the futility of attempting to change the ephemeral world of appearances, he encourages readers to heed the teachings of the wise, who from throughout the ages have taught that lasting safety can only come from self-examination and changing one's mind.

My name is Tess Turner--at least, that's what I've always been told. I have a voice but it isn't mine. It used to say things so I'd fit in, to please my parents, to please my teachers. It used to tell the universe I was something I wasn't. It lied. It never occurred to me that everyone else was lying too. Fifteen-year-old Tess doesn't mean to become mute. At first, she's just too shocked to speak. And who wouldn't be? Discovering your whole life has been a lie because your dad isn't your real father is a pretty big deal. Terrified of the truth, Tess retreats into silence. Reeling from her family's betrayal, Tess sets out to discover the identity of her real father. He could be anyone--even the familiar-looking teacher at her school. Tess continues to investigate, uncovering a secret that could ruin multiple lives. It all may be too much for Tess to handle, but how can she ask for help when she's forgotten how to use her voice? In a brilliant study of identity, betrayal, and complex family dynamics, award-winning author Annabel Pitcher explores the importance of communication, even when we're faced with unspeakable truths.

Winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets. (1999) Tory Dent's is a voice like no other. Her use of language is virtuosic, complex, and plangent. These are daring poems that also dare the reader. HIV positive, Dent writes out of her own experience and profound refusal to look away or suspend feeling or turn from love. When her first book of poems, What Silence Equals, appeared in 1993, it was recognized as "immediately one of the great, necessary books to come out of the AIDS crisis, flinging its challenge in the face of death." With HIV, Mon Amour she moves further into the whirlwind -- as witness, lover, and observer.

Many people find the very notion of silence uncomfortable, even alarming or embarrassing. They are gripped by a kind of agoraphobia of the spirit. Many try to obliterate silence by turning up the volume control of music or television, or the volume of their days. The Power of Silence explores the world of silence--a mysterious and unfathomable realm, perhaps the most underused of all resources--and those who recognize its value. It is based on extensive interviews with those whose business is silence and who understand its creative and therapeutic uses. Graham Turner explores how the desert fathers sought silence and solitude. Psychotherapists talk of the creative value of silence in their practice as do--perhaps surprisingly--musical composers. The great Catholic centers of contemplation are investigated, as are the practitioners of Zen and those who try to heal the sickness of the mind. A silent moment is time for tranquility and reflection--something beyond ourselves. The value of welcoming quiet has become a great gap in modern human awareness, and this book seeks to restore our belief in the power of silence.