The Gifts of the Body

A woman volunteer who cares for people with AIDS narrates a poignant account of the clients she comes to love in her role as a home-care aide, in a bittersweet novel about life, illness, death, and remembrance. By the author of The Children's Crusade.

Literature & Fiction

BROWN, REBECCA

United States

Harpercollins

A collection of short stories about a variety of relationships between lovers, friends, and aspects of the self

What Keeps Me Here: A Book of Stories

Using this medieval form, Brown tells the story of a contemporary American woman who lives in her studio apartment with a pack of Doberman pinschers. The dogs alternate between being brutal attack animals and loyal companions, and between being real and being otherworldy, seemingly able to disappear or talk or multiply at will. The nameless narrator whose home the dogs invade first tries to accommodate and please them, then grows to hate them, her efforts thwarted by the head of the pack, a cruel and charismatic bitch named Miss Dog.As in a bestiary, each chapter has a one-word title and claims to give the reader a moral or spiritual lesson. Some chapters draw upon the ecstatic and horrifying visions and language of Christian mystics, other chapters take place in the realm of the ordinary: a grocery, a late-night pick-up bar, a family barbecue. The narrator uneasily inhabits both of these worlds, with the dogs tormenting her until she is forced to leave one of these worlds forever.

The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary

An emotionally wrenching work of fiction about a health-care worker who tenders compassion and love to victims of AIDS, by an author who "strips her language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need."--New York Times Book Review

Harper-perennial

Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary is an intimate, exquisite, and true account of what it is to help a parent die. After her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, former home care worker and award-winning writer Rebecca Brown cared for her mother during the last six months of her life. This spare, unsentimental book comes out of that experience. In short chapters headed by definitions of medical terms, she confronts anemia, chemotherapy, metastasis, cremation. Brown’s is a poignant and unflinching story of how one family coped with loss and learned about the longevity of love. The Wisconsin edition is for sale only in North America.

Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary

Parenting & Relationships

University of Wisconsin Press

The narrator relates her childhood memories of parental and sibling relations, with all of their bewildering boundaries and limits, and finds herself drawn into a bizarre custody battle which separates her from her brother

The Children's Crusade (Picador Books)

Contemporary

The Seal Press

Gandhi's Spinning Wheel and the Making of India (Routledge Studies in South Asian History)

Gandhi’s use of the spinning wheel was one of the most significant unifying elements of the nationalist movement in India. Spinning was seen as an economic and political activity that could bring together the diverse population of South Asia, and allow the formerly elite nationalist movement to connect to the broader Indian population. This book looks at the politics of spinning both as a visual symbol and as a symbolic practice. It traces the genealogy of spinning from its early colonial manifestations in Company painting to its appropriation by the anti-colonial movement. This complex of visual imagery and performative ritual had the potential to overcome labour, gender, and religious divisions and thereby produce an accessible and effective symbol for the Gandhian anti-colonial movement. By thoroughly examining all aspects of this symbol’s deployment, this book unpacks the politics of the spinning wheel and provides a model for the analysis of political symbols elsewhere. It also probes the successes of India’s particular anti-colonial movement, making an invaluable contribution to studies in social and cultural history, as well as South Asian Studies.

Reference

Routledge

After returning from Europe, Robin finds her hard-working mother transformed into a film star with an invented past, and attempts to restore her Victorian dream house only to have the house itself mysteriously turn on her

Haunted House

Viking Adult

The first time Rebecca Brown walked to elementary school without her parents, three adult men got out of a dented van and headed in her direction. Her mother, an Italian-American from Brooklyn, had prepped her for dangerous situations she might face in Santa Monica, so Rebecca did what she had been trained to do and ran away from the men, screaming wildly to neighbors for help. The men were gardeners. Stop, Drop, and Panic...and Other Things Mom Taught Me is a classic coming-of-age memoir that follows a young woman as she struggles to overcome the anxieties and fears she inherited from her mother and find her way in the world. It’s an authentic story about what it’s like to live with panic.

Stop, Drop, and Panic ... and Other Things Mom Taught Me

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Jensen and Fleet

A quirky framing of the Civil War grounded in solid scholarship. The Brown twin sisters have built historical dioramas to tell the story of the Civil War with an unexpected twist. The thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers depicted in the battles and scenes are cats! Little Round Top, Pickett’s Charge, Andersonville come to life in this fun, fanciful, solidly researched and highly visual representation of the War. The cats pull you in, and soon you’ll find you’re immersed and engaged, learning details and gaining a new and different perspective.

Civil War Tails: 8,000 Cat Soldiers Tell the Panoramic Story

History

Brown, Ruth A.

Americas

Stackpole Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BROWN, REBECCA. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BROWN, REBECCA

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BROWN, REBECCA. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Gifts of the Body

What Keeps Me Here: A Book of Stories

The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary

The Gifts of the Body

Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary

The Children's Crusade (Picador Books)

Gandhi's Spinning Wheel and the Making of India (Routledge Studies in South Asian History)

Haunted House

Stop, Drop, and Panic ... and Other Things Mom Taught Me

Civil War Tails: 8,000 Cat Soldiers Tell the Panoramic Story