Rachel's Children: Stories from a Contemporary Native American Woman (Volume 12) (Contemporary Native American Communities, 12)

Rachel's Children is a true story, based on real events. It is an engaging and humorous account of a contemporary Ojibwa household and the woman and her children who are at its core. As their lives unfold, we understand how traditional beliefs and oral history help Rachel and her family cope as they encounter racism and educational discrimination in rural northern Michigan. When a white educator arrives in RachelOs household to learn about 'Indians,' she discovers the harsh reality of backwoods life. Beardslee is the queen of sucker punches―she writes in an unexpected combination of ethnography, theatrical script, and novel, echoing the Ojibwa style of storytelling. Her absorbing story about survival of the Native American family encourages a greater understanding of cultural diversity, and will be valuable for instructors in Native studies, multicultural education, womenOs studies, and anthropology.

Literature & Fiction

Beard, Steve

United States

AltaMira Press

Rachel's Children is the true story of a contemporary Ojibwa household and the woman and her children who are at its core. As their lives unfold, we understand how traditional beliefs help Rachel's family cope as they encounter racism in rural Michigan. Beardslee writes in a style that is a combination of ethnography, theatrical script, and novel, echoing the Ojibwa style of storytelling. Her book will be valuable for instructors in Native studies, multicultural education, and anthropology.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Not Far Away: The Real-life Adventures of Ima Pipiig (Contemporary Native American Communities)

In Not Far Away, a semi-fictional memoir, Lois Beardslee gives a chilling acount of racism, particularly that leveled against Native women, in language that is supple, evocative, often comical, and always incisive. Her fictional heroine, the teacher Ima Pipiig (pronounced "buh-BEEG"), endures humiliating insults from school administrators, fellow teachers, students, and callous neighbors. For years, she suffers in silence, believing that opposing bigotry would only fuel its caustic flames―but then she begins to speak out. Scattered among the chapters chronicling Ima's experiences are essays and speeches written by the author herself, blurring the line between fiction and fact and creating a kind of resounding echo of resistance that is the author's response to racism.

Reference

Part novel and part memoire, Not Far Away recounts the life of a female Ojibwe schoolteacher in northern Michigan as she endures the most caustic forms of racism.

Mappalujo is a shared dream set in the twilight realm of Lujo, a city dominated by the surreal cartoons and artificially bred toy creatures of the Zeno Entertainment Company. Since the company's founder died in mysterious circumstances, Zeno's visions have become darker and even more sinister. An identity-altering drug is leaking onto the streets. For a few brilliant, flickering moments users are transformed into famous or infamous celebrities, only to find that the other side of fame lies in the gutter, or in death. The novel follows a lowly salesman, an information gatherer, a private detective and a teenage psychic. Four stories, four people - each of them connected to the bizarre fate of Zeno, its bitter heir, and a hostile faery spirit named Mama Lujo. Here is one city's epic tale told in seventy-five chapters, each influenced by a different iconic figure. From Lewis Carroll to Patti Smith, from Sigmund Freud to Raymond Chandler and Sophie Calle - the ghosts haunting the streets of Lujo are all conjured from the collective unconscious of the modern media age.

Mappalujo

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Noon, Jeff

Science Fiction

Tickety Boo Press Ltd

Mappalujo is a shared dream set in the twilight realm of Lujo, a city dominated by the surreal cartoons and artificially bred toy creatures of the Zeno Entertainment Company. Since the company's founder died in mysterious circumstances, Zeno's visions have become darker and even more sinister. An identity-altering drug is leaking onto the streets. For a few brilliant, flickering moments users are transformed into famous or infamous celebrities, only to find that the other side of fame lies in the gutter, or in death. The novel follows a lowly salesman, an information gatherer, a private detective and a teenage psychic. Four stories, four people - each of them connected to the bizarre fate of Zeno, its bitter heir, and a hostile faery spirit named Mama Lujo. Here is one city's epic tale told in seventy-five chapters, each influenced by a different iconic figure. From Lewis Carroll to Patti Smith, from Sigmund Freud to Raymond Chandler and Sophie Calle - the ghosts haunting the streets of Lujo are all conjured from the collective unconscious of the modern media age. Mappalujo is baroque science fiction, tumbling with ideas and images, exuberant to the extreme. It documents a world only a few metres and a few minutes away from our own - yet stranger by far."

Voodoo Science Park started life as a poetic film about the science of accident investigation practised by the Health and Safety Laboratory in the Peak District of England. In the book of the film, Victoria Halford and Steve Beard reveal the thinking that went into the preparation of the script. The Health and Safety Lab is the place where large-scale accidents such as tunnel collapses, fires and rail crashes are recreated to examine their destructive pathways. Halford and Beard explore the connections with imitative magic, drawing on the secret histories of dissident religious sects, miners and shamans as well as the prophecies of William Blake. They rethink the lab’s industrial safety rigs as monstrous emblems of the state, as theorised by Thomas Hobbes, and retrace the steps of a journey the political philosopher took through the hollow lands of the Peak in 1626. Testimony from highwaymen, ramblers and urban explorers is collected along the way. The book is composed in a fragmentary style, which weaves together philosophy, travelogue, history of science, sociology and religious study.

Voodoo Science Park

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Zero Books

Digital Leatherette

Erotica

Codex Books

These popcult essays mix style-magazine think pieces, celebrity interviews, street-level cyber-theory and slipstream media memoir to offer a readymade archive of tomorrow's strip-mall culture. Its postmodern approach to reportage allows subjects like new media art, Terence McKenna at Megatripolis, Diana-gate, slasher movies, virtual capitalism, New Puritan transsexuals, Afrofuturism, and the cult of the serial killer to bleed into each other. Aftershocks features definitive interviews with Brian Eno, Michael Moorcock, the Orb's Alex Paterson, Reservoir Dogs-era Harvey Keitel, James Kelman, Robert Anton Wilson, Hakim Bey, Stelarc, and Naked Lunch-era David Cronenberg. Also includes previously unpublished material.

Aftershocks

Wallflower Press

A navigational aid to the apocalypse.
Steve Beard's Six Concepts for the End of the World mixes scientific research with experimental fiction to produce a manual for the apocalypse. The author examines six disciplines―technology, sociology, geography, psychology, theology and narratology―and for each one creates a fictional scenario that both reflects and energizes the research, all under the guiding light of the philosopher Paul Virilio's theories. This approach allows Beard to create one surprising idea after another: Hollywood viewed as a research and development lab for the end times, a first-person account of a UFO abduction, a blog on the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight 370, a voice-over for an imaginary film by a doomsday cult member. 
Highly original in both form and content, the book surprises and delights in its scope. The approach is multidisciplinary and multidirectional, and Beard's exploration ranges over many areas and themes, always bringing distinctive insights to bear. Six Concepts for the End of the World is an expertly guided tour through the author's imagination, and toward the end of the world.

Six Concepts for the End of the World (Goldsmiths Press / Unidentified Fictional Objects)

Genre Fiction

Goldsmiths Press

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

Books by Beard, Steve

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

Rachel's Children: Stories from a Contemporary Native American Woman (Volume 12) (Contemporary Native American Communities, 12)

Rachel's Children: Stories from a Contemporary Native American Woman (Volume 12) (Contemporary Native American Communities, 12)

Not Far Away: The Real-life Adventures of Ima Pipiig (Contemporary Native American Communities)

Not Far Away: The Real-life Adventures of Ima Pipiig (Contemporary Native American Communities)

Mappalujo

Mappalujo

Voodoo Science Park

Digital Leatherette

Aftershocks

Six Concepts for the End of the World (Goldsmiths Press / Unidentified Fictional Objects)