Linda Bevis, an American teacher and lawyer, first lived in Beijing in 1983. Twenty-five years later, Bevis, her playwright husband, and her young Chinese-born daughter return to China. Aware of the necessity for adopted families to connect with the birth culture, Bevis and her family delve into Chinese community, schools, language, theater, and return to the Jiangsu orphanage where Leyla Fu-Chi spent her early months. In the year preceding the Beijing Olympics, much is said of China, both good and bad. Bevis' journals offer an inside view not usually heard in the West. While writing about pollution, censorship, and human rights violations, she also portrays her Chinese friends and students as diverse, intelligent, kind people with awareness of past injustices, pride in their country, and hope for the Olympics. Tolerant but honest, balancing maternal and pedagogical concerns with cultural awareness and respect for China's traditions, Bevis' careful reflections reveal a complex, diverse, and surprising China.

Dragon Blossoms: An Adoptive Family's Year in China

Parenting & Relationships

Bevis, Linda

Adoption

Whole World Press

In 1949 Jerusalem, a young girl knows better than to ask about the sudden darkness in nearby Lifta. She carries the memory of a place once filled with the sounds of stone-cutting men and the sight of women in long, brightly embroidered dresses carrying fruit baskets on their heads. Sixty years later, she finally faces the answer to her own unspoken question. In 2009, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who worked at the Nuremburg trials--and still dreams about the medical "experiment" photos she once filed into endless boxes--now dreams of sailing into Gaza with help and hope for her Palestinian "brothers and sisters." Reading like a memoir, this anthology combines 14 women's stories into a collage of unbearable loss, unspeakable horrors, incredible strength, and a belief in the unwavering power of truth. Seeing the Israeli occupation through each storyteller's eyes, our well-worn filters fall away, and we begin to see as our own these women's journeys and join them in their quest for justice and lasting peace.

Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

In ancient times--long before the age of fast-food and Monsantoization--humans had deep respect for foods and considered them gifts from the gods or even gods themselves. In every culture there are myths, folklore, and fairy tales about where foods come from--a reverence for nourishment now lost. In this wildly provocative anthology, contemporary writers from varying cultures and countries invent origin myths for their favorite foods. From modern fairy tales to thoughtful memoirs, from preventing a steak-sandwich interference at a Catholic boys' school in Connecticut to a young Kuwaiti girl following the scent of her neighbor's delicious gaboot, these tales are fabulously witty, unique, and hugely diverse. What stories will you conjure up to delight your guests at your upcoming feast? Read from these pages and you are guaranteed to never look at food the same way again! Contributing authors: Jane Wodening, John Wright, Patricia Alford, Elisabeth Russell Taylor, Bruce Watson, Peter Markus, Tammy Donroe, Firyal Alshalabi, Barry Foy, Marjorie Sandor, Jill Foulston, Lisa Stock, Aphrodite Desiree Navab, Gloria Frym, Lisa Trank, Vinnie Penn, Elizabeth Robinson, Kate Bernheimer, Mary Kite, Jack Collom, Maliha Masood, Rebecca Brown, Jennifer Heath, Sarah C. Bell, Ellen Orleans, Andrew Wille, Sarah Quigley, Lia Purpura, Selah Saterstrom

Primal Picnics: Writers Invent Creation Myths for their Favorite Foods (With Recipes)

Literature & Fiction

Heath, Jennifer

Short Stories & Anthologies

INKSTAINS ON THE EDGE OF LIGHT is the second collection of poems and spoken word from Palestinian poet and filmmaker, Hind Shoufani. In four chapters--Death, Life, Home, Lust--Shoufani writes of the Arab world through a cosmopolitan global view, and of the world through her Palestinian refugee identity and rootless lifestyle. She is influenced by the Civil Rights Movement poets and current serious writers of the Hip Hop generation, especially the influential and powerful poets emerging from Brooklyn. In over three hundred pages of open free form verse, Shoufani takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of politics, honor killings, terror attacks on Mumbai, lost lovers and new found mourning, sex and humid nights in Beirut, the gulf of Dubai and the dust of chaotic Damascus. She speaks for those who are unnoticed in Arabia. She condemns the labor camps. Sexist mythology. Structures of patriarchy and cowardly lovers. She hurts for and commemorates family deceased, both close and far. She mourns Palestine, a homeland she never knew well. She resists all forms of occupation--both of land and soul. She laughs and sings and dances from throughout the Middle East to her beloved New York. And back.

Inkstains on the Edge of Light

Shoufani, Hind

Poetry

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