Voices Of Jordan

Jordan's diverse socioeconomic make-up encapsulates, like no other Middle Eastern state, both the array of pressing short-term problems facing the region, and the underlying challenges that Arab states will need to face once the current spate of civil conflicts is over: meaningful youth employment, female participation in politics, and integration of refugees into society. This book tells the story of Jordan through the lives of ordinary people, including a political cartoonist, a Syrian refugee, a Jihadist and a female parliamentarian. The raw voices and everyday struggles of these people shine a fresh light on the politics, religion, and society of a culture coming to terms with the harsh reality of modernization and urbanization at a time of regional upheaval. With her deep knowledge of Jordan's landscape, language and culture, Rana Sweis sketches an intimate portrait of the intricacies and complexities of life in the Middle East. Rather than focusing on how individuals are affected by events in the region, she reveals a cast of characters shaping their own lives and times. Voices of Jordan shares those stories in all of their rich detail, offering a living, breathing social and political history.

Jordan's diverse socioeconomic make-up encapsulates, like no other Middle Eastern state, both the array of pressing short-term problems facing the region, and the underlying challenges that Arab states will need to face once the current spate of civil conflicts is over: meaningful youth employment, female participation in politics, and integration of refugees into society. This book tells the story of Jordan through the lives of ordinary people, including a political cartoonist, a Syrian refugee, a Jihadist and a female parliamentarian. The raw voices and everyday struggles of these people shine a fresh light on the politics, religion, and society of a culture coming to terms with the harsh reality of modernization and urbanization at a time of regional upheaval. With her deep knowledge of Jordan's landscape, language and culture, Rana Sweis sketches an intimate portrait of the intricacies and complexities of life in the Middle East. Rather than focusing on how individuals are affected by events in the region, she reveals a cast of characters shaping their own lives and times. Voices of Jordan shares those stories in all of their rich detail, offering a living, breathing social and political history.

According to conventional wisdom, the national identity of the Jordanian state was defined by the ruling Hashemite family, which has governed the country since the 1920s. But this view overlooks the significant role that the "Arab street"—in this case, ordinary Jordanians and Palestinians—played and continues to play in defining national identity in Jordan and the Fertile Crescent as a whole. Indeed, as this pathfinding study makes clear, "the street" no less than the state has been a major actor in the process of nation building in the Middle East during and after the colonial era. In this book, Betty Anderson examines the activities of the Jordanian National Movement (JNM), a collection of leftist political parties that worked to promote pan-Arab unity and oppose the continuation of a separate Jordanian state from the 1920s through the 1950s. Using primary sources including memoirs, interviews, poetry, textbooks, and newspapers, as well as archival records, she shows how the expansion of education, new jobs in the public and private sectors, changes in economic relationships, the establishment of national militaries, and the explosion of media outlets all converged to offer ordinary Jordanians and Palestinians (who were under the Jordanian government at the time) an alternative sense of national identity. Anderson convincingly demonstrates that key elements of the JNM's pan-Arab vision and goals influenced and were ultimately adopted by the Hashemite elite, even though the movement itself was politically defeated in 1957.

“When Barbara Jordan talked, we listened.” —Former President of the United States, Bill Clinton Congresswoman Barbara Jordan had a big, bold, confident voice—and she knew how to use it! Learn all about her amazing career in this illuminating and inspiring picture book biography of the lawyer, educator, politician, and civil rights leader. Even as a child growing up in the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas, Barbara Jordan stood out for her big, bold, booming, crisp, clear, confident voice. It was a voice that made people sit up, stand up, and take notice. So what do you do with a voice like that? Barbara took her voice to places few African American women had been in the 1960s: first law school, then the Texas state senate, then up to the United States congress. Throughout her career, she persevered through adversity to give voice to the voiceless and to fight for civil rights, equality, and justice. New York Times bestselling author Chris Barton and Caldecott Honoree Ekua Holmes deliver a remarkable picture book biography about a woman whose struggles and mission continue to inspire today.

This edited volume investigates the political and socioeconomic impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on Lebanon and Jordan, and these countries’ mechanisms to cope with the rapid influx of refugees. The sudden population increase has resulted in severe pressures on infrastructures and services, as well as growing social tensions between the refugees and host communities. These chapters use a transdisciplinary approach to analyse the repercussions of the humanitarian tragedy at three different levels: 1) the changing governmental policies of the two countries towards the crisis; 2) the different perceptions of the Jordanian and Lebanese local communities on the Syrian refugees; and 3) the role played by NGOs and the civil society in both countries in dealing with protracted humanitarian emergencies.

An executive coach shares her insights in a leadership book that takes the reader through the 10 critical principles for success. In addition to sharing the true stories and experiences of other successful women, she gives practical tools that help erase the doubts and frustration women face as they multi-task in today's world.

Here in their own words are Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, Chief Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Plough Jogger, Sacco and Vanzetti, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Twain, and Malcolm X, to name just a few of the hundreds of voices that appear in Voices of a People's History of the United States, edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. Paralleling the twenty-four chapters of Zinn's A People's History of the United States, Voices of a People’s History is the long-awaited companion volume to the national bestseller. For Voices, Zinn and Arnove have selected testimonies to living history—speeches, letters, poems, songs—left by the people who make history happen but who usually are left out of history books—women, workers, nonwhites. Zinn has written short introductions to the texts, which range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches and essays that run several pages. Voices of a People’s History is a symphony of our nation’s original voices, rich in ideas and actions, the embodiment of the power of civil disobedience and dissent wherein lies our nation’s true spirit of defiance and resilience.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends and Before We Were Yours explores the connection between our hearts and our pasts in this emotional novel in the Tending Roses series.... Once trapped in a world of poverty and neglect, Dell Jordan knows she was one of the lucky ones. Adopted at thirteen, she was loved, mentored, and encouraged to pursue her passion for music. By twenty, her future has expanded in exciting new directions—a year abroad with a traveling symphony, teaching music to orphans in Ukraine, and applying for a scholarship to Julliard. But underneath Dell’s smoothly polished surface lurk mysteries from the past. Why did her mother abandon her? Who was her father? Are there faces somewhere that look like hers—blood relatives she’s never met? Determined to find answers, and unable to share her emotional uncertainty with her adoptive family, Dell sets off on a secret journey into Oklahoma’s Kiamichi Mountains. Drawn by the only remaining link to her origins—a father’s Native American name on her birth certificate—she travels into quiet wooded valleys, into the heart of the modern Choctaw Nation. There she will find connections to a long and proud heritage and begin to answer the questions of her heart. In the voices of her ancestors, she’ll discover the keys to a future unlike anything she could have imagined.

“River Jordan’s Saints in Limbo is a compelling story of the mysteries of existence and, specially, the mysteries of the human heart.” –Ron Rash, author of Serena and Chemistry and Other Stories “I lose myself in River’s writing–transported to a different time and place– and in this case, to one that makes the ordinary mystical and magical. I give it FIVE diamonds in the Pulpwood Queen’s TIARA!” –Kathy L. Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs and author of The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life Ever since her husband Joe died, Velma True’s world has been limited to what she can see while clinging to one of the multicolored threads tied to the porch railing of her home outside Echo, Florida. When a mysterious stranger appears at her door on her birthday and presents Velma with a special gift, she is rattled by the object’s ability to take her into her memories–a place where Joe still lives, her son Rudy is still young, unaffected by the world’s hardness, and the beginning is closer than the end. As secrets old and new come to light, Velma wonders if it’s possible to be unmoored from the past’s deep roots and find a reason to hope again. Praise for River Jordan “[River Jordan’s] literary spice rack has everything you need to put together a good book.” –Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man “River Jordan writes so beautifully.” –Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama and The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Toni Morrison affirms Jordan's work as "tireless activism coupled with and fueled by flawless art.