Like We Still Speak

"Winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, Danielle Badra's Like We Still Speak addresses notions of inheritance, witnessing, and intimacy in a world on fire"--

Joel Higgins has 901 unsent text messages saved on his phone. Ever since the thing that happened, there are certain people he hasn't been able to talk to in person. Sure, he shows up at school, does his mandatory volunteer hours at the soup kitchen, and spends pretty much every moment thinking about Eli, the most amazing girl in the world. But that doesn't mean he's keeping it together, or even that he has any friends. So instead of hanging out with people in real life, he drafts text messages. But he never presses send. As dismal as sophomore year was for Joel, he doesn't see how junior year will be any better. For starters, Eli doesn't know how he feels about her, his best friend Andy's gone, and he basically bombed the SATs. But as Joel spends more time at the soup kitchen with Eli and Benj, the new kid whose mouth seems to be unconnected to his brain, he forms bonds with the people they serve there-including a veteran they call Rooster-and begins to understand that the world is bigger than his own pain. In this dazzling, hilarious, and heartbreaking debut, Joel grapples with the aftermath of a tragic loss as he tries to make sense of the problems he's sees all around him with the help of banned books, Winnie-the-Pooh, a field of asparagus, and many pairs of socks.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

"All the Ways Our Dead Still Speak takes readers on a lyrical and tender quest to encounter the hereafter. As Wilde picks up bodies, organizes funerals, and meets with grieving families in a small town in Pennsylvania, those who remain share with him--and us--what they experience in the thin places between life and death."--

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it’s hard to know where to start. How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend? In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life. "Simply put: Ijeoma Oluo is a necessary voice and intellectual for these times, and any time, truth be told." ―Phoebe Robinson, New York Times bestselling author of You Can't Touch My Hair

The main objective of this edited collection is to provide an insight into key facets of contemporary research and scholarship on race and ethnicity. The various chapters were presented at a conference to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the international journal Ethnic and Racial Studies. Given this context, contributors reflect on the evolution of scholarship over the past five decades, and look forward to the range of issues that we shall need to research and understand more fully in the future. In doing so they both provide an overview of the shifting boundaries of the field of ethnic and racial studies and display an engagement with emerging fields of scholarship and research. The volume brings together leading scholars who have experience of researching race and ethnicity in various parts of the globe, and combines conceptual reflection with empirically focused analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Robert M. Wilson, one of the founding fathers and former mayor of Costa Mesa, provides readers with an in-depth perspective on the excitement, frustrations, and triumphs of bringing Costa Mesa from provincial obscurity to national prominence. He uses the city's key personalities as a focal point as he shares the city's history rich with culture, art, and industry.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The bestselling author of The Simple Wild and Keep Her Safe and “master of steamy romance” (Kirkus Reviews) delivers a sizzling novel about an ambitious and high-powered executive who reconnects with her first love: the boy who broke her heart. Life is a mixed bag for Piper Calloway. On the one hand, she’s a twenty-nine-year-old VP at her dad’s multibillion-dollar real estate development firm, and living the high single life with her two best friends in a swanky downtown penthouse. On the other hand, she’s considered a pair of sexy legs in a male-dominated world and constantly has to prove her worth. Plus she’s stuck seeing her narcissistic ex-fiancé—a fellow VP—on the other side of her glass office wall every day. Things get exponentially more complicated for Piper when she runs into Kyle Miller—the handsome new security guard at Calloway Group, and coincidentally the first love of her life. The guy she hasn’t seen or heard from since they were summer camp counselors together. The guy from the wrong side of the tracks. The guy who apparently doesn’t even remember her name. Piper may be a high-powered businesswoman now, but she soon realizes that her schoolgirl crush is still alive and strong, and crippling her concentration. What’s more, despite Kyle’s distant attitude, she’s convinced their reunion isn’t at all coincidental, and that his feelings for her still run deep. And she’s determined to make him admit to them, no matter the consequences.

Renowned motivational speaker, teacher, and storyteller Brit Barron offers a path to holding on to our deepest convictions without losing relationships with the people we love. “This book is so needed in a time when we are fresh off cancel culture and ready for a new way to process and interact with those with whom we don’t agree—whether virtually or in real life.”—Joy Cho, author and founder of Oh Joy! Brit Barron gets it. Those people who hurt us with their bigotry and ignorance . . . they’re often the people we love: They’re our friends, our parents, our grandparents, and even our religious leaders. And what we want is for them to grow, not to be canceled by an online mob. So what can it look like to strive for justice without causing new harm or giving up on the people we love? Barron shows that the way forward is to create a gracious and risky space for people to learn and evolve. We need to form the sorts of relationships where we can tell difficult truths, set boundaries, forgive, and share stories of our own failings. And this starts with examining ourselves. In Do You Still Talk to Grandma?, Barron draws readers into this tension between relationship and accountability, sharing painful experiences from her own life, such as her parents’ divorce and belonging to a faith community that sided with the forces that dehumanize BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks. Barron illuminates the challenges and hope for these relationships, showing that the best research points toward humility, self-awareness, an openness to learning, and remembering that others can learn too. Barron envisions a redemptive way of being that allows progressives to love people who say or believe problematic things without sacrificing themselves, their values, or their beliefs. Provocative, charming, and vulnerable, Do You Still Talk to Grandma? is an essential read for anyone struggling to live compassionately without giving up on conviction.

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Thus begins “Phenomenal Woman,” just one of the beloved poems collected here in Maya Angelou’s third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh—and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it. “It is true poetry she is writing,” M.F.K. Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity. . . . It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night . . . it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.”