edited by Beth Kallman Werner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2017
The best of these pieces stand on their own but also serve as invitations for responses by other aspiring writers.
A collection of brief essays in an annual volume by emerging writers recounting women’s experiences in the world.
From self-care to care for children and elderly parents, women’s lives often require sharply honed balancing skills. The opening essay, by Ava Carmel, recounts a visit from her home in Israel to her mother’s home halfway across the world, a place of half-heard exchanges of pleasantry and information, ritual application of makeup (“I find the entire makeup routine silly, yet fascinating. At ninety-four years old, she still has to ‘put on a face’ before leaving her apartment or before anyone comes to visit, even me”), and rueful remembrance (“despite being mostly obedient and subdued at home, I rebelled often, with vengeance”). All are matters that will be familiar to almost anyone with surviving parents. Marlena M. Matute, a young Latina writer, recounts her efforts to stay in school while battling economic hardship; as she writes, with great wisdom, “here’s something people don’t tell you: being homeless is more expensive than if you’re not.” By that she means that once off the good-credit treadmill, it’s hard to jump on, particularly in a world of first-and-last-month’s-rent-and-deposit. Some of the essays address surviving abuse and domestic violence, addiction and alcoholism, rape and betrayal; most, despite the horrors they recount, are hopeful and even helpful in assuring readers that they, too, can survive and even attain dreams that might seem out of reach. One of the most forceful declarations comes from former model Penny James: “It was empowering to realize we can choose to never be stuck counting on someone and feeling let down when we need them the most, whether in love or business.”
The best of these pieces stand on their own but also serve as invitations for responses by other aspiring writers.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9980201-8-1
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Author Connections
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2017
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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