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Separated from his family in the aftermath of the failed decolonization process in Western Sahara, Bahia Mahmud Awah was sustained by recollections of his mother. In this memoir, he describes her sacrifices, her optimism, and her deep love. His family's experiences exemplify the larger story of loss and displacement in the region even as his story shows how shared memories can nourish community and culture across generations, even in exile. Incorporating poetry in Hassaniya, the traditional Saharawi language, the work highlights the role of language in shaping identity and resisting colonialism.
First published in 2011 as La maestra que me enseñó en una tabla de madera (The Woman Who Taught Me on a Wooden Slate), this edition includes the first complete English translation and a new epilogue by the author featuring further remembrances of his mother and examples of her poetry.
First published in 2011 as La maestra que me enseñó en una tabla de madera (The Woman Who Taught Me on a Wooden Slate), this edition includes a new epilogue by the author featuring further remembrances of his mother and examples of her poetry.
An oasis community in Morocco hopes to stop a devastating drought by sacrificing black cows to satisfy the spirits. But the wise elder Bassou secretly plans a different solution: to sabotage the motorized pumps that have lowered the water table and nearly destroyed the subsistence farming and herding that support the local way of life. The young newlywed Yidir agrees to help him and eventually becomes a part of the broader fight for Moroccan independence from French colonial rule.
Portraying an indigenous community undergoing radical change, The Sacrifice of Black Cows reflects on notions of modernity and tradition, science and spirituality, free will and fate, and considers the moral obligations of individuals and community. First published in French in 1992, the novel received international acclaim and is regarded as the single best work about Amazigh culture in southeastern Morocco. It was adapted into the award-winning film Atash (Thirst) by the Moroccan director Saâd Chraïbi in 2000. Here, it is presented in a riveting new translation by Paul A. Silverstein.
Portraying an indigenous community undergoing radical change, Le sacrifice de vaches noires reflects on notions of modernity and tradition, science and spirituality, free will and fate, and considers the moral obligations of individuals and community. First published in French in 1992, the novel received international acclaim and is regarded as the single best work about Amazigh culture in southeastern Morocco. It was adapted into the award-winning film Atash (Thirst) by the Moroccan director Saâd Chraïbi in 2000.
This volume brings a diverse range of voices—from anthropology, communication studies, ethnomusicology, film, history, literature, linguistics, sociology, theater, and urban geography—into the conversation about film from the People's Republic of China. Essays seek to answer what films can reveal or obscure about Chinese history and society and demonstrate how studying films from the PRC can introduce students to larger issues of historical consciousness and media representation.
The volume addresses not only postsocialist fictional films but also a wide variety of other subjects including socialist period films, documentaries, films by or about people from ethnic minority groups, film music, the perspectives of female characters, martial arts cinema, and remakes of South Korean films. By exploring how films represent power, traditions, and ideologies, students learn about both the complexity of the PRC and the importance of cross-cultural and cross-ideological understanding.
Migration from the Indian subcontinent began on a large scale over 150 years ago, and today there are diasporic communities around the world. The identities of South Asians in the diaspora are informed by roots in the subcontinent and the complex experiences of race, religion, nation, class, caste, gender, sexuality, language, trauma, and geography. The literature that arises from these roots and experiences is diverse, powerful, and urgent.
Teaching South Asian Anglophone Diasporic Literature embraces an intersectionality that attends to the historical and material conditions of cultural production, the institutional contexts of pedagogy, and the subject positions of teachers and students. Encouraging a deep engagement with works whose personal, political, and cultural insights are specific to South Asian diasporic consciousness, the volume also provokes meaningful reflection on other literatures in an age of increasing migration and diaspora.
Over the past several decades, writers such as Paolo Bacigalupi, Octavia E. Butler, Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, and Margaret Atwood have explored climate change through literature, reflecting current anxieties about humans' impact on the planet. Emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinarity, this volume embraces literature as a means to cultivate students' understanding of the ongoing climate crisis, ethics in times of disaster, and the intrinsic intersectionality of environmental issues.
Contributors discuss speculative climate futures, the Anthropocene, postcolonialism, climate anxiety, and the usefulness of storytelling in engaging with catastrophe. The essays offer approaches to teaching interdisciplinary and cross-listed courses, including strategies for team-teaching across disciplines and for building connections between humanities majors and STEM majors. The volume concludes with essays that explore ways to address grief and to contemplate a hopeful future in the face of apocalyptic predictions.
Following decades of LGBTQ+ activism, South Korea has seen a flowering of queer literature, film, and Internet culture. Many openly gay, lesbian, transgender, and other queer Korean writers find themselves in the national and international spotlight. But the rich variety of queer representation also extends into the Korean past, as this volume illustrates.
Beginning with contemporary works of fiction by Kim Bi, Sang Young Park, and Yi Seoyoung and reaching back through the last century, this collection includes works by the canonical authors Yi Kwangsu, Yi Kiyŏng, Ch'oe Chŏnghŭi, and O Chŏnghŭi as well as stories by Yu Sŭngjin and Kim Sunyŏng that have been recovered from archives. The introduction places these representations of queerness in their historical and cultural context, explores the sometimes problematic norms found in the stories, and considers the potential these texts hold for destabilizing binaries of sex and gender.
The e-book edition of this title is available from Barnes and Noble and Apple. It is not available from Amazon.
At his boardinghouse in Rio de Janeiro, the Englishman James Marian is seen as handsome but eccentric. Then another boarder learns Marian's secret: a fusion of a female head and a male body, Marian is the creation of a surgeon with occult powers. Despite his wealth and mysterious abilities, Marian is unable to live fully as either a man or a woman, traveling the world in order to repress his sexual desire and withdraw from society.
Sphinx explores the binaries of science and magic, body and spirit, male and female, attraction and horror, presenting its sexually ambiguous protagonist with sympathy. Ornately descriptive, this 1908 neo-gothic novel exemplifies the era's taste for the sensual and the fantastic. With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it stands as a classic of Brazilian science fiction.
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