Alienation

A new collection--about loss, alienation, aging, and the strangeness of contemporary life--by the award-winning, and inimitable, author of The Book of Goose.A grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she's lost. Elsewhere, a professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In the stories of Wednesday's Child, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and the grand mysterious forces--death, violence, estrangement--come to light. Even before such moments, everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details: a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many years, until it must be seen. Yiyun Li is a truly original writer, an alchemist of opposites: tender and unsentimental, metaphysical and blunt, funny and horrifying, omniscient and unusually aware of j

A dazzling collection of short stories from the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, stories that look deeply into the heart of family relationships, marriage, loss and memory, and what it means to spend a life togetherMargaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine—explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the co

The Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery reveals the way recent scholarship in the field of slavery studies has taken a more expansive turn, in terms of both the geographical and the temporal. These new studies perform area studies-driven analyses of the representation of slavery from national or regional literary traditions that are not always considered by scholars of slavery and explore the diverse range of unfreedoms depicted therein. Literary scholars of China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa provide original scholarly arguments about some of the most trenchant themes that arise in the literatures of slavery – authentication and legitimation, ethnic formation and globalization, displacement, exile, and alienation, representation and metaphorization, and resistance and liberation. This Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery is designed to highlight the shifting terrain in literary studies of slavery and collectively challenge the reductive no

Janette H. Ok argues that 1 Peter characterizes Christian identity as an ethnic identity, as it holds the potential to engender a powerful sense of solidarity for readers who are experiencing social alienation as a result of their conversion. The epistle describes and delineates a communal identity based on Jewish traditions, and in response to the hostility its largely Gentile Anatolian addressees are experiencing as religious minorities in the Roman empire. In order to help construct a collective understanding of what it means to be a Christian in contrast to non-Christians, Ok argues that the author of the epistle employs “ethnic reasoning” or logic. Consequently, the writer of 1 Peter makes use of various literary and rhetorical strategies, including establishing a sense of shared history and ancestry, delineating boundaries, stereotyping and negatively characterizing “the other,” emphasizing distinct conduct or a common culture, and applying ethnic categories to his addressees. Ok

Constellating Home: Trans and Queer Asian American Rhetorics explores how race, migration, gender, and disability entwine in conceptions of deserving citizens. V. Jo Hsu explores three archives of trans and queer Asian American (QTAPI) rhetorics, considering a range of texts including oral histories, photography, personal essays, and performance showcases. To demonstrate how QTAPI use personal narrative to critique and revise the conditions of their exclusion, Hsu forwards a critical approach to storytelling, homing, which deliberately engages sites of alienation and belonging. Through a practice of diasporic listening, Hsu tracks confluences among seemingly divergent journeys and locates trans and queer Asian American experiences within broader US and global politics. The stories at the heart of Constellating Home center the voices of trans and nonbinary people, disabled people, and others often overlooked in conceptions of US citizenry. Hsu's analyses demonstrate the inextricability

This central collection by the poet, dramatist, and Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs--newly translated from the German by Joshua Weiner (with Linda B. Parshall)--reveals the visionary poet's remarkable power of creation and transformation So far out, in the open, cushioned in sleep.In flight from the landwith love's heavy luggage. A butterfly-zone of dreamslike an open parasolheld up against the truth. Flight and Metamorphosis marks the culmination of Nelly Sachs's development as a poet. Sachs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966, speaks from her own condition as a refugee from Nazi Germany--her loneliness while living in a small Stockholm flat with her elderly mother, her exile, her alienation, her feelings of romantic bereavement, and her search for the divine. Forced onto a journey of endless change, Sachs created her own path forward. From these sublime poems, she emerges as a visionary, one who harnesses language's essential power to create and transform our world. Jos

Why higher education in the United States has lost its way, and how universities and colleges can focus sharply on their core mission.For The Real World of College, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and others, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less selective state schools. What they found challenged characterizations in the media: students are not preoccupied by political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They are most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. Many say they face mental health challenges, fear that they don’t belong, and feel a deep sense of alienation. Given this daily reality for students, has higher education lost its way? Fischman and Gardner contend that US universities and colleges must focus sharply

✽南美洲備受期待的超級新星 Sandro Bassi，2019年波隆那插畫展入圍之作✽繪本×無聲漫畫，靈巧切換的分鏡，流暢且扣人心弦的無字圖像敘事✽以石墨鉛筆描繪科技異化的超現實光景，宛如闖入《駭客任務》般的世界身為數位上癮的科技新世代，我們終將變成沒有網路便無法生存的異形？當網路斷訊後，專注於掌中螢幕的異形，是否就能回歸日常？▋委內瑞拉最受期待的繪本新星，帶來科技世界下對於人性的現象反思。▋抬眼望見封面的地鐵站牌，隨著角色走進站內，搭上手扶梯，黑暗頁面浮現網路的指示燈。接著，月台大廳滿滿人潮，各個擁有造型相異的畸形頭部，卻人手一機沉浸在掌上的虛擬世界。一場由「科技網路」所引起的突異插曲，就要在後來短短幾分鐘的車程中展開。車廂座椅上一隻舊式大哥大突兀出現，擾動了網路因而斷訊，啟動人們的腦部解離，馬戲團般地短暫打亂現實常態。一段看似無傷大雅的插曲，或許也是一種提醒或暗示：科技異化是否已化為人體的自然天性？此書帶領我們進入一個看似與現實不同的畸形世界，然而卻又恰恰呼應真實社會。究竟《異形世界》是一則未來的科幻奇想，還是日常遭受科技異化的現實縮影？《異形世界》為一本結合繪本和無聲漫畫的圖像作品，在五十六頁的篇幅中展演出一則當代科技異化的奇觀現象。作者桑德羅・巴希（Sandro Bassi）為委內瑞拉的視覺藝術家，此為其第一本繪本創作，入圍了2019年波隆納插畫展。美國100 Scope Notes童書評論家認為其視覺效果令人驚艷，風格可說是結合繪本作家陳志勇、克利斯．凡．艾斯伯格（ Chris Van Allsburg）的特色，以鉛筆細膩的素描筆觸，描繪出超現實的魔幻光景，具有謎樣的懸疑氛圍。而作者在書名也設下雙關巧思，原文「La Nacionalien」以其暗示當代社會中的「異化、疏離」（alienation）現象。得獎紀錄：․2021 學校圖書館期刊最為驚人不凡的選書推薦․2021 加泰隆尼亞插畫家專業協會榮格達獎（Junceda）Adult Fiction Book類別、Gran Junceda獎․ 2020 德國國際青少年圖書館白烏鴉獎․2021 入選科克斯評論的年度最佳圖文書共同推薦：․王登鈺｜漫畫家「厲害的點子跟畫功，當這兩件事適時碰撞在一起造成了這本書，令我震撼，我的腦子霎時間也要變形分裂了。」․ 安哲｜視覺藝術家․紀金慶｜臺灣師範大學助理教授․吳平稑｜漫畫