A Study Guide for Nancy Rawles's "My Jim"

A Study Guide for Nancy Rawles's
Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2016-06-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1410353419

A Study Guide for Nancy Rawles's "My Jim," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

"A Study Guide for Nancy Rawles's ""Crawfish Dreams"""

Author: Gale, Cengage
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2018-12-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0028665309

"A Study Guide for Nancy Rawles's ""Crawfish Dreams"", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs."

My Jim

My Jim
Author: Nancy Rawles
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307421341

A deeply moving recasting of one of the most controversial characters in American literature, Huckleberry Finn’s Jim Written in the great literary tradition of novels of American slavery, My Jim is told in the incantatory voice of Sadie Watson, an ex-slave who schools her granddaughter with lessons of love she learned in bondage. To help her granddaughter confront the decisions she needs to make, Sadie mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadie’s Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck. Sadie is suddenly left alone. Worried about her children, convinced her husband is dead, reviled as a witch, and punished for Jim’s escape, Sadie’s will and her love for Jim, even in absentia, animate her life and see her through. Told with spare eloquence and mirroring the true stories of countless slave women, My Jim re-creates one of the most controversial characters in American literature. A nuanced critique of the great American novel, My Jim stands on its own as a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Author: Ernest J. Gaines
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2012-10-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 030783025X

“Grand, robust, a rich and big novel.”—Alice Walker, The New York Times Book Review “In [Jane Pittman], Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure. . . . Gaines’s novel brings to mind other great works: The Odyssey, for the way his heroine’s travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn, for the clarity of [Pittman’s] voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story of it all.”—Newsweek Miss Jane Pittman. She is one of the most unforgettable heroines in American fiction, a woman whose life has come to symbolize the struggle for freedom, dignity, and justice. Ernest J. Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. A historical tour de force, a triumph of fiction, Miss Jane’s eloquent narrative brings to life an important story of race in America—and stands as a landmark work for our time.

Beatrice And Virgil [may-10]

Beatrice And Virgil [may-10]
Author: Yann Martel
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2010
Genre: Animals
ISBN: 0670084514

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey--named Beatrice and Virgil--and the epic journey they undertake together.

Made in Detroit

Made in Detroit
Author: Paul Clemens
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2006-10-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1400075963

A New York Times Notable BookA powerfully candid memoir about growing up white in Detroit and the conflicted point of view it produced. Raised in Detroit during the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, Paul Clemens saw his family growing steadily isolated from its surroundings: white in a predominately black city, Catholic in an area where churches were closing at a rapid rate, and blue-collar in a steadily declining Rust Belt. As the city continued to collapse—from depopulation, indifference, and the racial antagonism between blacks and whites—Clemens turned to writing and literature as his lifeline, his way of dealing with his contempt for suburban escapees and his frustration with the city proper. Sparing no one—particularly not himself—this is an astonishing examination of race and class relations from a fresh perspective, one forged in a city both desperate and hopeful.

Broken for You

Broken for You
Author: Stephanie Kallos
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1555846572

“A dazzling mosaic of intersecting lives and fates . . . Comparisons to John Irving and Tennessee Williams would not be amiss in this show-stopping debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). The national bestseller and Today Show Book Club selection, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect . . . When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world. As their tentative friendship evolves, the armor begins to fall away and Margaret opens her house to the younger woman. This launches a series of unanticipated events, leading Margaret to discover a way to redeem her cursed past, and Wanda to learn the true purpose of her cross-country journey. “I absolutely fell in love with this book. . . . There is a message here about creating family in the most unusual places. . . . A wonderful, engaging story.” —Sue Monk Kidd, New York Times–bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees “Well-crafted plotting and crackling wit make this debut novel by Seattle author Kallos a delight to read and a memory to savor . . . Book groups will enjoy discussing the layers of meaning, the stylistic nuances, and the powerful message of hope secreted in these pages.” —Booklist (starred review)

Finn

Finn
Author: Jon Clinch
Publisher: Unmediated Ink
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2017-05-06
Genre: Boys
ISBN: 9780692885345

This is the 10th-Anniversary Edition of Finn, with a new introduction by Jared Leto.In this masterful debut, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain's classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body-flayed and stripped of all identifying marks-drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim's identity, shape Finn's story as they will shape his life and his death.Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn's terrifying father, known only as the Jud≥ his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn's mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity-not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America's past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new. Praise for Finn"A brutal, shocking and epic look in the mirror for all Americans."- Jared Leto, from the introduction"Ravishing...and a stand-alone marvel of a novel. Grade: A."- Entertainment Weekly"Clinch treads dangerous ground in making one of America's greatest novels his jumping-off point, but he brings it off magnificently."- Dallas Morning News"Clinch's riverbank Missouri feels postapocalyptic, and his Pap Finn is a crazed yet wily survivor in a polluted landscape."- Newsweek"Finn strikes its most original chords in its bold imagining of possibilities left unexplored by Huckleberry Finn."- Austin American-Statesman"An inspired riff on one of literature's all-time great villains."- New Orleans Times-Picayune"A jolting companion to the mischievous antics of Huckleberry Finn."- Christian Science Monitor"A triumph of successful plotting, convincing characterization and lyrical prose."- Rocky Mountain News"Shocking and charming, A folk-art masterpiece."- New York Post"Disturbing and darkly compelling."- Hartford Courant"Jon Clinch pulls off the near impossible in his new novel, which brings Huck's dad to life in all his terrible humanness."- Winston-Salem Journal"Every fan of Twain's masterpiece will want to read this inspired spin-off, which could become an unofficial companion volume."- Library Journal, starred review"Finn is as dark, as brutal, as ambivalent, and as insane as the history and legacy of American racial slavery."- Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica "Clinch's tale is not only filled with echoes of the great American classic to which it is tied; it is destined to become one itself."- Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

72 Hour Hold

72 Hour Hold
Author: Bebe Moore Campbell
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307424251

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • "A tightly woven, well-written story about mothers and daughters, highs and lows, ex-husbands and boyfriends.... Universally touching." —San Francisco Chronicle Trina is eighteen and suffers from bi-polar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and violent. Frightened by her own child, Keri searches for help, quickly learning that the mental health community can only offer her a seventy-two hour hold. After these three days Trina is off on her own again. Fed up with the bureaucracy and determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal intervention known as The Program, a group of radicals who eschew the psychiatric system and model themselves after the Underground Railroad. In the upheaval that follows, she is forced to confront a past that refuses to stay buried, even as she battles to secure a future for her child.