A World Otherwise

A World Otherwise
Author: Yuki Miyamoto
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2021-02-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 179364361X

In her book A World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata, Yuki Miyamoto examines the struggles of those suffering from Minamata disease, eponymous with the Japanese city in which a Chisso factory released methylmercury into the Shiranui Sea, leading to widespread poisonings. Miyamoto explores Minamata sufferers’ struggles, examining their physical pains as well as the emotional plight of having lost their loved ones, their livelihood, and fellowship in communities, to the illness. Miyamoto’s analysis focuses on the philosophies and actions of a group, Hongan no kai, comprised of Minamata disease sufferers and their supporters in 1994. Relying on the group’s newsletter, “Tamashii utsure” (Transferring the spirit), this monograph explores the ways in which Hongan no kai members have come to terms with their experiences as well as their visions of “a world otherwise” (janaka shaba), where ontology, epistemology, and worldviews are construed differently from those of this modern world.

The World Could Be Otherwise

The World Could Be Otherwise
Author: Norman Fischer
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0834842149

An imaginative approach to spiritual practice in difficult times, through the Buddhist teaching of the six paramitas or "perfections"—qualities that lead to kindness, wisdom, and an awakened life. In frightening times, we wish the world could be otherwise. With a touch of imagination, it can be. Imagination helps us see what’s hidden, and it shape-shifts reality’s roiling twisting waves. In this inspiring reframe of a classic Buddhist teaching, Zen teacher Norman Fischer writes that the paramitas, or “six perfections”—generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyful effort, meditation, and understanding—can help us reconfigure the world we live in. Ranging from our everyday concerns about relationships, ethics, and consumption to our artistic inspirations and broadest human yearnings, Fischer depicts imaginative spiritual practice as a necessary resource for our troubled times.

Otherwise Worlds

Otherwise Worlds
Author: Tiffany Lethabo King
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2020-05-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478012021

The contributors to Otherwise Worlds investigate the complex relationships between settler colonialism and anti-Blackness to explore the political possibilities that emerge from such inquiries. Pointing out that presumptions of solidarity, antagonism, or incommensurability between Black and Native communities are insufficient to understand the relationships between the groups, the volume's scholars, artists, and activists look to articulate new modes of living and organizing in the service of creating new futures. Among other topics, they examine the ontological status of Blackness and Indigeneity, possible forms of relationality between Black and Native communities, perspectives on Black and Indigenous sociality, and freeing the flesh from the constraints of violence and settler colonialism. Throughout the volume's essays, art, and interviews, the contributors carefully attend to alternative kinds of relationships between Black and Native communities that can lead toward liberation. In so doing, they critically point to the importance of Black and Indigenous conversations for formulating otherwise worlds. Contributors Maile Arvin, Marcus Briggs-Cloud, J. Kameron Carter, Ashon Crawley, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Chris Finley, Hotvlkuce Harjo, Sandra Harvey, Chad B. Infante, Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, Lindsay Nixon, Kimberly Robertson, Jared Sexton, Andrea Smith, Cedric Sunray, Se’mana Thompson, Frank B. Wilderson

Otherwise Normal People

Otherwise Normal People
Author: Aurelia C. Scott
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Gardening
ISBN: 1565124642

A colorful, firsthand journey inside the world of competitive rose gardening documents the cutthroat gardeners representing a broad cross-section of American rose lovers who will do anything to obsessively cultivate the perfect bloom.

Otherwise

Otherwise
Author: Linda Oatman High
Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2014-07-25
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1612479995

A law has been passed. There will be no more genders. Everyone must appear gender neutral. No more boys. No more girls. Just ... Otherwise. Same bland clothes. Same fuzzy heads. “Spark” dreads the countdown leading up to the finality of the new law’s passage. Her parents are for it. They’re tired of conforming to society’s standards. But they allow her to take off for a quick camping trip to gather her thoughts. At the campsite, she meets “Whistler.” And the attraction is instant and mutual. But who is Whistler? And what is Whistler? Boy? Or girl? This gender-bending story in verse will make readers question everything they thought they knew about love, chemistry, and cultural norms. Just like prose, a novel in verse tells a story. But verse is unique because readers access the text through short “chapters,” or poems. The varying lengths of the chapters are ideal for a struggling reader, giving them breaks to collect their thoughts, to imagine the characters in their mind’s eye, and to set the scene—like a frame in a movie. The structure of poetry makes the books appear less intimidating, with plenty of airy white space. Moreover, the depth and substance conveyed in verse is every bit as deep and real as in a Gravel Road prose novel.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise

Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Author: James Tiptree, Jr.
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-06-03
Genre: Science fiction, American
ISBN: 9780241509753

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise
Author: Lola Olufemi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-10-28
Genre: English literature
ISBN: 9781914221057

This is a book of failure and mistakes; it begins with what is stolen from us and proposes only an invitation to imagine. In these playful written experiments, Lola Olufemi navigates the space between what is and what could be. Weaving together fragmentary reflections in prose and poetry, this is an exploration of the possibility of living differently, grounded in black feminist scholarship and political organising. Olufemi shows that the horizon is not an immaterial state we gesture toward. Instead, propelled by the motion of thinking against and beyond, we must invent the future now and never let go of the otherwise.

Knowing Otherwise

Knowing Otherwise
Author: Alexis Shotwell
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2015-09-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0271068051

Prejudice is often not a conscious attitude: because of ingrained habits in relating to the world, one may act in prejudiced ways toward others without explicitly understanding the meaning of one’s actions. Similarly, one may know how to do certain things, like ride a bicycle, without being able to articulate in words what that knowledge is. These are examples of what Alexis Shotwell discusses in Knowing Otherwise as phenomena of “implicit understanding.” Presenting a systematic analysis of this concept, she highlights how this kind of understanding may be used to ground positive political and social change, such as combating racism in its less overt and more deep-rooted forms. Shotwell begins by distinguishing four basic types of implicit understanding: nonpropositional, skill-based, or practical knowledge; embodied knowledge; potentially propositional knowledge; and affective knowledge. She then develops the notion of a racialized and gendered “common sense,” drawing on Gramsci and critical race theorists, and clarifies the idea of embodied knowledge by showing how it operates in the realm of aesthetics. She also examines the role that both negative affects, like shame, and positive affects, like sympathy, can play in moving us away from racism and toward political solidarity and social justice. Finally, Shotwell looks at the politicized experience of one’s body in feminist and transgender theories of liberation in order to elucidate the role of situated sensuous knowledge in bringing about social change and political transformation.

What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems

What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems
Author: Bianca Stone
Publisher: Tin House Books
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1953534058

Finalist for the New England Book Award in Poetry and the Vermont Book Award As heard on NPR Morning Edition A New York Public Library Best Book of 2022 A searching, startling new collection of poems from the author of The Möbius Strip Club of Grief and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows Written in four sections with incisive and vivid lyrical language, Bianca Stone’s What Is Otherwise Infinite considers how we find our place in the world through themes of philosophy, religion, environment, myth, and psychology. “I deal only in the hardest pain-revivers, symbols and tongues,” writes Stone. “I want to tell you only / in the intimacy of our discomfort.” Populated by Archangels, limping in paradise; by allergies of the soul; the intimacy and danger of motherhood; psychic wounds; and dirty, dirty chocolate layer cake, What Is Otherwise Infinite deftly examines our inherent and inherited ideas of how to live, and the experience of the Self—which on one hand is so intensely personal, and on the other, universal.

The World Made Otherwise

The World Made Otherwise
Author: Timothy J. Gorringe
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532648677

Many natural scientists believe climate change will bring civilizational collapse. Tim Gorringe argues that behind this threat is a commitment to false values, embodied in our political, economic, and farming systems. At the same time, millions of people the world over—perhaps the majority—are committed to alternative values and practices. This book explores how these values, already foreshadowed in people’s movements all over the world, can produce different political and economic realities which can underwrite a safe and prosperous future for all.