Bob’S Trip Through Manhood

Bob’S Trip Through Manhood
Author: Glenn G. Tucker
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2016-01-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504971825

Bob Brand was being raised by drunken, brutal parents until he was fifteen years old. He had a paper route, like many young boys. One night, he refused to give his father the money he collected to pay his paper bill and was beaten badly by his father. He escaped from the home and went to see an elderly doctor on his route to get help. Dr. Ted Woods sewed him up and called the police. His father was arrested and given a year in jail and was allowed three days to get his affairs in order. He and his wife fled, and Dr. Woods gained custody of Bob in a hearing. Dr. Woods hired Julia Finney to be his housekeeper. Julia had a daughter, Martha, who was born when Julia was fifteen years old. Both Julia and Martha suffered feelings of guilt and shame due to Julias background. Bobs presence in his new family somehow seemed to knit the four people into a happy, loving family and cured the feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority held by both Julia and Martha. As Dr. Woods remarked, Bob provided the glue to make them a happy, loving family. He also said Bob had gifts he was unaware he had. Whenever he was near, held, or kissed a person, they experienced great warmth and love. He had the same effect on animals, which had no fear of him and wanted to get close to him, much to the amazement of Dr. Woods and his family and bystanders. Martha fell in love with Bob, as did Julia, but Julia knew the difference in the ages between Bob and her made it impossible for them to ever marry. Bob fell in love with both Julia and Martha. Martha fell deeply in love with Bob and constantly tried to seduce him, believing when he did, he would marry her, even as young as they were. This book is about the life of Bob and how he reacted when he lost first his wife, Martha; his second wife, Julia; and finally his housekeeper, Peggy. He, finally, with the help of Peggys daughter, Cynthia, discovers his hidden gift.

Violent Adventure

Violent Adventure
Author: Marilyn C. Wesley
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2003
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780813922133

Questioning both the popular condemnation of violent representation and the notion that violence can be constructive by empowering the identity of an integrated adult self, Wesley identifies a revealing pattern of "violent adventure" in recent fiction by American men.

Making Place, Making Self

Making Place, Making Self
Author: Inger Birkeland
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1351920804

Making Place, Making Self explores new understandings of place and place-making in late modernity, covering key themes of place and space, tourism and mobility, sexual difference and subjectivity. Using a series of individual life stories, it develops a fascinating polyvocal account of leisure and life journeys. These stories focus on journeys made to the North Cape in Norway, the most northern point of mainland Europe, which is both a tourist destination and an evocation of a reliable and secure point of reference, an idea that gives meaning to an individual's life. The theoretical core of the book draws on an inter-weaving of post-Lacanian versions of feminist psycho-analytical thinking with phenomenological and existential thinking, where place-making is linked with self-making and homecoming. By combining such ground-breaking theory with her innovative use of case studies, Inger Birkeland here provides a major contribution to the fields of cultural geography, tourism and feminist studies.

Black Manhood on the Silent Screen

Black Manhood on the Silent Screen
Author: Gerald R. Butters
Publisher:
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

In early-twentieth-century motion picture houses, offensive stereotypes of African Americans were as predictable as they were prevalent. Watermelon eating, chicken thievery, savages with uncontrollable appetites, Sambo and Zip Coon were all representations associated with African American people. Most of these caricatures were rendered by whites in blackface. Few people realize that from 1915 through 1929 a number of African American film directors worked diligently to counter such racist definitions of black manhood found in films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 epic that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. In the wake of the film's phenomenal success, African American filmmakers sought to defend and redefine black manhood through motion pictures. Gerald Butters's comprehensive study of the African American cinematic vision in silent film concentrates on works largely ignored by most contemporary film scholars: African American-produced and -directed films and white independent productions of all-black features. Using these "race movies" to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race in popular culture, he separates cinematic myth from historical reality: the myth of the Euro American-controlled cinematic portrayal of black men versus the actual black male experience. Through intense archival research, Butters reconstructs many lost films, expanding the discussion of race and representation beyond the debate about "good" and "bad" imagery to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race as device in the context of Western popular culture. He particularly examines the filmmaking of Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific and controversial of all African American silent film directors and creator of the recently rediscovered Within Our Gates—the legendary film that exposed a virtual litany of white abuses toward blacks. Black Manhood on the Silent Screen is unique in that it takes contemporary and original film theory, applies it to the distinctive body of African American independent films in the silent era, and relates the meaning of these films to larger political, social, and intellectual events in American society. By showing how both white and black men have defined their own sense of manhood through cinema, it examines the intersection of race and gender in the movies and offers a deft interweaving of film theory, American history, and film history.

Air Traffic

Air Traffic
Author: Gregory Pardlo
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1524731773

From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: an extraordinary memoir and blistering meditation on fatherhood, race, addiction, and ambition. Gregory Pardlo's father was a brilliant and charismatic man--a leading labor organizer who presided over a happy suburban family of four. But when he loses his job following the famous air traffic controllers' strike of 1981, he succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money on more and more ostentatious whims. In the face of this troubling model and disillusioned presence in the household, young Gregory rebels. Struggling to distinguish himself on his own terms, he hustles off to Marine Corps boot camp. He moves across the world, returning to the United States only to take a job as a manager-cum-barfly at his family's jazz club. Air Traffic follows Gregory as he builds a life that honors his history without allowing it to define his future. Slowly, he embraces the challenges of being a poet, a son, and a father as he enters recovery for alcoholism and tends to his family. In this memoir, written in lyrical and sparkling prose, Gregory tries to free himself from the overwhelming expectations of race and class, and from the tempting yet ruinous legacy of American masculinity. Air Traffic is a richly realized, deeply felt ode to one man's remarkable father, to fatherhood, and to the frustrating yet redemptive ties of family. It is also a scrupulous, searing examination of how manhood can be fashioned in our cultural landscape.

Southern Manhood

Southern Manhood
Author: Craig Thompson Friend
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780820324234

Spanning the era from the American Revolution to the Civil War, these nine pathbreaking original essays explore the unexpected, competing, or contradictory ways in which southerners made sense of manhood. Employing a rich variety of methodologies, the contributors look at southern masculinity within African American, white, and Native American communities; on the frontier and in towns; and across boundaries of class and age. Until now, the emerging subdiscipline of southern masculinity studies has been informed mainly by conclusions drawn from research on how the planter class engaged issues of honor, mastery, and patriarchy. But what about men who didn’t own slaves or were themselves enslaved? These essays illuminate the mechanisms through which such men negotiated with overarching conceptions of masculine power. Here the reader encounters Choctaw elites struggling to maintain manly status in the market economy, black and white artisans forging rival communities and competing against the gentry for social recognition, slave men on the southern frontier balancing community expectations against owner domination, and men in a variety of military settings acting out community expectations to secure manly status. As Southern Manhood brings definition to an emerging subdiscipline of southern history, it also pushes the broader field in new directions. All of the essayists take up large themes in antebellum history, including southern womanhood, the advent of consumer culture and market relations, and the emergence of sectional conflict.

Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush

Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush
Author: David Greven
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0292779100

A struggle between narcissistic and masochistic modes of manhood defined Hollywood masculinity in the period between the presidencies of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. David Greven's contention is that a profound shift in representation occurred during the early 1990s when Hollywood was transformed by an explosion of films that foregrounded non-normative gendered identity and sexualities. In the years that have followed, popular cinema has either emulated or evaded the representational strategies of this era, especially in terms of gender and sexuality. One major focus of this study is that, in a great deal of the criticism in both the fields of film theory and queer theory, masochism has been positively cast as a form of male sexuality that resists the structures of normative power, while narcissism has been negatively cast as either a regressive sexuality or the bastion of white male privilege. Greven argues that narcissism is a potentially radical mode of male sexuality that can defy normative codes and categories of gender, whereas masochism, far from being radical, has emerged as the default mode of a traditional normative masculinity. This study combines approaches from a variety of disciplines—psychoanalysis, queer theory, American studies, men's studies, and film theory—as it offers fresh readings of several important films of the past twenty years, including Casualties of War, The Silence of the Lambs, Fight Club, The Passion of the Christ, Auto Focus, and Brokeback Mountain.

Global Masculinities and Manhood

Global Masculinities and Manhood
Author: Ronald L Jackson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2011-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252093550

Bringing together an array of interdisciplinary voices, Global Masculinities and Manhood examines the concept of masculinity from the perspectives of cultures around the world. In the era of globalization, masculinity continues to be studied in a Western-centric context. Contributors to this volume, however, deconstruct the history and politics of masculinities within the contexts of the cultures from which they have been developed, examining what makes a man who he is within his own culture. Highlighting manifestations of masculinity in countries including Jamaica, Turkey, Peru, Kenya, Australia, and China, scholars from a variety of disciplines grapple with the complex politics of identity and the question of how gender is interpreted and practiced through discourse. Topics include how masculinity is affected by war and conflict, defined in relation to race, ethnicity, and sexuality, and expressed in cultural activities such as sports or the cinema. Contributors are Bryant Keith Alexander, Molefi K. Asante, Murali Balaji, Maurice Hall, Ronald L. Jackson II, Shino Konishi, Nil Mutluer, Mich Nyawalo, Kathleen Glenister Roberts, Margarita Saona, and Kath Woodward.

The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture

The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture
Author: Lydia R. Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2021-12-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000504956

Recently, the U.S. has seen a rise in misogynistic and race-based violence perpetrated by men expressing a sense of grievance, from "incels" to alt-right activists. Grounding sociological, historical, political, and economic analyses of masculinity through the lens of cultural narratives in many forms and expressions, The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture suggests that how we examine the stories that shape us in turn shapes our understanding of our current reality and gives us language for imagining better futures. Masculinity is more than a description of traits associated with particular performances of gender. It is more than a study of gender and social power. It is an examination of the ways in which gender affects our capacity to engage ethically with each other in complex human societies. This volume offers essays from a range of established, global experts in American masculinity as well as new and upcoming scholars in order to explore not just what masculinity once meant, has come to mean, and may mean in the future in the U.S.; it also articulates what is at stake with our conceptions of masculinity.

Hard-boiled Masculinities

Hard-boiled Masculinities
Author: Christopher Breu
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780816644346

The persona of the American male in the period between the two world wars was characterized by physical strength, emotional detachment, aggressive behavior, and an amoral worldview. This ideal of a hard-boiled masculinity can be seen in the pages and, even more vividly, on the covers of magazines such as Black Mask, which shifted from Victorian-influenced depictions of men in top hats and mustaches in the early 1920s to the portrayal of much more overtly violent and muscular men. Looking closely at this transformation, Christopher Breu offers a complex account of how and why hard-boiled masculinity emerged during an unsettled time of increased urbanization and tenuous peace and traces the changes in its cultural conception as it moved back and forth across the divide between high and low culture as well as the color line that bifurcated American society. Examining the work of Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, and William Faulkner, as well as many lesser-known writers for the hypermasculine pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, Breu illustrates how the tough male was a product of cultural fantasy, one that shored up gender and racial stereotypes as a way of lashing out at the destabilizing effects of capitalism and social transformation. Christopher Breu is assistant professor of English at Illinois State University.