Ina Coolbrith

Ina Coolbrith
Author: Aleta George
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780986124013

In post-Gold Rush San Francisco, Ina Coolbrith was known as the pearl of her tribe, a tribe that included Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and John Muir. Jack London and Isadora Duncan considered her their literary godmother, and John Greenleaf Whittier knew more of her poems by heart than she did his. Regardless of the acclaim from others, Coolbrith met with a series of challenges throughout her life that tested her devotion to her art. In the end, she put her full faith in poetry and her story reveals the saving grace of creativity in a woman's life. Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate is a new biography about a pioneer poet, Oakland's first public librarian, and the most popular literary ambassador in the early American West. George's deftly told and deeply researched book follows the struggles and triumphs of Coolbrith from her birth in 1841 as a niece of Mormon founder Joseph Smith to her death in 1928 as California's most beloved poet. California crowned Ina Coolbrith its first poet laureate in 1915 during San Francisco's Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and 2015 marks the centennial of her being named California's beloved first lady of letters. Aleta George writes about nature and culture in California. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times. This is her first book. "Telling Coolbrith's story, author Aleta George offers an intriguing glimpse of fin de siecle California and the rousing, sometimes rowdy adolescence of our nation." -Gerald Haslam, award-winning author and professor emeritus, Sonoma State University "In a book marked by literary grace and conviction, Aleta George presents a nuanced yet compelling portrait of a major California figure." -Malcolm Margolin, Heyday Books "Coolbrith's life is so captivating that it has been waiting not just for another biographer, but for a first-rate storyteller." - David Alpaugh, Ina Coolbrith Circle

The Bohemians

The Bohemians
Author: Ben Tarnoff
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0143126962

An extraordinary portrait of a fast-changing America—and the Western writers who gave voice to its emerging identity At once an intimate portrait of an unforgettable group of writers and a history of a cultural revolution in America, The Bohemians reveals how a brief moment on the far western frontier changed our culture forever. Beginning with Mark Twain’s arrival in San Francisco in 1863, this group biography introduces readers to the other young eccentric writers seeking to create a new American voice at the country’s edge—literary golden boy Bret Harte; struggling gay poet Charles Warren Stoddard; and beautiful, haunted Ina Coolbrith, poet and protector of the group. Ben Tarnoff’s elegant, atmospheric history reveals how these four pioneering writers helped spread the Bohemian movement throughout the world, transforming American literature along the way. “Tarnoff’s book sings with the humor and expansiveness of his subjects’ prose, capturing the intoxicating atmosphere of possibility that defined, for a time, America’s frontier.” -- The New Yorker “Rich hauls of historical research, deeply excavated but lightly borne.... Mr. Tarnoff’s ultimate thesis is a strong one, strongly expressed: that together these writers ‘helped pry American literature away from its provincial origins in New England and push it into a broader current’.” -- Wall Street Journal

California Poetry

California Poetry
Author: Dana Gioia
Publisher: Heyday Books
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2004
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

The first historical anthology to provide a comprehensive survey of California poetry, this ground-breaking new book presents the work of 101 authors across two centuries. California Poetry includes poets as diverse as Ambrose Bierce, Yone Noguchi, Robinson Jeffers, Josephine Miles, Charles Bukowski, Ishmael Reed, Francisco X. Alarcón, and Marilyn Chin. With ample biographical and critical notes for each author, California Poetry goes beyond the limits of the ordinary anthology and provides a detailed and often intimate account of the Golden State's rich but often neglected cultural history.

Berkeley Bohemia

Berkeley Bohemia
Author: Shelley Rideout
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2009-09
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9781423609056

Berkeley Bohemia highlights the contributions of the eccentric residents of one of America's centers of cultural innovation, during a critical period in the development of the country's radical thought. These writers and artists included Ansel Adams, Jack London, Dorothea Lange, John Muir, Bernard Maybeck, Joaquin Miller, Ina Coolbrith, and Charles and Lousie Keeler and other colorful characters less well known today.Due to its vibrant setting as a crossroads of cultures, Berkeley continues as a fertile ground for individuality, eccentricity, and creative expression. The Berkeley legacy of scholars and visionaries has inspired three generations of men and women, who still make Berkeley a place where ordinary people can flourish creatively, and the extraordinary is welcomed.

Answered Prayers

Answered Prayers
Author: Truman Capote
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345803043

Although Truman Capote's last novel was unfinished at the time of his death, its surviving portions offer a devastating group portrait of the high and low society of his time. • Includes the story La Cote Basque featured in the major FX series Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans. "Prose that makes the heart sing and the narrative fly." —The New York Times Book Review Tracing the career of a writer of uncertain parentage and omnivorous erotic tastes, Answered Prayers careens from a louche bar in Tangiers to a banquette at La Côte Basque, from literary salons to high-priced whorehouses. It takes in calculating beauties and sadistic husbands along with such real-life supporting characters as Colette, the Duchess of Windsor, Montgomery Clift, and Tallulah Bankhead. Above all, this malevolently finny book displays Capote at his most relentlessly observant and murderously witty.

Berkeley Walks

Berkeley Walks
Author: Robert E. Johnson
Publisher: Roaring Forties Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2015-09-28
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1938901517

Berkeley Walks celebrates the things that make Berkeley such a wonderful walking city—diverse architecture, panoramic views, tree-lined neighborhoods, historic homes, unusual gardens, secret pathways, hidden parks, vibrant street life, trend-setting restaurants, and intriguing history. Fascinating and surprising sidelights include the apartment building from which Patty Hearst was kidnapped; Ted Kaczynski’s home before he became the Unabomber; and the residences of Nobel laureates and literary Berkeleyans such as Thornton Wilder, Ann Rice, and Philip K. Dick. Bob Johnson and Janet Byron—longtime city residents and tour guides—designed these 18 walks to showcase the many elements that make Berkeley’s neighborhoods, shopping districts, and academic areas such fun to explore. Visitors will discover a vibrant community beyond the University of California campus borders, while locals will be surprised and delighted by the treasures in their own backyards. Highlights of the book include a focus on architects Joseph Esherick, John Galen Howard, Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, James Plachek, Walter Ratcliff, Jr., and John Hudson Thomas, 100 archival and original photos, and 20 maps, including a map of Berkeley bookstores.

Wings of Sunset

Wings of Sunset
Author: Ina Donna Coolbrith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 266
Release: 1929
Genre: California
ISBN:

Imperial Zions

Imperial Zions
Author: Amanda Hendrix-Komoto
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2022-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496233794

In the nineteenth century, white Americans contrasted the perceived purity of white, middle-class women with the perceived eroticism of women of color and the working classes. The Latter-day Saint practice of polygamy challenged this separation, encouraging white women to participate in an institution that many people associated with the streets of Calcutta or Turkish palaces. At the same time, Latter-day Saints participated in American settler colonialism. After their expulsion from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, Latter-day Saints dispossessed Ute and Shoshone communities in an attempt to build their American Zion. Their missionary work abroad also helped to solidify American influence in the Pacific Islands as the church became a participant in American expansion. Imperial Zions explores the importance of the body in Latter-day Saint theology with the faith's attempts to spread its gospel as a "civilizing" force in the American West and the Pacific. By highlighting the intertwining of Latter-day Saint theology and American ideas about race, sexuality, and the nature of colonialism, Imperial Zions argues that Latter-day Saints created their understandings of polygamy at the same time they tried to change the domestic practices of Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto tracks the work of missionaries as they moved through different imperial spaces to analyze the experiences of the American Indians and Native Hawaiians who became a part of white Latter-day Saint families. Imperial Zions is a foundational contribution that places Latter-day Saint discourses about race and peoplehood in the context of its ideas about sexuality, gender, and the family.