The Middle Place

The Middle Place
Author: Kelly Corrigan
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2008-01-08
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1401395570

"The Middle Place is about calling home. Instinctively. Even when all the paperwork -- a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns -- clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter." For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything. At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, a couple of funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column. But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as George Corrigan's daughter. A garrulous Irish-American charmer from Baltimore, George was the center of the ebullient, raucous Corrigan clan. He greeted every day by opening his bedroom window and shouting, "Hello, World!" Suffice it to say, Kelly's was a colorful childhood, just the sort a girl could get attached to. Kelly lives deep within what she calls the Middle Place -- "that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap" -- comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents' care. But she's abruptly shoved into a coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast -- and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear. And so Kelly's journey to full-blown adulthood begins. When George, too, learns he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly's turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her -- and show us a woman as she finally takes the leap and grows up. Kelly Corrigan is a natural-born storyteller, a gift you quickly recognize as her father's legacy, and her stories are rich with everyday details. She captures the beat of an ordinary life and the tender, sometimes fractious moments that bind families together. Rueful and honest, Kelly is the prized friend who will tell you her darkest, lowest, screwiest thoughts, and then later, dance on the coffee table at your party. Funny, yet heart-wrenching, The Middle Place is about being a parent and a child at the same time. It is about the special double-vision you get when you are standing with one foot in each place. It is about the family you make and the family you came from -- and locating, navigating, and finally celebrating the place where they meet. It is about reaching for life with both hands -- and finding it.

A Man's Place

A Man's Place
Author: John Tosh
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300143680

divDomesticity is generally treated as an aspect of women’s history. In this fascinating study of the nineteenth-century middle class, John Tosh shows how profoundly men’s lives were conditioned by the Victorian ideal and how they negotiated its many contradictions. Tosh begins by looking at the experience of boyhood, married life, sex, and fatherhood in the early decades of the nineteenth century—illustrated by case studies representing a variety of backgrounds—and then contrasts this with the lives of the late Victorian generation. He finds that the first group of men placed a new value on the home as a reaction to the disorienting experience of urbanization and as a response to the teachings of Evangelical Christianity. Domesticity still proved problematic in practice, however, because most men were likely to be absent from home for most of the day, and the role of father began to acquire its modern indeterminacy. By the 1870s, men were becoming less enchanted with the pleasures of home. Once the rights of wives were extended by law and society, marriage seemed less attractive, and the bachelor world of clubland flourished as never before. The Victorians declared that to be fully human and fully masculine, men must be active participants in domestic life. In exposing the contradictions in this ideal, they defined the climate for gender politics in the next century. /DIV

Hello World!

Hello World!
Author: Kelly Corrigan
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0593206088

From New York Times bestselling author Kelly Corrigan comes a book that celebrates the people in our lives and the meaningful connections we make that come from asking each other questions. Hello World! is the perfect reminder that the journeys we take through life are all about the people we will meet along the way--people who will make us smarter, stronger, and more amazing than we ever thought possible. With her trademark inspirational wisdom, Kelly Corrigan writes the perfect book for anyone about to embark on a new adventure.

The Middle Place

The Middle Place
Author: Kealan Ryan
Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2019-03-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1781176086

This funny, conversational and often very moving debut deals with the Big Questions while keeping tight focus on one life. A seriously impressive first novel, full of truth, heart and hope. – Joseph O'Connor A tour de force - a captivating debut novel, packed with punch, plot and pace - Muriel Bolger It is shockingly readable — the reader is dragged in and pulled along. It's naturalistic, honest, funny, and sad. I wasn't expecting that. Really quite wonderful. - Derek Landy A magnificent, heartfelt tale of love, family, loss and revenge, brimming with wit and wisdom both. -Anthony Glavin One minute Chris had been having a smoke, talking to his wife, and the next minute he was dead, killed with one punch. There's not a lot about being dead that he likes. He's stuck in this middle place with the ability to delve into the individual lives he cares about – to know what they are feeling and thinking. He is beginning to realise that in life he wasn't such a great guy. In death, he can't say goodbye to his wife, toddler son and friends. He is determined to figure out how to haunt the person who killed him. Chris wants to rise again, to live again. He wants to feel his wife again, feel the air in his lungs, feel the sea again but something won't let him go.

American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism

American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism
Author: Joni Adamson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816517923

Although much contemporary American Indian literature examines the relationship between humans and the land, most Native authors do not set their work in the "pristine wilderness" celebrated by mainstream nature writers. Instead, they focus on settings such as reservations, open-pit mines, and contested borderlands. Drawing on her own teaching experience among Native Americans and on lessons learned from such recent scenes of confrontation as Chiapas and Black Mesa, Joni Adamson explores why what counts as "nature" is often very different for multicultural writers and activist groups than it is for mainstream environmentalists. This powerful book is one of the first to examine the intersections between literature and the environment from the perspective of the oppressions of race, class, gender, and nature, and the first to review American Indian literature from the standpoint of environmental justice and ecocriticism. By examining such texts as Sherman Alexie's short stories and Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Almanac of the Dead, Adamson contends that these works, in addition to being literary, are examples of ecological criticism that expand Euro-American concepts of nature and place. Adamson shows that when we begin exploring the differences that shape diverse cultural and literary representations of nature, we discover the challenge they present to mainstream American culture, environmentalism, and literature. By comparing the work of Native authors such as Simon Ortiz with that of environmental writers such as Edward Abbey, she reveals opportunities for more multicultural conceptions of nature and the environment. More than a work of literary criticism, this is a book about the search to find ways to understand our cultural and historical differences and similarities in order to arrive at a better agreement of what the human role in nature is and should be. It exposes the blind spots in early ecocriticism and shows the possibilities for building common groundÑ a middle placeÑ where writers, scholars, teachers, and environmentalists might come together to work for social and environmental change.

Stories, Community, and Place

Stories, Community, and Place
Author: Barbara Johnstone
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1990
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

From the Blurb: Though social scientists often talk about the "mainstream" of American society, they have very rarely studied it. Stories, Community, and Place does look at this group, examining the socio-linguistic behavior of the white middle-class population of a Midwest city. Barbara Johnstone focuses on the stories people tell about their lives and the stories they jointly create to define the place where they live. She looks at people's stories about incidents in their own lives, discussing what it is that these stories share, in structure and in theme, and what it is that gives each speaker a creative individual voice. She then examines how people use narrative to create, perpetuate, and manipulate social roles and relations. How, for example, are gender roles reflected in the stories women and men tell, and how do men's and women's stories create worlds of contest and community? How do people use reported speech to indicate what their relationships to police officers and other authority figures are like, while simultaneously suggesting what these relationships should be like? The final section of the book connects narrative with place. The author shows, for example, how stories are anchored in the local sociolinguistic world partly by being anchored in the local physical world. Another kind of connection between narrative and place is exemplified in a "community story" created by the media about a natural disaster in the city. This is a story which belongs to the city rather than to any of its citizens, and one in which the city and its citizens become one. Stories, Community, and Place will be of interest to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and folklorists, as well as to narratologists of any persuasion.

The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages

The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages
Author: Nancy Elizabeth Van Deusen
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780791441299

The Psalms were an important part of the education, daily life, and spiritual development of medieval clerics and monks, and they had a significant impact on lay culture as well. The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages surveys their influence, giving a unique window into the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional culture of the period.

Out of Place

Out of Place
Author: Jennifer Blecher
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0062748610

When twelve-year-old Cove Bernstein becomes the target of a school-wide bullying campaign, she sets out to find a way to leave her home on Martha’s Vineyard for New York City, where her best friend lives. But Cove discovers that friends can appear in the unlikeliest places, and maybe home isn’t the worst place to be after all. Jennifer Blecher’s debut novel is a voice-driven story about bullying, friendship, and self-reliance that hits the sweet spot for fans of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish and Erin Entrada Kelly’s You Go First. Twelve-year-old Cove Bernstein’s year has gone from bad to worse. First, her best friend, Nina, moved from Martha’s Vineyard to New York City. Then, without Nina around, Cove became the target of a bullying campaign at school. Escape seems impossible. But opportunities can appear when you least expect them. Cove’s visit to a secondhand clothing store leads her to a surprising chance to visit Nina, but only if she can win a coveted place in a kids-only design competition. Cove doesn’t know how to sew, but her friend at the retirement home, Anna, has promised to teach her. And things start really looking up when a new kid at school, Jack, begins appearing everywhere Cove goes. Then Cove makes a big mistake. One that could ruin every good thing that has happened to her this year. One that she doesn’t know how to undo. Jennifer Blecher’s accessible and beautifully written debut novel explores actions and consequences, loneliness, bullying, and finding your voice. This voice-driven friendship story is for fans of Rebecca Stead’s Goodbye Stranger and Jodi Kendall’s The Unlikely Story of a Pig in the City. Includes black-and-white spot art throughout.

My Middle-aged Baby Book

My Middle-aged Baby Book
Author: Mary-Lou Weisman
Publisher: Workman Publishing
Total Pages: 84
Release: 1995
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9781563058172

First lost tooth. First colonoscopy. First second mortgage. First chin hair. First comb-over. All of these memorable firsts belong in MY MIDDLE-AGED BABY BOOK: A Place to Write Down All the Things You'll Soon Forget. A padded and chewable keepsake with room to write in significant firsts, it's a perfect gift for a milestone birthday, when you're old enough not to take yourself too seriously. ?A comic classic, My Middle-Aged Baby Book is the irrepressibly cheeky celebration of middle age in the form of a fill-in baby book--and the perfect gift for both women ("Is it hot in here, or is it just me?") and men (remember, it's prostate not prostrate). It's a place to record firsts: my first colonoscopy, my first reading glasses, my first words ("everything hurts"). Vital statistics: including married name(s), circumference of abdomen, cholesterol count (bad HDLs, good HDLs). Primary caregivers: urologist, periodontist, colorist. It explains the Seven Stages of Hair Loss, answers the question Am I Smiling . . . or Is It Gas?, covers Sex? (Check one: Yes, No, Can't Remember), and what happens When I Grow Up--go ahead, be a burden to your children! ?And for everyone who forgot where they put their reading glasses, the book is thoughtfully printed on anti-glare paper in large, easy-to-read type.

Glitter and Glue

Glitter and Glue
Author: Kelly Corrigan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0345532856

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A memoir from the author of The Middle Place about mothers and daughters—a bond that can be nourishing, exasperating, and occasionally divine. When Kelly Corrigan was in high school, her mother neatly summarized the family dynamic as “Your father’s the glitter but I’m the glue.” This meant nothing to Kelly, who left childhood sure that her mom—with her inviolable commandments and proud stoicism—would be nothing more than background chatter for the rest of Kelly’s life, which she was carefully orienting toward adventure. After college, armed with a backpack, her personal mission statement, and a wad of traveler’s checks, she took off for Australia to see things and do things and Become Interesting. But it didn’t turn out the way she pictured it. In a matter of months, her savings shot, she had a choice: get a job or go home. That’s how Kelly met John Tanner, a newly widowed father of two looking for a live-in nanny. They chatted for an hour, discussed timing and pay, and a week later, Kelly moved in. And there, in that house in a suburb north of Sydney, 10,000 miles from the house where she was raised, her mother’s voice was suddenly everywhere, nudging and advising, cautioning and directing, escorting her through a terrain as foreign as any she had ever trekked. Every day she spent with the Tanner kids was a day spent reconsidering her relationship with her mother, turning it over in her hands like a shell, straining to hear whatever messages might be trapped in its spiral. This is a book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers. But mostly it’s about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time. Praise for Glitter and Glue “I loved this book, I was moved by this book, and now I will share this book with my own mother—along with my renewed appreciation for certain debts of love that can never be repaid.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love “Kelly Corrigan’s thoughtful and beautifully rendered meditation invites readers to reflect on their own launchings and homecomings. I accepted the invitation and learned things about myself. You will, too. Isn’t that why we read?”—Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Water “Kelly Corrigan is no stranger to mining the depths of her heart. . . . Through her own experience of caring for children, she begins, for the first time, to appreciate the complex woman who raised her.”—O: The Oprah Magazine