Brown Bodies, White Babies focuses on the practice of cross-racial gestational surrogacy, in which a woman - through in-vitro fertilization using the sperm and egg of intended parents or donors - carries a pregnancy for intended parents of a different race. Focusing on the racial differences between parents and surrogates, this book is interested in how reproductive technologies intersect with race, particularly when brown bodies produce white babies. While the potential of reproductive technologies is far from pre-determined, the ways in which these technologies are currently deployed often serve the interests of dominant groups, through the creation of white, middle-class, heteronormative families. Laura Harrison, providing an important understanding of the work of women of color as surrogates, connects this labor to the history of racialized reproduction in the United States. Cross-racial surrogacy is one end of a continuum in which dominant groups rely on the reproductive potential of nonwhite women, whose own reproductive desires have been historically thwarted and even demonized. Brown Bodies, White Babies provides am interdisciplinary analysis that includes legal cases of contested surrogacy, historical examples of surrogacy as a form of racialized reproductive labor, the role of genetics in the assisted reproduction industry, and the recent turn toward reproductive tourism. Joining the ongoing feminist debates surrounding reproduction, motherhood, race, and the body, Brown Bodies, White Babies ultimately critiques the new potentials for parenthood that put the very contours of kinship into question.
Lurch through East Anglia, UK, with the most lovable D.I. (Driving Instructor) in history ever to become a P.I. (Private Investigator), and plunk his bum on a stool in Brooklyn, NY, eating Junior's Cheesecake-real New York cheesecake. Go with him as he attends a Mafia funeral to rival a royal wedding. And then worry and scold like a Yiddishe mama as he risks life and limb to solve a murder best described as a dripper. Driving instruction? Oh, yes. He does some of that, and his driving students are, well, unusual. Some won't drive. Some won't stop. Some kill things along the way to driving competence. Like author Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy, the antiques-dealer-turned-sleuth, Shelf Barker is an encyclopedia of oddness, but a lot less snarky. But he is non-politically correct--or maybe a better way to say it is omni-ethnic--about it all.So how DOES a mild-mannered Brit go from giving driving lessons to the great British public of terrified driving students to solving a double murder? He has help. Like Janet Evanovich's almost helpless Stephanie Plum, Shelf works under the watchful eyes of two able helpers. One's an Italian beauty who can barely boil pasta, and the other is one of his ex-wives whom he fondly compares to a deadly snake. Not exactly Stephanie Plum's Ranger and Joe Morelli. More interesting.He labours under myriad delusions, Shelf does, not least of which is that as a former university professor (his slide from grace has been bumpy), he knows everything about everything. Including English. When he chides his wife about her mistakes in English, she assures him her university studies taught her proper English. "I always add 'proper AMERICAN English'," he replies, "and that always gets me a fine Italian phrase in return, a sneer and sometimes a familiar hand gesture." She probably learned the gesture from her Mafia forebears.Go figure. Poor Shelf has to grapple with US idioms, suffer through the vagaries of British jurisprudence, and keep his astonishment hidden through an Italian funeral where bodies surf along Brooklyn roads and demented mafiosi retirees give the game away. To top it off, a central African warlord who sounds like Eddie Murphy in Coming to America plays a central role.Still, Barker knows who he is, and isn't embarrassed to tell. "I might once have been a world-class anthropologist....I might have. But I wasn't. Just an ordinary bloke, educated beyond where it is wise to educate a member of the proletariat, trying to make a living." Barker is not a dab hand at handling a gun, but he can handle concepts just fine. And he has a fan-thing going for Lorena Bobbitt and her shorn husband, John. Remember them? Twenty years ago, Lorena trimmed her husband's private parts a bit too close. "A fiction writer couldn't come up with a better name for an egomaniacal American who fancied himself a matinee idol and who was shorn where it hurts-bobbed, you might say-than John Wayne Bobbitt," Shelf notes.Shelf has fun, he really does. See for yourself. He samples the best New York Cheesecake. He spends some quality time with the local constabulary. He falls in love. Again. And again? Maybe.Click LOOK INSIDE and immerse yourself for a minute in the very funny world of Shelf Barker as he graduates from D.I. to P.I. in one juicy murder.
Cats have nine lives. Don't you think there are a few things you could learn from them? And what if they were magical cats who lived on ancient, druid Dartmoor, deep in the ancient south of England? Here are magical cats of Dartmoor, come to help you affirm everything you've always wanted...and charm you as well with their antics all over the sacred spots of romantic, exotic Dartmoor. A perfect gift to yourself and your spirit helpers, or as a gift for a friend who loves cats, magick, or exotic places.
Ireland. An introduction to the matchless Irish experience of hospitality and good times, strength in adversity, spiritual intelligence when none might be expected, and a vibrant culture millions share, and millions more long for. Travel to Ireland in this book and come home with memories, or take it along and use it as a cultural compass to the Emerald Isle.Ireland Explained takes readers on a very personal trip around the Emerald Isle, with stops at interesting venues from Georgian homes to nouvelle cuisine restaurants--indeed, to one of the first ones in Ireland when it opened in the early 1980s. Visit castles, and tromp over open farmland. Look toward America from the west coast tracks; look toward Europe from cosmopolitan Dublin.You'll meet some people, too. Real characters. Real movers and shakers. And just about every other sort of person you can think of, from barkeeps to professors.Tuck this book in your suitcase and write your own annotations. Or read it in front of the fire at home, creating dreams or planning a trip of your own. However you do it, reading this book will provide you with a leisurely trip through one of the most beloved travel destinations on the planet, both exotic and familiar, homey and sublime. Beautiful, vexatious, vibrant, laugh-loving uplifting Ireland is what you'll find in the gentle prose of these pages, all of them written with love.
Cow-Tipping and the Deep Blue Sea is a (mostly) light-hearted look at life as we know it everywhere except the internet. It is a book of poetry that depends on real life, not life viewed through cyberspace nor friendships formed one pixel at a time. It is funny and pithy in equal measure. It travels around the Atlantic rim from New York to Florida to Ireland to Cornwall. Indeed, in many ways it unifies the experience of people living in the mainly Anglo cultures of those places, but with a seasoning of more exotic cultures that flavour the experience of most people these days.This easy to read book of gentle poetry conquers the angst of life today by picking it up, turning it around and around, until it sees the beauty even in the more difficult parts of the gem. It celebrates life, and sometimes death. It tackles the cogent issues of the age gently, allowing a response from the reader, giving guideposts to what one might do with the human condition one finds one's self in...or not. Open and invitational, this book portrays the secrets of the heart in the light of modern times. It is a must-read for those grappling with both rapid change and deadly boredom, hope and hopelessness, sadness and joy.
The Luminous Shadow of the Muse explores what's left behind when humans confront their lives...the feelings, hungers, pains, and joys, but beneath it all, the changes begun by everything a person does, and the activities altered by everything a human thinks.This volume is at times gentle, at times cogent and at times just plain unsentimental as it explores the big and small facets of modern life. It moves through space and time, from the 1950s to now, from the gentle breezes of the Cornish coast to the fug of midtown Manhattan. It assesses marriage, families and the single life. Dogs and horses. Food and drink. It will make you laugh, remember your past, and assess the difficult situations of your life. While the poems are based on one woman's experience on two continents, the emotions are universal. It is a spiritual journey, from birth to the late years of life. It examines, it suggests, it informs, it delights in the way it uses the majestically malleable English language to cast a beam of light on human life in the noughties.
Shelf Barker, not the world's greatest detective...just the world's detective who gets himself into the greatest number of unusual spots...with hilarious results.Needless to say, Halloween is a special time of year for Shelf and is wife and his ex-wife and his two loyal pets.Also needless to say, Shelf finds himself in a predicament very close to the witching hour, a predicament including a Jack-O'-Lantern that contains a deadly surprise, and a pack of disembodied souls that won't leave HIS house until he grants THEIR wishes.Odd? Topsy-turvy? Sure. But everything in Shelf's world is a bit off-kilter.Join Shelf, his wife, Polly, and his ex-wife, Chloe, as he chisels his way out of a riotous adventure that takes him from Norwich, UK, to the Bronx, NYC, and back again and stands to make him a wealthy man as well. Not bad for a few days' work, right?
In the 1970s, long before YouTube and when TV recording was in its infancy, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Santa Claus dropped his pants on his way from the sleigh to Macy's front door to kick off the Christmas season. But at least Santa didn't drop dead. Shelf Barker, the world's most unlikely British P.I., is called in by his wife's cousin, a mob boss in Brooklyn, NY, to find out who killed the Carroll Gardens Community Center's Santa Claus. Naturally, Shelf brings his wife, Polly--an Italian-American relocated to the UK--and his ex-wife, The Cobra, a British lady of both brains and beauty, who is now Polly's best friend.To find out why Santa went to the North Pole in the Sky at the annual Knights of St. Nicholas Christmas Party, Shelf and Co. find themselves in half a dozen weird situations, and meet a cast of characters you can only find where the old world and the new world meet. They get punched and kicked by a junior Mafia wannabe, and survive an interview with an Italian witch, all while doing their best to cope with an excess of luscious Italian food. Just in time for a merry Christmas, they solve Santa's untimely death in a way that magically makes everything all right.
In neighbourhoods and public spaces across Britain, young working people walked out together, congregated in the streets, and paraded up and down on the ‘monkey parades’. The beginnings of a distinct youth culture can be traced to the late nineteenth century, and the street and neighbourhood provided its forum. Dangerous amusements explores these sites of leisure and courtship, examining how young working-class men and women engaged with their environment. Drawing on an extensive range of sources, from newspapers and institutional records to oral histories and autobiography, this book traces the movements of young people across space. Exploring the relationship between the leisure lives of the young working class and urban space, this book offers a sensitive reappraisal of working-class youth and will be essential reading for historians of modern Britain.
This book of poetry was begun in the anguish of the UK referendum that gave birth to Brexit, the putative abandonment by the UK of its leading role in the European Union, possibly the best international body for peace and prosperity that was ever conceived and given life. As this goes to press, there is still no conclusion, no settlement of the upheaval caused by that wrong-headed political stunt by a political party more interested in usurping control than in running a nation for the common good.The book developed through three years of personal and political anguish at the undemocratic horrors being perpetrated on the British people. The anguish, however, is tempered with a more sanguine look at the human condition, offering sky hooks of hope and sparkling streams of possibility for the future, often anchored in the past. Or at least, in one woman's past, informed by her life in three countries, and her passion for ensuring the best of all worlds for all people. She does what she can...and sometimes, that is verbal or pictorial art.A portion of the income from this book will be donated to humane organizations worldwide, as the author/artist identifies needs.
Poor Shelf He had just finished up his Halloween adventure inNew York. The ghosts who had dragged him across the Atlantic tosolve that mystery from colonial times seemed to be after him again.His new task? To keep the famous New York City Ballet's productionof The Nutcracker from becoming the graveyard of alot more than this season's new ballet shoes, and last New Years'shattered resolutions. Shelf--and wives Polly and Chloe (one current, onenot)--didn't have much time. The ballet would close just after New Year's Day, and whatever was going on had to be sorted out by then. Or else.
Born in 1924, Laura May Harris uses her vivid memory and unique writing skills to create a series of rustic tales which not only illustrate family life at the beginning of the 20th century, during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, but also illuminates the author's own personal journey from farm to forces to frontier. And anchoring those vignettes are various adventures unfolding during the same era, but well-beyond her own doorstep. Echo is a thoroughly enjoyable read. For today's youth, it allows them to walk a mile in the footsteps of their grandparents; for today's seniors resting up for the next lap of life's journey, it gives them license to smile.
On the pages of her book Laura May Harris weaves a memorial to five generations of men and women who carved out a life on the family homestead. This very personal family perspective chronicles the lives of some of the earliest pioneers and their descendants - many of whom have contributed their memories to this rich anthology. She aptly chose the following quote to describe the philosophy for her forebearers: "We will not follow where the path may lead, but we will go where there is no path, and we will leave a trail." (Muriel Strode)
Although they grew up a mere fifteen miles apart, two young homestead adults meet by chance in the fledgling Lower Canada of the mid-eighteen hundreds. Their parents, however, had arrived into that wilderness area a quarter-century earlier from distant and culturally-diverse parts of the world. 'Their Land Of Promise' travels to those distant lands; breathes life and love into those parents again; shares their problems; learns their dreams; and eventually it travels with them into Britain's colony, a land full of dense wilderness forests - forests the newcomers challenge with a Bible in one hand and an axe in the other.
A simple, relaxing, all-inclusive Caribbean cruise turns out to be anything but, as the luxury ship is sabotaged and chaos and isolation swiftly turn to mistrust, mayhem and murder...Contemplating early retirement following the horrific and high-profile death of her sister and the media hounding that followed, Criminal Psychologist and Profiler, Dr. Christine Kane embarks on a get-away cruise that will prove to be the vacation of a lifetime for all the wrong reasons. Ex-DI Jonathan Prior is now the Head of Security on board the luxury ocean-liner, Ianus, and despite his initial reservations, he seems to have found love in the most unlikely of places. He is happy. For the first time in a long time. Though even bliss such as this can't keep the nightmares of his past at bay for long. Kelly Livingstone is the Artist in Residence at Leeds University. A talented woman with a tortured past, she lives her life for the here and now and to hell with the consequences! That is until the university force her to take her annual leave and concentrate on creating some biographical nonsense for publication.Kelly promises herself she won't fall in love on this trip, but with so many beautiful and intelligent women surrounding her, can she really keep her word...and should she? With so many twists and turns, a frenzied pace and a real sense of the panic of containment and isolation, SPLINTERED is an energized escape into the world of an unknown assassin on the verge of transition and self-discovery with only one thing on their mind...murder.
