Böcker av Kathleen Collins

"A heartbreakingly beautiful debut." Sandra A. Miller, author of Wednesdays at OneIn the middle of 1974, Flora is privileged and middle-aged in a liberation-hued America, and feels both compelled by and left out of the women's movement. She finds it difficult to activate her limited supply of empathy as she contends with a clandestine and unlikely friendship, a worrisome health scare, a domineering and philandering psychiatrist husband or her own distant daughter.Flora's secret foray into psychotherapy does nothing to halt the sense that there is a better life for her somewhere else, in some parallel existence. Through the continuum of psychological diagnoses, she is lost in the murky place between contentment and discontentment, normal and abnormal.Is her state of mind a clinical, diagnosable condition, or common malaise? Perhaps she'll find out if she stops resisting to share herself with those who love her.

In Politicizing Islam in Central Asia, Kathleen Collins explores the causes, dynamics, and variation in Islamist movements-first within the USSR, and then in the post-Soviet states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic and historical research on Islamist mobilization across numerous post-Soviet Central Asian countries, she covers over a century and explains the strategies and relative success of each movement. Collins argues that in each case, state repression of Islam and ideology motivated and enabled Islamist mobilization.

Relatively unknown during her life, the artist, filmmaker, and writer Kathleen Collins emerged on the literary scene in 2016 with the posthumous publication of the short-story collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? Said Zadie Smith, “To be this good and yet to be ignored is shameful, but her rediscovery is a great piece of luck for us.”That rediscovery continues in Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary, which spans genres to reveal the breadth and depth of the late author’s talent. The compilation is anchored by more of Collins’s striking short stories, which explore the ways in which relationships both are formed and come undone. Also collected here is the work Collins wrote for the screen and stage, including the screenplay of her pioneering film Losing Ground and the script for The Brothers, which powerfully illuminate the particular joys, challenges, and heartbreaks rendered by the African American experience. And finally, it is in Collins’s raw and prescient diaries that her nascent ideas about race, gender, marriage, and motherhood first play out on the page.By turns empowering, exuberant, sexy, and poignant, Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary is a brilliant compendium of the works of an inimitable talent, and a rich portrait of a writer hard at work.

"From the first page you know you're in the hands of an exceptional writer... I adored this book." --Zadie Smith"Sexy and radical and intimate." --Miranda JulyNamed a Best Book of 2016 by VICE, Elle, Nylon, Publishers Weekly and NPRNamed one of the most anticipated books of the fall by the Huffington Post, New York, The Boston Globe, Lit Hub, and The MillionsNow available in Ecco's Art of the Story series: a never-before-published collection of stories from a brilliant yet little known African American artist and filmmaker--a contemporary of revered writers including Toni Cade Bambara, Laurie Colwin, Ann Beattie, Amy Hempel, and Grace Paley--whose prescient work has recently resurfaced to wide acclaim.Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins's stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues--race, gender, family, and sexuality--that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.In "The Uncle," a young girl who idolizes her handsome uncle and his beautiful wife makes a haunting discovery about their lives. In "Only Once," a woman reminisces about her charming daredevil of a lover and his ultimate--and final--act of foolishness. Collins's work seamlessly integrates the African-American experience in her characters' lives, creating rich, devastatingly familiar, full-bodied men, women, and children who transcend the symbolic, penetrating both the reader's head and heart.Both contemporary and timeless, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? is a major addition to the literary canon, and is sure to earn Kathleen Collins the widespread recognition she is long overdue.

Equipped with an encyclopedic knowledge of boxing, a young Joyce Brothers competed on The $64,000 Question and became the first woman to win the top prize money. That triumphant debut in 1955 was the initial step toward a career as a media pioneer. Through her own advice programs and perennial appearances on talk shows¿as well as episodic television¿Brothers became one of the most well-known figures of the 20th century. For more than four decades, viewers could count on her authoritative, calm response to almost any issue, from marital and financial woes to the Space Shuttle disaster.In Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology, Kathleen Collins explores how a clever businesswoman provided a mass-scale service for a never-ending demand: helping viewers understand themselves. Collins explains how Brothers¿ longevity on television was in large part afforded by her symbiotic relationship with the medium. She played other roles in addition töand interdependent on¿that of media psychologist. Her numerous appearances on variety shows, sitcoms, and dramas kept her on the screen and in the public eye, creating both a persona as celebrity professional as well as professional celebrity.This portrait of Brothers¿ multi-layered career also provides a means by which to observe U.S. cultural history, addressing cultural preoccupations with television and self-help obsessed audiences looking for guidance in reality TV. Drawing on primary sources from Brothers¿ personal papers and published interviews¿as well as interviews the author conducted with several of Joyce¿s former colleagues and her daughter, Lisa Arbisser¿Collins provides an engaging, informative, and thought provoking look at this iconic figure.

While variety shows, Westerns, and live, scripted dramas have gone the way of rabbit ear antennae, cooking shows are still being watched, often on high definition plasma screens via Tivo. This title illuminates how cooking shows have both reflected and shaped significant changes in American culture.