Böcker utgivna av Atmosphere Press

What happens when a daughter's dream and a mother's sordid past collide?New York, 1910. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher.At least, that's what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won't approve of.But Sylvie isn't the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, stitching together a fabric of lies along with the shirtwaists she finishes every day, doing everything in her power to keep the truth from her daughter-that she fled Paris as a courtesan after committing a crime that could still get her arrested, or worse.When Justine's past catches up with her in a single act of brutality, Sylvie witnesses what she thinks is her mother's betrayal and runs away during a freak blizzard, putting them both in grave danger.Ambition, survival, and unexpected alliances combine in this mother-daughter story that proves love can conquer all-at a price.

Four women, unknowingly bound together by one man's violent past.Johnny Wharton is a history professor and descendant of a Texas "planter family" - a legacy that's followed him all the way to 1985. Tough-girl Jenny (Johnny's daughter), runs away to Madison, blotting out her past with distance, drugs, and sex. Her loner lifestyle is upended by her new roommate's scary insistence on friendship. Emotionally damaged Jane (Johnny's new graduate student) gives Johnny's offer of an affair a try, thinking she might manage if it's furtive and part-time. Maddie (his lesbian colleague) is grief-stricken; her longtime Black lady love Roz left her - inexplicably. Conservatively raised Liz (Johnny's wife) is desperate to reconnect with her estranged daughter. She's beginning to realize that Johnny's past has left unspeakable scars on her family's present.As the lives of these four women intertwine in unexpected ways, each learns the past can't be conquered until it's confronted, and its secrets revealed - and shared.

The closest you'll ever get to seeing someone actually wear their hearts on their sleeves is in Texas, every fall, at the local high school homecoming game.They're called homecoming mums. They are as bodacious as football, as irresistible as a juicy rumor, and as deep as a momma's love. Over a hundred years ago when the custom began, mum was short for chrysanthemum, a typical corsage that boys gave to girls before taking them to the big football game. But through the decades, mum went from a simple abbreviation to a complicated shorthand for an eye-popping tradition that's as ingrained in the culture as it is confounding to outsiders.Through her original photography and collection of stories from across and beyond the Lone Star State, Amy J. Schultz takes us deep in the heart of mum country. You'll meet kids who wear them, parents who buy them, and critics who decry them as just another example of consumerism gone wild. But mostly, you'll discover that just like every ritual which stands the test of time, someone is keeping the tradition alive. Someone like Mom.

"e;We all knew that a drastic shift had taken place in America. We were well aware that American hegemony was on its last legs. And just like music, what was this new scene morphing into? No one knew. What we did know is that it was a mixture of the old, with the absurd."e; Colin, The Anti-Hero of Capitol HillPythia in the Basement is a vapid and played-out tale of self-discovery and the call to action. The search for meaning in a life that doesn't care. The redundant hero's journey and fear-of-death narrative that has imbued every society. A tale of failure, love, sex, and betrayal. All set to an absurdist and satirical backdrop. In a time of self-censorship and half-truths, Pythia in the Basement is a biting satire about our fears, existence, morality, philosophy, and lacking common sense. But no one poses the question better than Roger, our tendentious autodidact, and purveyor of truth... "e;Why are we banning words? Because they remind us of what savages we are? Society takes care of those who don't play by the rules, dog. Let people say what they want, let them reveal themselves, let's see the real monsters behind the mask."e; Roger, The Prophet of Capitol Hill

This book is an answer to the American Sonnet. Through the structure of the sonnet, the pause and the breath explores the boundlessness that is the experience of xir black transness. Though laden with imagery, each sonnet remains a narrative that develops into an overarching narrative of wholeness. In this book, Kwame Sound Daniels urges the reader to pause and breathe through facets of personal identity.