An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West

Author: Konstantin Kisin
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 1408716038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Book Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A lively and spirited book' DOUGLAS MURRAY 'A paean to the freedom and dignity that many in the West take for granted' PETER BOGHOSSIAN 'A cool, steady but urgent message that we should value and protect what we have' SPIKED 'Kisin's book [has] a powerful moral quality that makes it worth reading' SUNDAY TIMES For all of the West's failings - terrible food, cold weather, and questionable politicians with funny hair to name a few - it has its upsides. Konstantin would know. Growing up in the Soviet Union, he experienced first-hand the horrors of a socialist paradise gone wrong, having lived in extreme poverty with little access to even the most basic of necessities. It wasn't until he moved to the UK that Kisin found himself thriving in an open and tolerant society, receiving countless opportunities he would never have had otherwise. Funny, provocative and unswervingly perceptive, An Immigrant's Love letter to the West interrogates the developing sense of self-loathing the Western sphere has adopted and offers an alternative perspective. Exploring race politics, free speech, immigration and more, Kisin argues that wrongdoing and guilt need not pervade how we feel about the West - and Britain - today, and that despite all its ups and downs, it remains one of the best places to live in the world. After all, if an immigrant can't publicly profess their appreciation for this country, who can?

Summary of Konstantin Kisin's An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West

Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 In the 1980s, it was common for black families to give their children advice about how to act if they were stopped by the police, as this could be a consequence of having an unpopular opinion in the Soviet Union. #2 The Pavlik Morozov story is a perfect example of how communist leaders praised a disloyal teenage boy who threw his own family under the bus for the sake of a failed political philosophy. #3 Bernie Sanders, a politician in America, promotes socialism to the masses as if it’s some magical panacea, despite the fact he earns nearly $200,000 per year as a senator. The danger of this sort of stupidity was clear back in the 1980s, when Sanders lived it up with the West’s enemy. #4 The education system in Russia was also artificially flattened to stop inequalities manifesting later in life. The Soviet system was also free healthcare and racial unrest was entirely absent.

Lovers and Strangers

Author: Clair Wills
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141974966
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 525

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2018 TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 'Generous and empathetic ... opens up postwar migration in all its richness' Sukhdev Sandhu, Guardian 'Groundbreaking, sophisticated, original, open-minded ... essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only the transformation of British society after the war but also its character today' Piers Brendon, Literary Review 'Lyrical, full of wise and original observations' David Goodhart, The Times The battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers - to rebuild, to fill the factories, to make the new NHS work. From all over the world and with many motives, thousands of individuals took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years here, sending most of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed - and transformed the country. Drawing on an amazing array of unusual and surprising sources, Clair Wills' wonderful new book brings to life the incredible diversity and strangeness of the migrant experience. She introduces us to lovers, scroungers, dancers, homeowners, teachers, drinkers, carers and many more to show the opportunities and excitement as much as the humiliation and poverty that could be part of the new arrivals' experience. Irish, Bengalis, West Indians, Poles, Maltese, Punjabis and Cypriots battled to fit into an often shocked Britain and, to their own surprise, found themselves making permanent homes. As Britain picked itself up again in the 1950s migrants set about changing life in their own image, through music, clothing, food, religion, but also fighting racism and casual and not so casual violence. Lovers and Strangers is an extremely important book, one that is full of enjoyable surprises, giving a voice to a generation who had to deal with the reality of life surrounded by 'white strangers' in their new country.

A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back

Author: gloria j wilson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816545243
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Book Description
In 1981, Chicana feminist intellectuals Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa published what would become a touchstone work for generations of feminist women of color—the seminal This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. To celebrate and honor this important work, editors gloria j. wilson, Joni B. Acuff, and Amelia M. Kraehe offer new generations A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back. In A Love Letter, creators illuminate, question, and respond to current politics, progressive struggles, transformations, acts of resistance, and solidarity, while also offering readers a space for renewal and healing. The central theme of the original Bridge is honored, exposing the lived realities of women of color at the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality, advancing those early conversations on what it means to be Third World feminist conscious. A Love Letter recognizes the challenges faced by women of color in a twenty-first-century world of climate and economic crises, increasing gun violence, and ever-changing social media constructs for women of color. It also retains the clarion call Bridge set in motion, as Moraga wrote: “A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives—our skin color, the land or concrete we grew up on, our sexual longing—all fuse to create a politic born of necessity.”

Thelma & Louise

Author: Susan Kollin
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826365523
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Book Description
Thelma & Louise, the 1991 film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, has been described as a road movie, a buddy movie, a feminist parable, and only incidentally as a Western. An Oscar winner for first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri, Thelma & Louise catalyzed a national conversation about women, violence, and self-determination in a Hollywood still shrugging off the West of John Wayne and in an America that still viewed women as accessories to the national mythology. In this latest volume in the Reel West series, Susan Kollin recreates this watershed moment for women's movies in general and women's Westerns in particular.

Love Letters to Missouri--a Kept Promise

Author: Samuel Matthias Ayres
Publisher: Virtualbookworm Publishing
ISBN: 1589398637
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description
"Love Letters from Missouri" is a human interest story of a young Missouri doctor, Dr. Samuel Ayres, who joined the general exodus of 1850 to the gold fields of California in the pursuit of riches. As promised to his wife, Samuel faithfully writes letters describing his day-to-day adventures of the trail, including brief encounters with Indians, successful treatment of numerous chases of cholera along the Platte river between Fort Kearney and Fort Laramie, and celebrating the third anniversary of the establishment of the Great City of Salt Lake. Frequently he mentions his loneliness and heartbreak being away from his wife Priscilla and their two small boys, of concern for his own personal safety and of his extreme disappointment in the deteriorated conditions and lack of opportunities found in California on his arrival. Following only one actual day of labor in the gold fields, Dr. Ayres succumbed to illness and tragically dies November 19, 1850, six months and one week after his departure from his Missouri wife and family.

LOVE LETTERS TO AND FROM A MONK

Author: Suzanne Saunders Taylor
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1493186353
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
The letters begin when my Aunt wrote to inform Rev. Bonnell Spencer of the death of her husband who had been his Williams college roommate. Thus began a 20 year relationship, highlighted by numerous letters written after her husband’s death in 1974 at the age of 70. They are most unusual for they not only are her letters to him, but his responses to her. As time passed they developed a deep feeling for each other. Remarkable people: He was third in his class at Williams, Phi Beta Kappa, a member of Actor’s Equity, a published author and a mentor to many Seminarians in Ghana and numerous other places. He celebrated over 50 years in the life-long profession of being an Episcopalian Monk, affiliated with the Holy Cross Monastery at West Park, New York. She began her 48 year long career teaching in a one room school and ending as a professor at Central Connecticut State University teaching others to teach. Thereafter she continued to be an activist for many humanitarian and politically liberal causes. Both were world travelers and met in England, Santa Barbara, New York City and numerous other exotic places. Theirs was a most unusual and sensitive relationship. The letters are exceptionally well written and one wants to read on to see how they managed to meet and to learn how two extraordinary people thought about life, religion, education, politics and the world of their day., as well as to learn what would become of their relationship.

Fashioning America

Author: Michelle Tolini Finamore
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1610757858
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
The companion volume to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s first fashion exhibition, Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour celebrates the history of American attire, from the cowboy boot to the zoot suit. From dresses worn by First Ladies to art-inspired garments to iconic moments in fashion that defined a generation, Fashioning America showcases uniquely American expressions of innovation, spotlighting stories of designers and wearers that center on opportunity and self-invention, and amplifying the voices of those who are often left out of dominant fashion narratives. With nearly one hundred illustrations of garments and accessories that span two centuries of design, Fashioning America celebrates the achievements of a wide array of makers—especially immigrants, Native Americans, and Black Americans. Incorporating essays by fashion historians, curators, and journalists, this volume takes a fresh look at the country’s fashion history while exploring its close relationship with Hollywood and media in general, illuminating the role that American designers have played in shaping global visual culture and demonstrating why American fashion has long resonated around the world.

Starting School (Routledge Revivals)

Author: Brian Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135039151
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 159

Book Description
First published in 1979, this book considers the culture of a multi-racial community through the eyes of six children about to start school. Each child is from a different background but all live in the same street in a town in the north of England. Following the children from home into school, their six separate lives are unveiled, illustrating the manner in which their six separate worlds are in some ways grounded in their own respective cultures, and in others interwoven with the common experience of school. These Children enter school in search of a multi-cultural society, and a sympathetic appraisal is made of what happens to them as they face such initially daunting prospects as the classroom, television and the playground. The most compelling element in this book is the way in which education is shown to be able to derive benefit from this cultural diversity. The research was commissioned by the Social Sciences Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust, and will be of particular interest to those working in social work and education.

The Oxford Handbook of Human Mating

Author: David M. Buss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197536433
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 865

Book Description
The scientific study of human mating has mushroomed over the past three decades, and this growth in turn has generated a proliferation of evolving literature revealing fresh discoveries about mate attraction, mate choice, mate retention, marital satisfaction, jealousy, infidelity, intimate partner violence, breakups, internet dating, cyberstalking, and sexual coercion. In The Oxford Handbook of Human Mating, editor David M. Buss showcases contributions from the best and the brightest scientists in the field, providing up-to-date summaries of theories and empirical evidence of the science of human mating strategies. Much of the research in the field is guided by sexual selection theory. Over 150 years after Darwin's proposal of sexual selection theory, it has become the most important overarching theoretical framework for the scientific study of the mating strategies of all sexually reproducing species, including humans. A mountain of research centered around Darwin's classic book has documented the many complexities of human mate competition and mate choice; how these processes differ between the sexes; and how they differ as a function of sex ratio, mate value, social contexts, ovulation cycles, personality characteristics, and cultural norms and mating rituals. Thus, the science is now ripe for a collection of work by eminent scholars in the field. David M. Buss is a leading researcher and pioneer in the study of human mating strategies, and he applies his expertise to the curation of this volume, which includes major sections covering theories of human mating; mate selection and mate attraction; mate competition; sexual conflict in mating; human pair bonding; the endocrinology of mating; and mating in the modern world.