From the self-described 'black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet', these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

The author of the widely praised Wordslut analyzes the social science of cult influence: how cultish groups from Jonestown and Scientology to SoulCycle and social media gurus use language as the ultimate form of power. What makes "cults" so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we're looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join-and more importantly, stay in-extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell's argument is that, on some level, it already has . . . Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of "brainwashing." But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear-and are influenced by-every single day. Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities "cultish," revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven's Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of "cultish" everywhere.

In Policing Intimacy: Law, Sexuality, and the Color Line in Twentieth-Century Hemispheric American Literature, author Jenna Grace Sciuto analyzes literary depictions of sexual policing of the color line across multiple spaces with diverse colonial histories: Mississippi through William Faulkner's work, Louisiana through Ernest Gaines's novels, Haiti through the work of Marie Chauvet and Edwidge Danticat, and the Dominican Republic through writing by Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, and Nelly Rosario. This literature exposes the continuing coloniality that links depictions of US democracy with Caribbean dictatorships in the twentieth century, revealing a set of interrelated features characterizing the transformation of colonial forms of racial and sexual control into neocolonial reconfigurations. A result of systemic inequality and large-scale historical events, the patterns explored herein reveal the ways in which private relations can reflect national occurrences and the intimate can be brought under public scrutiny. Acknowledging the widespread effects of racial and sexual policing that persist in current legal, economic, and political infrastructures across the circum-Caribbean can in turn bring to light permutations of resistance to the violent discriminations of the status quo. By drawing on colonial documents, such as early law systems like the 1685 French Code Noir instated in Haiti, the 1724 Code Noir in Louisiana, and the 1865 Black Code in Mississippi, in tandem with examples from twentieth-century literature, Policing Intimacy humanizes the effects of legal histories and leaves space for local particularities. By focusing on literary texts and variances in form and aesthetics, Sciuto demonstrates the necessity of incorporating multiple stories, histories, and traumas into accounts of the past.

Kim Jai Sook Martin entered the world in 1935, during the Japanese occupation of her native Korea. She was the second daughter of an ordinary family, born to parents who had hoped for a boy; they dressed her as one until she was three, when her brother was born. By the age of six, she had already learned the price of her fierce independence: refusing to acknowledge the Japanese flag as the Korean national flag, she was denied entrance to her first year of school.

This early conflict set Kim Jai Sook on a lifetime quest to understand her obligations to her family, her culture, her country, herself, and, ultimately, to God. Hers is a story of perseverance, turmoil, and love, as she fought to maintain balance between duty and her own desires.

She set her goals high. As the survivor of Japanese subjugation and two wars, she committed herself to living as a responsible and worthy person. As an adult, in pursuit of her deep desire to become a teacher, she left Korea and built a new life in Canada, where her father's advice on dealing with people became her guiding principles.

This is her story.

Throughout history certain forms and styles of dress have been deemed appropriate - or more significantly, inappropriate - for people as they age. Older women in particular have long been subject to social pressure to tone down, to adopt self-effacing, covered-up styles. But increasingly there are signs of change, as older women aspire to younger, more mainstream, styles, and retailers realize the potential of the 'grey market'. Fashion and Age is the first study to systematically explore the links between clothing and age, drawing on fashion theory and cultural gerontology to examine the changing ways in which age is imagined, experienced and understood in modern culture through the medium of dress. Clothes lie between the body and its social expression, and the book explores the significance of embodiment in dress and in the cultural constitution of age. Drawing on the views of older women, journalists and fashion editors, and clothing designers and retailers, it aims to widen the agenda of fashion studies to encompass the everyday dress of the majority, shifting the debate about age away from its current preoccupation with dependency, towards a fuller account of the lived experience of age. Fashion and Age will be of great interest to students of fashion, material culture, sociology, sociology of age, history of dress and to clothing designers.

Growing up in Poland in the 1930s, Rita Braun had many hopes and dreams for the future. When she was nine years old, however, World War II touched her once-idyllic life, transforming paradise on earth into an indescribable hell. In Fragments of my Life, Braun tells her story--from her birth in 1930 to living in Brazil today, where she works to ensure no one forgets the more than six million Jewish people who lost their lives during the Holocaust.

Including many photos, Fragments of my Life provides firsthand insight into the horrors of the war. As a nine-year old on her school vacation, Braun watched as military aircraft streaked across the skies above her parents' farm. She never imagined they would leave behind much more than a trail of smoke. This memoir details what she experienced as a Jewish girl trying to stay alive during World War II. Braun describes watching the selection process and deportation of friends and family, living under both Russian and German rule, using a fake identity, surviving in a gated and guarded ghetto, escaping and hiding for her life, and witnessing the many tragedies of war.

Candid and detailed, Fragments of my Life chronicles one survivor's experiences from a woman of the final generation who can say, "I lived through the Holocaust."

Drawing upon law, politics, sociology, and gender studies, this volume explores the ways in which the Muslim body is stereotyped, interrogated, appropriated and demonized in Western societies and subject to counter-terror legislation and the suspension of human rights. The author examines the intense scrutiny of Muslim women's dress and appearance, and their experience of hate crimes, as well as how Muslim men's bodies are emasculated, effeminized and subjected to torture. Chapters explore a range of issues including Western legislation and foreign policy against the 'Other', orientalism, Islamophobia, masculinity, the intersection of gender with nationalism and questions about diversity, inclusion, religious freedom, citizenship and identity. This text will be of interest to scholars and students across a range of disciplines, including sociology, gender studies, law, politics, cultural studies, international relations, and human rights.

This internationally celebrated memoir is now a new Showtime original series.

Belle couldn't find a job after University. Her impressive degree was not paying her rent or buying her food. But after a fantastic threesome with a very rich couple who gave her a ton of money, Belle realized that she could earn more than anyone she knew--by becoming a call girl. The rest is history. Belle became a 20-something London working girl--and had the audacity to write about it--anonymously. The shockingly candid and explicit diary she put on the Internet became a London sensation. She shares her entire journey inside the world of high-priced escorts, including fascinating and explicit insights about her job and her clients, her various boyfriends, and a taboo lifestyle that has to be read to be believed. The witty observations, shocking revelations, and hilarious scenarios deliver like the very best fiction and make for a titillating reading experience unlike any other.

'It is absolutely brilliant, I think every woman should read it' PANDORA SYKES, THE HIGH LOW 'My wish is that every white woman who calls herself a feminist will read this book in a state of hushed and humble respect ... Essential reading' ELIZABETH GILBERT All too often the focus of mainstream feminism is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. Meeting basic needs is a feminist issue. Food insecurity, the living wage and access to education are feminist issues. The fight against racism, ableism and transmisogyny are all feminist issues. White feminists often fail to see how race, class, sexual orientation and disability intersect with gender. How can feminists stand in solidarity as a movement when there is a distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? Insightful, incendiary and ultimately hopeful, Hood Feminism is both an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux and also clear-eyed assessment of how to save it.

This book considers issues of social and ecological significance through a masculinities lens. Earth - our home for aeons - is reeling. The atmosphere is heating up, causing reefs to bleach, fisheries to collapse, regions to flood and dry, vast tracts to burn, the polar ice caps to melt, ancient glaciers to retreat, biodiversity to decline exacerbated by the sixth great extinction, and more. Meanwhile, social and economic disparities are widening. Pandemics are cauterising glocal communities and altering our social mores. Nationalism is feeding divisiveness and hate, especially through men's violence. Politically extreme individuals and groups are exalting freedom while scapegoating the marginalised. Such are the symptoms of an emerging (m)Anthropocene. This anthology contends with these alarming trends, pointing our attention towards their gendered origins. Building on our monograph Ecological Masculinities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Guidance (2018), this collection of essays is framed as a dinner party conversation grouped into six discursive themes. Their views reflect a growing community of practice, whose combined efforts capture the most recent perspectives on masculine ecologisation. Together, they aim to help create a more caring world for all, moving the ecological masculinities conversation forward as it becomes an established, international, and pluralised field of study.

It is an often ignored but fundamental fact that in the Ottoman world as in most empires, there were 'first-class' and 'second class' subjects. Among the townspeople, peasants and nomads subject to the sultans, who might be Muslims or non-Muslims, adult Muslim males were first-class subjects and all others, including Muslim boys and women, were of the second class. As for the female members of the elite, while less privileged than the males, in some respects their life chances might be better than those of ordinary women. Even so, they shared the risks of pregnancy, childbirth and epidemic diseases with townswomen of the subject class and to a certain extent, with village women as well. Women also made up a sizeable share of the enslaved, belonging to the sultans, to elite figures but often to members of the subject population as well. Thus, the study of Ottoman women is indispensable for understanding Ottoman society in general. In this book, the experiences of women from a diverse range of class, religious, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds are woven into the social history of the Ottoman Empire, from the early-modern period to its dissolution in 1922. Its thematic chapters first introduce readers to the key sources for information about women's lives in the Ottoman Empire (qadi registers, petitions, fetvas, travelogues authored by women). The first section of the book then recounts urban, non-elite women's experiences at the courts, family life, and as slaves. Paying attention to the geographic diversity of the Ottoman Empire, this section also considers the social history of women in the Arab provinces of Baghdad, Cairo and Aleppo. The second section charts the social history of elite women, including that of women in the Palace system, writers and musicians and the history of women's education. The final section narrates the history of women at the end of the empire, during the Great War and Civil War. The first introductory social history of women in the Ottoman Empire, Women in the Ottoman Empire will be essential reading for scholars and students of Ottoman history and the history of women in the Middle East.

Twenty-three countries currently allow women to serve in front-line combat positions and others with a high likelihood of direct enemy contact. This book examines how these decisions did or did not evolve in 47 countries. This timely and fascinating book explores how different countries have determined to allow women in the military to take on combat roles-whether out of a need for personnel, a desire for the military to reflect the values of the society, or the opinion that women improve military effectiveness-or, in contrast, have disallowed such a move on behalf of the state. In addition, many countries have insurgent or dissident factions, in that have led armed resistance to state authority in which women have been present, requiring national militaries and peacekeepers to engage them, incorporate them, or disarm and deradicalize them. This country-by country analysis of the role of women in conflicts includes insightful essays on such countries as Afghanistan, China, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Russia, and the United States. Each essay provides important background information to help readers to understand the cultural and political contexts in which women have been integrated into their countries' militaries, have engaged in combat during the course of conflict, and have come to positions of political power that affect military decisions. Delineates the ways in which women are incorporated into national militaries in both the United States and countries around the world Offers in each entry the distinct national context in which countries have decided to employ women in warfare Reveals how different nations choose to include or exclude women from the military, providing key insight into each nation's values and priorities Examines how governments treat women serving in combat: battlefield experience can "earn" a woman citizenship or be cause for shunning her, depending on the state

The literature on Australian Aborigines is vast, but much of it is strangely silent about the experiences and activities of women. This collection of stories of the eventful lives and strong characters of a number of Aboriginal women offers a more intimate and personal view. Their lives span a century of history in fifteen communities scattered from Cape York Peninsula, Arnhem Land and East Kimberley to the Western Desert, the Centre, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. One of these stories is an autobiography and each of the others contains transcriptions or translations of a woman's own reminiscences, with additional details given by the author. Some women recall the first time they saw a European in their land, others tell how Europeans had influenced their communities generations before they were born. While the authors lived in Aboriginal communities in order to study some particular aspect of the society, the women they describe here became their close friends, companions and helpers, and this book is a record of friendships formed against differences of background, experiences and age. Allegiance to family and familiar territory shapes the personal histories of Aborigines in ways scarcely appreciated by people reared in nuclear family households in cities. The strength of family and community ties can be better understood through reading about the women who contribute so much to the maintenance of these communities.