For the first two years of her life she feels love, but suddenly her protector is gone She's too young to even know her Mother is gone. From the innocence of childhood, to the growing sickness and abuse in her life, she is confused and full of fear

How will she ever make it when there is no time to wonder-only time to survive?
She wants to be the "good little girl," and please her family; she wants to be loved
She wants to be right with God

The confusion, pain, and abuse are unbearable The family sickness is more than one can comprehend

What she is asked to do is impossible-for the sake of her siblings-she MUST do it, but is she strong enough?

Walk through the journey with her from her earthly father to her heavenly Father.

"You are about to embark on a journey that will take you places you've never been before and you will learn much about things you don't even know exist." The words flowed out of Patricia Beirne's hand and onto the paper in front of her. Subsequent sessions of automatic writing encouraged her and gave suggestions. "I never felt alone again," she says about the beginning of her extraordinary voyage of discovery.

To the outside world, Patricia seemed to have it all: an athletic, successful husband, two beautiful daughters, and a home in the San Diego area. Raised with rigid ideas about what women should be, she worked to be the perfect wife, hostess, mother, and homemaker. But as the years went by, Patricia could no longer ignore the growing restlessness and unsettling dreams stirring inside her. She knew she was being called to discover the meaning of her life ... but what was it?

Within a five-year period, both daughters were in serious car accidents, one struggled with drug use, and the other fought depression and a mysterious illness that took her to the hospital-all while Patricia's marriage deteriorated. It was then that she discovered she had a gift. She could trust the divine, loving Voice that directed her, and she could use her gift to help her daughters as well as others. Her story is a testament to what can happen when we listen, trust, and open ourselves to new ways of hearing and healing.

A critical analysis of white, working class North Americans' motivations and experiences when traveling to Central Europe for donor egg IVF Each year, more and more Americans travel out of the country seeking low cost medical treatments abroad, including fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF). As the lower middle classes of the United States have been priced out of an expensive privatized "baby business," the Czech Republic has emerged as a central hub of fertility tourism, offering a plentitude of blonde-haired, blue-eyed egg donors at a fraction of the price. Fertility Holidays presents a critical analysis of white, working class North Americans' motivations and experiences when traveling to Central Europe for donor egg IVF. Within this diaspora, patients become consumers, urged on by the representation of a white Europe and an empathetic health care system, which seems nonexistent at home. As the volume traces these American fertility journeys halfway around the world, it uncovers layers of contradiction embedded in global reproductive medicine. Speier reveals the extent to which reproductive travel heightens the hope ingrained in reproductive technologies, especially when the procedures are framed as "holidays." The pitch of combining a vacation with their treatment promises couples a stress-free IVF cycle; yet, in truth, they may become tangled in fraught situations as they endure an emotionally wrought cycle of IVF in a strange place. Offering an intimate, first-hand account of North Americans' journeys to the Czech Republic for IVF, Fertility Holidays exposes reproductive travel as a form of consumption which is motivated by complex layers of desire for white babies, a European vacation, better health care, and technological success.

In Elasticity in Domesticity: White women in Rhodesian Zimbabwe, 1890-1979 Ushehwedu Kufakurinani examines the colonial experiences of white women in what was later called Rhodesia. He demonstrates the extent to which the state and society appropriated white women's labour power and the workings of the domestic ideology in shaping white women's experiences. The author also discusses how and to what extent white women appropriated and deployed the domestic ideology. Institutional as well as personal archives were consulted which include official correspondence, diaries, personal letters, newsletters, magazines, commissions of inquiry, among other sources.

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"The result of Miller's information lode is aa]sometimes uplifting book. It is possible for government and private-sector programs to alleviate the violence against females, Miller believes--but not if those in charge lack the will and refuse to allocate the resources."
--"St. Louis Post Dispatch"

aMiller gives us a detailed examination of the violence experienced by Black inner city girls whose victimization is based on multiple dimensions of their lives: because they are Black, because they live in extremely disadvantaged neighborhoods, and because they are women. Milleras careful, rich, detailed field work documents and analyzes the complex realities of these young womenas lives that set the context for the struggles they routinely contend with. The voices of these young people have been ignored for too long. Getting Played has given them an opportunity to be heard that is long overdue.a
--Robert Crutchfield, University of Washington

aGetting Played shows powerfully how gender, class, and race inequality expose girls in disadvantaged urban communities to violent and sexual victimization, both in neighborhoods and in schools. Miller expertly analyzes how extreme social and economic disadvantage combine with pervasive normative codes to create a context in which girls face high risks of victimization at the hands of boys and men. Getting Played is masterful.a
--Karen Heimer, co-editor of "Gender and Crime: Patterns in Victimization and Offending"

aBy giving us a better understanding of how the neighborhoods and the peer culture of poor African American youth increase the risk of agendered victimization, a GettingPlayed challenges both academics and policymakers to face the role of structured discrimination in the perpetuation of violence toward women.a
--Candace Kruttschnitt, co-author of "Marking Time in the Golden State: Womenas Imprisonment in California"

aThis is a significant and timely book. Miller has taken on a vitally important, but understudied, topic--violence against young Black girls in economically depressed urban settings.a
--Dana M. Britton, author of "At Work in the Iron Cage: The Prison as Gendered Organization"

aMiller grabs readers' attention with the stark reality of the widespread occurrence of violent victimization among the girls she studies.a
--From the Foreword by Ruth D. Peterson, Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, The Ohio State University

Much has been written about the challenges that face urban African American young men, but less is said about the harsh realities for African American young women in disadvantaged communities. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, and even gang rape are not uncommon experiences. In Getting Played, sociologist Jody Miller presents a compelling picture of this dire social problem and explores how inextricably, and tragically, linked violence is to their daily lives in poor urban neighborhoods.

Drawing from richly textured interviews with adolescent girls and boys, Miller brings a keen eye to the troubling realities of a world infused with danger and gender-based violence. These girls are isolated, ignored, and often victimized by those considered family and friends. Community institutions such as the police and schools that are meant to protect them often turn a blind eye, leaving girls to fend for themselves. Miller draws a vivid picture of the race and gender inequalities that harm these communities--and how these result in deeply and dangerously engrained beliefs about gender that teach youths to see such violence--rather than the result of broader social inequalities--as deserved due to individual girlsa flawed characters, i.e., ashe deserved it.a

Through Milleras careful analysis of these engaging, often unsettling stories, Getting Played shows us not only how these young women are victimized, but how, despite vastly inadequate social support and opportunities, they struggle to navigate this dangerous terrain.

The Gender Revolution and New Sexual Health: Celebrating Unlimited Diversity of the Human Sexuality Hypercube deconstructs the gender binary and introduces students to the mathematics of unlimited human sexual diversity. The book bridges academic sexual science and real-world application of knowledge to improve personal satisfaction. It also prepares future healthcare providers, as well as those in other helping professions, to assist clients in a way that helps them increase their own personal comfort, confidence, and knowledge related to gender and sexual health. The text provides students with practical approaches to overcome the various challenges individuals face related to gender and sexuality. The chapters explore topics including sexual literacy, gender dysphoria, the history of sex education, health, and attitudes in the United States, sexual identity and orientation, the health benefits of sexual expression, gender fluidity, and more. The text features questionnaires that can be used to measure personal satisfaction, success stories from the field, and a glossary to assist with new terms and concepts. The Gender Revolution and New Sexual Health is an excellent resource for courses in sexual health, women's health, gender studies, psychology, psychiatry, nursing, counseling, and sociology.

This book describes and analyses the different roles women have played in the Islamic world, past and present. Starting with Sharia regulations and their applications in societies throughout history, it addresses the obstacles and opportunities women have faced, and still face, in various Islamic societies. The last chapter addresses women's participation in the Arab Spring and their hopes and disappointments. The result is a vivid portrait of the different worlds of women in Islam, encompassing religion and law, sexuality and love, literature and the arts, law and professional life, and politics and power.

This book describes southern womanhood and liberal northern education.From the end of Reconstruction and into the New South era, more than one thousand white southern women attended one of the Seven Sister colleges: Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Barnard. Joan Marie Johnson looks at how such educations - in the North, at some of the country's best schools - influenced southern women to challenge their traditional gender roles and become active in woman suffrage and other social reforms of the Progressive Era South.Attending one of the Seven Sister colleges, Johnson argues, could transform a southern woman indoctrinated in notions of domesticity and dependence into someone with newfound confidence and leadership skills. Many southern students at northern schools imported the values they imbibed at college, returning home to found schools of their own, women's clubs, and woman suffrage associations. At the same time, during college and after graduation, southern women maintained a complicated relationship to home, nurturing their regional identity and remaining loyal to the Confederacy.Johnson explores why students sought a classical, liberal arts education, how they prepared for entrance examinations, and how they felt as southerners on northern campuses. She draws on personal writings, information gleaned from college publications and records, and data on the women's decisions about marriage, work, children, and other life-altering concerns.In their time, the women studied in this book would eventually make up a disproportionately high percentage of the elite southern female leadership. This collective biography highlights their important role in forging new roles for women, especially in social reform, education, and suffrage.

Each morning we establish an image and an identity for ourselves through the simple act of getting dressed. Why Women Wear What they Wear presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. The book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions-observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body, and identity. Woodward pieces together what women actually think about clothing, dress and the body in a world where popular media and culture presents an increasingly extreme and distorted view of femininity and the ideal body. Immediately accessible to all those who have stood in front of a mirror and wondered 'does my bum look big in this?', 'is this skirt really me?' or 'does this jacket match?', Why Women Wear What they Wear provides students of anthropology and fashion with a fresh perspective on the social issues and constraints we are all consciously or unconsciously negotiating when we get dressed.