Being a parent is a lifetime job. No one knows that more than Eddie Marie Durham, mother of three adult sons. In her guidebook filled with practical parenting advice, Durham shares not only her personal experiences but also poetry, scripture, and quotes in order to help parents find their way down what can be a very challenging road while raising children in today's world. Durham, a retired elementary school teacher, has always relied on God's guidance and her family values to carry her through difficult times while parenting her children. Guided by these principles, Durham leads others chronologically through her experiences, both good and bad, while offering wisdom and encouragement to other parents that will help them respect one another, talk to children about expectations and consequences, carry out discipline, allow children to grow and mature, be active with children in all facets of life, and lean on their faith for strength. While Being a Parent shares time-tested advice from a blessed mother that will help other parents attain the greatest reward in life: mentoring a child into a productive, loving adult.

This groundbreaking book challenges the medicalized approach to women's experiences including menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause and suggests that there are better ways for women to cope with real issues they may face. Before any woman diets, douches, botoxes, reduces, reconstructs, or fills a prescription for antidepressants, statins, hormones, menstrual suppressants, or diet pills, she should read this book. Contesting common medical practice, the book addresses the many aspects of women's lives that have been targeted as "deficient" in order to support the billion-dollar profits of the medical-pharmacological industry and suggests alternatives to these "remedies." The contributors-psychologists, sociologists, and health experts-are also gender experts and feminist scholars who recognize the ways in which gender is an important aspect of the human experience. In this eye-opening work, they challenge the marketing and "science" that increasingly render women's bodies and experiences as a series of symptoms, diseases, and dysfunctions that require treatment by medical professionals who prescribe pharmaceutical and surgical interventions. Each article in the book addresses the marketing of a specific "condition" that has been constructed in a way that convinces a woman that her body is inadequate or her experience and behavior are not good enough. Among the topics addressed are menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, post-partum adjustment, sexual desire, weight, body dissatisfaction, moodiness, depression, grief, and anxiety. Addresses popular topics including the "thin ideal," the health realities of weight, cosmetic surgery, birth as a medical emergency, sexual desire and menopause, depression, and mourning Critiques the "science" and marketing that sees all women's complaints as symptoms, diseases, and dysfunctions requiring medical treatment Explains how psychological and social factors affect women's health and argues for a more well-founded approach such as using talk therapy first Explains why events like menopause, sexual desire, body dissatisfaction, and grief are examples of issues often not best treated with drugs, but with psychotherapy for permanent resolution Will appeal to all adult women who might, or do, question current medical approaches and media promises

Surviving HIV/AIDS in the Inner City explores the survival strategies of poor, HIV-positive Puerto Rican women by asking four key questions: Given their limited resources, how did they manage an illness as serious as HIV/AIDS? Did they look for alternatives to conventional medical treatment? Did the challenges they faced deprive them of self-determination, or could they help themselves and each other? What can we learn from these resourceful women? Based on her work with minority women living in Newark, New Jersey, Sabrina Marie Chase illuminates the hidden traps and land mines burdening our current health care system as a whole. For the women she studied, alliances with doctors, nurses, and social workers could literally mean the difference between life and death. By applying the theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to the day-to-day experiences of HIV-positive Latinas, Chase explains why some struggled and even died while others flourished and thrived under difficult conditions. These gripping, true-life stories advocate for those living with chronic illness who depend on the health care "safety net." Through her exploration of life and death among Newark's resourceful women, Chase provides the groundwork for inciting positive change in the U.S. health care system.

As the first woman, Eve was also the first woman who had to deal with the mistakes of her past. In a dramatic reinterpretation of Eve’s story in Genesis, Sarah Jakes Roberts shows how the slow seduction of our minds can knock us out of our orbit. Pastor Sarah guides women in identifying the dragons that have taken them down, then encourages readers to get into a new orbit as she reminds them “enmity” is a two-way street.

Everyone faces trials, and everyone will mess up. But past failures should not be the focus. A person’s purpose in life does not change; it evolves. In the same way, someone should not be attached to who she was but to who she can become.

Chapters include:

• Identify Your Weakness
• Silence Is Golden
• Touch but Don’t Eat
• Naked Is the New Black
• You’re Gonna Mess Up
• Rest in Hope

Shortly after Alysa Cummings was diagnosed with breast cancer, she sat down at her laptop computer and began keeping a journal. Over the two years of her cancer treatment, Alysa continued writing as she moved through the healthcare delivery system:

"I fantasized that I could somehow use my computer to craft a story with an upbeat next chapter or fairy tale happily-ever-after ending. Looking back, that's the only explanation I can come up with, why I felt so compelled to create a record of my day-to-day experiences as a cancer patient. The one thing I could control were these words that crowded each other as they quickly appeared on my computer screen; these stories that flowed through my fingertips in such a manic rush; these traumatic adventures that happened to me in a place I began to call CancerLand.

CancerLand: it's this parallel universe, I swear, separate and apart from the rest of life as I once knew it. How did I end up in this wacky Bizarro World filled with freaky language and even stranger rituals? "

Gradually her daily journal entries became vignettes and poems that were published on the OncoLink website. Greetings from CancerLand, a collection of Alysa's writing from 2002-2012, charts one breast cancer survivor's journey as she discovers the power of writing to move her recovery forward.

Jacob Abbott's account of Mary Queen of Scots life and untimely death is complete with original illustrations of Mary herself and her various residences. Abbott's history is both embracing and superb as an introduction to one of the most divisive and controversial figures of the Tudor era. Mary had a complex role in the politics of the day, and had potential as a rival to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The book begins by examining Mary's childhood years, and her French education. The agreement - The Treaty of Greenwich - which would pair the young Mary to Edward, the son of Henry VIII, is detailed, as are hopes that the union would cement relations between the English and the Scots. Clever, capable and charming, Mary Queen of Scots was initially seen as a promising monarch. However the rules of accession of the time made her very existence problematic for Queen Elizabeth I. This problem would underline the remainder of Mary's life, her nature as a potential threat made eternal by her very blood.

Women who encounter the criminal justice system are far more likely to have experienced domestic or sexual abuse than the wider female population. Despite widespread recognition of the link between a woman's victimisation and her involvement in crime, the relationship between the two is still not well understood. Gendered Justice? illustrates how a woman's involvement in crime can manifest as a by-product of her attempts to cope with, survive, or escape domestic abuse. Referencing the first UK-based research of its kind, Roberts explores how a woman's involvement in crime can be explained or contextualised by her experience of domestic abuse. Drawing on the experiences of women serving community-based sentences, all of whom had been subjected to domestic abuse, the author analyses a variety of situations which illustrate how women can become involved in crime when their abuse perpetrator is not present, after the abusive relationship has ended or even years after the abuse has ceased, yet their actions can still be attributed to their victimisation. She also demonstrates how perpetrators of abuse use women's involvement in the criminal justice system as a further weapon of abuse. Built upon the foundations of women's real-life experiences, which have real-world implications, Gendered Justice? introduces a range of recommendations and implications for both policy and practice in the field of criminal justice.

Reading Contemporary African American Literature focuses on the subject of contemporary African American popular fiction by women. Bragg's study addresses why such work should be the subject of scholarly examination, describes the events and attitudes which account for the critical neglect of this body of work, and models a critical approach to such narratives that demonstrates the distinctive ways in which this literature captures the complexities of post-civil rights era black experiences. In making her arguments regarding the value of popular writing, Bragg argues that black women's popular fiction foregrounds gender in ways that are frequently missing from other modes of narrative production. They exhibit a responsiveness and timeliness to the shifting social terrain which is reflected in the rapidly shifting styles and themes which characterize popular fiction. In doing so, they extend the historical function of African American literature by continuing to engage the black body as a symbol of political meaning in the social context of the United States. In popular literature Beauty Bragg locates a space from which black women engage a variety of public discourses.

Every year 5% of all breast cancer diagnosis occur in women under the age of forty. They do not have the time to be sick, stop their lives or even take the time to care for themselves. This book is for them-the women outside the common statistics, like me. Someone who has been rocked by a scary diagnosis but continues to rock-on. Someone who needs to laugh in the face of fear. It is scary-but hey, if I can get through it, anyone can. The one thing I know for sure, laughter heals. I realized long ago, before cancer, that if I didn t laugh, I d cry. I choose to laugh. I hope you do too.

Lindsey Salloway presented her husband, Tosh, with a wonderful gift for their fifth anniversary: two pink lines.. Finally pregnant after months of trying, Lindsey and Tosh were thrilled. The planning started that night-what they would name the baby, how they would decorate the nursery, and when the baby's due date would be. Lindsey and Tosh, like every other pregnant couple, look forward to kissing their tiny baby's face and counting fingers and toes. For Lindsey and Tosh, however, that dream would not come true.

In her poignant memoir, Lindsey shares the story of her journey through three miscarriages in a span of ten months - from the ecstatic moments after she learned she was first pregnant to the heartbreaking instant when she realized she had lost each baby. As she recalls each experience, Lindsey provides a realistic look into the darkness of the pain and suffering as well as the light of hope and healing as she faced the complicated emotions that accompany miscarriage.

"Our Beautiful Babies Dear" shares one woman's story of loss, endurance, and hope as she endures the pain of miscarriage and finds strength in survival.

Reveals the troubling intimacy between Black women and the making of US global power The year 1968 marked both the height of the worldwide Black liberation struggle and a turning point for the global reach of American power, which was built on the counterinsurgency honed on Black and other oppressed populations at home. The next five decades saw the consolidation of the culture of the American empire through what Erica R. Edwards calls the "imperial grammars of blackness." This is a story of state power at its most devious and most absurd, and, at the same time, a literary history of Black feminist radicalism at its most trenchant. Edwards reveals how the long war on terror, beginning with the late-Cold War campaign against organizations like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Liberation Army, has relied on the labor and the fantasies of Black women to justify the imperial spread of capitalism. Black feminist writers not only understood that this would demand a shift in racial gendered power, but crafted ways of surviving it. The Other Side of Terror offers an interdisciplinary Black feminist analysis of militarism, security, policing, diversity, representation, intersectionality, and resistance, while discussing a wide array of literary and cultural texts, from the unpublished work of Black radical feminist June Jordan to the memoirs of Condoleezza Rice to the television series Scandal. With clear, moving prose, Edwards chronicles Black feminist organizing and writing on "the other side of terror", which tracked changes in racial power, transformed African American literature and Black studies, and predicted the crises of our current era with unsettling accuracy.