When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs and symbols, a review quiz, and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing.

J. McHenry Jones's "Hearts of Gold" is a gripping tale of post-Civil War battles against racism and systemic injustice. Originally published in 1896, this novel reveals an African American community of individuals dedicated to education, journalism, fraternal organizations, and tireless work serving the needs of those abandoned by the political process of the white world. Jones challenges conventional wisdom by addressing a range of subjects--from interracial relationships to forced labor in coal mines--that virtually no other novelist of the time was willing to approach. With the addition of an introduction and appendix, this new edition reveals the difficult foundations upon which African Americans built a platform to address injustice; generate opportunities; and play a prominent role in American social, economic, and political life.

Contributions by Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Kathleen Kellett, Andrew McInnes, Joyce McPherson, Rebecca Mills, Cristina Rivera, Wendy Rountree, Danielle Russell, Anah-Jayne Samuelson, Sonya Sawyer Fritz, Andrew Trevarrow, and Richardine Woodall Home. School. Nature. The spaces children occupy, both physically and imaginatively, are never neutral. Instead, they carry social, cultural, and political histories that impose-or attempt to impose-behavioral expectations. Moreover, the spaces identified with childhood reflect and reveal adult expectations of where children "belong." The essays in Containing Childhood: Space and Identity in Children's Literature explore the multifaceted and dynamic nature of space, as well as the relationship between space and identity in children's literature. Contributors to the volume address such questions as: What is the nature of that relationship? What happens to the spaces associated with childhood over time? How do children conceptualize and lay claim to their own spaces? The book features essays on popular and lesser-known children's fiction from North America and Great Britain, including works like The Hate U Give, His Dark Materials, The Giver quartet, and Shadowshaper. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach in their analysis, contributors draw upon varied scholarly areas such as philosophy, race, class, and gender studies, among others. Without reducing the issues to any singular theory or perspective, each piece provides insight into specific treatments of space in specific periods of time, thereby affording scholars a greater appreciation of the diverse spatial patterns in children's literature.

Read an interview with Norbert Bachleitner. In this 200th volume of Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft the editors Norbert Bachleitner, Achim H. Hoelter and John A. McCarthy 'take stock' of the discipline. It focuses on recurrent questions in the field of Comparative Literature: What is literature? What is meant by 'comparative'? Or by 'world'? What constitute 'transgressions' or 'refractions'? What, ultimately, does being at home in the world imply? When we combine the answers to these individual questions, we might ultimately reach an intriguing proposition: Comparative Literature contributes to a sense of being at home in a world that is heterogeneous and fractured, rather than affirming a monolithic canon marked by territory and homogeneity. The volume unites essays on world literature, literature in the context of the history of ideas, comparative women and gender studies, aesthetics and textual analysis, and literary translation and tradition.

During the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, an activist observed, "Forced removal isn't just in the history books." Sabine N. Meyer concurs, noting the prominence of Indian Removal, the nineteenth-century policy of expelling Native peoples from their land, in Native American aesthetic and political praxis across the centuries. Removal has functioned both as a specific set of historical events and a synecdoche for settler colonial dispossession of Indigenous communities across hemispheres and generations. It has generated a plethora of Native American writings that negotiate forms of belonging-the identities of Native collectives, their proprietary relationships, and their most intimate relations among one another. By analyzing these writings in connection with domestic settler colonial, international, and tribal law, Meyer reveals their coherence as a distinct genre of Native literature that has played a significant role in negotiating Indigenous identity. Critically engaging with Native Removal writings across the centuries, Meyer's work shows how these texts need to be viewed as articulations of Native identity that respond to immediate political concerns and that take up the question of how Native peoples can define and assert their own social, cultural, and legal-political forms of living, being, and belonging within the settler colonial order. Placing novels in conversation with nonfiction writings, Native Removal Writing ranges from texts produced in response to the legal and political struggle over Cherokee Removal in the late 1820s and 1830s, to works written by African-Native writers dealing with the freedmen disenrollment crisis, to contemporary speculative fiction that links the appropriation of Native intangible property (culture) with the earlier dispossession of their real property (land). In close, contextualized readings of John Rollin Ridge, John Milton Oskison, Robert Conley, Diane Glancy, Sharon Ewell Foster, Zelda Lockhart, and Gerald Vizenor, as well as politicians and scholars such as John Ross, Elias Boudinot, and Rachel Caroline Eaton, Meyer identifies the links these writers create between historical past, narrative present, and political future. Native Removal Writing thus testifies to both the ongoing power of Native Removal writing and its significance as resistance.

This volume discusses Children's Literature through the ages from fairy tales and early didactic literature through to the classics of the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries and the modern day.

Lexicon Urthus is an alphabetical dictionary for the complete Urth Cycle by Gene Wolfe: The Shadow of the Torturer; The Claw of the Conciliator; The Sword of the Lictor; The Citadel of the Autarch; the sequel Urth of the New Sun; the novella Empires of Foliage and Flower; the short stories "The Cat," "The Map," and "The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun"; and Gene Wolfe's own commentaries in The Castle of the Otter. The first edition was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. This second edition includes over 1,200 entries. When the first edition was published, Science Fiction Age said: "Lexicon Urthus makes a perfect gift for any fan of [Wolfe's] work, and from the way his words sell, it appears that there are many deserving readers out there waiting." Gary K. Wolfe, in Locus, said: "A convenient and well researched glossary of names and terms. . . . It provides enough of a gloss on the novels that it almost evokes Wolfe's distant future all by itself. . . . It can provide both a useful reference and a good deal of fun." Donald Keller said, in the New York Review of Science Fiction: "A fruitful product of obsession, this is a thorough . . . dictionary of the Urth Cycle. . . . Andre-Driussi's research has been exhaustive, and he has discovered many fascinating things . . . [it is] head-spinning to confront a myriad of small and large details, some merely interesting, others jawdropping."

Provide your mystery fans with background information on their favorite writers and series characters, and use this as a guide for adding contemporary titles to your collections. This book examines 100 of today's top mystery novels and mystery authors hailing from countries such as the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, South Africa, and Australia. Equally valuable to students writing research papers, readers craving new authors or more information about their favorite authors, and teachers seeking specific types of fiction to support curricula, 100 Most Popular Contemporary Mystery Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies provides revealing information about today's best mysteries and authors-without any "spoilers." Each of the accomplished writers included in this guide has established a broad audience and is recognized for work that is imaginative and innovative. The rising stars of 21st century mystery will also be included, as will authors who have won the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. Provides interesting and informative profiles of 100 popular, contemporary mystery and crime writers as well as overviews of their series characters Contains over 60 author photographs A bibliography lists information on each author's works as well as supporting source materials for the profiles

Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard, two sister-writers born and raised in Jamaica, re-create imagined and lived homelands in their literature by commemorating the history, culture, and religion of the Caribbean. Velma Pollard was born in St. Catherine, Jamaica. By the time she was three, her parents had moved to Woodside, St. Mary, in northeast Jamaica, where her sister, Erna, was born. Even though they both travel widely and often, the sisters both still live in Jamaica. The sisters write about their homeland as a series of memories and stories in their many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They center on their home village of Woodside in St. Mary Parish, Jamaica, occasionally moving the settings of their fiction and poetry to other regions of Jamaica and various Caribbean islands, as well as other parts of the diaspora in the United States, Canada, and England. The role of women in the patriarchal society of Jamaica and much of the Caribbean is also a subject of the sisters' writing. Growing up in what Brodber calls the kumbla, the protective but restrictive environment of many women in the Anglo-Caribbean, is an important theme in their fiction. In her fiction, Pollard discusses the gender gaps in employment and the demands of marriage and the special contributions of women to family and community. Many scholars have also explored the significance of spirit in Brodber's work, including the topics of "spirit theft," "spirit possession," and spirits existing through time, from Africa to the present. Brodber's narratives also show communication between the living and the dead, from Jane and Louisa (1980) to Nothing's Mat (2014). Yet, few scholars have examined Brodber's work on par with her sister's writing. Drawing upon interviews with the authors, this is the first book to give Brodber and Pollard their due and study the sisters' important contributions.

What distinguishes realism from 'classic bourgeois' realism and magic realism? How does a Shakespearean sonnet differ from a Spenserian or a Petrarchan sonnet? Who were the Cambridge Critics, the Graveyard Poets and the Tribe of Ben? The answers to these and many other literary questions are provided in this expanded and updated edition of Martin Gray's much-acclaimed Dictionary. Wide in scope, it explains concepts and topics thatn range from the familiar to the comparativley esoteric and that cover such fields as literary movements (Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Imagism), genres and sub-genres (tragedy, elegy, roman a these), technical language (anapaest, synecdoche, hamartia), and schools of literary theory (structuralism, deconstructionism, feminist criticism). The result is a clear, lively and imformative guide through the bewildering maze of literary terminology, and one that will enhance the reader's enjoyment of literary studies.

"This dictionary brings together in one volume information on Byron's work, life and times. Areas covered include his poetry and prose; authors and works known to him; genres, forms, styles; his life, biographers and incarnations on stage and screen; manuscripts and editions; historical, social and cultural contexts; and his influence on other art"--Provided by publisher.

Whether it's a novel, memoir, diary, poem, or drama, a common thread runs through the literature of the Nazi Holocaust--a motif of personal testimony to the dearness of humanity. With that perspective the expert authors of Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature undertake profiling 128 of the most influential first generation authors who either survived, perished, or were closely connected to the Holocaust. Arranged alphabetically by author, all of the entries answer the same basic questions about the author and his or her work: What is the nature of the author's literary response to the Holocaust? What is his or her place in Holocaust literature? What does the author's work contribute to an understanding of the Holocaust? What is distinctive about the author's work? What are some key moments in the author's life? What issues does the author's work pose for the reader? To address these questions, the entries are generally organized into three primary divisions: (1) an opening section on why the author's work has a significant or distinctive place in Holocaust literature, (2) a second section containing information on the author's biography, and (3) a critical examination of the highlights of the author's work. In most cases, the third section is the longest, since the focus of the encyclopedia is the literature, not the author.

The Encyclopedia is intended for all students and teachers of the Holocaust, regardless of their levels of learning. Avenues for further research are incorporated at the conclusion of each entry and in a comprehensive bibliography of primary works of Holocaust literature and a second bibliography of critical studies of Holocaust literature.

While previous collections of Emerson essays have tended to be a sort of 'stock-taking' or 'retrospective' look at Emerson scholarship, the present collection follows a more 'prospective' trajectory for Emerson studies based on the recent increase in global perspectives in nearly all fields of humanistic studies. The present collection is divided into four main sections: "Emerson, Europe, and Beyond;" "Emerson and Science;" "Emerson Thinking;" "and "Emerson and Activism." The first category emphasizes the global perspective in Emerson's literary and cultural relations, followed closely by two other "transnational" categories - Emerson's relations in the international arenas of science and philosophy - and concluding with the final category, which addresses the end purpose of Emerson's project: fully realized human beings whose actions, directly and indirectly, help to create a society in which individuals are free to develop their capacities fully. Transnational and global perspectives are becoming more recognized and more commonplace in the academy and the world at large. Evidence for such developing perspectives is not hard to find: national and international conferences, new books, and the increasing university courses and programs in World Literature, all reflect a move toward viewing Emerson and literature in general from broader, more inclusive perspectives. The first four categories that follow - "Emerson, Europe, and Beyond" - gives us seven perspectives on Emerson's international influence, ranging from Stephen L. Tanner's gem-like essay on English Traits, to Steve Adisasmito-Smith's trail-blazing Hindu scholarship, to Jan Stievermann's explication of Emerson's vision of "an American World Literature." In the "Emerson and Science" section, four essays range from Michael P. Branch's examination of Emerson's early lectures on natural science, to Branka Arsic's explorations of science from a broad Emersonian view, to David M. Robinson's and Laura Walls' very specific essays on Emerson's encounters with the cutting-edge science of his mature period. In "Emerson Thinking," five scholars examine Emerson's broad thought, which gives evidence of philosophical influence from all times and places through suck topics as human subjectivity and its expression, while George J. Stack and Mary DiMaria examine Emerson's philosophical similarities to and disparities from the French foundational thinkers of the Postmodern theory revolution in literary studies. Finally, in the "Emerson and Activism" section, David S. Reynolds, Len Gougeon, and T. Gregory Garvey examine Emersonian and Transcendental influences on the abolition movement, and Eduardo Cadava expands activism to include more recent "economic oppression and colonialist and racist exclusions," which ultimately can be seen as part of a worldwide post-colonial literary movement and an awareness of the dark side of globalism. All of these essays to a greater or lesser degree are concerned with influences of literature and thought that are cycled through the individual, the culture, and the global community.

Buz Donahoo is a larger than life character. From boyhood Miami to the beaches of exotic islands, the high mountain peaks of the Andes and Himalayas to the jungles of the Amazon, his life is painted upon a broad canvas. From a promising career as an architect to starting his own adventure tour company and guiding people to remote corners of the earth, Buz traces the contours of his life in A Ticket, A Pack and A Chart. Within the pages of this book we learn of the unique places he has traveled to and the equally unique people who have traveled there with him. While Buz Donahoo can paint in broad strokes with his words, he is at his best filling in the fine detail of the lives of the people he meets and the places he visits. He reminds us that it is often the little things we encounter in life and travel that leave a lasting impression. Whether studying at Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, serving as a lieutenant in Watts during the 1965 riots, dining on the small, sun-drenched patio of an isolated restaurant in the Greek Isles, or scaling the heights of Aconcagua, South America's highest peak, we feel as though we're right there beside Buz, taking in each moment and each detail with him. Living according to his own set of rules, Buz's view of the world is refreshing and entertaining. The contents of his book truly capture episodes from the life of a man who lives a borderless life. Once you have traveled with him through these pages, you may find yourself yearning to travel to some far-flung, exotic location for an adventure of your own.

Almost all of us know French literature, even if we don t know French, because it is probably the second largest and certainly the most translated into English. And, even if we don t read, we would have seen film and television versions (think Count of Monte-Cristo) and even a musical rendition (Les Mis). So this is a particularly interesting volume in the literature series, since it covers French literature from the earliest times to the present. It is also a particularly rich literature, espousing ever genre from poetry, to novel, to biography, to drama, and adopting every style, including realism and surrealism, and expressing the views of all classes and political stands, with recently strong feminist and gay strains. Obviously, the core dictionary section includes among its panoply of often substantial and detailed entries, hundreds of authors, dozens of significant works, the various styles mentioned above and many others, events that have impacted literature such as the Dreyfus Affair and the Algerian War, and literary prizes. The chronology manages to cover about 1,200 years of literary output. And the introduction sets it all out neatly from one historical and literary period to the next. The bibliography, broken down by period and author, directs us to further reading in both French and English."

War Echoes examines how Latina/o cultural production has engaged with U.S. militarism in the post-Viet Nam era. Analysing literature alongside film, memoir, and activism, Ariana E. Vigil highlights the productive interplay among social, political, and cultural movements while exploring Latina/o responses to U.S. intervention in Central America and the Middle East. These responses evolved over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries-from support for anti-imperial war, as seen in Alejandro Murguia's Southern Front, to the disavowal of all war articulated in works such as Demetria Martinez's Mother Tongue and Camilo Mejia's Road from Ar Ramadi. With a focus on how issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality intersect and are impacted by war and militarization, War Echoes illustrates how this country's bellicose foreign policies have played an integral part in shaping U.S. Latina/o culture and identity and given rise to the creation of works that recognize how militarized violence and values, such as patriarchy, hierarchy, and obedience, are both enacted in domestic spheres and propagated abroad.

History matters. Some wish to bury it; others to use it selectively for their own purposes. But in the case of any nation it must be confronted honestly. Just as the Freedom Charter proclaims that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, so does its history. And the country was liberated by its people, not one specific group.

Myth and Reality in South Africa’s History is a collection of eighty newspaper opinion pieces and feature articles published over a span of thirty years. Their purpose was to examine significant past lives, movements and events, and interpret their contemporary significance for a general readership. Emphasis was placed on individuals and organisations that had tended to be neglected by post-liberation discourse, which was prone to exaggerate the role of certain movements.

The intention was to challenge a monochrome version of national history by emphasising pluralism and diversity. Underlying themes are continuity of faith in universal human rights, individual empowerment and psychological liberation in the face of power, both under and after apartheid.

The chapters of this book are arranged by broad chronology regardless of date of publication to produce a historical narrative; pulled together by a short introduction to modern South African history.

Asian American literature is one of the most recent forms of ethnic literature and is already becoming one of the most prominent, given the large number of writers, the growing ethnic population from the region, the general receptivity of this body of work, and the quality of the authors. In recent decades, there has been an exponential growth in their output and much Asian American literature has now achieved new levels of popular success and critical acclaim. Nurtured by rich and long literary traditions from the vast continent of Asia, this literature is poised between the ancient and the modern, between the East and West, and between the oral and the written. The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers the activities in this burgeoning field. First, its history is traced year by year from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and the introduction provides a good overview. The most important section is the dictionary, with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs. More reading can be found through an extensive bibliography with general works and those on specific authors. The book is thus a good place to get started, or to expanded one s horizons, about a branch of American literature that can only grow in importance."

The rich and complex genre of fantasy fiction appeals to readers of all ages. Designed for readers' advisors and collection development specialists in public, school, and college libraries, this in-depth guide expands upon the material on fantasy fiction offered in Genreflecting. Herald offers a historical and structural overview of the genre, describes 15 subgenres and a score of variations within them, and lists the best and most current reads available in the fantasy arena. Descriptive entries contain information about pertinent review resources, bibliographies, criticism, awards, and organizations. An author/title and subject index help provide easy access to specific titles and authors and an appendix lists recommended fantasy titles for young adults. A must for readers' advisors and collection development specialists, this book will also be valuable to writers, researchers, bookstore owners, and dedicated fans of fantasy fiction.

This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century CE. It asks basic questions such as: How did reading and writing practices change over these two millennia? How did concepts of literature evolve? What were the factors that shaped literary production and textual transmission? How do traditional bibliographic categories, modern conceptions of genre, and literary theories shape our understanding of classical Chinese literature? What are the recurrent and evolving concerns of writings within the period under purview? What are the dimensions of human experience they address? Why is classical Chinese literature important for our understanding of pre-modern East Asia? How does the transmission of this literature in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam define cultural boundaries? And what, in turn, can we learn from the Chinese-style literatures of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, about Chinese literature? In addressing these questions, The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature departs from standard literary histories and sourcebooks. It does not simply categorize literary works according to periods, authors, or texts. Its goal is to offer a new conceptual framework for thinking about classical Chinese literature by defining a four-part structure. The first section discusses the basics of literacy and includes topics such as writing systems, manuscript culture, education, and loss and preservation in textual transmission. It is followed by a second section devoted to conceptions of genre, textual organization, and literary signification throughout Chinese history. A third section surveys literary tropes and themes. The final section takes us beyond China to the surrounding cultures that adopted Chinese culture and produced Chinese style writing adapted to their own historical circumstances. The volume is sustained by a dual foci: the recuperation of historical perspectives for the period it surveys and the attempt to draw connections between past and present, demonstrating how the viewpoints and information in this volume yield insights into modern China and east Asia.