In Approximate Gestures, Anthony Stewart argues that the writing of Percival Everett, the acclaimed author of Erasure and more than twenty other works of fiction, compels readers to retrain their thinking habits and to value uncertainty. Stewart maintains that Everett's fiction challenges its interpreters to question their assumptions, consider the spaces in between categories, and embrace the potential of a larger, more uncertain world in an effort to confront bigotry and similarly limiting patterns of thought. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze and FA (c)lix Guattari, Stewart proposes that their notion of the schizorevolutionary figure captures the in-between status of many of Everett's characters as they refuse the constraints of the binary, categorical structures that govern so much of human life. Approximate Gestures engages specifically with the vexed question of discussing race in Everett's fiction. Stewart frames the stakes of analyzing such subject matter in the writing of an African American novelist whose work rigorously questions critical approaches to race. Requiring readers to engage with black males who are hydrologists, ranchers, college professors, romance novelists, and in one case, a toddler, means entering a world released from habitual frames of reference. Through an examination of a broad selection of novels, Stewart demonstrates the extent to which Everett's characters inhabit ""infinite spaces in between conventional categories"" and understand themselves as subjects attempting to navigate social and psychological worlds. Approximate Gestures: Infinite Spaces in the Fiction of Percival Everett encourages readers and critics to think more deeply about how they position themselves in and engage with the world around them. As one of the first books of literary criticism devoted to Everett's fiction, Stewart's pathbreaking study models a method for reading the formidable body of work being produced by a major contemporary writer.

The concept of a "postracial" America -the dream of a nation beyond race - has attracted much attention over the course of the presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that this idea is peculiar to the contemporary moment alone. Postracial America? An Interdisciplinary Study attempts to broaden the application of this idea by situating it in contexts that demonstrate how the idea of the postracial has been with America since its founding and will continue to be long after the Obama administration's term ends. The chapters in this volume explore the idea of the postracial in the United States through a variety of critical lenses, including film studies; literature; aesthetics and conceptual thinking; politics; media representations; race in relation to gender, identity, and sexuality; and personal experiences. Through this diverse interdisciplinary exploration, this collection skeptically weighs the implications of holding up a postracial culture as an admirable goal for the United States.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In its analysis of Animal Farm, Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Nineteen Eighty-Four, this book argues that George Orwell's fiction and non-fiction weigh the benefits and costs of adopting a doubled perspective - in other words, seeing one's own interests in relation to those of others - and illustrate how decency follows from such a perspective. Establishing this relationship within Orwell's work, Anthony Stewart demonstrates how Orwell's characters' ability to treat others decently depends upon the characters' relative capacities for doubleness.

Canada's next major challenge is not economic or political. It's ethical. On the issue of racism, Canadians tend to compare themselves favourably to Americans and to rely on a concession that Canadian racism, if it exists at all, is more "subtle." Is there a future time when newcomers and visible minorities will be enabled to feel like they belong in Canada? Or will they have to accept their experience as visitors to Canada no matter how long they have lived here? These are some of the questions Anthony Stewart tackles eloquently and with considerable wit.

Documenting a black professor's account of his own professional experience, this study describes what it feels like to be a nonwhite academic in one of the "big three" disciplines in the humanities--English, history, and philosophy. Challenging the notion that today's Canadian universities have successfully addressed the issues of diversity, this argument warns that if professors of color cannot see academia as a liberal bastion, it can only be even more forbidding for students of color. Demonstrating how integration policies are manipulated when it comes to hiring visible minorities in the university, this reference highlights aspects such as merit that are commonly used to deny employment. Positing that institutions should deliver on their stated policies instead of hiding behind formalities, this emboldened examination will surprise those inside and outside of the academic field.

People have a tendency to look at the worst in people. They especially have that tendency when the people are stars who have made millions of dollars in the rap industry. I have seen and recorded "the worst" but I choose to focus on the best. Lil Wayne is NOT a success because he spews explicits, demeans Black women and jumps up and down on stage with his shirt off... anyone can do that. Lil Wayne is successful because Dwayne Carter applies principles of substance underneath the symbol of the rapper. Because of those principles (that I have adapted to lessons within this book) he is without a doubt one of the greatest recording artist of our time and will literally live forever in the minds of those who have grown up on his music. I have personally gained from his words while videotaping his life for years, from the Carter I album through to the Carter III. These lessons that have come during nationwide tours, while at his home, on private jets, on our way to jail, overseas and more. Words spoken after the groupies had left, the security had turned in for the night, and his entourage was out doin' them. Just him, me, and the camera. No matter what and where you are in life this book contains lessons WE ALL can benefit from

Jai wakes up one morning in a motel room with a man she's been involved with since high school. Inevitably, she grows tired of him and seeks more than just mere pleasures of the flesh. So she abandons him in search of for the perfect life, and seemingly finds it. She marries a successful man. Who worships the ground that she walks on and she gives birth to a handsome son, destined to follow in his father's footsteps. But there's still something missing. Eric, her former lover, not only finds her, he comes to reclaim what is rightfully his. In the ultimate tale of love versus lust, Jai has to choose whether to follow her heart or give in to the irresistible temptations of her past. Is she willing to pay the price, to find out?. You be the judge of that!