Bruce Jay Friedman is the reigning don of the ironic comic novel, a man of whom The New York Times has written, "His writing is so funny -- and deceptively effortless -- critics often liken it to a stand-up comedy routine." Now he triumphantly returns to the form with Violencia , a crackling satire of show-business pomposity, flimflam, and dreck in the spirit of Mel Brooks's The Producers. Paul Gurney is a struggling civilian clerk working the desk at a major New York homicide precinct who runs a department newsletter, The Homicider, that covers the goings-on at the precinct, dispenses advice, and disseminates interoffice gossip. But Gurney is newly divorced and dissatisfied, and abruptly decides to retire from the force, not knowing exactly what he'll do next. When he meets a shady Broadway impresario who wants to create a stage musical from his newsletter, he soon finds himself plunging headlong into the world of actors, agents, singers, songwriters, hacks, hams, and con artists. As the show Violencia moves from rounds of financing from suspect sources to questionable casting calls to a disastrous out-of-town opening (at each stage getting progressively -- and hilariously -- worse and worse), Gurney enjoys the high living, romantic flings, and glamour of the entertainment industry. But he also comes to realize that show people aren't that different from other people he already knows: the thugs, lowlifes, and cutthroats he's encountered during his career on the homicide squad. Packed with unforgettably reprehensible characters, unimaginably turgid lyrics, and unimpeachably funny dialogue, Bruce Jay Friedman's Violencia is a sidesplitting farce about the dark underbelly of theGreat White Way.

Grove Press continues the reissue of Bruce Jay Friedman's critically acclaimed fiction with two classic novels by the comedic genius whose work Nelson Algren hailed as more interesting than most of Malamud, Roth, and Bellow . . . and] more important.Friedman's first novel, Stern, tells the story of a young Jewish man who relocates his family from the city to the suburbs, where they are besieged by voracious caterpillars and a bigotry that ranges from the genteel snub to outright confrontation. The Current Climate continues the hilarious misadventures of the screen-writer from Friedman's novel About Harry Towns. Harry is now twenty years older and living in New York, a frustrated playwright struggling to sell a TV series to make some quick cash -- and paralyzed by the decision of whether or not he should get tickets to see Cats.

Bruce Jay Friedman has been hailed by critics as a comic genius, a writer whose vision confronts the malaise of contemporary life with a liberating deadpan humor. Grove Press is proud to reissue the collected short stories and one of the classic novels from this acclaimed master of modem humor.

Hailed by Newsweek as "a bona fide literary event", The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman brings together Friedman's fifty-seven greatest stories, which appeared in Esquire, Playboy, The New Yorker, and other magazines from 1953 to 1995. About Harry Towns is the story of the eponymous screenwriter, a man reveling in the freewheeling atmosphere of the early 1970s, a bicoastal playboy with a broken marriage and a child he rarely sees. But when his perfectly constructed life begins to spin out of control, he must decide to pick up the scattered pieces of his past to begin anew.

Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity explores the ways Hollywood represents race, gender, class, and nationality at the intersection of aesthetics and ideology and its productive tensions. This collection of essays asks to what degree can a close critical analysis of films, that is, reading them against their own ideological grain, reveal contradictions and tensions in Hollywood’s task of erecting normative cultural standards? How do some films perhaps knowingly undermine their inherent ideology by opening a field of conflicting and competing intersecting identities?  The challenge set out in this volume is to revisit well-known films in search for a narrative not exclusively constituted by the Hollywood formula and to answer the questions: What lies beyond the frame? What elements contradict a film’s sustained illusion of a normative world? Where do films betray their own ideology and most importantly what intersectional spaces of identity do they reveal or conceal?  

Seeking Rights from the Left offers a unique comparative assessment of left-leaning Latin American governments by examining their engagement with feminist, women's, and LGBT movements and issues. Focusing on the "Pink Tide" in eight national cases-Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela-the contributors evaluate how the Left addressed gender- and sexuality-based rights through the state. Most of these governments improved the basic conditions of poor women and their families. Many significantly advanced women's representation in national legislatures. Some legalized same-sex relationships and enabled their citizens to claim their own gender identity. They also opened opportunities for feminist and LGBT movements to press forward their demands. But at the same time, these governments have largely relied on heteropatriarchal relations of power, ignoring or rejecting the more challenging elements of a social agenda and engaging in strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights. Moreover, the comparative examination of such rights arenas reveals that the Left's more general political and economic projects have been profoundly, if at times unintentionally, informed by traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. Contributors: Sonia E. Alvarez, Maria Constanza Diaz, Rachel Elfenbein, Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Niki Johnson, Victoria Keller, Edurne Larracoechea Bohigas, Amy Lind, Marlise Matos, Shawnna Mullenax, Ana Laura Rodriguez Gusta, Diego Sempol, Constanza Tabbush, Gwynn Thomas, Catalina Trebisacce, Annie Wilkinson

"A Mother's Kisses" is the story of Joseph, a tall, scattered looking boy of seventeen and his wonderfully indomitable mother, Meg, who is resolved, in the summer after her son's high-school graduation to start arranging his life for him, even going so far as to accompany him to college. A work of roaring comedy and emotional honesty, "A Mother's Kisses" is a classic of modern fiction.

Throughout the silent-feature era, American artists and intellectuals routinely described cinema as a force of global communion, a universal language promoting mutual understanding and harmonious coexistence amongst disparate groups of people. In the early 1920s, film-industry leaders began to espouse this utopian view, in order to claim for motion pictures an essentially uplifting social function. The Movies as a World Force examines the body of writing in which this understanding of cinema emerged and explores how it shaped particular silent films and their marketing campaigns. The utopian and universalist view of cinema, the book shows, represents a synthesis of New Age spirituality and the new liberalism. It provided a framework for the first official, written histories of American cinema and persisted as an advertising trope, even after the transition to sound made movies reliant on specific national languages.

Throughout the silent-feature era, American artists and intellectuals routinely described cinema as a force of global communion, a universal language promoting mutual understanding and harmonious coexistence amongst disparate groups of people. In the early 1920s, film-industry leaders began to espouse this utopian view, in order to claim for motion pictures an essentially uplifting social function. The Movies as a World Force examines the body of writing in which this understanding of cinema emerged and explores how it shaped particular silent films and their marketing campaigns. The utopian and universalist view of cinema, the book shows, represents a synthesis of New Age spirituality and the new liberalism. It provided a framework for the first official, written histories of American cinema and persisted as an advertising trope, even after the transition to sound made movies reliant on specific national languages.

Seeking Rights from the Left offers a unique comparative assessment of left-leaning Latin American governments by examining their engagement with feminist, women's, and LGBT movements and issues. Focusing on the "Pink Tide" in eight national cases-Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela-the contributors evaluate how the Left addressed gender- and sexuality-based rights through the state. Most of these governments improved the basic conditions of poor women and their families. Many significantly advanced women's representation in national legislatures. Some legalized same-sex relationships and enabled their citizens to claim their own gender identity. They also opened opportunities for feminist and LGBT movements to press forward their demands. But at the same time, these governments have largely relied on heteropatriarchal relations of power, ignoring or rejecting the more challenging elements of a social agenda and engaging in strategic trade-offs among gender and sexual rights. Moreover, the comparative examination of such rights arenas reveals that the Left's more general political and economic projects have been profoundly, if at times unintentionally, informed by traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. Contributors: Sonia E. Alvarez, Maria Constanza Diaz, Rachel Elfenbein, Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Niki Johnson, Victoria Keller, Edurne Larracoechea Bohigas, Amy Lind, Marlise Matos, Shawnna Mullenax, Ana Laura Rodriguez Gusta, Diego Sempol, Constanza Tabbush, Gwynn Thomas, Catalina Trebisacce, Annie Wilkinson

Hollywood at the Intersection of Race and Identity explores the ways Hollywood represents race, gender, class, and nationality at the intersection of aesthetics and ideology and its productive tensions. This collection of essays asks to what degree can a close critical analysis of films, that is, reading them against their own ideological grain, reveal contradictions and tensions in Hollywood's task of erecting normative cultural standards? How do some films perhaps knowingly undermine their inherent ideology by opening a field of conflicting and competing intersecting identities? The challenge set out in this volume is to revisit well-known films in search for a narrative not exclusively constituted by the Hollywood formula and to answer the questions: What lies beyond the frame? What elements contradict a film's sustained illusion of a normative world? Where do films betray their own ideology and most importantly what intersectional spaces of identity do they reveal or conceal?

Every user knows the importance of the "@" symbol in internet communication. Though the symbol barely existed in Latin America before the emergence of email, Spanish-speaking feminist activists immediately claimed it to replace the awkward "o/a" used to indicate both genders in written text, discovering embedded in the internet an answer to the challenge of symbolic inclusion. In repurposing the symbol, they changed its meaning. In Interpreting the Internet, Elisabeth Jay Friedman provides the first in-depth exploration of how Latin American feminist and queer activists have interpreted the internet to support their counter publics. Aided by a global network of women and men dedicated to establishing an accessible internet, activists have developed identities, constructed communities, and honed strategies for social change. And by translating the internet into their own vernacular, they have transformed the technology itself. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in feminist and gender studies, Latin American studies, media studies, and political science, as well as anyone curious about the ways in which the internet shapes our lives.

Every user knows the importance of the "@" symbol in internet communication. Though the symbol barely existed in Latin America before the emergence of email, Spanish-speaking feminist activists immediately claimed it to replace the awkward "o/a" used to indicate both genders in written text, discovering embedded in the internet an answer to the challenge of symbolic inclusion. In repurposing the symbol, they changed its meaning. In Interpreting the Internet, Elisabeth Jay Friedman provides the first in-depth exploration of how Latin American feminist and queer activists have interpreted the internet to support their counter publics. Aided by a global network of women and men dedicated to establishing an accessible internet, activists have developed identities, constructed communities, and honed strategies for social change. And by translating the internet into their own vernacular, they have transformed the technology itself. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in feminist and gender studies, Latin American studies, media studies, and political science, as well as anyone curious about the ways in which the internet shapes our lives.

An indefatigable, irresistible, and wildly inappropriate Jewish mother takes her 17-year-old son to school in this uproarious coming-of-age comedy Tall and scattered-looking, Joseph has just graduated from high school and is ready for college. But is college ready for him? Apparently not, judging by the rejection letter he receives from Bates and the deafening silence that greets his application to Columbia. While his friends pack their bags for schools across the country, Joseph mopes around the apartment in his bathrobe and checks the mailbox obsessively. It's enough to make his mother fear for the boy's sanity--so she resolves to take matters into her own hands. What follows is a sidesplitting series of misadventures as Meg, whom the New York Times Book Review called "the most unforgettable mother since Medea," pulls out all the stops to get her boy what he wants.

The Womens Feminist Movement (Women's Lib) started in the western world in the 1800's and has gone through three waves.

The 'first' wave was in the 1800's, and was orientated around the stations of middle or upper class women.

The 'second' wave began in the 1960's. It addressed unofficial inequalities, sexuality, and perhaps the most controversially, "reproductive rights."

The 'third' wave started in the 1980's and continues through the present. It focused on embracing contradictions, conflict and irrationality.

I AM WOMAN --The Book, is the 'fourth' wave in the Feminist Movement. It is the final wave: the Tsunami Wave

The book, like the women's organization, will help quide women to empowerment and transformation. It is for women seeking to re-invent themselves, and becoming the beautiful butterfly they really are.

I AM WOMAN will finally re-unite men and women, and women can now stand tall and proudly say: "I AM WOMAN.."..Watch me soar

The selected plays of Bruce Jay Friedman which include Scuba Duba, Steambath, Sardines and the Trial along with reviews of his work. ..".Friedman is not just a blasphemously funny writer; if you haven't come across a good perception of the Absurd lately, this one is personal and cogent and contemporary." -New York Times "What Friedman, willy-nilly, is telling us from the frazzled depths of his being is that he, they, we are living in a loony bin in which anything goes." - The Nation

"Sovereignty, Democracy, and Global Civil Societyexplores the growing power of nongovernmental organizations (NGos) by analysing a microcosm of contemporary global state-socity relations at UN World Conferences. The intence Interactions between states and NGOs at conferences on the environment, human rights, women's issues, and other topics confirm the emergence of a new transnational democratic sphere of activity. Employing both regional and global case studies, the book charts noticeable growth in the ability of NGOs to build network among themselves and effect change within UN processes. Using a multidimensional understanding of state sovereignty, the authors find that states use sovereignty to shelter not only material interests but also cultural identity in the face of external pressure. This book is unique in its analysis of NGO activities at the international level as well as the complexity of nation-states' responses to their new companions in global governance.