Author: Ryu Murakami File Type: mobi From the author of Audition, a wickedly satirical and wildly funny tale of an intergenerational battle of the sexes.In his most irreverent novel yet, Ryu Murakami creates a rivalry of epic proportions between six aimless youths and six tough-as-nails women who battle for control of a Tokyo neighborhood. At the outset, the young men seem louche but harmless, their activities limited to drinking, snacking, peering at a naked neighbor through a window, and performing karaoke. The six aunties are fiercely independent career women. When one of the boys executes a lethal ambush of one of the women, chaos ensues. The women band together to find the killer and exact revenge. In turn, the boys buckle down, study physics, and plot to take out their nemeses in a single blast. Who knew that a deadly gang war could be such fun? Murakami builds the conflict into a hilarious, spot-on satire of modern culture and the tensions between the sexes and generations.From Publishers WeeklyViolence aficionado Murakami (Audition) drops a motley cast into a late 20th-century Japan thats all decadence and social ineptitude. Though six young men have nothing in common except for having given up on committing positively to anything in life, and are incapable of sustaining meaningful conversations, they get together often to drink, peep on an unsuspecting neighbor, and put on extravagant karaoke shows at a deserted spot on the coast. But when one of them impulsively slits a womans throat, he places his gang in opposition to the friends of his victim, a bevy of divorcees known as the Midori Society. The women exact revenge, the men respond with another blow, and the cycle of vengeance continues with ever-increasing gore and giddy nihilism. As it turns out, murderous revenge is just the thing to bring meaning back into life, and nothing nourishes friendship like a common cause. Murakamis crackling prose makes the sickest human instincts seem fun. (Jan.) (c) PWxyz, LLC. From BooklistMurakamis deviously captivating novel about class and gender roles in twentieth-century Tokyo recounts the tale of six disaffected teenage boys and their attempt to satisfy an incomprehensible inner longing. Seemingly innocent, charmingly aloof, the boys spend evenings laughing uncontrollably for indeterminate reasons, belting karaoke tunes, and settling important matters with paper-rock-scissors tournaments. But their detachment turns disturbingly real when one of the boys dispassionately murders a member of the Midori Society, a group of six middle-aged women, all divorced mothers who cant seem to find love or happiness without one another. Once the Midoris seek their revenge, one of the funniest and strangest gang wars in recent literature ensues. As the battle becomes increasingly violent and the body count rises, the surprisingly optimistic opponents seem incapable of distinguishing the difference between defending a friends honor and satisfying a lust for vengeance. Murakamis characters can seem unfeeling, nihilistic, and self-indulgent, but the moral weight of this darkly comic tale is rooted in a crucial era in Japans history, characterized by alternating periods of peace and extreme violence. --Jonathan Fullmer

Author: Gary Lemons File Type: pdf Over the last generation, the womanist idea--and the tradition blooming around it--has emerged as an important response to separatism, domination, and oppression. Gary L. Lemons gathers a diverse group of writers to discuss their scholarly and personal experiences with the womanist spirit of women of color feminisms. Feminist and womanist-identified educators, students, performers, and poets model the powerful ways that crossing borders of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation-state affiliation(s) expands ones existence. At the same time, they bear witness to how the self-liberating theory and practice of women of color feminism changes ones life. Throughout, the essayists come together to promote an unwavering vein of activist comradeship capable of building political alliances dedicated to liberty and social justice.Contributors M. Jacqui Alexander, Dora Arreola, Andrea Assaf, Kendra N. Bryant, Rudolph P. Byrd, Atika Chaudhary, Paul T. Corrigan, Fanni V. Green, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Susan Hoeller, Ylce Irizarry, M. Thandabantu Iverson, Gary L. Lemons, Layli Maparyan, and Erica C. Sutherlin

Author: Ngoc Doan File Type: pdf

Author: Georges Bataille File Type: pdf Set against the backdrop of Europes slide into Fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Batailles overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity.Georges Bataille is one of the most important writers of the centuryMichel Foucault[box]Also available My Mother Madame Edwarda and the Dead Man,TP $14.95, 0-7145-3004-2 CUSALiterature and Evil TP $14.95, 0-7145-0346-0 CUSALAbbe CTP $14.95, 0-7145-2448-X CUSALanguage NotesText English (translation)Original Language French About the AuthorGeorges Bataille was born in France in 1897 and died in 1962. He was a philospher, novelist and critic who wrote on a wide range of topics and continues to exert a vital influence on todays literature and thought. Other works published by Marion Boyars include My Mother Madame Edwarda and the Dead Man, Literature and Evil and LAbbe C.