Author: By Aaron Abeyta In Colcha, Aaron Abeyta blends the contrasting rhythms of the English and Spanish languages, finding music in a simple yet memorable lyricism without losing the complexity and mystery of personal experience. His forty-two poems take the reader on a journey through a contemplative personal history that explores communal, political and societal issues as well as the individual experiences of family and friends. With his distinctive voice, Abeyta invites people of all cultures to enter his poems by exploring the essence of humanity as expressed by his particular Hispanic culture and heritage. Marked by intimacy and deep sentiment, Colcha not only acquaints us with the land of Abeyta's people, but also reveals the individuals from his life and family history in the most colorful and delicate detail. We meet his abuelitos (grandparents) in poems such as colcha and 3515 Wyandot, and hear of their connection to the tierra and its seasons, their labor and its bounty presented both viscerally and lovingly. We also meet the nameless people: the rancheros and the herders and the farmers, the locals in their pick-up trucks, and the women who make the tortillas. Abeyta's reflections on the plight, loves, joys, failures, and exploitation of the common person in such poems as cuando se secan las acequias, untitled (verde), and cinco de mayo belong to the literary heritage of such poets as Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Walt Whitman. Colcha is not just for those who love poetry, but for all people who wish to be moved by the music of language and, while listening, perhaps to gain some personal insight into their own lives and cultural traditions.

Author: Edited by Kathleen A. Culhane-Pera, Dorothy E. Vawter, Phua Xiong, Barbara Babbitt, and Mary M. Solberg This is a 'must read' book for anyone interested in providing more culturally competent health care and addressing cross-cultural ethical conflicts. The writing is fascinating, informative, practical, and provocative. Congratulations on what I am sure will become a seminal text in the field!-- Robert C. Like A spectacular work of scholarship and collaboration among authors of varying backgrounds, professions, and ethnicities. It covers a very broad range of medical and ethical issues in an accessible format, based on actual medical cases in all their frustrating and fascinating complexity. The views of both health professionals and patients/families are represented, along with steps in negotiating mutually acceptable courses of action. This unique and important work will quickly become indispensable to all who teach about, study, or practice cross-cultural health care and medical ethics.--Bonnie B. O'Connor Healing by Heart is a book of stories--stories of people's search for culturally responsive health care from U.S. providers. It offers resources to providers and institutions committed to delivering culturally responsive health care, paying special attention to building successful relationships with traditional Hmong patients and families. It makes available extensive information about the health-related beliefs, practices, and values of the Hmong people, including photographs of traditional healing methods. Ranging in age from young infants to older adults, the patients in the stories present a wide range of health problems. The clinicians are from family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry/psychology, and hospice. Each of the fourteen case stories is accompanied by discussion questions as well as two or three commentaries. The commentaries--written by patients, family members, shaman, Western clinicians (including Hmong physicians, nurses, and social workers), medical anthropologists, health care ethicists, social workers, psychologists, and clergy--are rich in personal reflections on cross-cultural health care experiences. Readers are rewarded with a combination of perspectives, including those of Hmong authors who have not previously published in English and scholars with years of professional experience working with the Hmong in Laos, Thailand, and the United States. The editors offer a model for delivering culturally responsive health care with special attention to matters of cross-cultural health care ethics. The model identifies questions health care providers can focus on as they seek to understand the health-related moral commitments and practices prevalent in the cultural groups they serve, ethical questions that arise frequently and with great poignancy in cross-cultural health care relationships, and points to consider when a patient's treatment wish challenges the provider's professional integrity. By sharing stories of suffering, confusion, and success, Healing by Heart couples an accessible method of learning about others with concrete recommendations about how to enhance cross-cultural health care relationships.

Author: Edward Bever This collection of essays considers the place of magic in the modern world, first by exploring the ways in which modernity has been defined in explicit opposition to magic and superstition, and then by illuminating how modern proponents of magic have worked to legitimize their practices through an overt embrace of evolving forms such as esotericism and supernaturalism.Taking a two-track approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of the construction of the modern self and its relation to the modern preoccupation with magic. Essays examine how modern rational consciousness is generated and maintained and how proponents of both magical and scientific traditions rationalize evidence to fit accepted orthodoxy. This book also describes how people unsatisfied with the norms of modern subjectivity embrace various forms of magicand the methods these modern practitioners use to legitimate magic in the modern world.A compelling assessment of magic from the early modern period to today, Magic in the Modern World shows how, despite the dominant cultures emphatic denial of their validity, older forms of magic persist and develop while new forms of magic continue to emerge.In addition to the editors, contributors include Egil Asprem, Erik Davis, Megan Goodwin, Dan Harms, Adam Jortner, and Benedek Lang.

Author: Hugh Thomson Kerr The book description for Sons of the Prophets is currently unavailable.