Become Brothers

December 8, 2011. The dissident Vietnamese priest Nguyen Van Ly (age sixty-four) is deported from a rest home in the Archdiocese Hue to the concentration camp Nam Ha in the north of the country. Van Ly, who is half paralyzed after having suffered four strokes, still faces five years in prison for his peaceable struggle against the totalitarian communist regime--a peaceable struggle he has waged for nearly forty years. We follow Father Ly, a nurse, and his guards through the twenty-four hour ordeal of getting from Hue to Nam Ha via ambulance. Arranged according to the liturgy of the hours, each chapter offers a glimpse into the life of Father Ly. This hagiographic journey, here placed in its context of Advent, offers hope for captive and oppressor. And it is hope especially that makes Father Ly realize his life's struggle for religious freedom is not in vain. Indeed, as a goodwill gesture before President Obama's visit to Vietnam, Father Ly will later be released on May 20, 2016.

Near the woods live a little boy and his mother. The mother warns her son to watch out for wolves, but he doesn’t listen. Instead he chases rabbits. And in the woods live a wolf cub and his mother. The wolf warns her son to watch out for people, but he doesn’t listen. Instead he chases rabbits. What will happen when the boy and the cub cross paths in the forest?

The authors grew up during the 1940s and 1950s in a quiet Baltimore neighborhood, and in this profoundly honest and evocative book they reconstruct their lifelong struggle to be brothers. A book for the growing audience of men who are exploring their feelings of friendship and brotherhood.

Four weeks after Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden, President Obama stood in Arlington National Cemetery to deliver his Memorial Day address. He extolled the heroism and sacrifice of the two men buried side by side in the graves before him: Travis Manion, a fallen US Marine, and Brendan Looney, a fallen US Navy SEAL. Although they were killed three years apart, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, these two former roommates and best friends were now buried together—“brothers forever.” Award-winning journalist Tom Sileo and Travis's father, Colonel Tom Manion, USMCR (Ret.), tell the intimate and personal story of how these Naval Academy roommates defined a generation's sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq. From Travis's incredible bravery on the streets of Fallujah to Brendan's anguished SEAL training in the wake of his friend's death and later acts of heroism in the mountains of Afghanistan, Brothers Forever is a remarkable story of war and friendship.

The long-awaited second novel from David Chariandy, whose debut, Soucouyant, was nominated for nearly every major literary prize in Canada and published internationally. An intensely beautiful, searingly powerful, tightly constructed novel, Brother explores questions of masculinity, family, race, and identity as they are played out in a Scarborough housing complex during the sweltering heat and simmering violence of the summer of 1991. With shimmering prose and mesmerizing precision, David Chariandy takes us inside the lives of Michael and Francis. They are the sons of Trinidadian immigrants, their father has disappeared and their mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home. Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry -- teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves. Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow. With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.

Foreword by Junot Diaz. This anthology emerges from the Creative Writing class of San Quentin State Prison. The subtitle "Six Cubic Feet" refers to the amount of space each prisoner is allotted for personal property. The work presented here attests, in a variety of voices, to the ways that stories can transcend even the severe, constricted enclosure of prison. Contributors include: Cole Bienek, Charles "Talib" Brooks, Kenneth R. Brydon, N. T. "Noble" Butler, Micheal "Yahya" Cooke, Arnulfo T. Garcia, Andrew Gazzeny, Richard F. Gilliam, Ivan Skrblinski (a.k.a. Juan Haines), Michael R. Harris, Keoghan O'Donnell, JulianGlenn Padgett, Paul Stauffer, Watani Stiner, Aly Tamboura, Keshun Tate (a.k.a. Daleadamown Abu Muhsin), Troy Williams, Danny York. Edited by Zoe Mullery.

It is not easy for a husband to say, I messed up, but many of us mess up in our marriages. That is probably why more than two-thirds of divorce cases are filed by women, because their husbands messed up. We want to do better and save our marriages. This book is just what a brother needs to help him do better in his marriage. Wives, give us a chance to read this book, thoroughly. We hope to get it right.

In the world of early Byzantine Christianity, monastic rules acknowledged but discouraged the homosexual impulses of adult males. What most disturbed monastic leaders was adolescent males being accepted as novices; adult men were considered unable to control their sexual desires for these "beautiful boys." John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople (397-407), virulently denounced homosexuality, but was virtually the only Byzantine cleric to do so. Penances traditionally attached to heterosexual sins--including remarriage after divorce or widowhood--have always been much more severe than those for a variety of homosexual acts or relationships. Just as Byzantine churches have found ways to accommodate sequential marriages and other behavior once stridently condemned, this book argues, it is possible for Byzantine Christianity to make pastoral accommodations for gay relationships and same-sex marriage.