Call Your Mutha

**A New York Times Editor's Choice selection!** This outrageous and hilarious memoir follows a film and television director’s life, from his idiosyncratic upbringing to his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black. Barry Sonnenfeld's philosophy is, "Regret the Past. Fear the Present. Dread the Future." Told in his unmistakable voice, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother is a laugh-out-loud memoir about coming of age. Constantly threatened with suicide by his over-protective mother, disillusioned by the father he worshiped, and abused by a demonic relative, Sonnenfeld somehow went on to become one of Hollywood's most successful producers and directors. Written with poignant insight and real-life irony, the book follows Sonnenfeld from childhood as a French horn player through graduate film school at NYU, where he developed his talent for cinematography. His first job after graduating was shooting nine feature length pornos in nine days. From that humble entrée, he went on to form a friendship with the Coen Brothers, launching his career shooting their first three films. Though Sonnenfeld had no ambition to direct, Scott Rudin convinced him to be the director of The Addams Family. It was a successful career move. He went on to direct many more films and television shows. Will Smith once joked that he wanted to take Sonnenfeld to Philadelphia public schools and say, "If this guy could end up as a successful film director on big budget films, anyone can." This book is a fascinating and hilarious roadmap for anyone who thinks they can't succeed in life because of a rough beginning.

Introduction: In the name of the "mutha'" -- What's going on? -- The dirty/earthy mother -- The gods we worship -- The Anthropocene is a motherfucker -- Color Mother Nature gone -- "Feed the green" -- "Word is born" -- Call (on) your "mutha'" -- Coda: "Gather and vote."

The ecocide and domination of nature that is the Anthropocene does not represent the actions of all humans, but that of Man, the Western and masculine identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that long has masked itself as the civilized and the human. In this book, Jane Caputi looks at two major "myths" of the Earth, one ancient and one contemporary, and uses them to devise a manifesto for the survival of nature--which includes human beings--in our current ecological crisis. These are the myths of Mother Earth and the Anthropocene. The former personifies nature as a figure with the power to give life or death, and one who shares a communal destiny with all other living things. The latter myth sees humans as exceptional for exerting an implicitly sexual domination of Mother Earth through technological achievement, from the plow to synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. Much that we take for granted as inferior or taboo is based in a splitting apart of inherent unities: culture-nature; up-down, male-female; spirit-matter; mind-body; life-death; sacred-profane; reason-madness; human-beast; light-dark. The first is valued and the second reviled. This provides the framework for any number of related injustices--sexual, racial, and ecological. This book resists this pattern, in part, by deliberately putting the dirty back into the mind, the obscene back into the sacred, and vice versa. Ecofeminism and Environmental Justice argue for the significance and reality of the Earth Mother. Caputi engages specifically with the powers of that Mother, ones made taboo and even obscene throughout heteropatriarchal traditions. Jane Caputi rejects misogynist and colonialist stereotypes, and examines the potency of the Earth Mother in order to deepen awareness of how our relationship to the Earth went astray and what might be done to address this. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American, ecofeminism, ecowomanism, green activism, femme, queer and gender non-binary philosophies, literature and arts, Afrofuturism, and popular culture images, Call Your "Mutha" contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence so much of Man's supremacy, but instead a sign that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is turning away, withdrawing the support systems necessary for life and continuance. Caputi looks at contemporary narratives and artwork to consider the ways in which respect for the autonomous and potent Earth Mother and a call for their return has already reasserted itself into our political and popular culture.

Featured on Oprah’s Summer Reading List For readers of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, this extraordinary historical debut novel follows three fierce Southern women in an unforgettable story of motherhood and womanhood. It’s 1924 in Branchville, South Carolina and three women have come to a crossroads. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters. Retta, a first-generation freed slave, comes to Gertrude’s aid by watching her children, despite the gossip it causes in her community. Annie, the matriarch of the influential Coles family, offers Gertrude employment at her sewing circle, while facing problems of her own at home. These three women seemingly have nothing in common, yet as they unite to stand up to injustices that have long plagued the small town, they find strength in the bond that ties women together. Told in the pitch-perfect voices of Gertrude, Retta, and Annie, Call Your Daughter Home is an emotional, timeless story about the power of family, community, and ferocity of motherhood. “Like Jill McCorkle and Sue Monk Kidd, Spera probes the comfort and strength women find in their own company.” — O, The Oprah Magazine “A mesmerizing Southern tale…Authentic, gripping, a page-turner, yet also a novel filled with language that begs to be savored.” — Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours

Author writes about his life and relationship with his mother and her fifteen year struggle with the disease scleroderma.

"The proposed new geological era, The Anthropocene (aka Age of Humans, Age of Man), marking human domination of the planet long called Mother Earth, is truly The Age of the Motherfucker. The ecocide of the Anthropocene comes from Man, the Western- and masculine- identified corporate, military, intellectual, and political class that masks itself as the exemplar of the civilized and the human. The word motherfucker was invented by the enslaved children of White slavemasters to name their mothers' rapist/owners. Man's strategic motherfucking, from the personal to the planetary, is invasion, exploitation, spirit-breaking, extraction and toxic wasting of individuals, communities, and lands, for reasons of pleasure, plunder, and profit. Ecocide is attempted deicide of Mother Nature-Earth, reflecting Man's goal to come the god he first made in his own image. The motivational word Motherfucker further reveals the Anthropocene with a flip side signifying an outstanding, formidable, and inexorable force. Mother Nature-Earth is that "Mutha'" -- one defying translation into heteropatriarchal classifications of gender, one capable of overwhelming Man and not the other way around. Drawing upon Indigenous and African American scholarship, ecofeminism, ecowomanism, green activism, femme, queer, and gender non-binary philosophies, literature and arts, Afrofuturism, and popular culture, Call Your "Mutha'" contends that the Anthropocene is not evidence of Man's supremacy over nature, but that Mother Nature-Earth, faced with disrespect, is going away. It is imperative now to call the "Mutha'" by decolonizing land, bodies, and minds, ending rapism, feeding the green, renewing sustaining patterns and affirming devotion to Mother Nature-Earth"--

From author Tracy C. Gold and illustrator Vivian Mineker, Call Your Mother is a heartwarming tribute to the timeless bond between mothers and children, from infancy to parenthood. When you’re hungry, when you’re sad, When you don’t know why you’re mad, Goo ga! Ma ma! Call your mother. From life’s highs to life’s lows, there’s one person who is always the first one we call: our mother. She’s the one we want to comfort us, to wipe our tears, and to share our triumphs. In this beautiful and relatable picture book, follow a mother and daughter through the years as they face each new stage together and learn you are never too old to need your mother. The perfect gift for the mothers or grandmothers in your life who always answer the call.

In paperback at last: Rivka Galchen’s beloved baby bible—slyly hilarious, surprising, and absolutely essential reading for anyone who has ever had, held, or been a baby In this enchanting miscellany, Galchen notes that literature has more dogs than babies (and also more abortions), that the tally of children for many great women writers—Jane Bowles, Elizabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, Janet Frame, Willa Cather, Patricia Highsmith, Iris Murdoch, Djuna Barnes, Mavis Gallant—is zero, that orange is the new baby pink, that The Tale of Genji has no plot but plenty of drama about paternity, that babies exude an intoxicating black magic, and that a baby is a goldmine.