Chasing Freedom

If This Is Freedom continues the story of struggle for Loyalist settlers in Nova Scotia after the American Revolutionary War. In the black settlement of Birchtown, times are especially hard for the former slaves. They face the difficulties of a hardscrabble existence and continued discrimination from their white counterparts. Like many desperate Birchtowners, Sarah Redmond has signed an indenture agreement, a work contract meant to protect her rights and ensure a living wage. Sarah’s employers, the Blyes, do not honour the agreement, and Sarah and her family are all but shattered when Sarah takes a wrong step – one she will come to regret as it sets off a chain of unusual events that put her under further pressure. With her faith in the settlement running dry and the Birchtowners abandoning the settlement, Sarah is perplexed and soon faces the taxing option of whether to hold on to the only real life she has ever known or let go. At once a stand-alone story and a companion to Gloria Ann Wesley’s previous novel, Chasing Freedom, this story about moral courage and the enduring strength of dreams shares history with us in a way that is both honest and emotional.

“[A] fascinating debut . . . documenting the lives of teenage runaways who traverse America as part of a freewheeling counterculture.” —Publishers Weekly At age twenty-two, writer Chris Urquhart left a life of middle-class comfort to document the lives of these young nomads for a magazine feature. Captivated, she followed them for three more years. In honest prose interspersed with photographs portraying the grimy beauty of nomadic life, Dirty Kids tells the story of how Urquhart lived alongside runaways, crust punks, and dropouts, hippies, Deadheads, and Rainbows in an attempt to belong in their world. But the road took its toll, and along the way, Urquhart found suffering alongside the freedom—mental health issues, substance abuse, and fears of violence marred her journey. Despite all that, the warm, welcoming family of travelers and their radically alternative culture of sharing, generosity, and non-capitalistic collaboration forever changed her outlook on life and her understanding of freedom. “An illuminating and memorable twenty-first-century journey. From this angle, Burning Man looks bourgeois.” —Ted Conover, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing “Brings readers face-to-face with the bliss of freedom, the terror of loneliness, and the hard but true realities of life on the road—and on the rails—in modern day Babylon.” —Peter Conners, author of Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead “Urquhart shows us a seldom-glimpsed slice of America with poetic flair and journalistic objectivity.” —Ken Ilgunas, award-winning author of Trespassing Across America

How did Rodrigo Duterte earn the support of large segments of the Philippine middle class, despite imposing arbitrary authority and offering little tolerance for dissent? Has the Filipino middle class, heroes of the 1986 People Power Revolution, given up on democracy? Chasing Freedom retells the history of Philippine democracy, employing a genealogical approach that makes visible the forms of power that have shaped and constrained understandings of democracy. The book traces the attitudes of the Filipino middle class from the beginning of American colonization in 1898, to the present. It argues that democracy in country has been, and continues to be, lived in an ambivalent way a result of the contradictions inherent in Americas imperial project of democratic tutelage. Humiliation of the colonial past fuels the imperative to search for more authentic self-determination; at the same time, Filipinos are haunted by self-doubt over the capacity of its people to correctly manage the freedom that democracy provides. This simultaneous yes and no has persisted after independence in 1946 until today; it is the masterful mobilization of this democratic ambivalence by authoritarian populists like Rodrigo Duterte that helps to explain the effectiveness of their political narratives for middle-class audiences. The Philippines is a bellwether case with lessons of global importance in an age when disenchantment with democracy is on the rise. While ambivalence may result in failure to meet a democratic ideal it may, nevertheless, be one of democracy's safeguards. This work is at the forefront of recent debates about middle class-led democratic backsliding, with scholars unable to reconcile the appeal of authoritarian populists amongst those who have historically been expected to be democracy's vanguard.

Chasing Freedom is a no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is look at the life of a Canadian Military spouse. In it, author Kathleen Mills, who did a “tour of duty” that lasted 38 years, shares the good, the bad, the hard, and the amazing of her journey. The good includes the opportunity to travel and to live in several locations across Canada and in England and the United States. It also includes amazing adventures, such as taking a parachute course for military spouses and getting to meet Princess Diana. The bad includes being in a school parking lot to pick up her kids and getting a call that her husband’s helicopter had been shot down in Iraq, and the hard covers the stress and demands of holding down the home front while her husband did multiple deployments. It also explores the story of what happens after a soldier returns from deployment and what it means for the spouse and other family members. With brutal honesty, grace, and a great deal of humour, Kathleen provides a look at what marrying the military means and raises awareness about Operational Stress Injury (OSI) – the psychological difficulty caused by the prolonged, high-stress fatigue that can be experienced by those in military service and their family members. She also includes some poems that poignantly capture the experience of being married to the army, as well as some self-help tips for anyone who may be struggling. If you are involved in the military or thinking about joining it, or if you find your life has gotten in the way of you being your authentic self, this book is for you.

CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, by Marquis Whos Who in the World writer Paul Heidelberg, is a novel about life, art and music in San Francisco during The Roaring Sixties. The novel revolves around life at the San Francisco Art Institute, which the author attended for four years before earning a degree in painting and creative writing (Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead studied at the art institute, and Janis Joplin worked in the school cafeteria before attaining rock star status). The book, set in The Sixties, which the author considers to have been from about 1965-75, has a painter as female protagonist and a painter and poet as male protagonist. It includes poetry readings at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Avenue, where Janis Joplin had her first paying job as a singer, and incorporates poetry into prose. The book includes the authors Theory Of Relativity Of Ping-Pong Balls of people constantly meeting and parting he had formulated while living in Europe. Other characters who figure into the books progress and conclusion include a sculptor who graduated from art institute in the late 1960s who has an upbeat personality and often ends a sentence with laughter: ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES includes scenes from wild art exhibition openings, to free performances by such musicians as blues great Charlie Musselwhite (in a San Francisco bar) and Dr. John, who led a New Orleans-style musical parade up Columbus Avenue in North Beach. The book includes scenes in Morocco in 1971, and Essouira Peter, a Yale University graduate who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out, to Barbayanni in 1960s Greece. Barbayanni, Uncle John, lived in the village of Mallia, Crete and wore the black baggy pants, high black goatskin boots and other accoutrements of a proud Cretan the clothing that had been worn by the grandfather of the writer Nikos Kazantzakis. The great Cretan writer is also an important figure in the book. Another key figure is the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. As author Heidelberg writes in the beginning pages of CHASING FREEDOM, REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES, the book is not merely a remembrance of The Sixties, but it is also a remembrance of all times when artists and others have been Chasing Freedom, as Federico Garcia Lorca did in the 1920s and 1930s. The novel concludes at a great rock concert in San Francisco. (The price of the book includes a suitable-for-framing Fine Art Print, the cover illustration, created by using modern computer software to alter a photographic transparency taken at the San Francisco Art Institute during The Sixties.)

Young Adult Historical Fiction A story of the struggle of Black Loyalists and their arrival in Nova Scotia. NEW:// Teaching Guide Available Here Shortlisted for The Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature. The American Revolutionary War is being waged, and the fate of slaves in the colonies is on the line. Sarah Redmond, a slave on a South Carolina plantation, watches with a heavy heart as her father steals away in the dead of the night to join the British army, enticed by promises of freedom, land and provisions for his whole family. But before her father can return, the war draws to a close and the Loyalist slaves are all freed – including Sarah and her grandmother, Lydia. Uncertain of their future, Sarah and Lydia join the thousands who are rounded up and sent to New York to prepare for their journey to a new home somewhere in the British colonies. After months of waiting, the Redmonds are assigned to a ship bound for the first all-black community in North America: Birchtown, Nova Scotia. With their Certificates of Freedom in hand, Lydia and Sarah wait anxiously, hoping beyond hope that their new life will bring acceptance and happiness. But once they reach Birchtown they find that their new home is barren, cold and isolated – and in a world slow to forget old fears and hate, their Certificates offer them freedom in name only. Chasing Freedom is the story of a young woman struggling to discover who she is and what she can become in a world that offers her few opportunities. Can Sarah and her family find the strength and determination to persevere against all odds? Selected for The Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Books for Kids & Teens 2012

Nikki Grimes offers a glimpse into the inspiring lives of Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman, with breathtaking illustrations by Michele Wood! What if Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony sat down over tea to reminisce about their extraordinary lives? What would they recall of their triumphs and struggles as they fought to achieve civil rights for African Americans and equal rights for women? And what other historical figures played parts in their stories? These questions led Coretta Scott King Award winner Nikki Grimes to create CHASING FREEDOM, an engaging work of historical fiction about two of the nineteenth century's most powerful, and inspiring, American women.With breathtaking illustrations by Coretta Scott King Award winner Michele Wood, CHASING FREEDOM richly imagines the experiences of Tubman and Anthony, set against the backdrop of the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, and the Women's Suffrage Movement.Additional back matter invites curious young readers to further explore this period in history--and the larger-than-life figures who lived it.

Confined to a world of poverty and mis-education, Quawntay perceived crime and drug dealing as his own opportunity for success and freedom. However, when he fell victim to America's War on Drugs and was arrested in a marijuana sting just weeks after the conception of his daughter, he realized that he'd made a wrong turn in life. Faced with the horrible prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars, and worse, not being able to be a responsible father, his only perceivable solution was to escape. Literally. Chasin' Freedum is an informative, touching, and amusing story that provides not only details of Quawntay's brazen ingenious escapes, but also a glimpse into the mind and heart of an intriguingly wise fool whom the media has dubbed a ladies' man and escape artist as he desperately pursues freedom the wrong way. If you've watched and enjoyed the documentary Break Out, based on Quawntay's escape from prison, you'll really enjoy this book.