Daddy Polished My Shoes

Jou'lania's father worked every day to provide for his family; he respected the Word of God, and he loved his wife as Christ loves the church. Her father showed his aff ection by polishing her Sunday shoes, her self-esteem, and her spirit. But as the years passed, her shoes became soiled with dirt and splatter. She did not want anyone to know how dirty her shoes were, and she began to hide them. Each day was another exercise in obscuring her unhappy life with hairstyles, fake smiles, new clothes, and sweet smelling fragrances. But those things did nothing to comfort the pain in her heart for the three failed marriages. It was only by looking to the Lord for guidance and remembering how her father made her feel as a little girl that she was able to step out of the mud and be clean again. Daddy Polished My Shoes celebrates a father whose love his daughter never doubted and considers the profound lessons she learned from his example about life. It is a must read, a page-turner packed with family dynamics that would make you laugh, cry, forgive, and love again.

In the United States, as in many countries, we're a culture that supports and values intellectual quotient (IQ) development in our educational systems. However, we neglect the emotional quotient (EQ) as it's not mainstream in our schools unless a person chooses to study the field of psychology. Emotions can play havoc in our personal and professional lives in times of change if we don't develop our emotional intelligence. Dr. W. Edwards Deming said, "It's not mandatory to change. Survival is not mandatory." With all that the world faces today, the pandemic, racial tensions, frequent hurricanes, and forest fires have challenged humanity in ways unprecedented. Our moral compasses don't always point true north due to this myriad of disruptions. Our emotions, especially fear and anger, can derail a person, or groups of people quickly. We're being challenged to navigate life in new ways, which requires us to move to higher levels of consciousness, or being awake and more aware of one's surroundings. The Spirit That Soars! contains a multitude of pathways that a person may choose to follow in "waking up" to life. This book is a compilation of true stories, experiences, and conversations. The tools and exercises have been tried and tested and found to be true to their intent; some are designed for personal use and others for groups of people. The big D of diversity is the basis of this work and relates to all cultures, ethnic backgrounds, gender, age, religious beliefs, economic levels, and education. It's time to awaken.

This text, based on Louise M. Rosenblatt's transactional model of literature, focuses on the application of transactional reader-response theory in the classroom. It grows from frequent requests from secondary school and college teachers for teaching suggestions on how to put theory into practice. This is not a "What should I do on Monday?" cookbook, but an expression of the practice of theory in college and secondary school classrooms. The chapters portray a spectrum of strategies--including biopoems, expressive and imaginative writing, journal writing, readers' theater, role playing, and unsent letters--using as examples individual works from several genres. Recognizing that teachers who may have been trained in other theories and methodologies may be hesitant about their quite different role and expectations in the reader-centered classroom, the authors provide stepping stones to develop readiness and confidence, suggestions, and insights to ease the transition to the transactional model of teaching and learning. Pedagogical features: * An explanatory introduction to each section defines its orientation and describes the content and direction of the chapters it contains. * Invitations elicit engagement of readers with concepts, attitudes, or strategies presented in the chapters; they invite readers, as individuals or members of a small group, to consider ideas or to practice a strategy, among other activities, in order to enhance understandings. * A glossary defines key concepts and strategies discussed in the text. * A bibliography provides an extensive list of resources--books and journal articles--both theoretical and applied. New in the second edition: * Six new chapters--three deal with the roles of film-as-literature in the English classroom, and three with enhancing multicultural understandings. * Updates and revisions to several chapters that appeared in the first edition. * Invitations, new in this edition, have been added to focus and expand readers' thinking.

How did a humble, quiet man, whose formal education ended with the sixth grade, and who did not marry until he was forty years of age, make an indelible impression on the lives of thousands of individuals over the span of thirty-six years? By working 108 hours every two weeks as an orderly in a city-owned hospital, the name J. Chandler Carlson came to be well-known. And, more than known, he was as much loved as he was respected by patients and fellow staff alike.

Dr. Joice Christine Bailey Lewis wrote My Ancestral Voices at the age of seventy-four. She tells stories about people and events that occurred in the Alabama community where her ancestors lived for five generations. Dr. Lewis uses autobiographies and biographies to describe events by details and dialogue that are either true, assumed, or plausible. Dr. Lewis, a member of the fifth generation, tells how she drew strength from the historical accounts of survival of people through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, racial segregation, educational inequality, sharecropping, the civil rights movement, the Second World War, Northern and Western Diaspora, and her ancestors beating great odds to succeed in landowning and community development and in fields of medicine, law, education, and business. The Holly Springs Missionary Baptist Church was erected by the first generation of ancestors who were all freed slaves. It is still in service to the community of Romulus (Ralph) Alabama. The church stands as a monument to its members, who rose up from slavery to create a lasting legacy of hope, love, and family.

"The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of silence. His mother and father often sat in the same room but exchanged no words. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn't come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but unspoken. And on a cold night just before Christmas 1973, long after dinner, the rest of the family asleep, Forhan's father killed himself in the garage--a new silence. Forty years later, Chris speaks into the quiet his father left behind, digging into his family's past and finding within each generation the same abandonment, loss, and silence in which he was raised. Like Ian Frazier in Family or Philip Roth in American Pastoral, Forhan shows his family as both a part and a product of its time. My Father Before Me is a family history, an investigation into a death, and a stirring portrait of an Irish Catholic childhood, all set against a backdrop of America from the Great Depression to Elvis Costello. Lucidly and unflinchingly, Forhan attempts to understand his father and ultimately himself in order to avoid passing his family's silence on to his children. To separate this silence from the introversion that inspires him as a writer, he courageously confronts it, telling the story that his family will not tell, and piecing together the fragments of the life that his father chose to leave"--Provided by publisher.

In this haunting and frank account, Donna Ford, bestselling author of The Step Child, returns to the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepmother. As a tiny girl of five, and for six long years, Donna was physically, mentally and sexually abused. She was starved, beaten and 'loaned out' to neighbours who raped and molested her ... and throughout her father stood by and did nothing. When her stepmother finally left the family home, Donna dreamed of a normal childhood in which she would be taken care of by the man who had, up until this point, failed her. But it was not to be. By telling the whole story of her Edinburgh childhood, Donna tries to understand why the man who should have loved her the most - her own father - was the one who deceived her the most, by continuing to allow men to abuse her. Instead of finding a future of love and happiness, Donna was once again thrust into a living nightmare of exploitation and betrayal by those who should have wrapped her up in their love. While this is a true story of appalling child abuse, it is also a tale of how exhilaration, tenderness and self-development can flourish despite childhood horrors. We take a journey with Donna to discover the woman she has become: a devoted mother of three and a talented artist and writer.

The mother of Emmett Till recounts the story of her life, her son’s tragic death, and the dawn of the civil rights movement—with a foreword by the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old African American, Emmett Till, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night by two white men and brutally murdered. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman in a convenience store. The killers were eventually acquitted. What followed altered the course of this country’s history—and it was all set in motion by the sheer will, determination, and courage of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose actions galvanized the civil rights movement, leaving an indelible mark on our racial consciousness. Death of Innocence is an essential document in the annals of American civil rights history, and a painful yet beautiful account of a mother’s ability to transform tragedy into boundless courage and hope. Praise for Death of Innocence “A testament to the power of the indestructible human spirit [that] speaks as eloquently as the diary of Anne Frank.”—The Washington Post Book World “With this important book, [Mamie Till-Mobley] has helped ensure that the story of her son (and her own story) will not soon be forgotten. . . . A riveting account of a tragedy that upended her life and ultimately the Jim Crow system.”—Chicago Tribune “The book will . . . inform or remind people of what a courageous figure for justice [Mamie Till-Mobley] was and how important she and her son were to setting the stage for the modern-day civil rights movement.”—The Detroit News “Poignant . . . In his mother’s descriptions, Emmett becomes more than an icon; he becomes a living, breathing youngster—any mother’s child.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Powerful . . . [Mamie Till-Mobley’s] courage transformed her loss into a moral compass for a nation.”—Black Issues Book Review Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Special Recognition • BlackBoard Nonfiction Book of the Year