Divided Families

Explores the effects of divorce on children and their parents.

The Civil War has long been described as a war pitting "brother against brother." The divided family is an enduring metaphor for the divided nation, but it also accurately reflects the reality of America's bloodiest war. Connecting the metaphor to the real experiences of families whose households were split by conflicting opinions about the war, Amy Murrell Taylor provides a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America. In hundreds of border state households, brothers--and sisters--really did fight one another, while fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Even enslaved men and women found themselves divided over how to respond to the war. Taylor studies letters, diaries, newspapers, and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war into their private lives. Family divisions inflamed the national crisis while simultaneously embodying it on a small scale--something noticed by writers of popular fiction and political rhetoric, who drew explicit connections between the ordeal of divided families and that of the nation. Weaving together an analysis of this popular imagery with the experiences of real families, Taylor demonstrates how the effects of the Civil War went far beyond the battlefield to penetrate many facets of everyday life.

Before landing a spot on the megahit Netflix show Orange is the New Black; before wow-ing audiences as Lina on Jane the Virgin; and before her incredible activism and work on immigration reform, Diane Guerrero was a young girl living in Boston. One day, while Guerrero was at school, her undocumented immigrant parents were taken from their home, detained, and deported. Guerrero's life, which had been full of the support of a loving family, was turned upside down. Reflective of the experiences of millions of undocumented immigrant families in the United States, Guerrero's story is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.

How does a man serving in the Imperial Japanese Army feel when he suddenly sees his brother in the uniform of the enemy United States? How does a Japanese mother, surrounded by barbed wire in an American internment camp for "enemy aliens," feel when her only son writes: "I am now an American soldier. I must fight and, if necessary, die for my country"? How does a Hawaii-born youth feel as he lies near death in Hiroshima, a victim of history's first nuclear attack, launched by the United States? Or a twelve-year-old girl on a sugar plantation, whose ailing father returned to the place of his birth just a month earlier, on the morning she hears that "yellow Japs" have attacked? These are among the moments of excruciating confrontation experienced by Japanese American families, divided geographically and politically between Japan and Hawaii when the Peacific War exploded at Pearl Harbor. Our House Divided focuses on seven personal stories of such families as they struggled with the emotions and events brought on by the war--stories of the dilemma of first-generation Japanese Americans who were strongly attached both to the contry of their birth, and to the land where they had spent most of their lives and raised children in communities they had helped to build; and stories of the dilemma of second-generation Japanese Americans, whose loyalty to the United States was questioned even though they were American citizens. That these citizens turned that distrust into national respect through their celebrated achievements is also part of the poignant story. Our House Divided, an inward journey for the author, will open the eyes and hearts of many readers who have roots in more than one country and culture. Foreword by A. A. "Bud" Smyser

From NYT bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen comes a stunning thriller about a girl who must escape to freedom after the Berlin Wall divides her family between east and west. A Night Divided joins the Scholastic Gold line, which features award-winning and beloved novels. Includes exclusive bonus content!With the rise of the Berlin Wall, Gerta finds her family suddenly divided. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. Gerta knows it is dangerous to watch the wall, yet she can't help herself. She sees the East German soldiers with their guns trained on their own citizens; she, her family, her neighbors and friends are prisoners in their own city.But one day on her way to school, Gerta spots her father on a viewing platform on the western side, pantomiming a peculiar dance. Gerta concludes that her father wants her and Fritz to tunnel beneath the wall, out of East Berlin. However, if they are caught, the consequences will be deadly. No one can be trusted. Will Gerta and her family find their way to freedom?

Alerts divorcing parents, especially fathers, to the hidden minefields of custody proceedings; offers practical recommendations for reform; sheds light on the real cause of fatherlessness in America today.

In a world faced with terrorism and division, God's people are called to be Restorer's of Broken Walls and Repairers of Streets and Dwellings.Believers everywhere are challenged to set the example of love and unity and to bring healing to broken communities, families and individuals.In this nation, that has been founded on the principles of "Unity in Diversity", God's people must walk together in love and power if there is to be healing in the land.Collaboration is the key to such unity and restoration."A House Divided" calls for faith based collaboration in this great nation, celebrating and honoring our creed, "From Many… One, E Pluribus Unum." This book boldly proclaims that there can be "No Division" in the White House, in God's House, or in our House."

Belonging in a House Divided chronicles the everyday lives of resettled North Korean refugees in South Korea and their experiences of violence, postwar citizenship, and ethnic boundary making. Through extensive ethnographic research, Joowon Park documents the emergence of cultural differences and tensions between Koreans from the North and South, as well as new transnational kinship practices that connect family members across the Korean Demilitarized Zone. As a South Korean citizen raised outside the peninsula and later drafted into the military, Park weaves in autoethnographic accounts of his own experience in the army to provide an empathetic and vivid analysis of the multiple overlapping layers of violence that shape the embodied experiences of belonging. He asks readers to consider why North Korean resettlement in South Korea is a difficult process, despite a shared goal of reunification and the absence of a language barrier. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in anthropology, migration, and the politics of humanitarianism.