Feeding The Ghosts

A literary venture into the economic shadow that slavery cast, Feeding the Ghosts, based on a true story, lays bare the raw business of the slave trade. The Zong, a slave ship packed with captive African “stock,” is headed to the New World. When illness threatens to disable all on board and cut potential profits, the ship’s captain orders his crew to throw the sick into the ocean. After being hurled overboard, Mintah, a young female slave taken from a Danish mission, is able to climb back onto the ship. From her hiding place, she rouses the remaining slaves to rebel and stirs unease among the crew with a voice and conscience they seem unable to silence. Mintah’s courage and others’ reactions to it unfold in a suspenseful story of the struggle to live even when threatened by oblivion.

What do we turn to for both everyday sustenance and seasonal celebration? Food. Often, though, we're like the hungry ghosts of Taoist lore, eating mindlessly, wandering aimlessly, and wanting more - more than food itself can provide. Ellen Kanner believes that if we put in a little thought and preparation, every meal can feed not only our bodies but our souls and our communities as well. Warm, wicked, and one-of-a-kind, Ellen offers an irreverent approach to bringing reverenceinto daily living - and eating. She presents global vegan recipes that call you to the table, stories that make you stand up and cheer, and gentle nudges that aim to serve up what we're hungry for: a more vital self, more loving and meaningful connections, a nourished and nourishing world, and great food, too. 'Feeding the Hungry Ghost' will challenge you to decide: keep reading or start cooking?

Written in taut, poetic language, THE LONGEST MEMORY is set on a Virginian plantation in the 19th century, and tells the tragic story of a rebellious, fiercely intelligent young slave who breaks all the rules: in learning to read and write, in falling in love with a white girl, the daughter of his owner, and, finally, in trying to escape and join her in the free North. For his attempt to flee, he is whipped to death in front of his family, and this brutal event is the pivot around which the story evolves.

In this timely and profoundly original new book, bestselling writer and physician Gabor Maté looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours. For over seven years Gabor Maté has been the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. His patients are challenged by life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four. But if Dr. Maté’s patients are at the far end of the spectrum, there are many others among us who are also struggling with addictions. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, work, food, sex, gambling and excessive inappropriate spending: what is amiss with our lives that we seek such self-destructive ways to comfort ourselves? And why is it so difficult to stop these habits, even as they threaten our health, jeopardize our relationships and corrode our lives? Beginning with a dramatically close view of his drug addicted patients, Dr. Maté looks at his own history of compulsive behaviour. He weaves the stories of real people who have struggled with addiction with the latest research on addiction and the brain. Providing a bold synthesis of clinical experience, insight and cutting edge scientific findings, Dr. Maté sheds light on this most puzzling of human frailties. He proposes a compassionate approach to helping drug addicts and, for the many behaviour addicts among us, to addressing the void addiction is meant to fill. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it manifests in the lethal substance dependencies of my Downtown Eastside patients, the frantic self-soothing of overeaters or shopaholics, the obsessions of gamblers, sexaholics and compulsive internet users, or in the socially acceptable and even admired behaviours of the workaholic. Drug addicts are often dismissed and discounted as unworthy of empathy and respect. In telling their stories my intent is to help their voices to be heard and to shed light on the origins and nature of their ill-fated struggle to overcome suffering through substance use. Both in their flaws and their virtues they share much in common with the society that ostracizes them. If they have chosen a path to nowhere, they still have much to teach the rest of us. In the dark mirror of their lives we can trace outlines of our own. —from In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar), course: HS Caribbean Literature and Culture, language: English, abstract: (...) The novel belongs to the genre of the Caribbean novels, and, as a historical fiction about the slave trade, provocatively combines historical and imaginative elements. Thus, it can be subsumed under the term “revisionist historical novel”, which, according to Ansgar Nünning, denotes novels that maintain a positive tension between their status as literature and their status as history (cf. Thieme, 1121; Pichler, 6, 11). Feeding the Ghosts is based on the infamous “Zong Massacre” which took place in 1781. It was an incident in which 133 slaves were thrown overboard an English slave ship, leading to a civil action in the same year by the ship’s owners, who sued their insurers for compensation for the dead slaves. The publicity about the law suit and the concluding verdict, which confirmed the legal status of slaves as cargo, fostered abolitionist support and made them a landmark of the battle against British slave trade in the 18th century. Due to growing public indignation a parliamentary act was finally passed in 1790, which ruled out insurance claims resulting from slave mortality or the jettison of slaves on any account (cf. Low, 106 et seq.; Pichler, 6; Philp, 245; Baucom, 61 et seq., Frias 421, Schatteman, 234; James, 327). In order to recreate the trauma of the Middle Passage D’ Aguiar’s fictionalised treatment of the Zong Massacre and of the subsequent trial mainly focuses on the reconstruction of the events from a slave girl’s point of view, (cf. Schatteman, 234, Phil, 245; Carr, Pichler, 11). Since the most prominent feature of D’ Aguiar’s fiction is his poetic style, which is an object of acclaim as well as of critical reprimand (cf. Steward, 68; Figueredo, 211; Frias, 418; James, 327; Bovenschen; Low, 110; Schatteman, 234; Carr), the paper at hand chooses the novel’s imagery as its subject-matter and examines the principal dichotomy of sea and land. By elucidating their meanings the analysis will show that these images are multilayered metaphors which mutually influence each other, and explain other imagery they are connected to. Subsequently, sea and land will analysed in the light of the concept of writing back in Postcolonial Criticism in order to point out that they are part of a distinctive, reconciling approach, which aims at understanding history by personality and at recompense by remembrance

Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain. "Dark tourism" often highlights the most sensationalist and macabre aspects of slavery, from salacious sexual ties between white masters and black women slaves to the physical abuse and torture of black bodies to the supposedly exotic nature of African spiritual practices. Because the realities of slavery are largely absent from these tours, Miles reveals how they continue to feed problematic "Old South" narratives and erase the hard truths of the Civil War era. In an incisive and engaging work, Miles uses these troubling cases to shine light on how we feel about the Civil War and race, and how the ghosts of the past are still with us.

According to Chinese tradition, those who die hungry or unjustly come back to haunt the living. Some are appeased with food. But not all ghosts are successfully mollified. In this chilling collection of stories,Ying Chang Compestine takes readers on a journey through time and across different parts of China. From the building of the GreatWall in 200 BCE to themodern day of iPods, hungry ghosts continue to torment those who wronged them. At once a window into the history and culture of China and an ode to Chinese cuisine, this assortment of frightening tales—complete with historical notes and delectable recipes—will both scare and satiate!