For Was I Not Born Here

As Lauris Edmond writes, du Fresne's work is a tapestry of the past and present, storying immigrant life. Flitting in and out of the past is shown to be one way of coming to terms with the present and of understanding the importance of home, as is evident in The Book of Ester and Frederique , both centering on the manifold, complex European cultural traditions that were often overlooked in settler countries. Another is to be an inquisitive spy on the land like the child narrator, Astrid Westergaard, in du Fresne's magnificent stories, many of them originally radio broadcasts, which depict life in a small Danish community in the Manawatu in the 1930's, often in a humorous and ironic manner. --

A moving and revelatory Palestinian memoir by the author of I Saw Ramallah.

In Here, George Washington Was Born, Seth C. Bruggeman examines the history of commemoration in the United States by focusing on the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia's Northern Neck, where contests of public memory have unfolded with particular vigor for nearly eighty years. Washington left the birthplace with his family at a young age and rarely returned. The house burned in 1779 and would likely have passed from memory but for George Washington Parke Custis, who erected a stone marker on the site in 1815, creating the first birthplace monument in America. Both Virginia and the U.S. War Department later commemorated the site, but neither matched the work of a Virginia ladies association that in 1923 resolved to build a replica of the home. The National Park Service permitted construction of the "replica house" until a shocking archeological discovery sparked protracted battles between the two organizations over the building's appearance, purpose, and claims to historical authenticity. Bruggeman sifts through years of correspondence, superintendent logs, and other park records to reconstruct delicate negotiations of power among a host of often unexpected claimants on Washington's memory. By paying close attention to costumes, furnishings, and other material culture, he reveals the centrality of race and gender in the construction of Washington's public memory and reminds us that national parks have not always welcomed all Americans. What's more, Bruggeman offers the story of Washington's birthplace as a cautionary tale about the perils and possibilities of public history by asking why we care about famous birthplaces at all.

This children's book is a series that will teach the reader about the customs and sites of some countries around the world. The objective of the book is to teach children about the different foods, sites, and customs from five different countries. It will also attract parents and grandparents who want to teach their children and grandchildren about world cultures. Hopefully, the reader will see how different yet similar we all are.

This children's book is a series that will teach the reader about the customs and sites of some countries around the world. The objective of the book is to teach children about the different foods, sites and customs from five different countries—Greece, Israel, Mexico, India, Kenya. This book is volume 2, the first book in the series was Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Australia, and Ireland, be sure to collect them both. It will attract parents and grandparents who want to teach their children and grandchildren about world cultures. Hopefully, the reader will see how different yet similar we all are.

In 1996 Barghouti went back to his Palestinian home for the first time since his exile following the Six-Day War in 1967, first in Egypt and then in Hungary, and wrote a poignant and incisive account of the exile's lot in the acclaimed memoir I Saw Ramallah. In 2003 he returned to Ramallah to introduce his Cairo-born son, Tamim Barghouti, to his Palestinian family. Ironically, within a year Tamim himself had been arrested for taking part in a demonstration against the impending Iraq War and found himself not only in the same Cairo prison from which his father had been expelled from Egypt when Tamim was a baby, but in the very same cell. I Was Born There, I was Born Here traces Barghouti's own life in recent years and in the past - early life in Palestine, expulsion from Cairo, exile to Budapest, marriage to one of Egypt's leading writers and critics (Radwa Ashour), the birth of his son, Tamim, and then the young man's own expulsion from Cairo. Ranging freely back and forth in time, Barghouti weaves into his account poignant evocations of Palestinian history and daily life. His evocative, composed prose, beautifully rendered in Humphrey Davies' precise and sensitive translation, leads to the surprisingly candid condemnation of the Palestinian authority's leading figures and the astonishing verdict that 'The real disaster that the Palestinians are living through these days is that they've fallen under the control of a bunch of school kids with no teacher.' Beautifully rendered by the prize-winning translator Humphrey Davies, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, is destined, like its predecessor, to become a classic.