Growing Up In The Gutter

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award Cityline Book Club Pick “A deep, unflinching yet loving look at injustice and power.” —Chatelaine “A powerful and unforgettable novel” (Quill and Quire, starred review) about a young woman who must find the courage to secure her freedom and determine her own future Set in an imagined world in which the most vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society, Gutter Child uncovers a nation divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. As part of a social experiment led by the Mainland government, Elimina Dubois is one of just one hundred babies taken from the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity. But when her Mainland mother dies, Elimina finds herself alone, a teenager forced into an unfamiliar life of servitude, unsure of who she is and where she belongs. Sent to an academy with new rules and expectations, Elimina befriends children who are making their own way through the Gutter System in whatever way they know how. But when her life takes yet another unexpected turn, Elimina will discover that what she needs more than anything may not be the freedom she longed for after all. Gutter Child reveals one young woman’s journey through a fractured world of heartbreaking disadvantages and shocking injustices. As a modern heroine in an altered but all-too-recognizable reality, Elimina must find the strength within herself to forge her future in defiance of a system that tries to shape her destiny.

Scholars interested in Graphic Arts, Postcolonial & Decolonial Studies, Global South Studies, Diaspora & Migration Studies, American Literature, African American Studies, Asian & Asian American Studies, Chicanx & Latinx Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies.

The African-American football player Chuck Ealey grew up in a segregated neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio. Against all odds, he became an incredible quarterback. But despite his unbeaten record in high school and university, he would never play professional football in the United States. Chuck Ealey grew up poor in a racially segregated community that was divided from the rest of town by a set of train tracks, but his mother assured him that he wouldn’t stay in Portsmouth forever. Education was the way out, and a football scholarship was the way to pay for that education. So despite the racist taunts he faced at all the games he played in high school, Chuck maintained a remarkable level of dedication and determination. And when discrimination followed him to university and beyond, Chuck Ealey remained undefeated. This inspirational story is told by Chuck Ealey’s daughter, author and educator Jael Richardson, with striking and powerful illustrations by award-winning illustrator Matt James.

Science fiction, fantasy, comics, romance, genre movies, games all drain into the Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful articles about disreputable art-media and genres that are a little embarrassing. Irredeemable. Worthy of Note, but rolling like errant pennies back into the gutter. The Cultural Gutter is dangerous because we have a philosophy. We try to balance enthusiasm with clear-eyed, honest engagement with the material and with our readers. This book expands on our mission with 10 articles each from science fiction/fantasy editor James Schellenberg, comics editor and publisher Carol Borden, romance editor Chris Szego, screen editor Ian Driscoll and founding editor and former games editor Jim Munroe.

Astronomers including Henry Russell, Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawking - Chemists including John Dalton, Dmitri Mendeleev, Marie Curie, Dorothy Hodgkin - Physicists including Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Ernest Rutherford and Albert Einstein - Geologists including Charles Lyell, Alfred Wegner and Harry Hess - Biologists including Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Alexander Fleming, Crick and Watson.

The true story of the Edelweiss Pirates, working-class teenagers who fought the Nazis by whatever means they could. Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean were classic outsiders: their clothes were different, their music was rebellious, and they weren’t afraid to fight. But they were also Germans living under Hitler, and any nonconformity could get them arrested or worse. As children in 1933, they saw their world change. Their earliest memories were of the Nazi rise to power and of their parents fighting Brownshirts in the streets, being sent to prison, or just disappearing. As Hitler’s grip tightened, these three found themselves trapped in a nation whose government contradicted everything they believed in. And by the time they were teenagers, the Nazis expected them to be part of the war machine. Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean and hundreds like them said no. They grew bolder, painting anti-Nazi graffiti, distributing anti-war leaflets, and helping those persecuted by the Nazis. Their actions were always dangerous. The Gestapo pursued and arrested hundreds of Edelweiss Pirates. In World War II’s desperate final year, some Pirates joined in sabotage and armed resistance, risking the Third Reich’s ultimate punishment. This is their story.

Let me take you on this wild ride of my younger years hanging around true anarchists called Gutter Punks or Train Kids as they like to be called in this current day. I will break down to the reader how the whole Gutter Punk persuasion started in New Orleans and all the different tactics and rules one must abide by to chill with these rebellious people. These nomads usually hop trains to different major cities and always end up, for some reason or another, in New Orleans. Surprisingly, you'd be amazed how many Gutter Punks I've met that come from rich, well-to-do families. Guessing that this is not the route they wanted to take in life, sadly, a lot of them end up with ominous ambitions as their goals--not all of them, though. Almost every story in this book takes place in New Orleans, and all legal names of characters have been changed as stated on the cover. The only names that haven't been changed are the street names for certain Gutter Punks. City street names haven't been changed either. I am a sober man today, and as I sat here in a long-term rehab thinking about my past, I asked myself, "What are you going to do with all these crazy, action-packed, macabre tales you've experienced over the years? I know! Tell the world how much fun you had. Also, let them know how much karma can catch up with you for all the atrocious actions you've taken hanging out with today's modern Pirate. Maybe it will open up the eyes of the public on how our fellow brothers or sisters got into the predicament they did. What does not come out in the wash will definitely come out in the rinse." 70 70

Grand Prize Winner of the 2015 Green Book Festival Mark Sundeen's new book, The Unsettlers, is coming in January 2017 from Riverhead Books In 2000, Daniel Suelo left his life savings-all thirty dollars of it-in a phone booth. He has lived without money-and with a newfound sense of freedom and security-ever since. The Man Who Quit Money is an account of how one man learned to live, sanely and happily, without earning, receiving, or spending a single cent. Suelo doesn't pay taxes, or accept food stamps or welfare. He lives in caves in the Utah canyonlands, forages wild foods and gourmet discards. He no longer even carries an I.D. Yet he manages to amply fulfill not only the basic human needs-for shelter, food, and warmth-but, to an enviable degree, the universal desires for companionship, purpose, and spiritual engagement. In retracing the surprising path and guiding philosophy that led Suelo into this way of life, Sundeen raises provocative and riveting questions about the decisions we all make, by default or by design, about how we live-and how we might live better.