It Was September When We Ran Away The First Time

In a funny, moving, and lyrical story, three boys learn a thing or two about the way a person relates to his fellow man, and along the way they grow up, just a little, despite their best efforts not to.

Contentious Lives examines the ways popular protests are experienced and remembered, individually and collectively, by those who participate in them. Javier Auyero focuses on the roles of two young women, Nana and Laura, in uprisings in Argentina (the two-day protest in the northwestern city of Santiago del Estero in 1993 and the six-day road blockade in the southern oil towns of Cutral-co and Plaza Huincul in 1996) and the roles of the protests in their lives. Laura was the spokesperson of the picketers in Cutral-co and Plaza Huincul; Nana was an activist in the 1993 protests. In addition to exploring the effects of these episodes on their lives, Auyero considers how each woman's experiences shaped what she said and did during the uprisings, and later, the ways she recalled the events. While the protests were responses to the consequences of political corruption and structural adjustment policies, they were also, as Nana’s and Laura’s stories reveal, quests for recognition, respect, and dignity. Auyero reconstructs Nana’s and Laura’s biographies through oral histories and diaries. Drawing on interviews with many other protesters, newspaper articles, judicial records, government reports, and video footage, he provides sociological and historical context for their stories. The women’s accounts reveal the frustrations of lives overwhelmed by gender domination, the deprivations brought about by hyper-unemployment and the withering of the welfare component of the state, and the achievements and costs of collective action. Balancing attention to large-scale political and economic processes with acknowledgment of the plurality of meanings emanating from personal experiences, Contentious Lives is an insightful, penetrating, and timely contribution to discussions of popular resistance and the combined effects of globalization, neoliberal economic policies, and political corruption in Argentina and elsewhere.

This tender novel tells a universal story of struggle, loss, and ultimately, survival. Arcelia Perez left Puerto Rico for the American dream, but within a few years she's living on the tough side of Providence, Rhode Island with three children, no job, and a powerful heroin addiction. Through rotating narration, we meet a diverse cast of characters—most notably Arcelia's charming, street-savvy son, Cristo, and his teacher, Miss Valentín—whose futures are inextricably linked as they strive to succeed against the odds. Born in Boston and raised in Providence and rural Minnesota, Rachel M. Harper is a graduate of Brown University and the master's program at USC. Her poems and short fiction have been published in the Carolina Review, Chicago Review, African American Review, Prairie Schooner, and the anthology Mending the World: Stories of Family by Contemporary Black Writers. She was chosen as one of Borders' "Best Original Voices" for her first novel, Brass Ankle Blues, which was also selected by Target's "Break Out Books" program. Harper has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and won the 2002 Fellowship in Fiction from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She teaches fiction at Spalding University's brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.

This is a short love story that takes place over a forty-five-year period in our lives. The actual love story only takes place for about a year and a half. In that time, a very strong friendship and love affair would endure forty years, two marriages each, and eight children between us (now grown). I believe in love, miracles, second chances, God, and most of all, our friendship which has never left us. The love affair is a small part of this story. We became friends who trusted, loved, and searched for each other through others but failed until January 12, 2019, when Edie finally found me on Facebook. The story doesn't end here; it begins here.

California's Girl is the story of a young girl growing up on the beach in Southern California during the 1960s and '70s. It is told through journal entries, short stories, poetry, and associated recollections. It begins with an idyllic childhood in a small beach town on the California coast. It details the lifestyle unique to the beach culture. A timeless span of innocence, bursting with the joy of life, surrounded by sand and sea. Adolescence arrives during an era of rebellion and social upheaval. Through the high school years, lessons are learned, and the complexity of life is examined. Reality begins to erode the fantasies of childhood. The first kiss, the first heartbreak, the loss of innocence, and the emergence of personal identity are seen through the eyes of a young girl. The beginning of one life's journey, when choices are made that will ultimately affect the unforeseeable future. A young girl does the best she can, makes mistakes, and savors the triumphsa microcosm of the human experience.

Two modern cases of genocide and extermination began in Southeast Asia in the same year. Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and Indonesian forces occupied East Timor from 1975 to 1999. This book examines the horrific consequences of Cambodian communist revolution and Indonesian anti-communist counterinsurgency. It also chronicles the two cases of indigenous resistance to genocide and extermination, the international cover-ups that obstructed documentation of these crimes, and efforts to hold the perpetrators legally accountable.The perpetrator regimes inflicted casualties in similar proportions. Each caused the deaths of about one-fifth of the population of the nation. Cambodia's mortality was approximately 1.7 million, and approximately 170,000 perished in East Timor. In both cases, most of the deaths occurred in the five-year period from 1975 to1980. In addition, Cambodia and East Timor not only shared the experience of genocide but also of civil war, international intervention, and UN conflict resolution. U.S. policymakers supported the invading Indonesians in Timor, as well as the indigenous Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Both regimes exterminated ethnic minorities, including local Chinese, as well as political dissidents. Yet the ideological fuel that ignited each conflagration was quite different. Jakarta pursued anti-communism; the Khmer Rouge were communists. In East Timor the major Indonesian goal was conquest. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge's goal was revolution. Maoist ideology influenced Pol Pot's regime, but it also influenced the East Timorese resistance to the Indonesia's occupiers.Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia is significant both for its historical documentation and for its contribution to the study of the politics and mechanisms of genocide. It is a fundamental contribution that will be read by historians, human rights activists, and genocide studies specialists.