Kneel

"A must read. 10/10.” —Broderick Hunter, actor, model, and activist This fearless debut novel explores racism, injustice, and self-expression through the story of a promising Black football star in Louisiana. The system is rigged. For guys like Russell Boudreaux, football is the only way out of their small town. As the team’s varsity tight end, Rus has a singular goal: to get a scholarship and play on the national stage. But when his best friend is unfairly arrested and kicked off the team, Rus faces an impossible choice: speak up or live in fear. “Please rise for the national anthem.” Desperate for change, Rus kneels during the national anthem. In one instant, he falls from local stardom and becomes a target for hatred. But he’s not alone. With the help of his best friend and an unlikely ally, Rus will fight for his dreams, and for justice. "A gripping story about what it looks like when we demand equity, justice, and recognition of our own humanity." —Kalynn Bayron, author of Cinderella Is Dead

A powerful look at the history of racism through the prism of sport, showing how we can change things through education and understanding

In this inventive mix of criticism, scholarship, and personal reflection, Carrie J. Preston explores the nature of cross-cultural teaching, learning, and performance. Throughout the twentieth century, Japanese noh was a major creative catalyst for American and European writers, dancers, and composers. The noh theater’s stylized choreography, poetic chant, spectacular costumes and masks, and engagement with history inspired Western artists as they reimagined new approaches to tradition and form. In Learning to Kneel, Preston locates noh’s important influence on such canonical figures as Pound, Yeats, Brecht, Britten, and Beckett. These writers learned about noh from an international cast of collaborators, and Preston traces the ways in which Japanese and Western artists influenced one another. Preston’s critical work was profoundly shaped by her own training in noh performance technique under a professional actor in Tokyo, who taught her to kneel, bow, chant, and submit to the teachings of a conservative tradition. This encounter challenged Preston’s assumptions about effective teaching, particularly her inclinations to emphasize Western ideas of innovation and subversion and to overlook the complex ranges of agency experienced by teachers and students. It also inspired new perspectives regarding the generative relationship between Western writers and Japanese performers. Pound, Yeats, Brecht, and others are often criticized for their orientalist tendencies and misappropriation of noh, but Preston’s analysis and her journey reflect a more nuanced understanding of cultural exchange.

That Denise Levertov (1923–97) was one of the most pioneering and skilled poets of her generation is beyond dispute. Her masterly use of language, innovative experimentations with organic form, and the political acuity disclosed by her activist poetry are well marked by critical communities. But it is also quite clear that the poems Levertov wrote in the last twenty years of her life, with their more explicit focus on theological themes and subjects, are among the best poems written on religious experience of any century, let alone the twentieth. The collection of essays gathered here shed vital light on this neglected aspect of Levertov studies so as to expand and enrich the scope of critical engagement. In a mixture of theoretical considerations and close readings, these essays provide valuable reflections about the complex relationship between poetry and belief and offer philosophically robust insights into different styles of poetic imagination. The abiding hope is to broaden the terrain for discussions in twenty-first-century theology, literary theory, poetics, and aesthetics—honoring immanence, exploring transcendence, and dwelling with integrity within the spaces between.

Mordecai Did Not Kneel Because the King Did Not Order It! takes a fresh look at the people and events depicted in the biblical book of Esther. Author Ilan Sendowski employs methods of analysis from rabbinic scholarship and insights from the practice of law to uncover the main purpose driving the decisions made by Mordecai, the primary subject of the study. He shows how Mordecai worked to save the scattered Jews from extinction, avoiding the fate that had been suffered by the Ten Tribes of Israel. This exploration describes the inner thoughts of figures in the book of Esther. It explains how Mordecai worked his way through complications presented by courtly practices and social customs. Finally, it uses an array of analytical tools to uncover a method for responding to problems with wisdom and knowledge. If you desire to learn from the book of Esther how to attend to the hidden nuances of difficult circumstances, how to take advantage of your insights, how to avoid suffering harm at the hands of dangerous people, or how to rely more fruitfully on knowledge and wisdom, then Mordecai Did Not Kneel Because the King Did Not Order It! can serve as a guide. Whether you are engaging the amazing story in Esther for the first time, seeking insight for daily life, or digging into this new reading of the biblical book, Mordecai Did Not Kneel Because the King Did Not Order It! can address your questions.

“Paul Tran’s debut collection of poems is indelible, this remarkable voice transforming itself as you read, eventually transforming you.” —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel “This powerful debut marshals narrative lyrics and stark beauty to address personal and political violence.” —New York Times Book Review A profound meditation on physical, emotional, and psychological transformation in the aftermath of imperial violence and interpersonal abuse, from a poet both “tender and unflinching” (Khadijah Queen) Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran's debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. In poems of desire, gender, bodies, legacies, and imagined futures, Tran’s poems elucidate the complex and harrowing processes of reckoning and recovery, enhanced by innovative poetic forms that mirror the nonlinear emotional and psychological experiences of trauma survivors. At once grand and intimate, commanding and deeply vulnerable, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacity for resilience, endurance, and love.

From the USA Today bestselling author comes a story of two shattered souls trying to find love in the dark. It's raw, unapologetic, and carnal. "Greed was my vice. A sin that led to my addiction." I hid the monster from everyone, including myself. Emotions were firmly locked away. As much control as I had in my life, I could never control my heart. Eva exposed me. She begged and pleaded, and I swore I'd make her kneel. And when she finally did, I broke the only jewel I ever owned.

An ex-SEAL in a wetsuit, a bisexual President, and a First Lady with a tattoo on her ass… Secret Service agent Kent Sinclair, head of POTUS security, thought he was prepared for anything. Then, the First Lady—a woman who barely tolerates his presence—approaches him with a request that startles the hell out of him. Carlene Broderick is scared. Her husband James is buckling under the strain of the highest office in the land. With the weight of the country and an impending war on his shoulders, he’s a heart attack waiting to happen. Carlene is out of options, so she resorts to the man whose name James calls out in his sleep—a buddy from his SEAL days. His ex-lover. Kent. There’s nothing Kent won’t do for his best friend, but he quickly realizes it’s not him that James needs—the Commander in Chief is desperate to give up complete control in the bedroom. And if she’s willing, Kent can teach Carlene to be what her husband needs. Now James is caught deep in forbidden territory—torn between his beloved wife and the man he’s never stopped loving. Kneel, Mr. President is a sexy, military, friends to lovers, over 40 menage romance full of dominance, submission, and exploration.