Living On Hope Street

'Living on Hope Street is a big-hearted, compassionate work. Divaroren is a ferociously good storyteller and every character breathes life, every character convinces. This book is an absolute joy to read.' CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS" We all love someone. We all fear something. Sometimes they live right next door - or even closer. Kane will do everything he can to save his mother and his little brother Sam from the violence of his father, even if it means becoming a monster himself. Mrs Aslan will protect the boys no matter what - even though her own family is in pieces. Ada wants a family she can count on, while she faces new questions about herself. Mr Bailey is afraid of the refugees next door, but his worst fear will take another form. And Gugulethu is just trying to make a life away from terror. On this street, everyone comes from different places, but to find peace they will have to discover what unites them. A deeply moving, unflinching portrait of modern Australian suburban life.

This is the story of a family which has always lived in the heart of one of the traditional working class communities of the North. Originally immigrants from Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, their saga, their triumphs and tragedies unfolded in the cobbled streets, working men's cottages and terraced houses of Horwich, near Manchester. They worked in the cotton mills and on the railways. Like most families at the time, they were good socialists and trade unionists. They also attended the local Spiritualist church. Spiritualism was free-thinking, modern and progressive too and went hand in hand with socialism. The family living on Hope Street North had problems every family has - and worse. Marriages broke up and they had more than their fair share of loss and heartbreak. Within the working class in those days there were many - now forgotten - class distinctions which caused painful rifts between the family. There was a violent bully too and an eviction which left a mother and her children wandering the streets penniless and homeless. A young girl was run over and killed by a horse and cart and another died of diptheria. An unmarried woman bound her abdomen tightly to disguise her pregnancy, and as a result her child was born with deformed legs. As a young woman, that child went on to elope with her lover and they both committed suicide. She died as she was born: in shame. The book that would become Hope Street started when Pamela Young felt compelled to write about her mother's childhood, of seeing things - spirits, angels - that other people couldn't see. Vivid memories of their family life came flooding back: coal dusk glistening on her father's scalp as he came home from work, the old army coats used as bedding and the dresser with doors missing because they'd been chopped up as firewood when times were hard. And swirling in and around these very vivid, often earthy memories of life in Hope Street were memories of the extraordinary spiritual phenomena that took place there. On one occasion a silver ball sped around the room. On another her father, asking for proof, was picked up by a spirit guide and lifted up into the air as light as a feather. Pamela would once see her mother engulfed in a cloud of ectoplasm and twice her mother gradually, and starting from her head down, disappeared before her eyes. But it was after her own marriage had broken up and her mother had died, when Pamela was in the depths of despair, that she found her own spiritual gift. Guided by the spirit of her mother, she began to fully understand the great project her mother had initiated.

‘I loved every minute of this fantastic story!’ Christie Barlow It’s time to face the music...

“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

Go on a journey of exploring the different approaches to grieving loss and discover the one that’s right for you Written by two women who experienced loss at a young age, this incredible grieving book will help you navigate any kind of loss, whether it’s the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship or the loss of your job. Living with grief is hard. Let It's Your Loss help you find your new normal. It includes: • 10 chapters that focus on a different step of the journey through loss. • Topics reviewed by each of the authors in turn — one taking a more thoughtful, introverted approach, the other more practical and extroverted. • Five-minute fixes offer quick-and-easy practical coping suggestions. • Professional grief advice anchors the topics in sound psychological principle. Losing something or someone can be devastatingly painful, with far-reaching effects. But, loss is a natural part of life, one we all go through. This grief recovery handbook shows you how to recognize your grief and loss, take the time to sit with it, look at it and ultimately understand your reaction to it. Authors Emma Hopkinson and Robyn Donaldson believe that there is no right or wrong way to cope with loss. In this book about grief, they explore their own natural inclination to either keep their feelings in (Emma) or let them all out (Robyn), while offering key things they’ve learned along the way. By working through your emotions of shock, disbelief, guilt, anger and sadness, and taking time to heal and accept your loss, you’ll learn how to comfortably move through life after loss.

Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy’s landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures—and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity—and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow. Praise for Woman on the Edge of Time “This is one of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning. Whether you are reading Marge Piercy’s great work again or for the first time, it will remind you that we are creating the future with every choice we make.”—Gloria Steinem “An ambitious, unusual novel about the possibilities for moral courage in contemporary society.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “A stunning, even astonishing novel . . . marvelous and compelling.”—Publishers Weekly “Connie Ramos’s world is cuttingly real.”—Newsweek “Absorbing and exciting.”—The New York Times Book Review

The photograph of three men spattered with red paint, their arms linked, marching to protest the Vietnam War, is an icon of the 1960s movement for social justice. David Dellinger is on one side, Robert Moses on the other. In the middle is Staughton Lynd, chairperson of the first march on Washington against the war, and former director of the Mississippi Freedom Schools. Thirty years later, Staughton Lynd here reaffirms ideas central to the New Left of the sixties: nonviolence, participatory democracy, an experiential approach to education, and anti-capitalism. In essays written between 1970 and 1995, he passionately defends the intellectual contribution of a movement often dismissed as mindlessly activist. In addition, he advocates direct, sustained involvement in meeting the needs of the working class and the poor. Each section of the book identifies major influences on Lynd's life as teacher, historian, lawyer, and organizer. In the section entitled "Accompaniment", Lynd suggests the relevance to the United States of the concepts of liberation theology which have revolutionized Central America. In "Socialism with a Human Face", he expresses continued allegiance to the socialist ideals exemplified by Simone Weft and E. P. Thompson. The final section, "Solidarity Unionism", deals with the self-activity of rank-and-file workers. Living Inside Our Hope will reach out to everyone who remembers the Meals of the sixties with nostalgia and to those, too young to remember, who are seeking a foundation on which to build their own social activism.