Rose Of Soweto The Dingaan Thobela Story

Many tales have been told of boxers who have risen up against the odds to achieve success in their lives. None, however, has been as dramatic and had such a profoundly inspirational influence on the people who shared the dream as the true life story of the man they call The Rose of Soweto. Dingaan Thobela, The Rose of Soweto, has been described as the most naturally talented boxer ever to come out of South Africa. Growing up in Chiawelo under the watchful eye of his grandmother, this is the story of how a skinny boy from Soweto overcame adversity to become one of the greatest boxers to lace up a pair of gloves. Starting his career as a raw 17-year-old with a passion for boxing, Dingaan Thobela would go on to become a two-time lightweight world champion by the age of 26. Fame and fortune followed, but the fairy tale that his life had become was not to last. After relinquishing his WBO title and losing his WBA title, he was to endure seven years of mixed fortunes and bitter disappointments until he found himself on the verge of being consigned to history books. Written off in the media and no longer able to make the weight to fight in the lightweight division, it looked as if The Rose of Soweto had no other option but to fade away quietly. His long-held dream of winning a third world title seemed an impossible one. Yet, Dingaan refused to give it up. He would not be denied. This is the story of how one man went about proving that no matter where you come from, no matter what your background and social standing you can triumph in the face of adversity. And then he proved it all over again. In doing so he would not only regain his crown as the champion of the people and once again be hailed as a unifying symbol in a racially divided nation, but he would also confirm his place alongside the greatest stars that boxing has ever produced.

Part art history essay, part experimental fiction, part theoretical manifesto on the politics of equivalence, Helicography examines questions of scale in relation to Robert Smithson's iconic 1970 artwork Spiral Jetty. In an essay and film made to accompany the earthwork, Smithson invites us to imagine the stone helix of his structure at various orders of magnitude, from microscopic molecules to entire galaxies. Taking up this invitation with an unrelenting and literal enthusiasm, Helicography pursues the implications of such transformations all the way to the limits of logic. If other spirals, from the natural to the man-made, were expanded or condensed to the size of Spiral Jetty, what are the consequences of their physical metamorphoses? What other equivalences follow in turn, and where do their surprising historical, cultural, and mechanical connections lead? This book considers a number of forms in order to find out: the fluid vortices of whirlpools, hurricanes, and galaxies; the delicate shells of snails and the threatening pose of rattlesnakes; prehistoric ferns and the turns of the inner ear; the monstrous jaws of ancient sharks; a baroque finial scroll on a bass viol; a 19th-century watch spring; phonograph discs and spooled film; the largest open-pit mine on the planet. The result is a narrative laboratory for the "science of imaginary solutions" proposed by Alfred Jarry (whose King Ubu also plays a central role in the story told here), a work of fictocriticism blurring form and content, and the story of a single instant in time lost in the deserts of the intermountain west. Craig Dworkin is the author of four scholarly monographs - Reading the Illegible (Northwestern University Press), No Medium (MIT Press), Dictionary Poetics: Toward a Radical Lexicography (Fordham University Press), and Radium of the Word: a Poetics of Materiality (Chicago University Press) - as well as a half-dozen edited collections and a dozen books of experimental writing, including, most recently, The Pine-Woods Notebook (Kenning Editions). He teaches literary history and theory at the University of Utah.

Issues for Nov. 1957- include section: Accessions. Aanwinste, Sept. 1957-

"In this beautifully written work, searing and unflinchingly honest, Bonnie makes a remarkable transition from actress to author with ease and flair. This shockingly naked account recounts how her depression almost robbed her of her shine and how she continues to fight this darkness. After Bonnie unsuccessfully tried to pursue her acting career in Hollywood, she was diagnosed with clinical depression. At last her darkness had a name, and there was a way to overcome it. With the failed Hollywood adventure as her lowest point, Bonnie begins the painful climb back to a life of health and mental stability. This memoir will have you cheering, crying, and falling in love all at the same time"--Provided by publisher.

Gavin Evans became obsessed with boxing at the age of six. Infatuated with the likes of Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, Gavin devoured everything he could find on the sport and determined to become the heavyweight champion of the world, in spite of being the smallest kid in the class. After a less than wildly successful junior career, Gavin resigned himself to the role of spectator rather than participator in the sport he loved, becoming a journalist, often with a ringside seat. But, growing up in South Africa, it was politics that filled the void, becoming Gavin's new Goliath, and it was politics into which he poured his energy and his pent-up frustrations. Recruited in the ANC underground, Gavin's active role in the struggle against apartheid would frequently place him in far greater danger than he had ever faced in the ring. Detentions, assaults, 5am meetings, spy-catching, murder attempts, all these became a part of Gavin Evans' new world. A memoir of twin passions, boxing and politics, set against the backdrop of South Africa under apartheid, Dancing Shoes is Dead is a vivid, incisive and poignant portrait of two disparate yet strangely connected worlds, and of the characters, brave, brutal and often bizarre, who inhabit them both.