The Erratics

In this award-winning memoir, two sisters reckon with the convalescence and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humour and brutal honesty. When Vicki and her sister learn their mother has been hospitalized for a broken hip, they return to their parents' home in Alberta to put things back in order. Though their parents disowned them years before, the sisters now reassert themselves in the dysfunctional household: their father, undernourished and suffering from Stockholm syndrome, is unable to see that he is in danger from his outlandish and vindictive wife. Rearranging their lives to be the daughters they were never allowed to be, the sisters focus their efforts on helping their father cope with the unending manipulations of their mother, and must encounter all the characters common in the circus of caretaking--oddball nurses and home helpers; over-opinionated hospital staff who have fallen for their mother's compulsive lies--along with the pressures that come with caring for elderly loved (and sometimes unloved) ones. Set against the natural world of remotest Alberta ("in winter the cold will kill you, nothing personal"), this memoir--at once dark and hopeful--shatters precedents about grief, anger and family trauma with surprising tenderness and humour.

Winner of the History of Science Society's 2022 Davis Prize How one mother challenged the medical establishment and misconceptions about autistic children and their parents In the early 1960s, Massachusetts writer and homemaker Clara Park and her husband took their 3-year-old daughter, Jessy, to a specialist after noticing that she avoided connection with others. Following the conventional wisdom of the time, the psychiatrist diagnosed Jessy with autism and blamed Clara for Jessy’s isolation. Experts claimed Clara was the prototypical “refrigerator mother,” a cold, intellectual parent who starved her children of the natural affection they needed to develop properly. Refusing to accept this, Clara decided to document her daughter’s behaviors and the family’s engagement with her. In 1967, she published her groundbreaking memoir challenging the refrigerator mother theory and carefully documenting Jessy’s development. Clara’s insights and advocacy encouraged other parents to seek education and support for their autistic children. Meanwhile, Jessy would work hard to expand her mother’s world, and ours. Drawing on previously unexamined archival sources and firsthand interviews, science historian Marga Vicedo illuminates the story of how Clara Park and other parents fought against medical and popular attitudes toward autism while presenting a rich account of major scientific developments in the history of autism in the US. Intelligent Love is a fierce defense of a mother’s right to love intelligently, the value of parents’ firsthand knowledge about their children, and an individual’s right to be valued by society.

This fascinating book by Rebecca Linder Hintze powerfully and effectively communicates a key, and sometimes overlooked, piece of the puzzle relating to family dynamics. For example, have you ever wondered why some families reach a ceiling on their earning potential, struggle to have happy marriages, or have such difficult interactions with their siblings and parents? Perhaps your family has a history of sabotaging careers or thwarting their love relationships? Healing Your Family History explains that most of our individual issues originate from family blocks. As you read this book, you’ll come to understand how family belief systems store inside you and prevent individual growth by locking you into thought processes that hold you back. All families have these nonverbal belief systems, and unless you understand and heal your inherent blocks, it may be difficult to love others, move forward, and get what you want in life. Most people have a family . . . and we all have a reason to heal our related challenges—after all, tribal issues sit at the core of world turmoil. Those who are truly ready to heal their family dysfunction will benefit immensely from this book!

“Clear and lucid” poems from a US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner who “journeys through the landscape of memory, consciousness, loss, and love” (The Washington Post). Kay Ryan is acclaimed for her highly relatable, deeply insightful poems. Erratic Facts is her first new collection since the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Best of It, and it is animated with her signature swift, clearheaded, lyrical style. At once witty and melancholy, playful and heartfelt, Ryan examines enormous subjects—existence, consciousness, love, loss—in compact poems that have immensely powerful resonance. Her sly rhymes and strong cadences convey both musicality and wisdom. While these pieces are composed of the same brevity and vitality that have characterized her singular voice over the course of more than twenty years, her imagination is more eccentric and daring than ever. Erratic Facts solidifies Ryan’s place at the pinnacle of American poetry. “Read a poem once and take in its crisp rhythms, subtle rhymes, and arresting images. Read it again and detect its hide-and-seek metaphors and meanings. . . . [Ryan’s] quantum poems pose resonant questions of physics and metaphysics, of attentiveness and caring on scales intimate and universal.” —Booklist

Watch an interview with DJ on CNN Listen to Ralph Savarese's interview on NPR's "The Diane Rehm Show" Visit the book's website: www.reasonable-people.com "Why would someone adopt a badly abused, nonspeaking, six-year-old from foster care?" So the author was asked at the outset of his adoption-as-a-first-resort adventure. Part love story, part political manifesto about "living with conviction in a cynical time," the memoir traces the development of DJ, a boy written off as profoundly retarded and now, six years later, earning all "A's" at a regular school. Neither a typical saga of autism nor simply a challenge to expert opinion, Reasonable People illuminates the belated emergence of a self in language. And it does so using DJ's own words, expressed through the once discredited but now resurgent technique of facilitated communication. In this emotional page-turner, DJ reconnects with the sister from whom he was separated, begins to type independently, and explores his experience of disability, poverty, abandonment, and sexual abuse. "Try to remember my life," he says on his talking computer, and remember he does in the most extraordinarily perceptive and lyrical way. Asking difficult questions about the nature of family, the demise of social obligation, and the meaning of neurological difference, Savarese argues for a reasonable commitment to human possibility and caring.

An advocate and son of same-gender parents recounts his famed address to the Iowa House of Representatives on civil unions, and describes his positive experiences of growing up in an alternative family in spite of prejudice.

Winner of the 2021 Michael Crouch Award, debut category of the National Biography Award: From famine to freedom, how a young boy fled Chairman Mao's China to a new life in Australia Andrew Kwong was only seven when he witnessed his first execution. The grim scene left him sleepless, anxious and doubtful about his commitment as a revolutionary in Mao's New China. Yet he knew if he devoted himself to the Party and its Chairman he would be saved. That's what his teacher told him. Months later, it was his own father on trial. This time the sentence was banishment to a re-education camp, not death. It left the family tainted, despised, and with few means of survival during the terrible years of persecution and famine known as the Great Leap Forward. Even after his father returned, things remained desperate. Escape seemed the only solution, and it would be twelve-year-old Andrew who undertook the perilous journey first. This is the poignant, resonant story of a young boy's awakening – to survival, education, fulfilment, and eventually to a new life of freedom. PRAISE 'An incredibly powerful book' Benjamin Law '[A] moving family saga, shot through with yearning and hard-won joy' Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald 'This book will live on in your heart long after you've read the last page' Vicki Laveau-Harvie, author of The Erratics 'Heart-breaking, honest, personal, Andrew Kwong's moving journey from oppression to freedom is inspiring' Susanne Gervay, OAM, author 'A work of startling clarity ... reminiscent of Angela's Ashes' South China Morning Post Magazine 'Deeply moving ... The unique perspective of a child ... places One Bright Moon in the vicinity of Night, Elie Wiesel's pathbreaking memoir of his early life prior to and of his time in German concentration camps' Meenakshi Bharat, IIC Quarterly 'A few pages into this compelling memoir proves it was written by a master storyteller' Sharon Rundle, Australian Book Review 'A profoundly moving and spellbinding story that perfectly illuminates the terror of the times and the irrepressible yearning for something better' Carol Major, author and writing mentor 'One Bright Moon is extraordinary writing that encapsulates long-term hunger as a background feature of daily life in Mao's New China. In the foreground are images of adults and children populating the world of the pre-teenage boy with a photographic memory who would later write of them. The book is rich archival material for the study of China's social history' Mabel Lee, PhD FAHA, writer and translator 'Reading this memoir is a healing experience' Devika Brendon, author and editor