Toxic Criticism

We've all felt the sting of criticism . . . Sometimes painful barbs from friends, family, coworkers, or strangers can lodge in our minds and eat away at our core. When you allow criticism--even self-criticism--to affect you that powerfully, it can be toxic. And if you don't break the cycle, toxic criticism can make you sick, strain relationships, and prevent you from fulfilling your dreams. But you don't have to live that way! By using the proven strategies in Toxic Criticism, you can deflect any hurtful comment that comes your way, rationally decide whether the criticism has any validity, and, if you choose, give a calculated response or use it as an opportunity to make a positive change. Once you've mastered the techniques in Toxic Criticism, you'll be able to: Dismiss negative comments before they make you upset Take away the power of criticism by believing in yourself Live a positive life, driven by feeling of self-worth instead of self-loathing Silence your inner critic, and listen to the voice of confidence

Cutting ties with a toxic family member is a crucial step away from a legacy of dysfunction and toward healing and happiness. This compassionate guide will help you embrace your decision with a sense of pride, validation, and faith in yourself; and provides powerful tools for creating boundaries, coping with judgment, and overcoming self-doubt. Do you have a toxic family member? Do you feel like cutting ties with this person—even as painful and scary as that may sound—would dramatically increase your well-being and improve your life? You’re not alone. Severing ties with a family member can be devastating; and cutting this toxic person out of your life may bring up feelings of guilt and uncertainty—especially if you feel judged by others regarding your decision. Fortunately, you can free yourself from this toxic family member in a healthy, responsible, and liberating way. In Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members, psychologist and toxic-family survivor Sherrie Campbell offers effective strategies for setting strong boundaries after ending contact with a toxic family member, and provides powerful tools to help you heal from shame, self-doubt, and stigma. You’ll find the validation you need to embrace your decision with pride and acknowledgement of your self-worth. You’ll learn how to let go of negative thoughts and feelings. And finally, you’ll develop the skills needed to rediscover self-care, self-love, self-reliance, and healthy loving relationships. Whether you’re ready to sever ties with a toxic family member, or already have, this book will help guide you, every step of the way.

Risk Criticism is a study of literary and cultural responses to global environmental risk in an age of unfolding ecological catastrophe. In 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset its iconic Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight, as close to the apocalypse as it has been since 1953. What pushed its hands was not just the threat of nuclear weapons, but also other global environmental risks that the Bulletin judged to have risen to the scale of the nuclear, including climate change and innovations in the life sciences. If we may once have believed that the end of days would come in a blaze of nuclear firestorm, we now suspect that the apocalypse may be much slower, creeping in as chemical toxins, climate change, or nano-technologies run amok. Taking inspiration from the questions raised by the Bulletin’s synecdochical “nuclear,” Risk Criticism aims to generate a hybrid form of critical practice that brings “nuclear criticism” into conversation with ecocriticism. Through readings of novels, films, theater, poetry, visual art, websites, news reports, and essays, Risk Criticism tracks the diverse ways in which environmental risks are understood and represented today.

As ecofeminism continues to gain attention from multiple academic discourses, the field of literary criticism has been especially affected by this philosophy/social movement. Scholars using ecofeminist literary criticism are making new and important arguments concerning literature across the spectrum and issues of environment, race, class, gender, sexuality, and other forms of oppression. The essays in New Directions in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism highlight the intersections of these oppressions through the works of different authors including Barbara Kingsolver, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Hogan and Flora Nwapa, and demonstrate the expansion of ecofeminist literary criticism to a more global scale as well as important connections with the field of environmental justice. This collection offers fresh insight and expands the important discussion surrounding the field of ecofeminism and literature.

Ecocriticism and Asian American Literature: Gold Mountains, Weedflowers, and Murky Globes offers an ecocritical reinterpretation of Asian American literature. The book considers more than a century of Asian American writing, from Eaton’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912) to Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being (2013), through an ecocritical lens. The volume explores the most relevant landmarks in Asian American literature: the first-contact narratives written by Bulosan, Kingston, Mukherjee, and Jen; the controversial texts published by Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton) at the time of the Yellow Peril; the rise of cultural nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s, illustrated by Wong’s Homebase and Kingston’s China Men; old and recent examples of “internment literature” dealing with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII (Sone, Houston, Miyake, Kadohata); and the new trends in Asian American literature since the 1990s, exemplified by Yamashita’s and Ozeki’s novels, which explore the challenges of our transnational, transnatural era. Begoña Simal-González’s ecocritical readings of these texts provide crucial interdisciplinary insights, addressing and analyzing important narratives within Asian American culture and literature.

From veteran teacher and acclaimed author Joni B. Cole comes a revised and expanded edition of her popular writing guide Toxic Feedback. Successful writers know that feedback is often the difference between writing and not writing, and between writing and writing well. But feedback mismanaged is more likely to leave the writer confused, intimidated, or even deflated. This book not only detoxifies the feedback process with humor, but it also shows writers and feedback providers how to make the most of this powerful resource at every stage of the writing and publishing process. This new edition includes a second preface, four new chapters, updates throughout the original material, and several additional exercises. Cole also includes new and previous interviews with authors such as Khaled Hosseini, Juan Morales, Grace Paley, Jodi Picoult, and Matthew Salesses. Toxic Feedback remains essential reading for all writers, critique groups, MFA programs, and teachers of writing at every level.

Offers proven strategies for taming toxic thought patterns of parents about their unruly children, and provides guidelines to improving the defiant behavior of children by changing one's own parenting mindset.

The big picture : how Buffy the vampire slayer turned me into a TV critic -- The long con ("The Sopranos") -- The great divide : Norman Lear, Archie Bunker, and the rise of the bad fan -- Difficult women ("Sex and the city") -- Cool story, bro ("True detective," "Top of the lake" and "The fall") -- Last girl in Larchmont : the legacy of Joan Rivers -- Girls girls girls : "Girls," "Vanderpump rules," "House of cards and Scandal," "The Amy Schumer show," "Transparent" -- Confessions of the human shield -- How jokes won the election -- In praise of sex and violence : "Hannibal," "Law et order : SVU," "Jessica Jones," -- "The jinx," "The Americans" -- The price is right : what advertising does to TV -- In living color : Kenya Barris' -- Breaking the box : "Jane the virgin," "The comeback," "The good wife," "The newsroom," "Adventure time," "The leftovers," "High maintenance." -- Riot girl : Jenji Kohan's hot provocations -- A disappointed fan is still a fan ("Lost") -- Mr. big : how Ryan Murphy became the most powerful man in television.