Voices From Behind The Mask

For the second time in history, masks have become the symbol of a global pandemic. The facial front lines differ in shape and size and are fashioned to the users’ desires, reaching from African prints to floral patterns. But are masks solely ‘germ-shields’ or ‘dirt-traps’ as referred to a century ago? What does the choice of fabric actually reveal about its wearer? And in which way are differences ‘un_masked’? Authors, academics and activists from different backgrounds share their ideas on the historical, political, religious, racial and cultural, as well as on the intersectional dimension of masks. Similar to W.E.B. Du Bois metaphor of ‘the veil’, which solely exists in people’s minds, masks can be seen as the physical manifestation of the inner and outer world, the speakable and the unspoken. With texts by Logan February, Precious Colette Kemigisha, Olumide Popoola, Djamila Ribeiro, Jeferson Tenório und Sheree Renée Thomas. A publication of the Literary Colloquium Berlin with the kind support of the Federal Foreign Office. Natasha A. Kelly has a PhD in Communication Studies and Sociology with a research focus on Black German Studies. Her award-winning and internationally acclaimed documentary "Millis Awakening" was commissioned by the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018. Based on her book "Sisters & Souls" (2015) she has been directing the sequential theater performance "M(a)y Sister" since 2016. Her dissertation "Afroculture. The Space between Yesterday and Tomorrow" (2016) was staged in three countries and three languages in 2019/20. Her latest publication "The Comet – Afrofuturism 2.0" (2020) is a documentary of the Black speculative arts symposium which she curated at the HAU Hebbel am Ufer Theater in Berlin. http://www.natashaakelly.com

This boldly original book explores the origins, meanings, and forms of women's aggression. Drawing from in-depth interviews with sixty women of different ages and ethnic and class backgrounds--police officers, attorneys, substance abusers, homemakers, artists--Dana Jack provides a rich account of how women explain (or explain away) their own hidden or actual acts of hurt to others. With sensitivity but without sentimentality, Jack gives readers a range of compelling stories of how women channel, either positively or destructively, their own powerful force and of how they resist and retaliate in the face of others' aggression in a society that expects women to be yielding, empathetic, and supportive. Arguing that aggression arises from failures in relationships, Jack portrays the many forms that women's aggression can take, from veiled approaches used to resist, control, and take vengeance on others, to aggression that reflects despair, to aggression that may be a hopeful sign of new strength. Throughout the book, Jack shows the positive sides of aggression as women struggle with internal and external demons, reconnect with others, and create the courage to stand their ground. This work broadens our understanding of aggression as an interpersonal phenomenon rooted in societal expectations, and offers exciting new approaches for exploring the variations of this vexing human experience.

Cass and her mom have always stood on their own against the world. Then Cass learns she had a grandmother, one who was never part of her life, one who has just died and left her and her mother the first house they could call their own. But with it comes more questions than answers: Why is her Mom so determined not to live there? Why was this relative kept so secret? And what is the unusual mask, forgotten in a drawer, trying to tell her? Strange dreams, strange voices, and strange incidents all lead Cass closer to solving the mystery and making connections she never dreamed she had.

Based on images of disguise in literature, theater, and opera, this short-story cycle explores themes of identity and subterfuge in a fictional fugue that ranges from comic to poignant. Into the librettos of Don Giovanni, Tosca, Rigoletto, and other operas, Green weaves the authentic biographies of their singers and composers, modern-day settings, and his own imaginative twists. Throughout Voices in a Mask, characters obscure and reveal themselves as art mimics life and life, art. Ultimately the very acts of masking and projecting reveal a truth about the power of art and its inherent deceptions.

‘Wow this book was fantastic! Loved the characters, loved the story. Couldn't put it down, it totally sucked me in and didn't let me go until the very last page.’ – Dawn (Netgalley) The greatest show on earth may pose the greatest danger...

In The Ghost behind the Masks, W. David Shaw traces Shakespeare’s influence on nine Victorian poets: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Algernon Swinburne, Arthur Hugh Clough, and George Meredith. Often, he writes, the transparency of Shakespeare's influence on Victorian poets and the degree of their engagement with Shakespeare exist in inverse ratio. Instead of imitating a play by Shakespeare or merely quoting his lines, a Victorian poet may embrace more elusive elements of rhetoric and style, adapting them to his or her own ends. Shaw argues that the most Shakespearean attribute of the Victorian poets is not their addiction to any particular trope or figure of speech but their reticence, the classical restraint of their great monologues, and their sudden descent from grandeur to simplicity. He explores such topics as man-made law versus natural right, Stoic fatalism versus self-reliance, and the sanity of lunatics, lovers, and poets versus the madness of commonplace minds.

This study asserts that the Lessing in the Postscript can only be understood within Kierkegaard's usage of pseudonymous figures to fulfill the requirements of indirect communication.