Voices From The Heart

In this deeply personal book, artist and author Ed Young explores twenty-six Chinese characters, each describing a feeling or emotion, and each containing somewhere the symbol for the heart. Through stunning collage art that interprets the visual elements within each character, Young uncovers layers of emotional meaning for words such as joy and sorrow, respect and rudeness. He invites children to probe the full range of their own emotions, and gives parents, librarians, and older readers a context for discussing ethics and for examining the silmilarities and differences between old and new, East and West. Voices of the Heart is a truly unique exploration—or as Young writes, "adventure"—into the different moods, and dangers and abilities of the human heart.

Collects interviews and commentary on blues and gospel music from the Mississippi Delta area, and discusses how race relations, connections to the sacred, and Southern life helped mold this style of music.

A triple breakdown in relationships, work life, and health leaves Professor Denis Ladbrook teetering on the brink. Inspired by Carl Jung's idea that the ocean symbolizes the unconscious the great source of life, emotion, and soul Denis chooses to leave the city for the seaside hamlet of Yanchep, an hour's drive north of Perth, Western Australia. Tiptoeing down a steep dune track to the water's edge as dawn breaks each morning, Denis walks far along the beach, immersed in sounds of wind and waves. His sensations morph into words. Stumbling through emotional desolation and divorce, he trudges the ocean shore until he discovers the rhythm of the ancient Japanese poetic shape, haiku. Among the book's almost three hundred haikus, Denis includes thirty-two written by medieval Japanese poets. Over the year, the healing energy of the ocean, the ritual beat of walking, and actually writing the poems enabled Denis to let go and flow with the tides. Raw emotions allying with capricious ocean moods give the collection its energy, transforming brokenness to wholeness.

Louis Stanislaw has brought us an extraordinary gift: a collection of deeply moving essays from men and women sharing their personal experiences with epilepsy, one of mankind's least understood and most daunting of challenges. In these pages, Jonathan Magaziner shares his feelings of pain and powerlessness as he sits on an airplane and watches a man a few rows away suffer a seizure--and then be carried off to an unknown destination. Lord Charles Guthrie, the distinguished British military commander, tells us about the strength and pride of a young soldier who refuses to let his secret battle with epilepsy halt his dreams of a sterling military career. And Bill Maier tells us of his personal angels: the doctors and nurses who were finally able to halt his seizures and put an end to the chaos that was destroying his life. Crowning the collection, a young woman named Amanda Rich tells of her personal heartache and triumph, as she comes to embrace her epilepsy not as an affliction but as a gift, an opportunity to learn and grow and share with others the need for greater understanding and social acceptance for everyone with such challenges.

A companion on the darkest road many of us will ever have to travel: grieving the death of someone we loved. 83 people share their journeys through grief, and healing.

"Written by patients and doctors, nurses and caregivers, students and mental health professionals, these intimate and beautifully crafted pieces capture the authentic voices of people whose lives have been changed by their health care experiences"--Back cover.

From 2001 to 2006, Richard L. Cates Jr. interviewed senior members of more than 30 families living in and around Arena township, a small community in southern Wisconsin. He asked them about growing up in rural America and their connection to a way of life that is vanishing in the twenty-first century. The result, Voices from the Heart of the Land, is a collection of reminiscences, observations, and opinions celebrating the stewardship of the land and the values of the stewards. Of course, as Cates points out, these are nothing less than “our core human values—integrity, commitment, responsibility, citizenship, self-determination, decency, kindness, love, and hope.”

California has always been America's promised landÑfor American Indians as much as anyone. In the 1950s, Native people from all over the United States moved to the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Relocation Program. Oakland was a major destination of this program, and once there, Indian people arriving from rural and reservation areas had to adjust to urban living. They did it by creating a cooperative, multi-tribal communityÑnot a geographic community, but rather a network of people linked by shared experiences and understandings. The Intertribal Friendship House in Oakland became a sanctuary during times of upheaval in people's lives and the heart of a vibrant American Indian community. As one long-time resident observes, "The Wednesday Night Dinner at the Friendship House was a must if you wanted to know what was happening among Native people." One of the oldest urban Indian organizations in the country, it continues to serve as a gathering place for newcomers as well as for the descendants of families who arrived half a century ago. This album of essays, photographs, stories, and art chronicles some of the people and events that have playedÑand continue to playÑa role in the lives of Native families in the Bay Area Indian community over the past seventy years. Based on years of work by more than ninety individuals who have participated in the Bay Area Indian community and assembled by the Community History Project at the Intertribal Friendship House, it traces the community's changes from before and during the relocation period through the building of community institutions. It then offers insight into American Indian activism of the 1960s and '70sÑincluding the occupation of AlcatrazÑand shows how the Indian community continues to be created and re-created for future generations. Together, these perspectives weave a richly textured portrait that offers an extraordinary inside view of American Indian urban life. Through oral histories, written pieces prepared especially for this book, graphic images, and even news clippings, Urban Voices collects a bundle of memories that hold deep and rich meaning for those who are a part of the Bay Area Indian communityÑaccounts that will be familiar to Indian people living in cities throughout the United States. And through this collection, non-Indians can gain a better understanding of Indian people in America today. "If anything this book is expressive of, it is the insistence that Native people will be who they are as Indians living in urban communities, Natives thriving as cultural people strong in Indian ethnicity, and Natives helping each other socially, spiritually, economically, and politically no matter what. I lived in the Bay Area in 1975-79 and 1986-87, and I was always struck by the Native (many people do say 'American Indian' emphatically!) community and its cultural identity that has always insisted on being second to none. Yes, indeed this book is a dynamic, living document and tribute to the Oakland Indian community as well as to the Bay Area Indian community as a whole." ÑSimon J. Ortiz "When my family arrived in San Francisco in 1957, the people at the original San Francisco Indian Center helped us adjust to urban living. Many years later, I moved to Oakland and the Intertribal Friendship House became my sanctuary during a tumultuous time in my life. The Intertribal Friendship House was more than an organization. It was the heart of a vibrant tribal community. When we returned to our Oklahoma homelands twenty years later, we took incredible memories of the many people in the Bay Area who helped shape our values and beliefs, some of whom are included in this book." ÑWilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief, Cherokee Nation