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.

In 2001, The Voice of the Heart began a steady journey into the lives of those looking for more. Since its initial release, The Voice of the Heart has been handed one friend to another and has helped thousands of people begin to speak the truth of their story and to live more fully from the heart. Answer the call to full living.

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.

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.

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.

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.

"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.