Showing results for "Body Politics" in Biographies & Memoirs

In May 1373, the English mystic Julian of Norwich was healed of a serious illness after experiencing a series of visions of the Blessed Virgin and of Christ's suffering. Her account, A Revelation of Love, is considered one of the most remarkable documents of medieval religious experience. In this book, Frederick Bauerschmidt provides a close and historically sensitive study of Julian's Revelation of Love that addresses the relationship between our understanding of God and our vision of human community.

"It's a truism, for instance, that a few clothes are more shocking than none. But for women especially, bras, panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can't possibly fit. Without those visual references, however, each individual woman's body can be accepted on its own terms. We stop being comparatives. We begin to be unique."

When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending "more funerals than birthday parties". Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes you through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time.

In her first full-length book, Lucia Osborne-Crowley writes about the secrets a body keeps, from gender identity, puberty, and menstruation to sexual pleasure; to pregnancy or its absence; and to darker secrets of abuse, invasion, or violation. The voices of women, trans and nonbinary people around the world, and the author’s own deeply moving testimony, cohere into an immersive polyphonic memoir that tells the story of the young person’s body in 2021.

By day, Robert Lee Yates, Jr., was a respected father of five, a skilled helicopter pilot who served in Desert Storm and the National Guard, and a man no one suspected of a deadly hidden life. By night he prowled the streets where prostitutes gathered, gaining their trust before betraying them with a bullet to the head. On August 26, 1997, the decomposed bodies of two young women were discovered in Spokane, Washington. Within months, four more women were added to the mounting death toll.

In October, 1996, young, pretty, and petite women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York. Most were prostitutes and some were addicts. By August, 1998, the toll had reached eight, when a prostitute told police she had barely escaped being strangled by Kendall Francois, 27, a 6'4", 300-lb. middle school hall monitor whose slovenly personal hygiene had earned him the nickname "Stinky". Inside his house, the smell was worse, as investigators discovered a tangle of rotting flesh and bones.

An honest reckoning with the war on terror, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran whose convictions came undone When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror”...

Some women disappeared in crowded cities. Some vanished along dark roads. Some were last seen getting into cars, walking home, leaving work, or trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. Before the headlines, before the arrests, before the confessions, and before investigators understood the patterns, there were families waiting for answers. Before They Found the Bodies is a dark, gripping true crime collection about missing women, serial predators, failed investigations, cold case questions, and the long search for justice.

This program is read by the author. "Ratajkowski shares thoughts on sexuality, feminism, and power dynamics in a nuanced way that will have listeners looking for more from her." —AudioFile "The essays are more impactful when you hear Ratajkowski read them, which she does with sincere emotion."...

Have you ever struggled with your body image or felt as if you don't measure up? If you said yes, you are not alone. In This is My Body 25 women share their deepest truths about their relationships with their bodies and their journeys to self-acceptance and love. These stories are poignant and relate-able.