Ailing in Place

Ailing in Place
Author: Michele Morrone
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0821440772

In Ailing in Place, Michele Morrone explores the relationship between environmental conditions in Appalachia and health outcomes that are too often ascribed to individual choices only. She applies quantitative data to observations from environmental health professionals to frame the ways in which the environment, as a social determinant of health, leads to health disparities in Appalachian communities. These examples—these stories of place—trace the impacts of water quality, waste disposal, and natural resource extraction on the health and quality of life of Appalachian people. Public health is inextricably linked to place. Environmental conditions such as contaminated water, unsafe food, and polluted air are as important as culture, community, and landscape in characterizing a place and determining the health outcomes of the people who live there. In some places, the state of the environment is a consequence of historical activities related to natural resources and cultural practices. In others, political decisions to achieve short-term economic objectives are made with little consideration of long-term public health consequences.

Appalachian Fall

Appalachian Fall
Author: Jeff Young
Publisher: Tiller Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1982148861

A searing, on-the-ground examination of the coal industry—and the workers left behind—in the midst of an environmental crisis, addiction, and rising white nationalism. The past few years have highlighted the paradox at the heart of coal country. Despite fueling a century of American progress, its people are being left behind, suffering from unemployment, addiction, and environmental crises often at greater rates than anywhere else in the country. But what if Appalachia’s troubles are just a taste of what the future holds for all of us? Appalachian Fall tells the captivating true story of coal communities on the leading edge of change. A group of local reporters known as the Ohio Valley ReSource shares the real-world impact these changes have had on what was once the heart and soul of America. Including stories about the miners striking in Harlan County after their company suddenly went bankrupt, bouncing their paychecks; the farmers tilling former mining ground for new cash crops like hemp and maple syrup; the activists working to fight mountaintop removal and bring clean energy jobs to the region; and the mothers mourning the loss of their children to overdose and despair. In the wake of the controversial bestseller Hillbilly Elegy, Appalachian Fall addresses what our country owes to a region that provided fuel for a century and what it risks if it stands by watching as the region, and its people, collapse.

Love in a Fallen City

Love in a Fallen City
Author: Eileen Chang
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2017-06-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1681372444

Masterful short works about passion, family, and human relationships by one of the greatest writers of 20th century China. A New York Review Books Original “[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” –The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere." –Ang Lee Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

Mill Town

Mill Town
Author: Kerri Arsenault
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250155959

Winner of the 2021 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award Winner of the 2021 Maine Literary Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics John Leonard Prize for Best First Book Finalist for the 2021 New England Society Book Award Finalist for the 2021 New England Independent Booksellers Association Award A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Chicago Tribune top book for 2020 “Mill Town is the book of a lifetime; a deep-drilling, quick-moving, heartbreaking story. Scathing and tender, it lifts often into poetry, but comes down hard when it must. Through it all runs the river: sluggish, ancient, dangerous, freighted with America’s sins.” —Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland Kerri Arsenault grew up in the small, rural town of Mexico, Maine, where for over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that provided jobs for nearly everyone in town, including three generations of her family. Kerri had a happy childhood, but years after she moved away, she realized the price she paid for that childhood. The price everyone paid. The mill, while providing the social and economic cohesion for the community, also contributed to its demise. Mill Town is a book of narrative nonfiction, investigative memoir, and cultural criticism that illuminates the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease with the central question; Who or what are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

The Ailing City

The Ailing City
Author: Diego Armus
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2011-07-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822350122

DIVThe first comprehensive study of tuberculosis in Latin America demonstrates that in addition to being a biological phenomenon disease is also a social construction effected by rhetoric, politics, and the daily life of its victims./div

Where the Line Bleeds

Where the Line Bleeds
Author: Jesmyn Ward
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2018-01-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501164341

The first novel from National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward, a timeless Southern fable of brotherly love and familial conflict—“a lyrical yet clear-eyed portrait of a rural South and an African American reality that are rarely depicted” (The Boston Globe). Where the Line Bleeds is Jesmyn Ward’s gorgeous first novel and the first of three novels set in Bois Sauvage—followed by Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing—comprising a loose trilogy about small town sourthern family life. Described as “starkly beautiful” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), “fearless” (Essence), and “emotionally honest” (The Dallas Morning News), it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in rural Bois Sauvage, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. They’ve just finished high school and need to find jobs, but after Katrina, it’s not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe’s not so lucky and starts to sell drugs. Christophe’s downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins’ parents: Cille, who left for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins. Where the Line Bleeds takes place over the course of a single, life-changing summer. It is a delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife, of the relentless grind of poverty, of the toll of addiction on a family, and of the bonds that can sustain or torment us. Bois Sauvage, based on Ward’s own hometown, is a character in its own right, as stiflingly hot and as rich with history as it is bereft of opportunity. Ward’s “lushly descriptive prose…and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked” (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.

The Ailing Nation

The Ailing Nation
Author: NATE. LINK
Publisher:
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2020-09-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781977224989

A NATION IN DISTRESS America has enjoyed an enviable life. Yet, in recent years, there have been unmistakable signs of chronic illness. Our economic progress has fallen off its once-blistering pace, our ability to shape world events has been checked, and our vaunted democratic institutions have begun to collapse around us. America is ailing. Now, here we are, nearly forty years into a chronic illness that has resisted our best efforts at diagnosis. Is this the cancer of our advancing age? The long, slow, terminal decline that will defy the best approaches of modern Medicine? Our fitful end? Not necessarily. In the past four decades, American hospitals have garnered principles of safety from the aviation industry, gathered tips about quality from automobile manufacturers, and gleaned insights into customer service from the hotel trade. These interstellar innovations launched American healthcare into a continuously self-improving model of advancing performance. As such, the world of Medicine has valuable assets to offer the political multiverse: A culture of excellence. Intellectual tools to diagnose and treat difficult problems. A systematic approach that guides almost everything we say and do, yet is seldom employed in the chambers of government. And now it is time to pay it forward. In this collection of riveting stories from patient narratives and leadership challenges - from heartbreaking tales of AIDS, to a harrowing evacuation during Superstorm Sandy, to the exhilarating conquest of Ebola - Dr. Nate Link translates a lifetime of experience into useful lessons for our nation's leaders. To review these examples, he takes us to the bedside of his most memorable cases. We will learn from Natalie, the well-meaning ICU nurse who ignored the ventilator alarm, Juan, the irrepressible AIDS patient who had nine lives, Gerry, the bemused accountant whose brain could not store new memories, and Thomas, the accidental tourist who was raised from the dead. Two dozen other notable patients will teach us additional lessons in leadership. In the final chapter, our lessons will jointly lead us to a most unexpected conclusion and a prescription for the cure of our nation's mysterious malady. Dr. Link is the Chief Medical Officer of Bellevue, America's oldest public hospital, and has practiced there since arriving as a lowly intern at the onset of the AIDS epidemic. He earned his MD from Washington University School of Medicine in 1983, then completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at NYU School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital in 1986. Dr. Link was Co-Chief Editor of the "Bellevue Guide to Outpatient Medicine," winner of the American Medical Writers Association award as Book of the Year for Physicians in 2001.

Hyperboreal

Hyperboreal
Author: Joan Naviyuk Kane
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2013-10-21
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0822979144

Hyperboreal originates from diasporas. It attempts to make sense of change and to prepare for cultural, climate, and political turns that are sure to continue. The poems originate from the hope that our lives may be enriched by the expression of and reflection on the cultural strengths inherent to indigenous culture. It concerns King Island, the ancestral home of the author's family until the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly and permanently relocated its residents. The poems work towards the assembly of an identity, both collective and singular, that is capable of looking forward from the recollection and impact of an entire community's relocation to distant and arbitrary urban centers. Through language, Hyperboreal grants forum to issues of displacement, lack of access to traditional lands and resources and loss of family that King Island people—and all Inuit—are contending with.

The Home Place

The Home Place
Author: Carrie La Seur
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062323466

A successful lawyer is pulled back into her troubled family's life in rural Montana in the wake of her sister's death in this mesmerizing, emotionally evocative, and atmospheric literary novel For a Terrebonne, the home place is the safe haven, the convergence of waters, the place where the beloved dead are as real as the living. . . . The only Terrebonne who made it out, Alma thought she was done with Montana, with its cruel poverty, bleak winters, and stifling ways. Hard work and steely resolve got her to Yale, and now she's an attorney in a high-profile Seattle law firm, too consumed by her career to think about the past. But an unexpected call from the Montana police takes the successful lawyer back to her provincial hometown and pulls her into the family trouble she thought she'd escaped. Her lying, party-loving younger sister, Vicky, is dead. The Billings police say that a very drunk Vicky wandered away from a party and died of exposure after a night in the brutal cold. The strong one who fled Billings and saved herself, Alma returns to make Vicky's funeral arrangements and see to her eleven-year-old niece, Brittany. Once she is back in town, Alma discovers that Vicky's death may not have been an accident. Needing to make her peace with the sister she left behind, Alma sets out to find the truth, an emotional journey that leads her to the home place, her grandmother Maddie's house on the Montana plains that has been the center of the Terrebonne family for generations. She re-encounters Chance, her first love, whose presence reminds her of everything that once was . . . and everything that might be. But before she can face the future, Alma must acknowledge the truth of her own life—the choices that have haunted her and ultimately led her back to this place. The Home Place is a story of secrets that will not lie still, human bonds that will not break, and crippling memories that will not be silenced. It is a story of rural towns and runaways, of tensions corporate and racial, of childhood trauma and adolescent betrayal, and of the guilt that even forgiveness cannot ease. Most of all, it is a story of the place we carry in us always: home.