Death Blossoms

Death Blossoms
Author: Mumia Abu-Jamal
Publisher: South End Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2003-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780896086999

The author, a prisoner on death-row for killing a police officer, presents a series of essays and reflections on his life and his spirituality.

Death Blossoms

Death Blossoms
Author: Mumia Abu-Jamal
Publisher: City Lights Books
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 087286801X

Profound meditations on life, death, freedom, family, and faith, written by radical Black journalist, Mumia Abu-Jamal, while he was awaiting his execution. During the spring of 1996, black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was living on death row and expecting to be executed for a crime he steadfastly maintained he did not commit—the murder of a white Philadelphia police officer. It was in that period, with the likelihood of execution looming over him, that he received visits from members of the Bruderhof spiritual community—refugees from Hitler's Germany—anti-fascist, anti-racist, and deeply opposed to the death penalty. Inspired by the encounters, Mumia hand-wrote Death Blossoms—a series of short essays and personal vignettes reflecting on his search for spiritual meaning, freedom, and truth in a deeply racist and materialistic society. Featuring a new introduction by Mumia and a report by Amnesty International detailing how his trial was "in violation of minimum international standards," this new edition of Death Blossoms is essential reading for the Black Lives Matter era, and is destined to endure as a classic in American prison literature. Praise for Death Blossoms, Expanded Edition: "For years in my classrooms I have watched Death Blossoms do its luminous work. It has awakened the conscience of so many of my student readers. … From streets to classrooms and back, Death Blossoms keeps opening up consciences, hearts, and minds for our revolutionary work."—Mark Lewis Taylor, Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, and author of The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World "Targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO for his revolutionary politics, imprisoned, and sentenced to death, Mumia found freedom in resistance. His reflections here—on race, spirituality, on struggle, and life—illuminate this path to freedom for us all."—Joshua Bloom, co-author with Waldo E. Martin Jr. of Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party "In this revised edition of his groundbreaking work, Death Blossoms, convicted death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal tackles hard and existential questions, searching for God and a greater meaning in a caged life that may be cut short if the state has its way and takes his life. … If there is any justice, Mumia will prevail in his battle for his life and for his freedom."—Lara Bazelon, author of Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction "Mumia Abu-Jamal has challenged us to see the prison at the center of a long history of US oppression, and he has inspired us to keep faith with ordinary struggles against injustice under the most terrible odds and circumstances. Written more than two decades ago, Death Blossoms helps us to see beyond prison walls; it is as timely and as necessary as the day it was published."—Nikhil Pal Singh, founding faculty director of the NYU Prison Education Program, author of Race and America's Long War "For over three decades, the words of Mumia Abu-Jamal have been tools many young activists have used to connect the dots of empire, racism, and resistance. The welcome reissue of Death Blossoms is a chance to reconnect with Abu-Jamal's prophetic voice, one that needs to be heard now more than ever."—Hilary Moore and James Tracy, co-authors of No Fascist USA!, The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today's Movements

All Things Censored

All Things Censored
Author: Mumia Abu-Jamal
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2001-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781583220764

More than 75 essays—many freshly composed by Mumia with the cartridge of a ball-point pen, the only implement he is allowed in his death-row cell—embody the calm and powerful words of humanity spoken by a man on Death Row. Abu-Jamal writes on many different topics, including the ironies that abound within the U.S. prison system and the consequences of those ironies, and his own case. Mumia's composure, humor, and connection to the living world around him represents an irrefutable victory over the "corrections" system that has for two decades sought to isolate and silence him. The title, All Things Censored, refers to Mumia's hiring as an on-air columnist by National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and subsequent banning from that venue under pressure from law and order groups.

Death and Daisies

Death and Daisies
Author: Amanda Flower
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1683317823

National bestselling author: Florist Fiona Knox left behind her gloomy life for a magical garden in Scotland, but a murder on her shop’s opening day spells doom Fiona Knox thought she was pulling her life back together when she inherited her godfather’s cottage in Duncreigan, Scotland—complete with a magical walled garden. But the erstwhile Tennessee flower shop owner promptly found herself puddle boot-deep in danger when she found a dead body among the glimmering blossoms. One police investigation and a handsome Chief Inspector names Neil Craig later and Fiona’s life is getting back on a steady—though bewitched—track. Her sister Isla has just moved in with her, and the grand opening of her new spellbound venture, the Climbing Rose Flower Shop in Aberdeenshire, is imminent. But dark, ensorcelled clouds are gathering to douse Fiona’s newly sunny outlook. First, imperious parish minister Quaid MacCullen makes it undeniably clear that he would be happy to send Fiona back to Tennessee. Then, a horrific lightning storm, rife with terrible omen, threatens to tear apart the elderly cottage and sends Fi and Isla cowering under their beds. The storm passes, but then, Fi is called away from the Climbing Rose’s opening soiree when Kipling, the tiny village’s weak-kneed volunteer police chief, finds a dead body on the beach. The body proves difficult to identify, but Kipling is certain it’s that of the parish minister. Which makes Fiona, MacCullen’s new nemesis, a suspect. And what’s worse, Isla has seemed bewitched as of late...did she do something unspeakable to protect her sister? The last thing Fiona wanted to do was play detective again. But now, the rosy future she’d envisioned is going to seed, and if she and Craig can’t clear her name, her idyllic life will wilt away. Perfect for readers of Paige Shelton and Sheila Connolly, Death and Daises is the second floral Magic Garden Mystery by national bestselling author Amanda Flower.

Black Blossoms

Black Blossoms
Author: Rigoberto González
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781935536154

"What is / misery now that the last spring / you will ever know has already been forgotten?"

Flowers That Kill

Flowers That Kill
Author: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2015-08-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804795940

Flowers are beautiful. People often communicate their love, sorrow, and other feelings to each other by offering flowers, like roses. Flowers can also be symbols of collective identity, as cherry blossoms are for the Japanese. But, are they also deceptive? Do people become aware when their meaning changes, perhaps as flowers are deployed by the state and dictators? Did people recognize that the roses they offered to Stalin and Hitler became a propaganda tool? Or were they like the Japanese, who, including the soldiers, did not realize when the state told them to fall like cherry blossoms, it meant their deaths? Flowers That Kill proposes an entirely new theoretical understanding of the role of quotidian symbols and their political significance to understand how they lead people, if indirectly, to wars, violence, and even self-exclusion and self-destruction precisely because symbolic communication is full of ambiguity and opacity. Using a broad comparative approach, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney illustrates how the aesthetic and multiple meanings of symbols, and at times symbols without images become possible sources for creating opacity which prevents people from recognizing the shifting meaning of the symbols.

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
Author: Gail Tsukiyama
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2007-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429919094

Gail Tsukiyama's The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a powerfully moving masterpiece about tradition and change, loss and renewal, and love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers. It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of Noh theater masks. But as the ripples of war spread to their quiet neighborhood, the brothers must put their dreams on hold—and forge their own paths in a new Japan. Meanwhile, the two young daughters of a renowned sumo master find their lives increasingly intertwined with the fortunes of their father's star pupil, Hiroshi.

Blossoms in the Wind

Blossoms in the Wind
Author: M. G. Sheftall
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2023-05-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0593472322

A revelatory and groundbreaking account of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze—the suicide pilots of World War II—as told through the eyes of the survivors In the final year of World War II, a horrific new weapon was unleashed in the Pacific: the kamikaze. Idealistic, young Japanese men had been taught that there was no greater glory than to sacrifice one’s life to defend the homeland. Now, with the war all but lost, thousands of these determined warriors were hastily trained in the basics of piloting an airplane, then sent out in waves to crash into enemy warships, suicide attacks that killed altogether some seven thousand American sailors. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle and lived? In the wake of 9/11, ethnographer M. G. Sheftall was given unprecedented access to the cloistered community of Japan’s last remaining kamikaze survivors. As an American fluent in Japanese, Sheftall was the only westerner to ever sit face-to-face with these men and hear their stories. The result is a fascinating journey into the lives, indoctrination, and mindsets of the kamikaze, through the eyes of participants who are now lost to time.

Death Of A Saleswoman

Death Of A Saleswoman
Author: Michelle Haring
Publisher:
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2021-08-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9781733183765

This is a cozy mystery set in the car business.