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Complete Writings by Phillis Wheatley. New York. 2001. Penguin Books. Edited & With An Introduction and Notes By Vincent Carretta. 9780140424300, 224 pages. Cover art - engraving of Phillis Wheatley, reproduced from 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral', London.

9780140424300 DESCRIPTION - Destined to become the first published woman of African descent, Phillis Wheatley was born around 1753. She was taken by the slave ship PHILLIS to Boston in 1761 and bought by John and Susanna Wheatley. The Wheatleys provided her with an education that was unusual for a woman of the time and astonishing for a slave. Phillis published her first poem in 1767, around the age of fourteen, and won much public attention and considerable international fam before she was twenty years old. ‘Vincent Carretta’s edition of the works of Phillis Wheatley is the definitive collection of her work. Expertly edited, it is a masterpiece of textual scholarship. ’ – Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Wheatley Phillis Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) was both the second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent. The publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) brought her fame both in England and the American colonies; figures such as George Washington praised her work. During Wheatley's visit to England with her master's son, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in his own poem. Wheatley was emancipated after the death of her master John Wheatley. She married soon after. Two of her children died as infants. After her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1784, Wheatley fell into poverty and died of illness, quickly followed by the death of her surviving infant son.

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Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. New York. 1978. Dutton. 0525178287. 347 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Mark Rubin.

0525178287 DESCRIPTION - Petals of blood appear on flowers sent up from land that has been paved over in the false name of progress and governed by greedy politicians and inept bureaucrats. Such a land is the Kenya of Ngugi's striking novel. In a small boom town in a rural district of this newly independent nation, three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery are killed and four suspects are taken into custody: Munira, who has come to llmorog as a schoolteacher and become the headmaster; Wanja, the lovely and wise barmaid, who has left the city, where she was forced to be a prostitute; Karega, who has turned from rebellion to organizing workers; Abdulla, the former Mau Mau guerrilla crippled in the struggle for Kenya's freedom from colonial power, who now makes a miserable living as a shopkeeper. As the investigation into the startling triple murder proceeds, the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold and a devastating picture of modern-day Kenya emerges. it is a picture of exploitation and frustration in a land where the people feel their leaders have failed them time after time.

Ngugi wa Thiongo

Ngugi wa Thiong'o has taught at Amherst College, Yale University, and New York University. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, and is director of the university's International Center for Writing and Translation. His books include PETALS OF BLOOD, for which he was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in 1977. He lives in Irvine, California.

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Madwomen: The Locas Mujeres Poems of Gabriela Mistral by Gabriela Mistral. Chicago. 2007. University Of Chicago Press. Translated From The Spanish & Edited By Randall Couch. 168 pages. Jacket illustration - Giuliano Bugiardini, 'Sua cuique persona,' portrait cover with mask and grotesques, ca. 1516. 9780226531908. hardcover.

9780226531908 DESCRIPTION - A schoolteacher whose poetry catapulted her to early fame in her native Chile and an international diplomat whose boundary-defying sexuality still challenges scholars, Gabriela Mistral is one of the most important and enigmatic figures in Latin American literature of the last century. The LOCAS MUJERES poems collected here are among Mistral's most complex and compelling, exploring facets of the self in extremis--poems marked by the wound of blazing catastrophe and its aftermath of mourning. From disquieting humor to balladlike lyricism to folkloric wisdom, these pieces enact a tragic sense of life, depicting 'madwomen' who are anything but mad. Strong and intensely human, Mistral's poetic women confront impossible situations to which no sane response exists. This groundbreaking collection presents poems from Mistral's final published volume as well as new editions of posthumous work, featuring the first English-language appearance of many essential poems. MADWOMEN promises to reveal a profound poet to a new generation of Anglophone readers while reacquainting Spanish readers with a stranger, more complicated 'madwoman' than most have ever known.

Mistral Gabriela Gabriela Mistral (7 April 1889 – 10 January 1957) was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and feminist. She was the first Latin American (and, so far, the only Latin American woman) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she did in 1945 'for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world'. Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences. Her portrait also appears on the 5,000 Chilean peso bank note.

Randall Couch is adjunct professor of English at Arcadia University and an administrator at the University of Pennsylvania. He received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships in poetry in 2000 and 2008.

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Another Way To Be: Selected Works of Rosario Castellanos by Rosario Castellanos. Athens. 1990. University of Georgia Press. Translated From The Spanish & Edited Myralyn F. Allgood. Foreword By Edward D. Terry. 146 pages. Cover photograph courtesy of Oscar Bonifaz. 0820312401.

0820312401 DESCRIPTION - ANOTHER WAY TO BE is a multifaceted selection of the writings of Rosario Castellanos, one of Mexico's most distinguished literary personalities. Poet, novelist, journalist, philosopher, and diplomat, Castellanos was a woman whose life and art reflected her commitment to the problems and promise of her native land. The daughter of a wealthy landowner who had married a seamstress from a lower class, she saw during her childhood the clash of cultures and social classes in tradition-bound communities where women were condemned to lives of submission and Indians were regarded as nothing more than chattel. From these experiences she came to see the world as a place where races and individuals are caught up in an ongoing struggle for justice and dignity, for 'another way to be human and free. ' In her work she focuses a penetrating light on interpersonal and interracial conflicts, denouncing the pervasive injustice as she created a literature that she hoped would be a catalyst for change. ANOTHER WAY TO BE opens with selections from her poetry, presented both in Spanish and in English translation. In such poems as 'Wailing Wall' and the previously unpublished 'Ritual Bath in the Grijalva,' there are echoes of Chilean Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, whom she greatly admired. Poems like 'Indian Mother' and 'The Indian's Prayer' express empathy and compassion for the native of Chiapas. Selections from Castellano's prize-winning fiction reflect her concern with the hostility and prejudice that cripple human relationships and her refusal to depict women and Indians as stereotypes. This collection closes with a group of essays, the product of the latter phase of Castellanos's creative evolution. Written with keen insight and satirical humor, these essays - like her other writing - reflect her training in philosophy, her intellectual debt to Simone Weil and Simone de Beauvoir, and the kinship she felt with Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson. Together with the introductory essay by Myralyn Allgood and an extensive bibliography, the selections in ANOTHER WAY TO BE - most appearing in translation for the first time - give a rich and full sense of the diverse talents of a remarkable writer.

Castellanos Rosario Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 – 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by César Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.

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Guzman, Martin Luis. The Eagle and the Serpent. New York. 1930. Knopf. Translated from the Spanish by Harriet De Onis. 360 pages. hardcover. Originally published as EL AGUILA Y LA SERPIENTE, 1928 - Madrid.

eagle and the serpent knopf 1930 DESCRIPTION - A revolutionary novel, inspired by the experiences of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Eagle and the Serpent (El águila y la serpiente, 1928) depicts the Mexican Revolution and its political aftermath both of which Guzman was familiar with, having contributed both to revolutionary agitation and to the formation of the new revolutionary government. In order that readers not familiar with the origin and nature of the Mexican Revolution may better understand the spirit of this book, we have thought it advisable to give a brief resume of the political events that took place in Mexico from 1910 to 1913. In 1910 Porfirio Diaz's dictatorship was still supreme in Mexico-a liberal, progressive dictator. ship. That same year, as the time for presidential elections approached-a periodical farce by which the letter of the Constitution was observed-the nation began to give evident signs that it wanted to regain possession of its civic will, which had been lost since 1850s. In opposition to the invariable candidacy of Diaz, which satisfied only the groups in power, the nation put forward another, that of Francisco I. Madero. The dictator, however, paid no attention to these premonitory indications; he and his supporters attempted to continue in power, whereupon Madero, at the head of a rising which was not merely political, but revolutionary in character, overthrew Porfirio Diaz and took over the presidency after new elections held in 1911. Madero was a reformer of gentle, apostolic character. He preached ideals of justice and a faith in the triumph of the right. As head of the government he attempted to divert the revolutionary tendencies he headed into legal channels, He also decided, in order to preserve the material well-being of the country, not to destroy the administrative machinery or the political instruments created by the dictatorship. He maintained the existing army; he respected the courts and the legislative bodies and made no changes in the personnel of the government departments. And in this way he lost the sympathy and support of his friends and delivered himself into the hands of his enemies, with results that were soon to prove fatal, A part of the army, headed by two ambitious generals, Bernardo Reyes and Felix Diaz, rose in February, 1913; another division, under the command of Victoriano Huerta, revolted a few days later, after solemnly swearing its loyalty. And then, all joining forces, Huerta had the revolutionary President assassinated a few hours after usurping his office. The indignation and anger of the populace were so great that the day after Madero's death the real revolution broke out; the ideals of justice and agrarian reform the 'martyr President' had advocated seemed too conservative; a vehement desire to regenerate everything asserted itself, an impulse to transform the whole social fabric of Mexico in its diverse aspects; and before the end of February the conflict had been kindled again. Venustiano Carranza, the governor of Coahuila, a civilian, was named First chief of the revolutionary army; the political purposes of the new uprising were outlined in the Plan of Guadalupe, drawn up on March 27, 1913. This new phase of the revolution was much more widespread than the first. From the beginning there were four principal centres of revolutionary action, three in the north: Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila; and one in the south: Morelos. The military leaders in the various sections of the north were respectively, Alvaro Obregon, Francisco Villa, and Pablo Gonzalez; the leader in the south was Emiliano Zapata. The advance of the four revolutionary armies, which was very slow at first, finally became irresistible, especially after the big battles won by Villa and Felipe Angeles in Torreon and Zacatecas. In the northwest, through the states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit and Jalisco, Obregon marched from victory to victory, all the way from the American border to the heart of Mexico, After Villa had broken through the main division of Huerta's army, Pablo Gonzalez could move forward from the states of the northeast-that is to say, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and San Luis. And as Zapata was becoming more and more of a menace from the south-his activities had spread through the states of Morelos, Mexico, and Puebla, surrounding the capital-Huerta fled from the country seventeen months after his crime. After wiping out a part of Porfirio Diaz's former army and discharging from the service those who surrendered, the revolutionary troops marched into the city of Mexico in August 1914. But the revolution was already divided in its hour of triumph. Carranza, whose background and formation were those of the dictatorship, and who was devoid of ideals and eager only for power, from the first moment did all he could to bar the advancement of all those revolutionists whose independence or whose faith in the just character of the revolution might prove a stumbling.block to the new leaders in the race of their personal ambitions. He was supported in this by Obregon and by the groups of Sonora and Coahuila, and he even went so far as to put obstacles in the way of Villa's and Angeles's military operations. This lost him the support of many leaders and large sections of the country; and it brought about a wide breach, which was already evident in December 1913, and of a frankly hostile character by August 1914. To put an end to these dissensions, which threatened to destroy the fruits of the revolution's military victories, the leaders of the different groups decided to call an assembly which should have sovereign authority, to be composed of generals and governors. This was the Convention. It met in October 1914, first in Mexico City and then in Aguascalientes, and voted to remove both Carranza and Villa from their commands, as their quarrels were the principal cause of strife, and to name General Eulalio Gutierrez president pro tern. of the Republic. The generals and governors in favour of Villa submitted to the terms laid down by the Convention; but as Carranza and his adherents demanded, as a preliminary to their obedience of orders, the fulfilment of certain conditions that could not be accepted, the new President had to temporize with Villa while waiting for the Carranza faction to recognize his authority. Finally, dis. owned by the one and at the mercy of the other, he left the power in December 1914 and took refuge with his soldiers. By the beginning of 1915 the revolution had degenerated into a veritable state of anarchy, into a simple struggle between rivals for power. This went on until 1916, when Obregon and Carranza, in great part with the help of the United States, managed to reduce Villa to a position in which he could do nothing, though without ever conquering him. As a guerrilla leader Villa was invincible. In May 1920 he was still lording it in the stronghold of the sierras, His energy and his daring were unrivalled. Even General Pershing's famous expedition.-the ten thousand men that Wilson sent to Mexico, with Carranza and Obregon's approval, 'to get Villa dead or alive'-had to relinquish the undertaking.

Guzman Martin Luis Martín Luis Guzmán Franco (October 6, 1887 – December 22, 1976) was a Mexican novelist and journalist. Guzmán was born in Chihuahua, Chihuahua. Along with Mariano Azuela, he is considered a pioneer of the revolutionary novel, a genre inspired by the experiences of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. His novels La sombra del caudillo (1929) and El águila y la serpiente (1928) depict the Mexican Revolution and its political aftermath, both of which the author was familiar with, having contributed both to revolutionary agitation and to the formation of the new revolutionary government. For several months in 1914, he was under the direct orders of General Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa. He later wrote a five-volume biography of Villa, Memorias de Pancho Villa (1936-1951). Martin Luis Guzmán died suddenly on December 22, 1976 in Mexico City due an acute myocardial infarction. His widow Ana West, died seven years after him, on October 21st, 1983. She was 95 years old when, after being hospitalized for some days due to an acute bilateral pneumonia, she suffered a cardiac arrest and died.

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The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Boston. 2000. Beacon Press. 433 pages. Jacket design: Sara Eisenman. Jacket art, clockwise from top left: 'Many poor women imprisoned, and hanged for Witches,' 1655, Rare Books Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations; 'A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows. 0807050067.

0807050067 FROM THE PUBLISHER -

The culture of the Atlantic in an era of rapid expansion of trade, and the influence of sailors, slaves, pirates, and others in the creation of a new global economy. The notion of pirates as a free-enterprise and somewhat democratic alternative to the indentured sailors and more-or-less captive roving workforce options of the time is truly thought provoking. I'll never see pirates in quite the same way again. The intersection of aspects of the slave trade and the growing abolitionist movement with the developing Atlantic culture is a fascinating story told well by Linebaugh and Rediker. Certainly my favorite book of 2000 and one of my all-time favorites. 'For most readers the tale told here will be completely new. For those already well acquainted with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the image of that age which they have been so carefully taught and cultivated will be profoundly challenged. ' - David Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker. Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. THE MANY HEADED-HYDRA recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world. When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe. Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a 'hydra' and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.

Linebaugh Peter and Rediker Marcus Peter Linebaugh, professor of history at the University of Toledo, is a contributing editor of ALBION'S FATAL TREE and author of THE LONDON HANGED. A member of the Midnight Notes Collective, he lives in Toledo, Ohio.

Marcus Rediker, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, is author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, winner of the American Studies Association's John Hope Franklin Prize and the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Social History Award. He is a contributing author of WHO BUILT AMERICA? and lives in Pittsburgh.

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Dialogues by Stanislaw Lem. Cambridge. 2021. MIT Press. 9780262542937. Translated from the Polish by Peter Butko. 348 pages. paperback. Cover art: Przemek Debowski.

9780262542937 DESCRIPTION - The first English translation of a nonfiction work by Stanisław Lem, which was “conceived under the spell of cybernetics” in 1957 and updated in 1971. In 1957, Stanisław Lem published Dialogues, a book “conceived under the spell of cybernetics,” as he wrote in the preface to the second edition. Mimicking the form of Berkeley’s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Lem’s original dialogue was an attempt to unravel the then-novel field of cybernetics. It was a testimony, Lem wrote later, to “the almost limitless cognitive optimism” he felt upon his discovery of cybernetics. This is the first English translation of Lem’s Dialogues, including the text of the first edition and the later essays added to the second edition in 1971. For the second edition, Lem chose not to revise the original. Recognizing the naivete of his hopes for cybernetics, he constructed a supplement to the first dialogue, which consists of two critical essays, the first a summary of the evolution of cybernetics, the second a contribution to the cybernetic theory of the “sociopathology of governing,” amending the first edition’s discussion of the pathology of social regulation; and two previously published articles on related topics. From the vantage point of 1971, Lem observes that original book, begun as a search for methods “that would increase our understanding of both the human and nonhuman worlds,” was in the end “an expression of the cognitive curiosity and anxiety of modern thought.”

Lem Stanislaw Stanislaw Lem (12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976 Theodore Sturgeon wrote that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world. In 1996, he received the prestigious Polish award, the Order of the White Eagle. His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humanity's place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books. Translations of his works are difficult due to passages with elaborate word formation, alien or robotic poetry, and puns.

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Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief by Leblanc. Maurice. New York. 2007. Penguin Books. 9780143104865. Translated from the French by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. Introduction and notes by Michael Sims. 279 pages. paperback. Jacket design & photograph by Tony Greco & Associates.

9780143104865 DESCRIPTION - Created by Maurice LeBlanc during the early twentieth century, Arsène Lupin is a witty confidence man and burglar, the Sherlock Holmes of crime. The poor and innocent have nothing to fear from him; often they profit from his spontaneous generosity. The rich and powerful, and the detective who tries to spoil his fun, however, must beware. They are the target of Arsène's mischief and tomfoolery. A masterful thief, his plans frequently evolve into elaborate capers, a precursor to such cinematic creations as Ocean's Eleven and The Sting. Sparkling with amusing banter, these stories - the best of the Lupin series - are outrageous, melodramatic, and literate.

Leblanc Maurice AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941) is best known for his Arsène Lupin stories and such novels as The Hollow Needle and 813. Leblanc was awarded the ribbon of the French Legion of Honor. Alexander Louis Teixeira de Mattos (9 April 1865 - 5 December 1921) was a journalist, literary critic and publisher, who gained greatest fame as a translator. Teixeira de Mattos moved with his family to England from Amsterdam in 1874 and was educated at the Kensington catholic public school. He worked as a correspondent, editor and dramatic critic for several Dutch newspapers. On 20 October 1900, he married Lily Wilde, nee Sophie Lily Lees (1859-1922), the widow of Oscar Wilde's older brother Willie Wilde. During the First World War he was head of the intelligence section of the Department of War Trade Intelligence. He was responsible for many extremely perceptive and well-executed English translations of major French and Dutch literary works, including works by Emile Zola, Maurice Maeterlinck, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jean Henri Fabre, Maurice Leblanc, Gaston Leroux, Francois Rene, vicomte de Chateaubriand, and Louis Couperus. The high quality and readability of his work was such that many of his translations are still in print today; although some of these are over a century old, they have yet to be superseded by a more modern version. Michael Sims is the author of Ada's Navel, a New York Times Notable Book and a Library Journal Best Science Book. He has written for many publications, including the Los Angeles Times Book Review and the New Statesman.

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Imaginary Magnitude by Stanislaw Lem. New York. 1984. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151441189. Translated from the Polish by Marc E. Heine. 176 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo: THE IMAGE BANK/Pete Turner.

0151441189 DESCRIPTION - The acclaimed chronicler and poet of interplanetary travel "comes down to earth" - with witty and endlessly inventive introductions to books of the twenty-first century: A solemn foreword to a study on teaching English to bacteria; A pompous preface to a treatise on the use of animated X rays to create “pornograms”; A deliciously vulgar come-on for a 44-volume "extelopedia" so up-to-date that the words reform themselves on the printed page to accommodate the latest facts. And perhaps the most luminous creation of all is "Golem XIV," a mind-boggling account - complete, of course, with introduction - of a rebellious military supercomputer that decides to take up philosophy. True to form, Lem contributes an overall preface to this sparkling collection, a preface on, naturally enough, the subject of prefaces. Imaginary Magnitude is marvelously entertaining intellectual play, the ever-changing product of an extraordinary mind.

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Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem. New York. 1973. Seabury Press. 0816491283. Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose. 188 pages. hardcover.

0816491283 DESCRIPTION - Perhaps best described as a utopian farce, this fantastic novel is written in the form of an unfinished journal discovered some 1200 years in the future. These memoirs record the adventures of a man trapped in a structure known as The Building, and entrusted with a mission whose purpose is a mystery to him. His attempts to track his orders, culminating in the despair of total absurdity, are reminiscent now of Kafka, now of Lewis Carroll. The Building and its Antibuilding, the codes masked by layers of codes, the portrait of an ultimate bureaucracy, all add up to twentieth-century satire at its best.