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"In Part I of this book, I argued that preta narratives participated in a larger world-building process that negotiated the contours of the Buddhist cosmos and, with it, the place of the departed. Through stories about encounters between humans and pretas, Buddhist authors explored the place of the departed in a karmic cosmological system, worked out how to best assist them, and advocated for the importance of the sangha in facilitating these offerings. These tales do not merely reflect the process through which the preta as a specific entity and rebirth category became distinguished from the ancestral departed, but also participated in this process. This illustrates the importance of viewing narratives, in Rob Campany's terms, as argumentative. Stories are not merely the distillation of more abstract doctrine but are sites for the construction of religious worldviews. This illustrates that religious cosmologies are not laid down fully formed in doctrinal treatises. They are cumulatively built over time, and "popular culture" can do important work in the aggregative construction of cosmologies"--
PEN/Hemingway Award For Debut Novel Finalist​ Shortlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A “rich, ambitious debut novel” (The New York Times Book Review) that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Stanford Solomon’s shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead. These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the houseboy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions. This “rich and layered story” (Kirkus Reviews) explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is a “beguiling…vividly drawn, and compelling” (BookPage, starred review) portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret.
Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever. Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years, Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world—both its horrors and its thrills—and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.
In 1892, the Bishop of Tasmania set sail for Melanesia with the intent of rescuing islanders from lives of fear, black magic and cannibalism. Over 100 years later, his great grandson, Charles Montgomery, followed the bishop’s route through the South Pacific, seeking out the spirits and myths his missionary forebear had sought to destroy. Montgomery explored remote shores where gospel and empire never took hold. He rubbed shoulders with barefoot preachers, witch doctors and gun-toting rebels, only to discover that the pagan spirits were more tenacious than the missionaries had imagined. Melanesians had stirred Jesus and Mary into an already spicy broth of ancestor worship, ghosts, shark gods and magic. Through confrontations with a bizarre cast of characters—the randy ethnographer, the soft-talking assassin, the leper prophet—the journey becomes a debate on the nature of magic, myth and faith, and a metaphor for the transforming power of story. The Last Heathen marks the debut of an exciting young writer who charts his adventures with passion, insight and grace.
How the ghost stories of pagan times reveal the seamless union existing between the world of the living and the afterlife • Demonstrates how Medieval Christianity transformed the more corporeal ghost encountered in pagan cultures with the disembodied form known today • Explains how the returning dead were once viewed as either troublemakers or guarantors of the social order The impermeable border the modern world sees existing between the world of the living and the afterlife was not visible to our ancestors. The dead could--and did--cross back and forth at will. The pagan mind had no fear of death, but some of the dead were definitely to be dreaded: those who failed to go peacefully into the afterlife but remained on this side in order to right a wrong that had befallen them personally or to ensure that the law promoted by the ancestors was being respected. But these dead individuals were a far cry from the amorphous ectoplasm that is featured in modern ghost stories. These earlier visitors from beyond the grave--known as revenants--slept, ate, and fought like men, even when, like Klaufi of the Svarfdaela Saga, they carried their heads in their arms. Revenants were part of the ancestor worship prevalent in the pagan world and still practiced in indigenous cultures such as the Fang and Kota of equatorial Africa, among others. The Church, eager to supplant this familial faith with its own, engineered the transformation of the corporeal revenant into the disembodied ghost of modern times, which could then be easily discounted as a figment of the imagination or the work of the devil. The sanctified grounds of the church cemetery replaced the burial mounds on the family farm, where the ancestors remained as an integral part of the living community. This exile to the formal graveyard, ironically enough, has contributed to the great loss of the sacred that characterizes the modern world.
Voices and stories of veterans, their families, and their care providers, reveal what is necessary for postwar healing This book argues that the elements that contribute to healing war trauma—including safety, connection, community, dialogue, mutual respect, diversity, and compassion—can help build a stronger nation. But this message comes with a warning and a challenge not just for caregivers, veterans service organizations, governmental departments, Congress, and the White House, but for all Americans. War creates incalculable suffering—not only among those on the front lines, but also among those left behind. For every soldier killed or injured on the battlefield, countless others are affected—particularly relatives and friends—often in isolation and silence. As a nation, the U.S. must do everything it can to repair the injuries caused by war, whether physical, emotional, or moral, both for those who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and for the country itself. Only after the nation provides the top-quality care our veterans have earned will we be able to begin to end our reliance on war and truly build a durable peace.
Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Or so everyone thought. Six months after Beth's death, her secret emerged. It had a name: Annie. Praise for Annie's Ghosts "Annie's Ghosts is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read . . . From mental institutions to the Holocaust, from mothers and fathers to children and childhood, with its mysteries, sadness, and joy--this book is one emotional ride."--Bob Woodward, author of The War Within and State of Denial "Steve Luxenberg sleuths his family's hidden history with the skills of an investigative reporter, the instincts of a mystery writer, and the sympathy of a loving son. His rediscovery of one lost woman illuminates the shocking fate of thousands of Americans who disappeared just a generation ago."--Tony Horwitz, author of A Voyage Long and Strange and Confederates in the Attic "I started reading within minutes of picking up this book, and was instantly mesmerized. It's a riveting detective story, a moving family saga, an enlightening if heartbreaking chapter in the history of America's treatment of people born with what we now call special needs." -- Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and You're Wearing That "This is a memoir that pushes the journalistic envelope . . . Luxenberg has written a fascinating personal story as well as a report on our communal response to the mentally ill." -- Helen Epstein, author of Where She Came From and Children of the Holocaust "A wise, affecting new memoir of family secrets and posthumous absolution." -- The Washington Post "Annie's Ghosts will resonate for many, whether the chords have to do with family secrets, the Depression, memories of a thriving Detroit, the Holocaust's horrors, or the immigrant experience." -- The Detroit Free Press
The author analyses and documents the people who had lived on the islands of Melanesia during the late nineteenth century, and chronicles the experiences of his great-grandfather, who was a missionary in the South Pacific.
Offerings of various kinds – food, incense, paper money and figures – have been central to Chinese culture for millennia, and as a public, visual display of spiritual belief, they are still evident today in China and in Chinatowns around the world. Using Hong Kong as a case study, Janet Scott looks at paper offerings from every conceivable angle – how they are made, sold, and used. Her comprehensive investigation touches on virtually every aspect of Chinese popular religion as it explores the many forms of these intricate objects, their manufacture, their significance, and their importance in rituals to honor gods, care for ancestors, and contend with ghosts. Throughout For Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors, paper offerings are presented as a vibrant and living tradition expressing worshippers' respect and gratitude for the gods, as well as love and concern for departed family members. Ranging from fake paper money to paper furniture, servant dolls, cigarettes, and toiletries – all multihued and artfully constructed – paper offerings are intended to provide for the needs of those in the spirit world. Readers are introduced to the variety of paper offerings and their uses in worship, in assisting worshippers with personal difficulties, and in rituals directed to gods, ghosts, and ancestors. We learn of the manufacture and sale of paper goods, life in paper shops, the training of those who make paper offerings, and the symbolic and artistic dimensions of the objects. Finally, the book considers the survival of this traditional craft, the importance of flexibility and innovation, and the role of compassion and filial piety in the use of paper offerings.
Dead. Some evils are so great that they transcend death. In Brandon Massey's "The Patriarch," a young writer travels to the hushed backwoods of Mississippi, where dangerous secrets surface as a generations-old feud comes to bone-chilling new life. . . Buried. The souls of the mistreated always find a way to be heard. In L.A. Banks's "Ev'ry Shut Eye Ain't Sleep," violent visions haunt a man--until he's handed an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and prevent unspeakable acts from occurring once again. . . Forgotten. When horrors are covered up and lost, our ancestors must find a way--even in death--to tell their tales. In Tananarive Due's "Ghost Summer," ancestors haunt the nights of two children. And when a grisly discovery is made, these ancestors will make their mark on both the dead and the living. . . "Massey ventures into areas unexplored by most other black novelists. The result is artful and stunning." --Chicago Tribune "Tananarive Due is creating classics." --Tina McElroy Ansa "Banks's writing is lush and detailed, fully bringing her characters to life (or unlife), weaving a complex world of Good vs. Evil with its own intricate hierarchy." --Fangoria Magazine