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In passionate, lyrical, funny, angry, and ecstatic poems that migrate from the heartland of the country to the Atlantic coast and beyond, this young poet searches the world within her and around her for intimate myths that will hold, stories that will heal, actions that can transform the restless quest for love into its steady practice, adolescence into adulthood. "With sonorous cadences, with relentless honesty, and with deeply human truths, as well as deeply human humans infusing her poems, Maria Nazos has written a stunning first collection. Godspeed (like a bolt, like a bullet) A Hymn That Meanders into the world!" Thomas Lux, author of Particles: Poems, The Cradle Place, The Street of Clocks, and New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995. "Maria Nazos's first book successfully depicts an 'us' whose lyric motion is equal parts devotional and destructive but never accidental. This is grown-folk poetry, up front and adult, and there is not an ounce of surface-utterance in A Hymn that Meanders." Thomas Sayers Ellis, author of Skin Inc: Identity Repair Poems and The Maverick Room. Maria Nazos was raised in Athens, Greece and Joliet, Illinois. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives and writes inProvincetown, Massachusetts.

SHIFTING BALANCE SHEETS:Women's Stories of Naturalized Citizenship & Cultural Attachment. A Wising Up Anthology. Editors: Heather Tosteson, Kerry Langan, Charles D. Brockett and Debra Gingerich. In this anthology, thirty-four women and girls from twenty countries, now living all across the U.S., reflect on their journeys to naturalized U.S. citizenship-journeys that invite all of us, native and foreign born, to consider what it means to choose to be an American. In Chinese Daughters: All-American Girls, American mothers whose Chinese daughters have become naturalized citizens through adoption, and these insightful teen-agers themselves, ponder how their experiences of cross-national adoption with a unique gender imperative influences their sense of personal, cultural, national and global identity. In Natural Women: Naturalized Citizens, women from Australia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cuba, England, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Taiwan and Zambia describe their unique journeys to naturalized citizenship as adults-wondering what womanhood, family, love, cultural identification, intellectual curiosity, professional ambition, material need, war, revolution or chance have to do with it. Their stories invite us all to think more generously and intentionally about the invitations and expectations inherent in citizenship-and our shared responsibility to shape, nurture, and celebrate the constantly changing We in We, the People. Contributors: Cathy Adams, Anna Mae Anhalt, Patricia Barone, Elizabeth Bernays, Lisa Chan, Yu-Han Chao, Clementina, Mariel Coen, Linda D'Arcy, Madeline Geitz, Jennifer Bao Yu Jue-Steuck, Alicia Karls, Nikolina Kulidzan, Mariette Landry, Kerry Langan, Karen Levy, Karen Loeb, John Manesis, Katherine D. Perry, Donna Porter, Angelika Quirk, Amita Rao, Diane Raptosh, Lourdes Rosales-Guevara, Sonya Sabanac, Jian Dong Sakakeeny, Alexandrina Sergio, Azadeh Shahshahani, Maria Shockey, Sandra Soli, Julija Suput, Natalia O. Treviño, Boryana Zeitz, Weihua Zhang

Based on over one hundred interviews with people across all faith traditions, this is, first of all, a book of stories, each fascinating and unique. We are invited to read these stories with the express intention of feeling what we have in common with the people whose life stories we find here, whether they are conservative Christian housewives or liberal young Muslim immigrants, Buddhist musicians, or Harley-riding shamans. What does the world look like, sound like, taste like, feel like from that person's point of view? How have they experienced life's formidable mystery? When? Where? What language is their true language of faith? What theology has their life given birth to? What pain and what generosity does their story need to contain? The core theme of this book is what happens to us, as well as others, when we hold their spiritual stories in our imagination as if they could be our own. We may find our understanding of our own spiritual journey shifts, that our own life, in all its twists and turns, is highly resonant with those of out neighbors, whatever their faith. After reading these stories, we may end up feeling securely in the midst whatever our own spiritual journey has consisted of, wherever we find ourselves now-comfortably expanding into the religion of our childhood, deepening our understanding of a new one, or feeling ready to leave, reluctant to join, mute, lifted in song, lost, decisively found. "This is a marvelous read for all interested in the spiritual journeys of others as well as their own. Over 100 interviews with diverse persons from various faith traditions are woven into a narrative that will deepen the reader's own faith as it broadens their understanding of the faith of others." Dr. Ralph W. Hood Jr., Professor of Social Psychology, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga "Heather Tosteson knows how to listen past the surface where differences are so evident to the depths where common hopes and dreams are found. What's more--and this is rare--she knows how to describe what she has heard. This book is a model for genuine and generous conversation." Dr. Guy Sayles, Pastor, First Baptist Church of Asheville, NC "God Speaks My Language: Can You? is a valuable and fascinating collection of almost one hundred stories of faith. . . .Tosteson is an astute observer, a courageous and empathetic interviewer, and a splendid writer. She offers her own interpretation of these varied accounts, constructing a plausible typology and suggesting that beneath our commitments to disparate practices and doctrines are personal stories offering glimpses of common religious experiences. This fine book is an invitation to join the conversation about affirming difference in an ever increasing religious pluralism." Dr. John Shelley, Professor of Religion, Furman UniversityRevised Edition

FAMILIES: THE FRONTLINE OF PLURALISMHeather Tosteson and Charles D. Brockett, EditorsWising Up Press The difficulties of living up close and personal with diversity-of sensibility, race, sexual orientation, culture, class, or religion-is the subject of the stories, memoirs, and poetry in this anthology. In these works by thirty-five contemporary writers we learn what it means to absorb the intimate implications of being of mixed race, to be raised by a parent who suffers from being on the wrong side of history, to carry the burden of immigrant parents' self-sacrifice. We learn what it means to fully live out choices to marry across religion or culture, to hear our children chatter happily in a language we can't speak, to feel our imagination try to find its way into a world completely alien to us, still raw with the wounds of civil war. We learn about the tension-and love-that develop between siblings when one is disabled; the violence that carries across marriages; what it means to create relationships with children after divorce, or to make a space in our own heart for the children of step-children. We learn how completely parenthood shifts our priorities, whether we are lesbian parents adopting children from Guatemala, a single mother expanding her family of two with another child from China, a lesbian mother shifting sexual orientation to create a stable family clan, a white poet fostering a black child from an inner-city ghetto.