Original versions of these contributions were presented at the 2002 conference of the American Comparative Literature Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A colonial discourse has perpetuated the literary notion of islands as paradisal. This study explores how the notions of island paradise have been represented in European literature, the oral and literary indigenous traditions of the Caribbean and Sri Lanka, a colonial literary influence in these islands, and the literary experience after independence in these nations. Persistent themes of colonial narratives foreground the aesthetic and ignore the workforce in a representation of island space as idealized, insular, and vulnerable to conquest; an ideal space for management and control. English landscape has been replicated in islands through literature and in reality - the 'Great House' being an ideological symbol of power. Island Paradise: The Myth investigates how these entrenched notions of paradise, which islands have traditionally represented metonymically, are contested in the works of four postcolonial authors: Jamaica Kincaid, Lawrence Scott, Romesh Gunesekera, and Jean Arasanayagam, from the island nations of the Caribbean and Sri Lanka. It analyzes texts which focus on gardens, island space, and houses to examine how these motifs are used to re-vision colonial/contested sites. This book examines the relationship between landscape and identity and, with reference to Homi K. Bhabha, considers how these writers offer an alternative space for negotiating the ambivalence of hybridity.

Jamaica Kincaid’s works consistently explore how colonial history affects contemporary everyday lives. Throughout her novels, short fiction, and non-fictional essays, Kincaid’s texts engage with history through its medial representations, which are starkly determined by colonial perspectives. This study examines the entanglements of temporalities in current perceptions of the past and how literary text intervenes in historical consciousness. With a focus on the media text, image, and the human body, the chapters of this book demonstrate how Kincaid’s "poetics of impermanence" counter colonial representations of history with strategies of ambiguity, repetition, and redirection. Kincaid’s texts repeat and revise aspects of colonial history – a process that decenters the totality of historical colonial ideology and replaces it with self-determined versions of the past through a multiplication of perspectives and voices.

Margaret Roach has been harvesting thirty years of backyard parables-deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper-and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more. After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." In The Backyard Parables, Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her, and meditates on the science and spirituality of nature, reminding her readers and herself to keep on digging.

Johnnie Calloway is a gifted story teller, and has written a superb personal account of his harrowing childhood, and adult life. Although he retells his experiences of emotional and physical abuse, neglect, heartache, and betrayal, and later his own addictions and struggles with mental illness, he manages to keep the reader thoroughly engaged and inspired by his strength and wisdom throughout this page turner. Johnnies willingness to be soul-baringly honest in this book as he traces his earliest memories into his teens and then adult years is truly unlike anything I have ever read. I have no doubt that his display of courage and his determination to go to any lengths necessary for his own healing will serve as a guiding light for countless readers. It is a story of hope and love, forgiveness and healing. I only wish it had been available when I was a practicing addictions counselor. I would have made it required reading! Callie Chappell-Nicholas Retired Addictions Counselor

The third in a set of three integrated listening programs. Teaches students how to listen to music and identity themes and other characteristics which help them appreciate the music. Accompanying texts provide active participation experiences for the students.

Migratory Settings proposes a shift in perspective from migration as movement from place to place to migration as installing movement within place. Migration not only takes place between places, but also has its effects on place, in place. In brief, we suggest a view on migration in which place is neither reified nor transcended, but ‘thickened’ as it becomes the setting of the variegated memories, imaginations, dreams, fantasies, nightmares, anticipations, and idealizations of both migrants and native inhabitants that experiences of migration bring into contact with each other. Migration makes place overdetermined, turning it into the mise-en-scène of different histories. Hence, movement does not lead to placelessness, but to the intensification and overdetermination of place, its ‘heterotopicality.’ At the same time, place does not unequivocally authenticate or validate knowledge, but, shot-through with the transnational and the transcultural, exceeds it ceaselessly. Our contributions take us to the migratory settings of a fictional exhibition; a staged political wedding; a walking tour in a museum; African appropriations of Shakespeare and Sophocles; Gollwitz, Germany; Calais, France; the body after a heart transplant; refugees’ family portraiture; a garden in Vermont; the womb. With contributions by Mieke Bal, Maaike Bleeker, Paulina Aroch, Astrid van Weyenberg, Sarah de Mul, Annette Seidel Arpaci, Sudeep Dasgupta, Wim Staat, Maria Boletsi, Griselda Pollock, Alex Rotas, and Murat Aydemir.

THE SECOND SERAPH is an autobiographical fiction trilogy and is a suspenseful psychic drama. As a chosen handmaiden and an esoteric teacher sandwiched between the forces of Divine Love and the Dark Shadow Angels, Lori teaches Sister Immaculata, the ex-Nun now known as Alicia, about esoteric realities. The timing is critical because the Dark Forces are aligning to sabotage her and the Child -- a female, who is yet to become the Second Coming of the Christ Light upon Earth. Experience the footpath of a seer who, through the use of prophecy, revelation and intuition, awakens our own Divine Child, enabling us to transform our lives to ones of peace, harmony and everlasting joy. The Angels -- Lori's Guardian Beings -- share profound truths that Lori now shares with you, the reader. Everyone has a life purpose; this book will help you to discover yours and reveals The Keys. About the author: Reverend LORI HOLMES-BOYLE, a seer, is an Ordained Spiritualist Medium of Canada holding a doctorate in therapeutic counselling. At the age of seven she realized she had psychic abilities and was able to predict her own destiny and the paths of others. She lives in France and Canada.

Of Women and the Essay brings together forty-six American and British women essayists whose work spans nearly four centuries. The contributions of these essayists prove that women have been significant participants in the essay tradition since the genre’s modern beginnings in the sixteenth century. Many of these essayists, such as Eliza Haywood, Fanny Fern, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Agnes Repplier, and Alice Meynell, achieved significant success as writers within whatever essay form ruled the day; others bent the rules, though often imperceptibly, to make room for themselves. Collectively they represent a missing piece in the larger history of the essay. In Of Women and the Essay Jenny Spinner contextualizes the broad range of literary essays included within the chronological development of the genre. She makes a compelling argument that women have constructed their own tradition in the essay genre, often utilizing periodic traits of the essay to their own advantage. At the same time, she suggests that the personal essay’s demands on the essayist required both a public and personal authorization that proved challenging for women essayists in general and for women of color in particular. The appendix catalogs the works of nearly 200 female essayists and should inspire further reading. As a whole, the volume lifts women writers from the cutting-room floor of essay scholarship and returns them to their rightful place in the essay canon.