front cover of Cracks in the Invisible
Cracks in the Invisible
Poems
Stephen Kampa
Ohio University Press, 2011

Stephen Kampa’s poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. The poems also revel in the prosodic possibilities of English’shigh and low registers: a twenty–one line homageto Lord Byron that turns on three rhymes (one of which is “eisegesis”); a sestina whose end words include “sentimental,” “Marseilles,” and “Martian;” sapphics on the death of Ray Charles; and intricately modulated stanzas on the 1931 Spanish–language movie version of Dracula.

Despite the metaphysical seriousness, there is alwaysan undercurrent of stylistic levity — a panoply of puns, comic rhymes, and loving misquotations of canonical literature — that suggests comedy and tragedy are inextricably bound in human experience.

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front cover of Cracks in the Iron Closet
Cracks in the Iron Closet
Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia
David Tuller
University of Chicago Press, 1997
David Tuller provides the first look into the emotional and sexual lives of Russian lesbians and gays and the pervasive influence of the state on gay life. Part travelogue, part social history, and part journalistic inquiry, the book challenges our assumptions about what it means to be gay. The book also explores key issues in Russia and Soviet life, including concepts of friendship, community, gender, love, fate, and the relationship between the public and private spheres.

"Tuller's observant reporting and personal experiences make for absorbing reading: the human comedy rendered in unexpected ways."—New Yorker

"Anyone who thinks San Francisco is the world capital of sexual polymorphism should read this book."—Adam Goodheart, Washington Post

"[This book is] is profoundly moving."—Jim Van Buskirk, San Francisco Chronicle
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front cover of Cracks in the Wall
Cracks in the Wall
Beyond Apartheid in Palestine/Israel
Ben White
Pluto Press, 2018
After decades of occupation and creeping annexation, Israel has created an apartheid system in historic Palestine. Peace efforts have failed because of one hard truth: the best Israeli offers do not meet the minimum that a truly free Palestine would require—nor that international law would recognize. There are, however, widening cracks in Israel’s traditional pillars of support for this policy, and in this book Ben White lays them out. Opposition to Israeli policies, he shows, are growing within Jewish communities and among Western progressives, while the rise of populist movements around the world has confused traditional party lines on the question and the Palestinian-led boycott campaign continues to gain momentum. Now, White argues, is the time to plot a course to avoid the mistakes of the past—to create a real way forward, and beyond apartheid, in Palestine.
 
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