LITMIR.BIZ

On a Thursday morning in 1981, four thousand campesinos (fieldworkers), fleeing a US-funded Salvadoran death squad, stumbled down the rocky, overgrown side of a hill to the Lempa River. Some were mown down by machine guns and the strafing of helicopters; others drowned as they were swept away by the river. The rest escaped to live the next eight years in UN refugee camps in Honduras. In 1989 many of these refugees returned to El Salvador as the repatriated community of Valle Nuevo.
Companeros tells the stories of a twenty-five year relationship of accompaniment, healing, and forgiveness between Valle Nuevo and a small association of churches in the United States, Shalom Mission Communities. The two groups have come to embrace a transnational communion with one another despite the economic, political, and spiritual chasms that exist today.
This work is a collective, collaborative effort of storytelling and theological reflection, interweaving oral and written accounts of suffering, thanksgiving, sharing, remembering, and proclaiming the death of Christ until he comes again.

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California matters, both as a place and as an idea. What famed historian Kevin Starr has called «the California Dream» is a vital part of American self-understanding. Just as America was meant to be a place of renewal, even redemption, for Europe, so too California was intended as a place of renewal for America. Therefore, California–place and idea–provides a fertile ground for scholars to think deeply about what it means to articulate «the promise of American life.» This book follows in the train of George Marsden's classic The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship–believing that people of faith have a contribution to make to scholarship–and of Jay Green's more recent book, Christian Historiography: Five Rival Views–believing that scholars of faith should engage in moral inquiry. In this book, eight authors inquire into the moral questions that emerge from studying California.

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The figure of the Virgin Mary comes loaded with baggage and preconceptions. She is usually depicted as the perfect, obedient, and highly esteemed woman, much like the Victorian notion of the «angel in the house.» For many black women, nothing could be more inaccessible. This book considers the relationship between African American women and Mary of Nazareth. After examining the history of black American motherhood during slavery and beyond, this book then gives an overview of the existing views of Mary in both the church and the academy. Lee then brings African American women and Mary together, creating a womanist Mariology by using womanist biblical and theological interpretation, as well as considering black motherhood during the age of «Black Lives Matter.»

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A true believer is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Cuban Revolution."Daring, tough, and deeply compassionate, Achy Obejas's Ruins is a breathtaker. Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously . . . one of the Cuba's most important writers." —Junot Diaz, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction"In the Havana of Ruins, scarcity can only be fought with ingenuity, and the characters work very hard at the exquisite art of getting by. The plot rests on the schemes of its weary, obsessive, dreamy hero—a character so brilliantly drawn that he can't be dismissed or forgotten. A tender and wildly accurate portrait, in a gem of a novel." —Joan Silber, author of The Size of the World"Obejas evinces a new, focused lyricism as she penetrates to the very heart of the Cuban paradox in a story as pared down and intense as its narrator's life." —Booklist (*starred review*)"Compassionate and intriguing . . . Obejas plays out [the book's] conflicts in measured, simple prose, allowing her descriptions of the mundane—houses, food, dominoes—to illuminate a setting filled with heartbreak, confusion and decay . . . At her best, Obejas controls the mixture of humor and pathos that suffuse this poor community." —Los Angeles Times"Ruins is a beautifully written novel, a moving testament to the human spirit of an unlikely hero who remains unbroken even as the world collapses around him . . . A fine literary achievement, it's Achy Obejas at her very best." —El Paso Times"[A] superb novel . . . Highly recommended." —Library Journal"[An] honest and superbly written book." —Miami Herald"With the deft and evocative detail of a poet's, Obejas's prose is as illuminating and honest as her struggling protagonist." —Publishers WeeklyUsnavy has always been a true believer. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, he was just a young man and eagerly signed on for all of its promises. But as the years have passed, the sacrifices have outweighed the glories and he's become increasingly isolated in his revolutionary zeal. His friends openly mock him, his wife dreams of owning a car totally outside their reach, and his beloved fourteen-year-old daughter haunts the coast of Havana, staring north.In the summer of 1994, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government allows Cubans to leave at will and on whatever will float. More than 100,000 flee—including Usnavy's best friend. Things seem to brighten when he stumbles across what may or may not be a priceless Tiffany lamp that reveals a lost family secret and fuels his long repressed feelings . . . But now Usnavy is faced with a choice between love for his family and the Revolution that has shaped his entire life.Achy Obejas is the author of various books, including the award-winning novel Days of Awe and the best-selling poetry chapbook This Is What Happened in Our Other Life. She is the editor of Akashic's critically acclaimed crime-fiction anthology Havana Noir, and the translator (into Spanish) for Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Currently, she is the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana and continues to spend extended time there.

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In the midst of a rapidly shifting global economy, Brazil has emerged as a powerful new player on the geopolitical stage. Against all odds, the Latin American nation managed, in just three years, to repay a 2002 $15.5 billion IMF bailout loan thanks to aggressive economic restructuring and a series of alliances that have placed it at the center of political and economic power in the region.From the outside, Brazil is a poster child for neoliberal capitalism. Yet inside the country, the lives of the Brazilian people are still marked by vast inequities in wealth and access to social services–a striking disparity with the nation's newfound power in the global economy. In June of 2013, protests against the increasing costs of public transportation swelled to mass demonstrations against the Rousseff government's failure to address this disparity, leading many to wonder whether the popular movements in Brazil may be just powerful enough to shift the nation's influence towards a wholly new economic model based in regional integration. The New Brazil explores this disparity. Will the nation serve as the glue that holds together the Latin American states, distancing themselves from the neoliberalism of the United States and Canada? Or will Brazil simply become another world superpower, able to subject the rest of Latin American to its will? Only time will tell. Raul Zibechi is a journalist and social-movement analyst based in Montevideo, Uruguay. He is the author of numerous books including Dispersing Power and Territories in Resistance , both published by AK Press.

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For sixty years, Errico Malatesta's involvement with international anarchism helped fuel the movement's radical approach to class and labor, and directly impacted the workers' movement in Italy. A talented newspaper journalist, Malatesta's biting critiques were frequently short and to the point—and written directly to and for the workers. Though his few long-form essays, including «Anarchy» and «Our Program,» have been widely available in English translation since the 1950s, the bulk of Malatesta's most revolutionary writing remains unknown to English-speaking audiences. In The Method of Freedom, editor Davide Turcato presents an expansive collection of Malatesta's work, including new translations of existing works and a wealth of shorter essays translated here for the first time. Offering readers a thorough overview of the evolution of Malatesta's revolutionary thought during his half a century as an anarchist propagandist, The Method of Freedom explores revolutionary violence and workplace democracy, the general strike and the limitations of trade unionism, propaganda by the deed, and the revolution in practice. Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) was an enormously popular Italian anarchist, perhaps most well-known for his strong support of direct action and the general strike. A talented newspaper journalist and editor, Malatesta spent much of his life exiled from Italy because of his political beliefs. Davide Turcato is a computational linguist and an independent historian. He is the author of Making Sense of Anarchism and the editor of Malatesta's collected works, a ten-volume project currently underway in Italy, to be released in English by AK Press.

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The struggle between Israel and Palestine continues unabated, and many believe that the only way to break the cycle of oppression is for Israelis to speak out against the brutal acts of their government, and demand an end to the war of territory against the Palestinians. Anarchists Against the Wall has been one of the most vocal groups in Israel to speak out against the atrocities committed by the Israeli government, and have garnered international acclaim for their work.This is the first book to explore the work of Anarchists Against the Wall, despite the group's overwhelming popularity on the world stage.Uri Gordon is one of the few openly anarchist academics in the state of Israel, and is well-known for his political viewpoints. He received widespread praise for his first book, Anarchy Alive! (Pluto Press, 2007), which should draw attention to this latest book. Likewise many of the authors in this edited collection are well-respected journalists and political commentators in their own right, so we expect a fair amount of attention.This title is the fifth in our Anarchist Interventions series, co-published with the Institute for Anarchist Studies, which has been steadily gaining in popularity over the past two years.

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Occupy Wall Street and the movement that grew out of it was one of THE news stories for 2011.Though several books on Occupy have already appeared, this collection is unique in that it does not seek to historicize the still-developing movement. Rather, it seeks to understand where Occupy came from, what it accomplished, and where it might go from here.Developed in response to a stated need for strategic frameworks to guide future action within the movement, 99 to 1 is a movement book – developed by the movement, for the movement.Edited and compiled by long-time activists and organizers, this collection is intended to live past Occupy itself, to serve as a resource for future social movements, a strategic handbook for mass action, to avoid the necessity of reinventing the wheel over and over again.Over thirty contributors from a wealth of background and political ideologies bring their observations and experiences of 2011 to bear on the Occupy movement, while organizers from Occupations in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Asheville, Denver, Philadelphia, London, Toronto, and beyond share their stories of what worked and what didn't.Extensively illustrated with photographs, infographics, and sidebars.

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The first English translation of Guérin’s monumental anthology of anarchism, published here in one volume. It details a vast array of unpublished documents, letters, debates, manifestos, reports, impassioned calls-to-arms and reasoned analysis; the history, organization and practice of the movement—its theorists, advocates and activists; the great names and the obscure, towering legends and unsung heroes. This definitive anthology portrays anarchism as a sophisticated ideology whose nuances and complexities highlight the natural desire for freedom in all of us. The classical texts will re-establish anarchism as both an intellectual and practical force to be reckoned with. Includes writings by Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, Berkman, Bakunin, Proudhon, and Malatesta. Daniel Guérin was the author of Anarchism: From Theory to Practice.

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Widely regarded as one of the best and most comprehensive surveys of Latin American social politics in the Spanish-speaking world, Zibechi's Territorios en resistencia: Cartografía política de las periferias latinoamericanas (2008) is available here in translation for the first time. Interest in the socio-economic and political trajectory of Latin American countries continues to grow, as the economic crisis continues to threaten the so-called first world nations, and concerned citizens look elsewhere for alternative economic structures. Zibechi's first book translated into English was released by AK Press in 2010 (Dispersing Power) and received positive, if limited, attention. Whereas the previous book dealt specifically with the situation in Bolivia, this new work maps the social relations of the entire region. Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Argentina are all treated here in depth, making the book appropriate for specialists investigating any of these nations individually, as well as readers looking for a more global view of the politics of the region as a whole. Written in a clear and accessible journalistic style, Zibechi's work is equally appropriate for readers who have little to no background in Latin American politics, as well as for experts and academics already well-versed in the situation.

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