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English
Description
This eloquent ethnography reveals the daily lives and religious practice of ordinary Muslim men in Tajikistan as they aspire to become Sufi mystics. Benjamin Gatling describes in vivid detail the range of expressive forms -- memories, stories, poetry, artifacts, rituals, and other embodied practices -- employed as they try to construct a Sufi life in twenty-first-century Central Asia. Gatling demonstrates how Sufis transcend the oppressive religious...
Author
Language
English
Description
Prodigals, a memoir in essay, explores the life of Sarah Beth Childer's wildly creative brother, lost to suicide at twenty-two, and her own life through the lens of the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son. Childer's foregrounds the Appalachian landscape, depicting hardwood forests, winding roads, mining-stained rivers, and neighborhoods tucked between mountains. Her story is universal and uniquely Appalachian, shaped by fervent faith, resistance...
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1982, Harvard-trained ethnobotanist Wade Davis traveled into the Haitian countryside to research reports of zombies--the infamous living dead of Haitian folklore. A report by a team of physicians of a verifiable case of zombification led him to try to obtain the poison associated with the process and examine it for potential medical use.