When Therese Marie arrives in the emergency room of a small hospital in the Bronx, suffering from hypothermia and in shock, no one there knows her story. To the doctors and nurses, she is just another abandoned elderly woman who can't even tell them her name. But Therese Marie's dementia is not all that it seems. And when her prodigal son, Danny, returns to New York, Therese Marie must fight to maintain her dignity in light of her son's insistence on confronting the ugly secrets of their past. In this unconventional family drama, Stephen Adly Guirgis gives us a mother and son who must face a long family legacy of abuse in order to find the true meaning of grace.

This is the first book-length study of one of the most talented and exciting American playwrights working today. Stephen Adly Guirgis has said that "God is the starting point and the finish line" of his work, and this book identifies him as a playwright with a distinctly Christian sensibility who uses the technique of "inculturation" to translate the gospel for a secular audience. Critics have noted that his plays are peopled with poor, suffering minority figures, but few have also noted that these figures bear a remarkable similarity to the dispossessed with whom Jesus identifies in Matthew 25. Beginning with his early play Den of Thieves and proceeding through each of his dramas, this work examines Guirgis's plays within a biblical context. While noting that Guirgis is a writer of the "post-Christian age" who staunchly resists identification as a "Christian playwright," the book situates him within the tradition of the "drama of ideas" as a powerful writer employing a dialectical method to inculcate the New Testament ethos and transform the theater space into a place of sacrament.

Everyday, children around the world worry if they will fit in at school or make friends. But when a bully lurks in the shadows and eventually pounces, a lonely child's insecurities can be made even worse. Christine Taing shares tales with moral lessons that will empower children to stop and aptly deal with bullying. Children learn appropriate reactions to bullying through stories that teach them to do the right thing, take a stand, and be a friend to a child in need. A little girl learns to be proud of her family and the meaning of a true friend. A fourth grader decides his bully is a person who needs a friend just like him. A musically-talented high school student discovers that when he sticks up for himself, no one can hurt him. A teenager, with help from a teacher, becomes a confident student who embraces his differences. In this collection of short stories, children learn to stand tall and strong against bullies and ultimately become the beautiful flowers they are meant to be.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Many of the American playwrights who dominated the 20th century are no longer with us: Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, August Wilson and Wendy Wasserstein. A new generation, whose careers began in this century, has emerged, and done so when the theatre itself, along with the society with which it engages, was changing. Capturing the cultural shifts of 21st-century America, Staging America explores the lives and works of 8 award-winning playwrights – including Ayad Akhtar, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Young Jean Lee and Quiara Alllegría Hudes – whose backgrounds reflect the social, religious, sexual and national diversity of American society. Each chapter is devoted to a single playwright and provides an overview of their career, a description and critical evaluation of their work, as well as a sense of their reception. Drawing on primary sources, including the playwrights' own commentaries and notes, and contemporary reviews, Christopher Bigsby enters into a dialogue with plays which are as various as the individuals who generated them. An essential read for theatre scholars and students, Staging America is a sharp and landmark study of the contemporary American playwright.

Features a comprehensive guide to American dramatic literature, from its origins in the early days of the nation to the groundbreaking works of today's best writers.

Plays of Our Own is the first anthology of its kind containing an eclectic range of plays by Deaf and hard-of-hearing writers. These writers have made major, positive contributions to world drama or Deaf theatre arts. Their topics range from those completely unrelated to deafness to those with strong Deaf-related themes such as a dreamy, headstrong girl surviving a male-dominated world in Depression-era Ireland; a famous Spanish artist losing his hearing while creating his most controversial art; a Deaf African-American woman dealing with AIDS in her family; and a Deaf peddler ridiculed and rejected by his own kind for selling ABC fingerspelling cards. The plays are varied in style – a Kabuki western, an ensemble-created variety show, a visual-gestural play with no spoken nor signed language, a cartoon tragicomedy, historical and domestic dramas, and a situation comedy. This volume contains the well-known Deaf theatre classics, My Third Eye and A Play of Our Own. At long last, directors, producers, Deaf and hearing students, professors, and researchers will be able to pick up a book of "Deaf plays" for production consideration, Deaf culture or multicultural analysis, or the simple pleasure of reading.