May we exist like a lotus, / At home in the muddy water. / Thus we bow to life as it is. This verse is an important reminder, says Ezra Bayda, of what the spiritual life is truly about: the willingness to open ourselves to whatever life presents—no matter how messy or complicated. And through that willingness to be open, we can discover wisdom, compassion, and the genuine life we all want. In At Home in the Muddy Water, Bayda applies this simple Zen teaching to a range of everyday concerns—including relationships, trust, sexuality, and money—showing that everything we need to practice is right here before us, and that peace and fulfillment is available to everyone, right here, right now, no matter what their circumstances.

"I See Thru Muddy Water," is a compelling tale that exposes the secret lives of "down-low" men. The duplicity of this lifestyle leaves so many women wounded and ravaged with disease. This book runs on the raw side as the writer discloses her own dirty laundry from the past. Nichol Collins shares frank encounters with a variety of men ranging from law enforcement officers to clergymen. She discloses the fetishes which "so called" straight men enjoyed with her while she was a transgender lesbian. Perversion is a spirit without boundaries. Many men were attracted to her male appearance and willingly paid her to fulfill their erotic fantasies. After two decades in this aberrant arena exploring a little bit of everything, Nichol surrendered to the Lord. Her purpose for writing this story is to enlighten women about the treachery of "down-low" men. She tells you all the signs to be cognizant of to escape falling into their trap. www.globeshakers.com

Muddy Waters invented electric blues and created the template for the rock and roll band and its wild lifestyle. Gordon excavates Muddy's mysterious past and early career, taking us from Mississippi fields to postwar Chicago street corners.

An Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Winner A New York Times Best Illustrated Book An NPR Best Book of the Year A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book A Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner A picture book celebration of the indomitable Muddy Waters, a blues musician whose fierce and electric sound laid the groundwork for what would become rock and roll. Muddy Waters was never good at doing what he was told. When Grandma Della said the blues wouldn’t put food on the table, Muddy didn’t listen. And when record producers told him no one wanted to listen to a country boy playing country blues, Muddy ignored them as well. This tenacious streak carried Muddy from the hardscrabble fields of Mississippi to the smoky juke joints of Chicago and finally to a recording studio where a landmark record was made. Soon the world fell in love with the tough spirit of Muddy Waters. In blues-infused prose and soulful illustrations, Michael Mahin and award-winning artist Evan Turk tell Muddy’s fascinating and inspiring story of struggle, determination, and hope.

With its 1.5 million words BLUR is the biggest electronic corpus of nonstandard English. The present study describes the stages in the design, the compilation, and the editing of BLUR and attempts to gauge its linguistic profit. This is done both from a theoretical perspective - blues poetry vs. natural speech, representativeness, validity - and from an analytical perspective in particular qualitative, quantitative, and comparative analyses of morphological, morphosyntactic, and syntactic features. The findings indicate that BLUR provides an outstandingly rich and reliable documentation of the vernaculars spoken by African Americans between the Civil War and World War II. The more than 1,000 illustrative examples presented throughout this study attest to the correctness of this statement.

Gathers local folklore, folk songs, childrens games, and essays on race, the Black church, and Black artists

A bold exposé of the controversial secret that has potentially dire consequences in many African American communities. Delivering the first frank and thorough investigation of life “on the down low” (the DL), J. L. King exposes a closeted culture of sex between black men who lead “straight” lives. King explores his own past as a DL man, and the path that led him to let go of the lies and bring forth a message that can promote emotional healing and open discussions about relationships, sex, sexuality, and health in the black community. Providing a long-overdue wake-up call, J. L. King bravely puts the spotlight on a topic that has until now remained dangerously taboo. Drawn from hundreds of interviews, statistics, and the author’s firsthand knowledge of DL behavior, On the Down Low reveals the warning signs African American women need to know. King also discusses the potential health consequences of having unprotected sex, as African American women represent an alarming 64 percent of new HIV infections. Volatile yet vital, On the Down Low is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. “A survey by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta found that nearly a quarter of black HIV-positive men who had sex with men consider themselves heterosexual.” —Essence