Mamas Voice is the product of a middle-aged Christian psychiatrist and mother who journals her life observations and experiences, hoping to pass on some life lessons to her children. What started off as random journaling of thoughts ended up being a published book released as a birthday present for her children. The book is written in a random manner with life lessons ranging from self-esteem, bad habits, addictions, snobbery, conflict, money, selfishness, greed, and codependent relationships through to family dramas. The author attempts to capture some important life lessons with a touch of humor and rawness that depicts the real-life dramas. Both pleasurable and painful life observations and experiences are unapologetically expressed with a rawness that does not coat it with sweet candy. Its about real life seen through the eyes of a mother going through a midlife crisis and questioning most things she had taken for granted. The messages are given as direct instructions to her children in second or third person voices and riddles. The messages are just as random as they entered the authors thoughts. This is a light read for both the middle aged and young, who are questioning a few things in their worldview. Like the philosopher in the book of Ecclesiastes, the author grapples with certain life issues until she finally realizes that she cannot fix the world and she gives up control. The forty-five-year-old author starts off by writing a letter to her thirteen-year-old self and ends the book with her modified version of the Ten Commandments and a futuristic letter to her eighty-five-year-old self.

Mamma has lost her voice. Can Bekah find it? When a parent is ill, it can be a frightening experience for a child. They may not understand why Mamma can't do the regular things that she usually does throughout the day or at bedtime. Sometimes children will deal with it in the most imaginative way possible. Bekah decided that she was going to help her Mamma find her lost voice.

This heartfelt, deeply personal memoir explores how a celebrated filmmaker and activist and his conservative Mormon mother built bridges across today’s great divides—and how our stories hold the power to heal. Dustin Lance Black wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk and helped overturn California’s anti–gay marriage Proposition 8, but as an LGBTQ activist he has unlikely origins—a conservative Mormon household outside San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Anne, was raised in rural Louisiana and contracted polio when she was two years old. She endured brutal surgeries, as well as braces and crutches for life, and was told that she would never have children or a family. Willfully defying expectations, she found salvation in an unlikely faith, raised three rough-and-rowdy boys, and escaped the abuse and violence of two questionably devised Mormon marriages before finding love and an improbable career in the U.S. civil service. By the time Lance came out to his mother at age twenty-one, he was a blue-state young man studying the arts instead of going on his Mormon mission. She derided his sexuality as a sinful choice and was terrified for his future. It may seem like theirs was a house destined to be divided, and at times it was. This story shines light on what it took to remain a family despite such division—a journey that stretched from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court to the woodsheds of East Texas. In the end, the rifts that have split a nation couldn’t end this relationship that defined and inspired their remarkable lives. Mama’s Boy is their story. It’s a story of the noble quest for a plane higher than politics—a story of family, foundations, turmoil, tragedy, elation, and love. It is a story needed now more than ever.

Aflame begins in Soviet Moscow and ends with a Tibetan Buddhist monk's self-immolation; residing between them - improvisations after celebrated Japanese Haikus. Written in an intricate and polyphonic structure, Subhash Jaireth's rare and carefully crafted rhythms reveal the creeping melancholic joy of silence and life's elusive beauty.

In Blues Mamas and Broadway Belters, songwriter, scholar, and dramatist Masi Asare explores the singing practice of black women singers in US musical theatre between 1900 and 1970. Asare shows how a vanguard of black women singers including Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Pearl Bailey, Juanita Hall, Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, Diahann Carroll, and Leslie Uggams created a lineage of highly trained and effective voice teachers whose sound and vocal techniques continue to be heard today. Challenging pervasive narratives that these and other black women possessed “untrained” voices, Asare theorizes singing as a form of sonic citational practice—how the sound of the teacher’s voice lives on in the student’s singing. From vaudeville-blues shouters, black torch singers, and character actresses to nightclub vocalists and Broadway glamour girls, Asare locates black women of the musical stage in the context of historical voice pedagogy. She invites readers not only to study these singers, but to study with them—taking seriously what they and their contemporaries have taught about the voice. Ultimately, Asare speaks to the need to feel and hear the racial history in contemporary musical theatre.