Lexylia Beckford, a policewoman with the NYPD, is perplexed when her three closest friends try to persuade her to enter a beauty contest. But Lexy has no interest because if she was lucky enough to win, she would have to travel to the faraway planet of Drapnor Two. Against all her earlier misgivings, keeping her mother’s huge medical costs in mind and their insurmountable debt, Lexy decides to enter. She figures she has a very slim chance to even make it to the final five on Earth but fills out the entry form anyway. The entry steps shock her, but she shrugs it off and forges ahead. If she had known she had just committed a life-altering act, would she have clicked the send button?

Life in twenty-first century Tonga is rife with uncertainties. Though the postcolonial island kingdom may give the appearance of stability and order, there is a malaise that pervades everyday life, a disquiet rooted in the feeling that the twin forces of "progress" and "development"—and the seemingly inevitable wealth distribution that follows from them—have bypassed the society. Niko Besnier's illuminating ethnography analyzes the ways in which segments of this small-scale society grapple with their growing anxiety and hold on to different understandings of what modernity means. How should it be made relevant to local contexts? How it should mesh with practices and symbols of tradition? In the day-to-day lives of Tongans, the weight of transformations brought on by neoliberalism and democracy press not in the abstract, but in individually significant ways: how to make ends meet, how to pay lip service to tradition, and how to present a modern self without opening oneself to ridicule. Adopting a wide-angled perspective that brings together political, economic, cultural, and social concerns, this book focuses on the interface between the different forms that modern uncertainties take.

Magic and mischief are here!A collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories featuring dragons, aliens, humor, and a few characters with magic who just can't stay out of trouble if their life depends on it.Includes ten short stories, fifteen drabbles (100 word short stories), and five funny poems.Laugh your way through these short stories and share your favorites with family.

Language and Gender is an introduction to the study of the relation between gender and language use, written by two leading experts in the field. This new edition, thoroughly updated and restructured, brings out more strongly an emphasis on practice and change, while retaining the broad scope of its predecessor and its accessible introductions which explain the key concepts in a non-technical way. The authors integrate issues of sexuality more thoroughly into the discussion, exploring more diverse gendered and sexual identities and practices. The core emphasis is on change, both in linguistic resources and their use and in gender and sexual ideologies and personae. This book explores how change often involves conflict and competing norms, both social and linguistic. Drawing on their own extensive research, as well as other key literature, the authors argue that the connections between language and gender are deep yet fluid, and arise in social practice.

While transgender people have been called many different things by different cultures, they have always existed. This book traces the history of how transgender, third gender, and other varieties of gender-nonconforming individuals have functioned in various societies. It documents how different societies' understanding of sex and gender has changed over time. Readers will explore how different cultures viewed these individuals as well as how their legal rights have evolved (or devolved). They will meet some of the historical figures that paved the way for so many others to live their truth.