This the epic true story of the life of a woman of indomitable spirit set in 19th century outback Australia. Winifred Steger travelled to Australia with her father in the 1880s when he took up a land grant, which turned out to be worthless, in north Queensland. Faced with poverty, endless backbreaking work and isolation, Winifred's father spiralled into depression and alcoholism. Left to fend for herself, Winifred battled insurmountable odds to maintain her dignity and sanity, finding solace when she created fictitious scenarios to ease her hardship. She endured an early loveless marriage and being forced to abandon her four children, and eventually met and fell in love with an Indian trader, Ali. She bore him three children and the family moved to outback Australia where they ran a camel line. Later, a new phase began in Winifred's life, taking her to places she had only ever dreamed of. The Washerwoman's Dream is the story of an extraordinary woman. Hilarie Lindsay meticulously researched and reconstructed Winifred's life through her memoirs, newspaper articles, short stories, letters and unpublished novels. This is an account of the amazing life of a forgotten Australian writer. -- BOOK COVER.

In Hajj Travelogues: Texts and Contexts from the 12th Century until 1950 Richard van Leeuwen maps the corpus of hajj accounts from the Muslim world and Europe. The work outlines the main issues in a field of study which has largely been neglected. A large number of hajj travelogues are described as a textual type integrating religious discourse into the form of the journey. Special attention is given to their intertextual embedding in the broader discursive tradition of the hajj. Since the corpus is seen as dynamic and responsive to historical developments, the texts are situated in their historical context and the subsequent phases of globalisation. It is shown how in travelogues forms of religious subjectivity are constructed and expressed.

Synopsis coming soon.......

The interdisciplinary essays in Decolonial Voices discuss racialized, subaltern, feminist, and diasporic identities and the aesthetic politics of hybrid and mestiza/o cultural productions. This collection represents several key directions in the field: First, it charts how subaltern cultural productions of the US/ Mexico borderlands speak to the intersections of "local," "hemispheric," and "globalized" power relations of the border imaginary. Second, it recovers the Mexican women's and Chicana literary and cultural heritages that have been ignored by Euro-American canons and patriarchal exclusionary practices. It also expands the field in postnationalist directions by creating an interethnic, comparative, and transnational dialogue between Chicana and Chicano, African American, Mexican feminist, and U.S. Native American cultural vocabularies. Contributors include Norma AlarcÃ3n, Arturo J. Aldama, Frederick Luis Aldama, Cordelia Chávez Candelaria, Alejandra Elenes, RamÃ3n Garcia, MarÃa Herrera-Sobek, Patricia Penn Hilden, Gaye T. M. Johnson, Alberto Ledesma, Pancho McFarland, Amelia MarÃa de la Luz Montes, Laura Elisa Pérez, Naomi Quiñonez, Sarah Ramirez, Rolando J. Romero, Delberto Dario Ruiz, Vicki Ruiz, José David SaldÃvar, Anna Sandoval, and Jonathan Xavier Inda.

Border Matters locates the study of Chicano culture in a broad social context. José Saldívar examines issues of representation and expression in a diverse, exciting assortment of texts—corridos, novels, poems, short stories, punk and hip-hop music, ethnography, paintings, performance, art, and essays. Saldívar provides a sophisticated model for a new kind of U.S. cultural studies, one that challenges the homogeneity of U.S. nationalism and popular culture by foregrounding the contemporary experiences and historical circumstances facing Chicanos and Chicanas. This intellectually adventurous, politically engaged study applies borderlands and diaspora theory to Chicano cultural practices in a way that permanently changes our understanding of both the Chicano experience and the meaning of cultural theory. Defying national (and nationalistic) paradigms of culture, Saldívar argues that the culture of the borderlands is trans-national, constituting a social space in which new relations, hybrid cultures, and multi-voiced aesthetics are negotiated. Saldívar's critical readings treat culture as a social force and reveal the presence of social contexts within cultural texts. Border Matters maps out a new terrain for the study of culture, reshaping the way we understand migration, national identity, and intellectual inquiry itself.