Without My Books I would Be Lost--2012-2013. A Work in Progress

My first book represents a journey that I know first hand, Leni Goodman's Impossible Choices: "IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES is the moving story of a young woman growing into motherhood and her evolving sexuality. First, upon facing devastating events when her young daughter is diagnosed with a rare brain tumor; in order to save her life she confronts the traditional medical establishment by organizing volunteers to help with a radical course of rehab treatment called 'patterning.'” Years later, after making the decision to adopt a second daughter she survives the vicissitudes of foreign adoption; only to have her strength and fortitude challenged again when this daughter, upon reaching adolescence, is almost destroyed  by the haunting memories and after effects of her early childhood abuse. Excerpts from her daughter’s insightful and moving journal entries and letters give an added dimension to the unfolding drama." I watched Leni over many years piece this telling together, to learn what being a writer means while carrying such sadnesses in her heart, such determination in all of her to make life possible for her children and herself. 

You will find the first chapter of this book and images of Leni, Julie and Cache at impossiblechoices.wordpress.com   The book is available at Amazon.com books

Without My Books I Would Be Lost

Fantasy

1. David Gemmell—all his work

2. Kim Stanley Robinson: Shaman (2013)

3. Frank Schatzing: Limit (2013)

Poetry

1. Mahmoud Darwish: Memory for Forgetfullness (1982); Unfortunately It Was Paradise  (2003) Why did We Leave the Horses….

2. Edna St Vincent Millay: Collected Lyrics (1981)

3. W. H. Auden: Collected Poems (1976), “Lullaby,” p. 157

4. Robert Browning’s Poetry (1979)

5. Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1855, 1990) Always

6. C. P. Cavafy: Complete Poems (2012)

7.  May Swenson: New and Selected Things Taking Place (1978); May Out West (1996); The Love Poems (2003)

8. Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: An Anthology . edd. Larkin and Morse (1988)

9. Naomi Replansky: The Dangerous World: New and Selected Poems, 1934-1994; Collected Poems,  (2012)

10. Muriel Ruckeyser: The Collected Poems  (1978)

11. Julia de Burgos: Song of the Simple Truth  (1997)

12. Langston Hughes: The Collected Poems (1994)

13. Osip Mandelstam: Poems 1930-1937, The Moscow & Voronezh Notebooks (2003)

14. Jacob Glatstein: I Keep Recalling: The Holocaust Poems (1993)

History 

1. David McCullough: 1776 (2005)

Mystery-Historical Novels

1. C. J. Sansom: Winter in Madrid (2006)

2. Parker Bilal: The Golden Scales (2012)

Anthologies

1. Joyful Strains: Making Australia Home, edd. MacCarter and Lemer (2013)

2. A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Seekers, edd. Scott and Keneally  (2013)

Essays, Critical Thinking

1. Edmund Said: Reflections on Exile (2001)

2. Sarah Schulman: Israel/ Palestine and the Queer International (2012); The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2013)

3. jasbir k. puar: Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007
4. Gayle Rubin: Deviations

Novels

1. Michelle de Kretser: Questions of Travel  (2012)

Graphic Novels

1. Alison Bechdel: Fun Home; Are You My Mother (2012)