Book (b)

"The stories presented here tell tales of a new Chicago, a Chicago that, like the Scott Mutter montage that fronts this book, is made up of diverse images that suggest new ways of seeing. They provide alternative interpretations of life in the city. What you will find in this collection is a a multi-cultural neighborhood in print, a neighborhood which has yet to surface on Chicago streets, one which is perhaps still years away in a city that touts its culturally plural make-up while still enforcing rigid boundaries between segregated neighborhoods. Murder by industrial pollution (often masked by self-abuse), racism, homophobia, the disintegration of family life, the struggle for control of one's own body and mind, the troubles facing a growing elderly population, the subjugation of minority cultures to the rich, the white, the male, are all issues confronted by the writers of these stories. They speak through a range of voices, creating a new, urgent sense of Chicago Realism. These storytellers provide testimony to a new Chicago, a Chicago that while steeped in American tradition challenges the narrow boundaries of its stereotype. They speak to a changing America, an America that has awakened from decades of a false, prosperity-driven revelry with a reality hangover. They speak of an America that must now begin to turn its attention to the social and environmental problems it has too long ignored." - From the back cover

Novel set in the mid-1980s chronicling the misadventures of two roommates living in a loft just west of the Loop. They are the only inhabitants of their neighborhood, save for a few hookers and homeless people. Together they confront the ugly sights, sounds and smells of this urban frontier.

Urbesque is a collection of short (in the sense that most, though not all, of the pieces are shorter than forty pages) fiction (because they are untrue except, of course, for the parts that are). The characters who populate these stories do not travel to India or hang out with matadors. They do, however, go to job fairs, make furniture, leave their swords in the lockers at work, write letters to the objects that surround them and take pictures of it all, years after the fact, to remind them not to forget. If, one day, a copy of Urbesque should appear unannounced on your doorstep, looking a little worse for wear, with whiskey on its breath, invite it in. Make room for it on your couch or bookshelf. Or, better yet, read it. - Abstract from Green Lantern website

“... What I’m about to tell you notwithstanding, I am not a stalker. Or a boyfriend-stealer. I ended up in Donovan’s closet entirely by accident...”

Short stories. “She mines twenty-five years of therapeutic engagement with womyn and men and extracts powerful stories centered on a wide variety of themes encountered in the complex and troubled lives of womyn searching for indentities, running along the precarious edge between inner reality and socially dictated roles, suffering and coping with the varieties of abuse visited on womyn with frightening frequency.”

A collection Grant’s mini comics from 2003-2005

Excerpt from "Jimmy Corrigan Smartest Kid on Earth."

A collection of overheard conversations accumulated over numerous years and illustrated by comic artists.<br />

"At 10:00am on June 27, 1987, 24 Hours in Chicago began. Eighty-seven photographers from the Fort Dearborn-Chicago Camera Club fanned out across Chicago to produce a historical record of life in the city. ... The members of the Fort Dearborn-Chicago Camera Club planned this project to celebrate Chicago's 150th anniversary."

A short inspirational book to encourage readers to &quot;wake up&quot; to reality and accept responsibility in their lives. Includes some scripture, but is primarily in essay form.<br />