Behind Closed Doors: SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

Behind Closed Doors: SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING PDF Author: Polly Curtis
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 0349014523
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
'BRILLIANT . . . I LOVE THIS BOOK' LEMN SISSAY 'A MUST-READ BOOK' JACQUELINE WILSON 'EXTRAORDINARY' OLIVER BULLOUGH 'EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK' HILARY COTTAM Meet the mother whose children were taken away, and the father who fought for his son. Listen to the radical social worker, the judge, the lawyer. See inside the homes of foster carers, adoptive parents and children in care. Because behind closed doors, a scandal is ongoing. We now remove more children from their parents than ever before, more than any other western country. Not because of a rise in physical or sexual abuse, but because of complex factors that are overlooked and misunderstood. Children's Care is a system where fathers are ignored, and mothers are punished for experiencing abuse. Rife with prejudices about race, ableism and class, determined by a postcode lottery. Blind to poverty and its effects on family life. And, at its very worst, an exercise in social engineering that can never replace parental love. This is not a soft issue. Not a 'women and children' problem. It is a prism through which we can understand the deepest issues at play in politics, economics and society today, and it is happening behind closed doors. Because of legal restrictions against reporting in family courts, the uneasy work of social care and the shame poured on parents, these problems remain out of our sight. They are the subject of horror headlines or stale statistics. But family life is at the heart of who we are as people, and it is they who can help us understand. From North to South, rich and poor, Black and white, these are the people who know, first-hand, what is going wrong - and how we can fix it. These are their stories. 'IMPORTANT' IAN BIRRELL 'VITAL' HANNAH JANE PARKINSON 'ONE OF BRITAIN'S BEST JOURNALISTS WRITING ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE' MARIANA MAZZUCATO

Behind Closed Doors: SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

Behind Closed Doors: SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING PDF Author: Polly Curtis
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 0349014523
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book

Book Description
'BRILLIANT . . . I LOVE THIS BOOK' LEMN SISSAY 'A MUST-READ BOOK' JACQUELINE WILSON 'EXTRAORDINARY' OLIVER BULLOUGH 'EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK' HILARY COTTAM Meet the mother whose children were taken away, and the father who fought for his son. Listen to the radical social worker, the judge, the lawyer. See inside the homes of foster carers, adoptive parents and children in care. Because behind closed doors, a scandal is ongoing. We now remove more children from their parents than ever before, more than any other western country. Not because of a rise in physical or sexual abuse, but because of complex factors that are overlooked and misunderstood. Children's Care is a system where fathers are ignored, and mothers are punished for experiencing abuse. Rife with prejudices about race, ableism and class, determined by a postcode lottery. Blind to poverty and its effects on family life. And, at its very worst, an exercise in social engineering that can never replace parental love. This is not a soft issue. Not a 'women and children' problem. It is a prism through which we can understand the deepest issues at play in politics, economics and society today, and it is happening behind closed doors. Because of legal restrictions against reporting in family courts, the uneasy work of social care and the shame poured on parents, these problems remain out of our sight. They are the subject of horror headlines or stale statistics. But family life is at the heart of who we are as people, and it is they who can help us understand. From North to South, rich and poor, Black and white, these are the people who know, first-hand, what is going wrong - and how we can fix it. These are their stories. 'IMPORTANT' IAN BIRRELL 'VITAL' HANNAH JANE PARKINSON 'ONE OF BRITAIN'S BEST JOURNALISTS WRITING ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE' MARIANA MAZZUCATO

Why I Write

Why I Write PDF Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Renard Press Ltd
ISBN: 1913724263
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

The People's Republic of Amnesia

The People's Republic of Amnesia PDF Author: Louisa Lim
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199347700
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
An NPR correspondent explains how the Tiananmen Square massacre changed China, and how China changed the events of that day by rewriting its own history.

Down and Out

Down and Out PDF Author: Daniel Lavelle
Publisher: Wildfire
ISBN: 1472279107
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
***Winner of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness*** ***Winner of an RSL Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction*** 'Part memoir, part howl of fury' GUARDIAN 'Enrich[es] our impoverished sociological imagination' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Raw and compelling' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Shows the human cost of a genuinely Kafka-esque bureaucratic system' NEW STATESMAN At once a powerful memoir, unflinching polemic and probing investigation into modern homelessness in the UK, by award-winning investigative journalist Daniel Lavelle Daniel Lavelle left care at the age of nineteen, and experienced homelessness for the first time not long after. So began a life spent navigating social services that were not fit for purpose, leaving Daniel and many like him slipping through the cracks. In Down and Out, Daniel draws on his own experiences - as well as those of the witty, complex, hopeful individuals he has encountered who have been shunned or forgotten by the state that is supposed to provide for them - in order to shine a powerful light on this dire situation. Down and Out is a true state-of-the-nation examination of modern homelessness: assessing its significance, its precursors and causes, as well as the role played by government, austerity, charities, and other systems in perpetuating this crisis. Ultimately, it seeks to ask how we as a society might change our practices and attitudes so that, one day, we can bring this injustice to an end. More praise for Down and Out: 'Ruthless and raw ' DAVID LAMMY, author of TRIBES 'A vital voice . . . A book for every politician, policy maker and reader who wants a fairer and kinder country' FRANCES RYAN, author of CRIPPLED 'Anyone interested in homelessness should read this book' SIMON HATTENSTONE, journalist 'A valuable and damning personal tale of how the system fails our kids' EMILY KENWAY, author of THE TRUTH ABOUT MODERN SLAVERY

Brother

Brother PDF Author: David Chariandy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635572002
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
"A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life." --Marlon James "Highly recommend Brother by David Chariandy--concise and intense, elegiac short novel of devastation and hope." --Joyce Carol Oates, via Twitter WINNER--Toronto Book Award WINNER--Rogers' Writers' Trust Fiction Prize WINNER--Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction In luminous, incisive prose, a startling new literary talent explores masculinity, race, and sexuality against a backdrop of simmering violence during the summer of 1991. One sweltering summer in the Park, a housing complex outside of Toronto, Michael and Francis are coming of age and learning to stomach the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. While their Trinidadian single mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home, Francis helps the days pass by inventing games and challenges, bringing Michael to his crew's barbershop hangout, and leading escapes into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves. Propelled by the beats and styles of hip hop, Francis dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow. Honest and insightful in its portrayal of kinship, community, and lives cut short, David Chariandy's Brother is an emotional tour de force that marks the arrival of a stunning new literary voice.

My Name Is Why

My Name Is Why PDF Author: Lemn Sissay
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1786892359
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER INDIE BOOK AWARDS NON-FICTION WINNER 'EXTRAORDINARY' The Times, 'BEAUTIFUL' Dolly Alderton, 'SHATTERING' Observer, 'INCREDIBLE' Benjamin Zephaniah, 'UNPUTDOWNABLE' Sunday Times, 'ASTOUNDING' Matt Haig 'POWERFUL' Elif Shafak At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Sissay reflects on his childhood, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation's best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity.

Godforsaken Idaho

Godforsaken Idaho PDF Author: Shawn Vestal
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544027760
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Nine stories illuminate what it means to be Mormon and how faith serves to humanize, in a work that includes a seriocomic portrait of a young Joseph Smith.

Radical Help

Radical Help PDF Author: Hilary Cottam
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 0349009082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
How should we live: how should we care for one another; grow our capabilities to work, to learn, to love and fully realise our potential? This exciting and ambitious book shows how we can re-design the welfare state for this century. The welfare state was revolutionary: it lifted thousands out of poverty, provided decent homes, good education and security. But it is out of kilter now: an elaborate and expensive system of managing needs and risks. Today we face new challenges. Our resources have changed. Hilary Cottam takes us through five 'Experiments' to show us a new design. We start on a Swindon housing estate where families who have spent years revolving within our current welfare systems are supported to design their own way out. We spend time with young people who are helped to make new connections - with radical results. We turn to the question of good health care and then to the world of work and see what happens when people are given different tools to make change. Then we see those over sixty design a new and affordable system of support. At the heart of this way of working is human connection. Upending the current crisis of managing scarcity, we see instead that our capacities for the relationships that can make the changes are abundant. We must work with individuals, families and communities to grow the core capabilities we all need to flourish. Radical Help describes the principles behind the approach, the design process that makes the work possible and the challenges of transition. It is bold - and above all, practical. It is not a book of dreams. It is about concrete new ways of organising that already have been developing across Britain. Radical Help creates a new vision and a radically different approach that can take care of us once more, from cradle to grave.

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits PDF Author: Greg Palast
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609804791
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
A close presidential election in November could well come down to contested states or even districts--an election decided by vote theft? It could happen this year. Based on Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s investigative reporting for Rolling Stone and BBC television, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps might be the most important book published this year--one that could save the election. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits names the filthy-rich sugar-daddies who are super-funding the Super-PACs of both parties--billionaires with nicknames like "The Ice Man," "The Vulture" and, of course, The Brothers Koch. Told with Palast's no-holds-barred, reporter-on-the-beat style, the facts as he lays them out are staggering. What emerges in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits is the never-before-told-story of the epic battle being fought behind the scenes between the old money banking sector that still supports Obama, and the new hedge fund billionaires like Paul Singer who not only support Romney but also are among his key economic advisors. Although it has not been reported, Obama has shown some backbone in standing up to the financial excesses of the men behind Romney. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits exposes the previously unreported details on how operatives plan to use the hundreds of millions in Super-PAC money pouring into this election. We know the money is pouring in, but Palast shows us the convoluted ways the money will be used to suppress your vote. The story of the billionaires and why they want to buy an election is matched with the nine ways they can steal the election. His story of the sophisticated new trickery will pick up on Palast's giant New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Hackney Child

Hackney Child PDF Author: Hope Daniels
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 147112987X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The powerful, refreshingly honest, first-hand account of a childhood spent in the Care system. At the age of nine, Hope Daniels walked into Stoke Newington Police Station with her little brothers and asked to be taken into care. Home life was intolerable: both of Hope’s parents were alcoholics and her mum was a prostitute. The year was 1983. As London emerged into a new era of wealth and opportunity, the Daniels children lived in desperate poverty, neglected and barely nourished. Hounded by vigilante neighbours and vulnerable to the drunken behaviour of her parents’ friends, Hope had to draw on her inner strength. Hackney Child is Hope's gripping story of physical and emotional survival – and the lifeline given to her by the support of professionals working in the care system. Despite all the challenges she faced, Hope never lost compassion for her parents. Her experiences make essential reading and show that, with the right help, the least fortunate children have the potential not only to recover but to thrive. ‘It’s raw and absorbing’Grazia ‘This story needed to be told’ Cassie Harte, Sunday Times Number One bestselling author