How does a black woman maintain her sense of self, when most of her friends are white? In public spaces and private, Dawn Downey is under attack by an onslaught of microaggressions. She struggles to find balance between personal relationships and personal integrity. In the process, she unconsciously takes on characteristics of the privileged. But after a photo of a racist toy shows up in her social media feed, she discovers her black power.

What do you learn, when you revisit long-held assumptions about your past? When Dawn Downey examines essays she wrote in 2014, she gains insights into the workings of her mind. Her old resentments shapeshift into empathy. She recognizes a relationship with the natural world that she'd kept hidden from herself. She transcends the artificial binaries of death vs life and you vs me. Downey invites us to linger over our own memories and marvel as they take on new meaning under our gentle atten...

Dawn Downey's second collection of essays is for everyone who savors down-to-earth stories with a twist of wisdom. Deeply honest and deeply personal, her observations are laced with quirky insights and self-deprecating humor. She draws inspiration from the flu, the garden, bad knees and bad TV. She explores larger themes of loss and estrangement, while retaining a youthful outlook on the vagaries of life and aging. Readers will journey from the mundane to the metaphysical. Here's an author...

How does one embrace spirituality, when life is messy? Dawn Downey comes to a startling revelation: a difficult childhood was more than that. There was abuse. When she confronts family history, years of depression and splintered relationships finally make sense. As a seeker, she accepts her past and finds friendship, compassion, and joy.

In this spiritual memoir, Dawn Downey chronicles a journey that leads her from revelations at a Buddhist monastery to transcendence at a Baptist church. She loses her way in the foothills of California and discovers oneness in the high desert of Colorado. En route, she uncovers the cause of her lifelong depression: childhood abuse. A story for everyone who loves inspiration mixed with humor.

We strive for authenticity, but expediency often demands we suppress our true feelings.Dawn Downey struggles to find her genuine self, as she navigates her white surroundings. She wages an internal war, her intuition recognizing bigotry and her intellect wanting—needing—to deny it. At the end of any given day, she is angry. She is weary. She despairs.“You get to hopeless by sinking,” she tells us.“I sank through dreamlike images of shackles, chains, branding irons, ...

"You're not alone." Hollow words for any tender soul smiling through the day while hiding a deep sense of loneliness. For such a soul--like Dawn Downey--the friendliest encounter becomes an exercise in alienation. Through the stories in Searching for My Heart, Downey investigates why she feels left out, returning to themes of alienation, shame, and the self-awareness that leads to love. Downey is a seeker on a quest for closeness. Every step in her search is a homecoming, where she discove...

Discover a more lighthearted side of the funeral industry in this collection of real-life stories from the authors of Mortuary Confidential.Not knowing what to do, I sat on the church steps and waited. As the gravity of my failure began to well up in me, I began to cry . . . I Had Lost The Hearse!Funerals and the all the things that accompany them are traditionally somber, contemplative events in which the bereaved look to their undertaker...

IN THIS POIGNANT AND BREATHTAKING DEBUT, ONE MAN SEARCHES FOR MEANING IN THE WAKE OF INCOMPARABLE TRAGEDY…Karom Seth should have been in the Twin Towers on the morning of 9/11, and on the Indian shores in 2004, when the tsunami swept his entire family into the ocean. Whether it's a curse or a blessing, Karom can't be sure, but his absence from these disasters has left him with crushing guilt–and a belief that fate has singled him out for invincibility.Karom's affliction con...

The bestselling, wonderfully unconventional, “warmly conspiratorial…seriously good” (The New York Times) memoir-in-letters from the Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe Award–winning actress that has received fabulous and wide praise. “There is no one else quite like Mary-Louise Parker…Funny, heartbreaking and profound” (ELLE).An extraordinary literary memoir, Dear Mr. You renders the singular arc of a woman’s life through letters Mary-Louise Par...

This sophisticated, scary anthology collects the best horror fiction published between 1984 and 2005, one of horror’s most innovative eras. These exceptionally diverse stories, hand-picked by horror-expert editor Ellen Datlow, are tales of the subtly psychological, the unpredictably mischievous, and the disturbingly visceral.Here are classics, such as horror master Stephen King’s Chattery Teeth,” the tautly drawn account of a traveling salesman who unwisely picks up yet another hi...

From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuse...