On the sun-drenched island of Haiti in the 1970s, under the shadow of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s notorious regime, locals eke out an existence as servants, bartenders and panderers to the white elite. Fanfan, Charlie, and Legba, aware of the draw of their adolescent, black bodies, seduce rich, middle-aged white tourists looking for respite from their colourless jobs and marriages. These “relationships” mirror the power struggle inherent in all transactions in Port-au-Prince’s seedy back streets. Heading South takes us into the world of artists, rappers, Voodoo priests, hotel owners, uptight Parisian journalists and partner-swapping Haitian lovers, all desperately trying to balance happiness with survival. Made into an award-winning film starring Charlotte Rampling, this provocative novel, translated for the first time into English, explores the lines between sexual liberation and exploitation, artistic freedom and appropriation, independence and colonialism.

Freelance travel writer and Lonely Planet guidebook contributor Tim Richards decides to shake up his life by taking an epic rail journey across Australia. Jumping aboard iconic trains like the Indian Pacific, Overland, and Spirit of Queensland, he covers over 7,000 kilometres, from the tropics to the desert and from big cities to ghost towns. Tim's journey is one of classic travel highs and lows: floods, cancellations, extraordinary landscapes, and forays into personal and public histories—as well as the steady joy of random strangers encountered along the way.

In this remarkable memoir, Dorfman describes an extraordinary life, torn between the United States, South America, and his Jewish heritage, between English and Spanish, between revolution and repression. Interwoven with the story of how Dorfman switched languages and countries--not once, but three times--is a day-to-day account of his multiple escapes from death during Pinochet's military takeover of Chile in 1973. Combining eight vignettes of his life before 1973 with eight scenes from the coup, Dorfman filters these events through an engaging, hybrid consciousness.A beautifully written and deeply moving auto-biography by one of the "greatest living Latin American writers" (Newsweek), Heading South, Looking North is at once a vivid account of a life as complex and mysterious as the fictional characters Dorfman has created, and an enthralling search for a permanent home, a political cause, and a cultural identity.

Susan Nye Hutchison (1790-1867) was one of many teachers to venture south across the Mason-Dixon Line in the Second Great Awakening. From 1815 to 1841, she kept journals about her career, family life, and encounters with slavery. Drawing on these journals and hundreds of other documents, Kim Tolley uses Hutchison's life to explore the significance of education in transforming American society in the early national period. Tolley examines the roles of ambitious, educated women like Hutchison who became teachers for economic, spiritual, and professional reasons. During this era, working women faced significant struggles when balancing career ambitions with social conventions about female domesticity. Hutchison's eventual position as head of a respected southern academy was as close to equity as any woman could achieve in any field. By recounting Hutchison's experiences--from praying with slaves and free blacks in the streets of Raleigh and establishing an independent school in Georgia to defying North Carolina law by teaching slaves to read--Tolley offers a rich microhistory of an antebellum teacher. Hutchison's story reveals broad social and cultural shifts and opens an important window onto the world of women's work in southern education.

For Cochran, the sense of deja vu is overwhelming - and alarming."--BOOK JACKET.