For most people, prolonged social isolation is all bad, particularly mentally. We all want to be alone from time to time, to escape the demands of our colleagues or the hassle of crowds. “At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn’t until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realised the screams were my own.” “In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there,” she wrote in the New York Times in 2011. One of the most disturbing effects was the hallucinations. She endured almost 10,000 hours with little human contact before she was freed. Accused of spying, they were kept in solitary confinement in Evin prison in Tehran, each in their own tiny cell. That summer, the 32-year-old had been hiking with two friends in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan when they were arrested by Iranian troops after straying onto the border with Iran. She heard phantom footsteps and flashing lights, and spent most of her day crouched on all fours, listening through a gap in the door. Sarah Shourd’s mind began to slip after about two months into her incarceration.
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It wasn’t always easy to read about her journey, but my heart is so glad that I did. Through Leigh’s journey to Taiwan she experiences some difficult moments, but they are also the most insightful of her life. Pan’s APALA Honor Award and Walter Honor Award-winning debut young adult fantasy novel. Pan does a magnificent job bringing art and grief to life. The Astonishing Color of After, published in 2018, is Emily X.R. Leigh’s visceral desire to discover her roots and hold onto her mother is achingly realistic and human. Through a series of strange sightings and gifts, Leigh becomes convinced a beautiful red talking bird is really her mother, calling her to seek her heritage. It’s a remarkable examination of love, loss and family, written with a dash of magic and some of the most vividly beautiful language I have read. “Liberty, this book sounds so sad!” Well, it IS sad. Set adrift by her devastation, Leigh shuts herself off from the world. Kissing her longtime bff Axel in his basement was the biggest event in Leigh Chen Sanders’ life so far, until she gets home and learns her mother has taken her own life. With case studies and real-world examples, the book outlines and analyzes the possible impact of this phenomenon on issues like governance, public benefits, the long term care work force and national security, and builds a broader framework with which to understand them. The authors draw on current data about longevity, diversity and the growing Hispanic population in particular, to unfold the social, cultural, policy and political implications for an aging and diversifying population. Written with clarity and expertise, this book illuminates the changes and challenges that face the nation by concisely addressing a wide range of topics, including immigration reform, the politics of aging, and health and retirement security, and provides a glimpse of how the “next America” might look. "As the twin demographic shifts of population aging and diversity speed forward in America, it is hard to imagine a timelier or more needed work." - Paul Irving, Chairman, Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging This timely and critical book takes on a new phenomenon facing the United States and poses the stark question: Will the United States be prepared by 2050, when its older population doubles and we become a majority-minority society? In the authors’ response, scholars, policy leaders and the public are provided with the background and information that connects these two trends to contemporary public policy debates. |