The second book in the Elemental Logic series, Earth Logic continues the story from the perspective of Karis, a complex character born of magic and now ruler for the country of Shaftal. Karis is a woman who can heal the war-torn land and expel the invaders, but she lives in obscurity with her fractious found family. With war and disease spreading, Karis must act quickly. And when Karis acts, the very stones of the earth sit up and take notice. “Another stunner of a book. The powerful but subtle writing glows with intelligence.” — Booklist

Earth * Air * Water * Fire These elements have sustained the peaceful people of Shaftal for generations, with their subtle powers of healing, truth, joy, and intuition. But now, Shaftal is dying. The earth witch who ruled Shaftal is dead, leaving no heir. Shaftal's ruling house has been scattered by the invading Sainnites. The Shaftali have mobilized a guerrilla army against these marauders, but every year the cost of resistance grows, leaving Shaftal's fate in the hands of three people: Emil, scholar and reluctant warrior; Zanja, the sole survivor of a slaughtered tribe; and Karis the metalsmith, a half-blood giant whose earth powers can heal, but only when she can muster the strength to hold off her addiction to a deadly drug. Separately, all they can do is watch as Shaftal falls from prosperity into lawlessness and famine. But if they can find a way to work together, they just may change the course of history.

By water logic, a cow doctor becomes a politician. A soldier becomes a flower farmer. A lost book contains a lost future. The patterns of history are made and unmade. Amid assassinations, rebellions, and the pyres of too many dead, a new government forms in the land of Shaftal--a government of soldiers and farmers, scholars and elemental talents, all weary of war and longing for peace. But some cannot forget their losses, and some cannot imagine a place for themselves in an enemy land. Before memory, before recorded history, something happened that now must be remembered. Zanja na'Tarwein, the crosser of boundaries, born in fire and wedded to earth, has fallen under the ice. Now, by water logic, the logic of patterns repeated, of laughter and music, the lost must be found--or the found may forever be lost. Laurie J. Marks teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of five previous novels, and her first two Elemental Logic novels ("Fire Logic" and "Earth Logic") won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award and received multiple starred reviews. She is a recipient of the Fairy Godmother Award (James D. Tiptree, Jr. Award) and a founding member of Broad Universe.

With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet. Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience. In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them. How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.'

A groundbreaking work of feminist history and theory analyzing the complex relations between various forms of oppression. Ain't I a Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women's movement, and black women's involvement with feminism.