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Biography and Memoir October 2021 |
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| Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana BurkeWhat it is: activist and Me Too founder Tarana Burke's empowering debut memoir chronicling her commitment to social advocacy.
Don't miss: Burke's candid reflections on seeing her work co-opted by social media campaigns that initially failed to credit her.
Further reading: Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence by Anita Hill. |
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| Poet Warrior by Joy HarjoWhat it is: United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's lyrical and engaging follow-up to her 2012 memoir Crazy Brave.
Topics include: Harjo's Muscogee upbringing with a poetry-loving mother, who encouraged the author's interest in words; surviving abuse from her father and stepfather; finding communion with fellow Native writers as a University of New Mexico student in the 1970s.
Reviewers say: "A gorgeous, compassionate memoir from one of America's greatest living writers" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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The lady swings : memoirs of a jazz drummer
by Dottie Dodgion
"Dottie Dodgion is a jazz drummer who played with the best. A survivor, she lived an entire lifetime before she was seventeen.
Undeterred by hardships, she defied the odds and earned a seat as a woman in the exclusive men's club of jazz.
Her dues-paying path as a musician took her from early work with Charles Mingus to being hired by Benny Goodman at Basin Street East on her first day in New York.
From there she broke new ground as a woman who played a "man's instrument" in first-string, all-male New York City jazz bands.
Her inspiring memoir talks frankly about her music and the challenges she faced, and shines a light into the jazz world of the 1960s and 1970s.
Vivid and always entertaining, The Lady Swings tells Dottie Dodgion's story with the same verve and straight-ahead honesty that powered her playing"
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| Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood by Dawn TurnerWhat it is: journalist Dawn Turner's moving memoir detailing her 1970s coming of age in the South Side of Chicago's historic Bronzeville neighborhood (known as the city's "Black Metropolis") alongside her younger sister, Kim, and her best friend, Debra.
Read it for: a powerful examination of diverging paths and second chances, told with candor and empathy; an immersive portrait of life in post-civil rights era Chicago, drawing upon dozens of interviews. |
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| Beautiful Country by Qian Julie WangWhat it's about: In 1994, seven-year-old Qian Julie Wang and her family fled China, settling in New York City's Chinatown. Over the next five years, they battled poverty, racism, labor exploitation (including Wang's own time working in a sweatshop), and the constant fear of deportation.
For fans of: emotionally affecting memoirs that explore the reality of life as an undocumented immigrant, like Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Children of the Land.
Book buzz: Hailed "a new classic" by Publishers Weekly, Wang's haunting debut was September's Read with Jenna Book Club Pick. |
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Lake of the Ozarks : my surreal summers in a vanishing America
by William Geist
Before there was "tourism" or "leisure time;" before souvenir ashtrays became "camp" and "kitsch;" before Goofy Golf became an "attraction" and today's colossal theme parks could even be imagined, there was "Beautiful Lake of the Ozarks -- Family Vacationland," where to this day the ashtrays remain devoid of irony. It was here, at Arrowhead Lodge at Lake of the Ozarks, where Bill Geist spent his summers between high school and college working at this tacky resort.
What may have seemed "just a summer job" became, upon reflection, a transformative era where a cast of eccentric, small-town characters and experiences would make Bill the man he is today.
Bill realized it was this time in his life that would shape his sensibilities, his humor, his writing, and ultimately a career searching the world for other such untamed characters for The Chicago Tribune and the New York Times
In LAKE OF THE OZARKS, two-time Emmy Award-winning CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Bill Geist reflects on his coming of age in the American heartland of the Midwest and traces his evolution as a man and a writer, in the summers between high school and college.
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Transformed : a Navy SEAL's unlikely journey from the throne of Africa, to the streets of the Bronx, to defying all odds
by Remi Adeleke
What are the odds? Statistics tell us that African American males who grow up in a single-parent household are nine times more likely to drop out of high school and twenty times more likely to end up in prison than any other demographic.
In Transformed, Remi Adeleke takes you back to stories from his childhood, from living as Nigerian royalty to losing his father early in life and being stripped financially of everything by the Nigerian government.
He delves into being raised by a single mother in the Bronx and doesn't shy away from his illegal activities as a young man that threatened to derail his future.
At every turn, including throughout his naval career, Adeleke found a way to overcome the odds, even when it didn't make sense. His is an inspiring story of true personal transformation.
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Upper Bohemia : a memoir
by Hayden Hererra
On the surface, Herrera's childhood was idyllic and surreal. But underneath, the pain of being a parent's afterthought was acute.
Upper Bohemia captures the tension between a child's excitement at every new thing and her sadness at losing the comfort of a reliable family.
For her parents, both painters, the thing that mattered most was beauty--and so her childhood was expanded by art and by a reverence for nature.
But her early years were also marred by abuse and by absent, irresponsible adults. Herrera would move from place to place, parent to parent, relative to family friend, and school to school--eventually following her mother to Mexico.
The step-parents and step-siblings kept changing, too.
Intimate and honest, Upper Bohemia is a celebration of a wild and pleasure-filled way of living--and a poignant reminder of the toll such narcissism takes on the children raised in its grip.
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| Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc TranWhat it's about: After the fall of Saigon in 1975, author Phuc Tran and his family immigrated to America, winding up in a predominantly white small town in Pennsylvania. An outsider among his classmates, Tran found solace in punk music, classic literature, and skateboarding.
Why you might like it: Equal parts funny and affecting, Tran's memoir will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled to fit in.
Don't miss: chapters named after Tran's favorite books, including The Scarlet Letter, Pygmalion, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Carrollton Public Library 1700 Keller Springs Road, Carrollton Texas 75006 4220 North Josey Lane, Carrollton Texas 75010 |
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