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Biography and Memoir June 2019
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| Mama's Boy: A Story from Our Americas by Dustin Lance BlackWhat it's about: Dustin Lance Black's conservative Mormon upbringing in Texas and his complicated relationship with his mother, a headstrong polio and abuse survivor.
Author alert: LGBTQIA activist Black is the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Milk.
Reviewers say: "terrifically moving" (Kirkus Reviews); "belongs in every library" (Booklist). |
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| All That You Leave Behind by Erin Lee CarrWhat it is: a poignant elegy for Erin Lee Carr's late father, New York Times journalist David Carr, who died from lung cancer in 2015; an incisive look at the ravages of multigenerational addiction.
What's inside: texts, emails, and letters exchanged between Carr and her father that offer an insightful view into the pair's relationship.
Further reading: David Carr's award-winning 2008 memoir Night of the Gun, which chronicles his own struggles with addiction and his life as a single father. |
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| What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence by Michele Filgate (editor)What it is: a diverse collection of essays that illuminate the complicated relationships between the authors and their mothers.
Contributors include: Kiese Laymon, Alexander Chee, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nayomi Munaweera.
Is it for you? Haunting and lyrical, this anthology unflinchingly explores topics like abuse, estrangement, and mental illness. |
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| Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay JonesWhat it is: a comprehensive and entertaining biography of ad man-turned-beloved children's book author and cartoonist Dr. Seuss.
Don't miss: the balanced appraisal of Seuss' legacy -- though he was known for championing causes like environmentalism, he also employed racial stereotypes in his works.
Who it's for: Seuss fans and lovers of page-turning biographies. |
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| African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey GirardWho it's about: Yasuke, the 16th-century African slave who served as a vassal to powerful warlord Oda Nobunaga and became Japan's first foreign-born samurai.
Read it for: the action-packed narrative; the evocative depiction of feudal Japan.
Movie buzz: Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman is set to play Yasuke in a forthcoming film. |
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This much country : a memoir
by Kristin Knight Pace
A memoir from one of the few women to have completed both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod chronicles how she learned how to run sled dogs in one of the most remote places on earth. 25,000 first printing.
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From red earth : a Rwandan story of healing and forgiveness
by Denise Uwimana
In the space of a hundred days, a million Tutsi in Rwanda were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors. At the height of the genocide, as men with bloody machetes ransacked her home, Denise Uwimana gave birth to her third son. With the unlikely help of Hutu Good Samaritans, she and her children survived. Her husband and other family members were not as lucky.
If this were only a memoir of those chilling days and the long, hard road to personal healing and freedom from her past, it would be remarkable enough. But Uwimana didn’t stop there. Leaving a secure job in business, she devoted the rest of her life to restoring her country by empowering other genocide widows to band together, tell their stories, find healing, and rebuild their lives. The stories she has uncovered through her work and recounted here illustrate the complex and unfinished work of truth-telling, recovery, and reconciliation that may be Rwanda’s lasting legacy. Rising above their nation’s past, Rwanda’s genocide survivors are teaching the world the secret to healing the wound of war and ethnic conflict.
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Dutch Girl : Audrey Hepburn and World War II
by Robert Matzen
Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has covered her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. According to her son, Luca Dotti, “The war made my mother who she was.” Audrey Hepburn’s war included participation in the Dutch Resistance, working as a doctor’s assistant during the “Bridge Too Far” battle of Arnhem, the brutal execution of her uncle, and the ordeal of the Hunger Winter of 1944. She also had to contend with the fact that her father was a Nazi agent and her mother was pro-Nazi for the first two years of the occupation. But the war years also brought triumphs as Audrey became Arnhem’s most famous young ballerina. Audrey’s own reminiscences, new interviews with people who knew her in the war, wartime diaries, and research in classified Dutch archives shed light on the riveting, untold story of Audrey Hepburn under fire in World War II. Also included is a section of color and black-and-white photos. Many of these images are from Audrey’s personal collection and are published here for the first time.
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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 growing 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. But what would it take for one young man not only to rise above those statistics but also become a celebrated Navy SEAL, an acclaimed Hollywood actor, and a deep man of faith? For Remi Adeleke--whose life journey has been one of many complicated twists and turns--there'sonly one answer: God. Through times of intense struggle, pressure, and temptation, Remi's inspiring story is one of following God's voice, even when it didn't make sense, overcoming the odds, and ultimately experiencing true personal transformation. In Transformed, Remi takes readers back to stories from his childhood as Nigerian royalty, to losing his father early in life and being raised by a single mother in the Bronx, to illegal activities as a young man that threatened to derail his future. From troubled teen to Navy SEAL, this incredibly popular up-and-coming actor has beaten the odds at every turn. Remi explores the moments of redemption and grace that saved him and how, through finding faith in Christ, he turned to the one Father he'd been searching for all along."--Provided by publisher
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Life will be the death of me : ...and you, too!
by Chelsea Handler
"In a haze of vape smoke on a rare windy night in LA in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then, Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she's had enough ofthe privileged bubble she's lived in--a bubble within a bubble--and that it's time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large. At home, she embarks on a 'Year of Self-Sufficiency'--learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out whypeople are afraid of her. She becomes politically active--finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energizing her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, throughunflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, she unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead. This is a thrillingly honest, insightful, and deeply, darkly funny memoir that is the perfect read for this moment in time"
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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