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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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| 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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| Mean by Myriam GurbaWhat it is: experimental writer Myriam Gurba's darkly humorous reckoning with her formative and ongoing traumas including sexual violence, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
Why you should read it: Gurba's wry and thought-provoking reflections will stay with readers long after they've turned the last page.
Try this next: Cherríe Moraga's bittersweet memoir Native Country of the Heart similarly explores queer and mixed-race Chicana identity. |
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Up Ghost River : a chief's journey through the turbulent waters of Native history
by Edmund Metatawabin
"In the 1950s, 7-year-old Edmund Metatawabin was separated from his family and placed in one of Canada's worst residential schools. St. Anne's, in northern Ontario, is an institution now notorious for the range of punishments that staff and teachers inflicted on students. Even as Metatawabin built the trappings of a successful life wife, kids, career he was tormented by horrific memories. Fuelled by alcohol, the trauma from his past caught up with him, and his family and work lives imploded. In seeking healing, Metatawabin travelled to southern Alberta. There he learned from elders, participated in native cultural training workshops that emphasize the holistic approach to personhood at the heart of Cree culture, and finally faced his alcoholism and PTSD.Metatawabin has since worked tirelessly to expose the wrongdoings of St. Anne's, culminating in a recent court case demanding that the school records be released to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission."--Provided by publisher
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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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Crave : a memoir of food and longing
by Christine Scherick O'Brien
"Christine O'Brien remembers growing up in NYC's famous Dakota apartment with her powerful father, her beautiful mother, and a food obsessesion that consumed her. Hunger comes in many forms. A person can crave a steak in the same way that she can crave aperfect family life. In her memoir, Crave: A Memoir of Food and Longing, Christine O'Brien tells the story of her own cravings. It's a story of growing up in a family with a successful, but explosive father, a beautiful, but damaged, mother and three brothers in New York City's famed Dakota apartment building."--Provided by publisher
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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