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Biography and Memoir April 2025 |
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| Becoming Spectacular: The Rhythm of Resilience from the First African American... by Jennifer JonesIn her moving and inspiring debut, trailblazing dancer Jennifer Jones reveals the triumphs and trials of her 15-year career as a Radio City Rockette, becoming the troupe's first Black dancer in 1987. For fans of: The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby. |
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| Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson... by Mallory O'MearaMallory O'Meara's (The Lady from the Black Lagoon) engaging latest chronicles the life and career of Helen Gibson, Hollywood's first professional stunt woman, whose start in silent films included appearances in the long-running adventure serial The Hazards of Helen, from which she took her stage name. Further reading: Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood by J.E. Smyth. |
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The last manager : how Earl Weaver tricked, tormented, and reinvented baseball
by John W. Miller
Chronicles the life and career of the innovative and fiery Baltimore Orioles manager who revolutionized baseball with data-driven strategies, colorful theatrics and groundbreaking decisions that shaped the modern game while navigating the sport's transition into the free agency era. Illustrations.
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Focus on: National Poetry Month
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E.E. Cummings : a biography
by Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno
Presents the life of E.E. Cummings, his childhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his early attempts to establish himself as a poet, his marriages, his travels, and his eventual great success and world recognition
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Paul Laurence Dunbar : the life and times of a caged bird
by Gene Andrew Jarrett
"This biography explores the life of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), a major nineteenth-century American poet and one of the first African American writers to garner international attention and praise in the wake of emancipation. While Dunbar is perhaps best known for poems such as "Sympathy" (a poem that ends "I know why the caged bird sings!") and "We Wear the Mask," he wrote prolifically in many genres, including a newspaper he produced with his friends Orville and Wilbur Wright in their hometown ofDayton, Ohio. Before his early death he published fourteen books of poetry, four collections of short stories, and four novels, and also collaborated on theatrical productions, including the first musical with a full African American cast to appear on Broadway."
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| Poet Warrior by Joy HarjoFormer United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's engaging follow-up to her 2012 memoir Crazy Brave explores her Muscogee upbringing with a poetry-loving mother, who encouraged the author's interest in words, and how she survived abuse from her father and stepfather to find communion with fellow Indigenous writers as a University of New Mexico student in the 1970s. Further reading: When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: An Anthology of Native Nations Poetry edited by Harjo. |
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| Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha TretheweyYears after her mother's murder, Pulitzer Prize winner and former United States Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway returned to the scene of the crime, where she found long-buried answers to questions lingering from childhood. Readers stirred by this lyrical and unflinching portrait of family violence will want to check out Blood by Allison Moorer. |
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| The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and... by David WaldstreicherNamed a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, historian David Waldstreicher's thought-provoking and richly detailed biography chronicles the trailblazing life and work of Phillis Wheatley, the first known enslaved poet. Further reading: African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song edited by Kevin Young. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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