| Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of... by Leslie BrodyWhat it is: an engrossing and well-researched biography of Harriet the Spy author Louise Fitzhugh (1928-1974).
Read it for: a compelling portrait of a woman who rejected mid-century social and gender norms -- Fitzhugh lived openly as a lesbian among the Greenwich Village set and created a queer-coded heroine who has resonated with LGBTQIA readers for more than 50 years.
About the author: Leslie Brody is an award-winning playwright who adapted Harriet the Spy for the stage. |
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| All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South by Ruth Coker Burks with Kevin Carr O'LearyWhat it's about: In 1980s Hot Springs, Arkansas, young single mom Ruth Coker Burks became an outcast in her conservative community when she began caring for dying AIDS patients.
Why you should read it: Coker Burks' candid account of her life in activism offers a bittersweet front-line perspective on the AIDS crisis.
Don't miss: The author burying men in her family's cemetery after their own families wouldn't claim them, eventually earning the moniker "Cemetery Angel" for her efforts. |
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| Aftershocks by Nadia OwusuWhat it's about: Abandoned by her Armenian American mother as a toddler, Nadia Owusu spent her childhood globetrotting due to her Ghanaian father's United Nations career, never feeling like she fit in anywhere: "I have perpetually been a them rather than an us."
Read it for: a moving account of reckoning with trauma and finding a second chance at happiness.
Try this next: For another coming-of-age memoir by a woman navigating biracial identity and family dysfunction, check out T Kira Madden's Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. |
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The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War
by John Donohue
A U.S. Marine Corps veteran-turned-merchant mariner recounts how in 1967 he accepted a neighborhood challenge to sneak into Vietnam, track down local friends on the front line and share beer over messages of love from home. 100,000 first printing. Illustrations.
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Focus on: Black History Month
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Satchel : The Life and Times of an American Legend
by Larry Tye
A portrait of the Negro League pitcher evaluates the role of discrimination in limiting his career, covering such topics as his near-defeat of a young Joe DiMaggio, the Jim Crow biases that prevented his signing with the big leagues until he was in his forties, and his lasting legacy.
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| Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and... by Emily BernardWhat it is: a lyrical memoir in essays that examines author Emily Bernard's relationship to her Blackness and her Southern heritage.
Topics include: Bernard's interracial marriage and her adoption of twin girls from Ethiopia; her grandmother's Jim Crow-era Mississippi childhood.
Want a taste? "I am black -- and brown, too. Brown is the body I was born into. Black is the body of the stories I tell." |
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Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
by John Stauffer
A dual portrait of the two forefront nineteenth-century leaders evaluates their successes as self-made men, in an account by a Frederick Douglass Book Prize-winning Harvard professor that traces their dramatic rise from poverty and slavery to influential activists and writers.
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Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
by Catherine Clinton
A definitive full-scale biography of the legendary fugitive slave turned "conductor" on the Underground Railroad describes Tubman's youth in the antebellum South, her escape to Philadelphia, her successful efforts to liberate slaves, and her work as a scout, spy, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War.
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Becoming
by Michelle Obama
An intimate and uplifting memoir by the former First Lady chronicles the experiences that have shaped her remarkable life, from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago through her setbacks and achievements in the White House.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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