 Supporting COMMUNITY. Inspiring DISCOVERY. Promoting LITERACY. |
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Biography and Memoir July 2025 |
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| Dreaming of Home: How We Turn Fear into Pride, Power, and Belonging by Cristina JiménezIn her moving debut, MacArthur Fellow and community organizer Cristina Jiménez recounts her family's fraught immigration journey from Ecuador to the United States in the 1990s, detailing her fears of living undocumented, her commitment to social justice activism, and her role in helping enact Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Try this next: Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo. |
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A different kind of power : a memoir
by Jacinda Ardern
"What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remarkable story of how a Mormon girl plagued by self-doubt made political history and changed our assumptions of what a global leader can be. When Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister at age thirty-seven, the world took notice. But it was her compassionate yet powerful response to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, resulting in swift and sweeping gun control laws, that demonstrated her remarkable leadership. She guided her country through unprecedented challenges--a volcanic eruption, a major biosecurity breach, and a global pandemic--while advancing visionary new policies to address climate change, reduce child poverty, and secure historic international trade deals. She did all this while juggling first-time motherhood in the public eye. Ardern exemplifies a new kind of leadership--proving that leaders can be caring, empathetic, and effective. She has become a global icon, and now she is ready to share her story, from the struggles to the surprises, including forthe first time the full details of her decision to step down during her sixth year as Prime Minister"
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| Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America by Sam TanenhausFormer New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus' incisive and richly detailed biography surveys the life and legacy of public intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr., whose philosophies shaped the modern conservatism movement. Further reading: Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism by Carl T. Bogus. |
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The front runner : the life of Steve Prefontaine
by Brendan O'Meara
"In the fifty years since his tragic death in a car crash, Steve Prefontaine has towered over American distance running. One of the most recognizable and charismatic figures to ever run competitively in the United States, Prefontaine has endured as a source of inspiration and fascination-a talent who presaged the American running boom of the late 1970s and helped put Nike on the map as the brand's first celebrity-athlete face. Now on the anniversary of his untimely death, author Brendan O'Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast, offers a fresh, definitive retelling of Prefontaine's life, revisiting one of the most enigmatic figures in American sports with a twenty-first-century lens. Through dozens of original interviews with family, friends, teammates, and competitors, this long-overdue reappraisal of Prefontaine-the first such exhaustive treatment in almost thirty years-provides never-before-told stories about the unique talent, innovative mental strength, and personal struggles that shaped Prefontaine on and off the track. Bringing new depth to an athlete long eclipsed by his brash, aggressive running style and the heartbreak of his death at twenty-four, O'Meara finds the man inside the myth, scrutinizing a legacy that has shaped American sports culture for decades. What emerges is a singular portrait of a distinctly American talent, a story written in the pines and firs of the Pacific Northwest back when running was more blue-collar love than corporate pursuit-the story of a runner whose shortlife casts a long, fast shadow"
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Books You Might Have Missed
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| Bibliophobia by Sarah ChihayaBook critic and essayist Sarah Chihaya plumbs her bookish obsessions in this thought-provoking memoir exploring how literature shaped her identity as a Japanese American in a predominantly white Ohio suburb, helped her navigate mental health woes and destructive relationships, and bolstered her career as an academic. Thy these next: Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim; Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir by Vidyan Ravinthiran. |
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| The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. DautYale University professor Marlene L. Daut's scholarly and nuanced biography explores the complex legacy of Henry Chrisophe (1767-1820), Haiti's only king, whose evolution from revolutionary leader to despot shaped the country during its fight for independence and the decades that followed. Further reading: Haiti: The Aftershocks of History by Laurent Dubois. |
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| Mainline Mama by Keeonna HarrisPEN America Writing for Justice Fellow Keeonna Harris debuts with a searing account of her experiences navigating the prison industrial complex after her partner was sentenced to 22 years in prison following their son's birth. Try this next: Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford. |
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Things become other things : a walking memoir
by Craig Mod
"Photographer and essayist Craig Mod is a veteran of long solo walks. But in 2021, during the pandemic shutdown of Japan's borders, one particular walk around the Kumano Kodåo routes--the ancient pilgrimage paths of Japan's southern Kii Peninsula--took on an unexpectedly personal new significance. Mod found himself reflecting on his own childhood in a post-industrial American town, his experiences as an adoptee, his unlikely relocation to Japan at nineteen, and his relationship with one lost friend, whose life was tragically cut short after their paths diverged. For Mod, the walk became a tool to bear witness to a quiet grace visible only when "you're bored out of your skull and the miles left are long." Tracing a 300-mile-long journey, Things Become Other Things folds together history, literature, poetry, Shinto and Buddhist spirituality, and contemporary rural life in Japan via dozens of conversations with aging fishermen, multi-generational inn owners, farmers, and kissaten cafe "mamas." Along the way, Mod communes with mountain fauna, marvels over evidence of bears and boars, and hopscotches around leeches. He encounters whispering priests and foul-mouthed little kids who ask him, "Just what the heck are you, anyway?" Through sharp prose and his curious archive of photographs, he records evidence of floods and tsunamis, the disappearance of village life on the peninsula, and the capricious fecundity of nature."
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| Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star by Mayukh SenMayukh Sen's thought-provoking biography of British South Asian actress Merle Oberon (1911-1979) poignantly illuminates how the star navigated passing as a white woman within the Golden Age of Hollywood's racist and classic system, becoming the first actor of color nominated for an Academy Award while disguising her heritage. For fans of: Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong's Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Mary Riley Styles Public Library
120 N. Virginia Ave, Falls Church, Virginia 22046 703-248-5030 (TTY 711) www.mrspl.org
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