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Biography and Memoir February 2021
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| 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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Focus on: Black History Month
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| The Book of Delights by Ross GayWhat it is: National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Ross Gay's wide-ranging collection of 102 "essayettes" celebrating life's big and small joys.
Why it matters: Gay's engaging reflections on everything from race and masculinity to hobbies and popular culture offer a thought-provoking rejoinder to narratives that center on Black suffering. |
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Navigate Your Stars
by Jesmyn Ward
The two-time National Book Award-winning author of Sing, Unburied, Sing presents a sumptuously illustrated meditation on the power of tenacity in the face of hardship as well as the importance of respect of the self and others.
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Crusade for Justice: the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
"Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) is now a Chicago icon and a shining example of fearless grit and truth-telling. Born into slavery, she lost both parents at the age of sixteen and supported five siblings by teaching school. As perhaps the first investigative journalist, she crusaded against lynching and for women's suffrage. She worked with Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony; she co-founded the NAACP and started the Alpha Suffrage Club here in Chicago; she is the first African American woman to have a street named after her in Chicago."
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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