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Biography and Memoir November 2025 |
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| Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America by Jeff ChangBruce Lee’s arrival on the big screen was seismic, as recounted here by Asian American author Jeff Chang. Lee leveraged a potent mix of “magnetism and physical talents” (Kirkus Reviews) to gain renown as a martial arts teacher and later as an actor in Hong Kong and Hollywood, soon becoming the original Asian megastar. For fans of: The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America by Jeff Yang. |
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| Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age by Joy HarjoFormer United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s latest book is equal parts memoir and inspirational guide addressed to young Native women. Accordingly, her story is imbued with lyricism, spirituality, and a call to embrace one’s creativity even in the face of the pain, despair, and injustice that many young Indigenous people frequently encounter. For another inspiring memoir that incorporates ethnic identity and creativity, try Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu. |
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| Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth MacyAuthor Beth Macy tells her life story framed within a recent visit to her hardscrabble Midwestern hometown. Although Macy’s childhood was marked by trauma, she remembers Urbana, Ohio, as a place where neighbors had each other’s backs, a situation since compromised by declining opportunities, opioid addiction, and social polarization. Try this next: Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild. |
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The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
by Melinda French Gates
Transitions are moments in which we step out of our familiar surroundings and into a new landscape--a space that, for many people, is shadowed by confusion, fear, and indecision. [This book] accompanies readers as they cross that space, offering guidance on how to make the most of the time between an ending and a new beginning and how to move forward into the next day when the ground beneath you is shifting. ... Melinda will reflect, for the first time in print, on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation--
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Focus on: Native American Heritage Month |
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| Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie DiazMojave poet Natalie Diaz’s second volume of poetry draws details from her own life as an Indigenous American and spotlights themes and sentiments rooted in the Indigenous experience. Diaz employs sensual images to invoke American imperialism, Indigenous protest, assimilation, and desire, the latter of which she explores in numerous love poems that “buzz with erotic energy” (Booklist). For fans of: the socially aware poetry of Ada Limón. |
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| Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home by Chris La TrayMontana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray’s story is one of self-discovery in the face of resistance from one’s own family: La Tray’s father denied his Indigenous ancestry and refused to discuss it with his son. La Tray has spent the years since his father’s death as an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa and advocating for young people curious about where they come from. Try this next: From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle. |
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The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West
by Paul Andrew Hutton
the true story of the American West, revealing how American ambition clashed with the realities of violence and exploitation The epic of the American West became a tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest that came to shape the identity of a new nation. Over time a darker story emerged--one of ghastly violence and environmental spoliation that stained this identity. The American frontier movement has proven eternally fascinating around the world--the subject of countless books, paintings, poems, television shows, and films. The Undiscovered Country reveals the truth behind America's great creation myth.
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| Soft As Bones by Chyana Marie SageEssayist Chyana Marie Sage relates a harrowing tale of surviving severe poverty and sexual abuse at the hands of her drug-dealing father, a Woodland Cree tribe member from Alberta. As Sage entered adulthood and found therapy and writing, she gradually began to heal from her past and rescue a sense of hope and identity from the Canadian legacy of boarding schools, forced integration, and intergenerational trauma. “Readers will be as inspired as they are horrified” (Publishers Weekly). |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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