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Biography and Memoir November 2025 |
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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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| Joyride by Susan OrleanCelebrated nonfiction author Susan Orlean chooses her own life as subject in Joyride. Orlean openly reveals her bumpy road through the often challenging life of a professional writer, including her years developing a strong journalistic voice, and as a bonus provides indispensable advice to aspiring writers throughout. For another work-centered memoir from a writer of nonfiction, try Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert A. Caro. |
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Focus on: Native American Heritage Month
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Woven Through the Sweetgrass: Memories of a New England Abenaki Family
by Book Author
This book contains essays written by Claudia (Mason) Chicklas (1926-2008), a mixed-race daughter of an Abenaki Indian woman and an Old Yankee white man. Claudia grew up in the Marlboro/Keene, NH area and lived her middle and later years in Massachusetts. The book has been compiled and edited by her 2 daughters, Joyce (Chicklas) Heywood and Margaret (Chicklas) Perillo to include family history and experiences of the Native American side of the family, dating from the 1870s to the late 1990s. It takes the reader through the beginnings of Claudia's grandfather, Israel Sadoques' married life with Mary (Watso) Sadoques; their beginnings on the Indian reserve (Odanak) in Canada; their journey to CT and their subsequent arrival in Keene, NH; to stories of their 12 children (8 of whom survived to adulthood); to Israel and Mary's children's old age; and right on to Claudia's own older years. It depicts not only how their race affected their lives and how they worked to overcome discrimination to become accepted and respected as valuable members of their community, but also their everyday experiences which all people, no matter what their race, have in common. It is both serious and lighthearted, written in a style reminiscent of James Herriot's, All Creatures Great and Small. This family became well-known in the area of Keene, NH, with perhaps Claudia's mother, Elizabeth being the best known today. Elizabeth had a page about her in the Winter 2008 edition of Minority Nurse Magazine, titled Who really was the first American Indian RN? These essays, along with the many accompanying photographs will expand on the known information for this family, as well as give readers and researchers alike, a chance to get to know and appreciate them better.
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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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