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Biography and Memoir September 2026 |
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| Unsayable: A Life in Writing by Michael CunninghamIn his memoir, acclaimed novelist Michael Cunningham continually returns to the concept of articulation, claiming that writing is simply finding a way to express that which resists being put into words. Cunningham cannily pinpoints moments from his early life -- bouncing a ball, or watching his mother bake a cake -- as opportunities to fall in love with and ponder our relationship with language. Unsayable is a book for “readers hungry for gorgeous prose” (Publishers Weekly). |
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| All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir by Emilee HackneyAfter a devastating betrayal that called her Pentecostal faith into question, debut memoirist Emilee Hackney left her small Appalachian town in Virginia for Harvard. Amidst the culture shock, Hackney realized that leaving home was the right move for her. But it also made her see that home in a new light, and she found herself defending the land of her birth against those quick to dismiss and stereotype the South and its people. For another coming-of-age memoir about feeling pulled in opposite directions, try Between Two Trailers by J. Dana Trent. |
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Mahalia Jackson, Moving on Up a Little Higher: The Story of an American Civil Rights Pioneer
by Timothy B. Tyson
If Americans today still recognize the name Mahalia Jackson, they might recall that she was perhaps the greatest gospel singer who ever lived. While this rich musical legacy is admired by those in the know, virtually no one recognizes Jackson's astonishing role in American civil rights history. In this startling new depiction of the renowned gospel singer, New York Times best-selling author Timothy B. Tyson and Mary D. Williams, an acclaimed gospel singer herself, bring Jackson back to soaring life by positioning her as the major civil rights figure she was.
Mahalia Jackson, Moving On Up a Little Higher then traces Jackson's career from abject poverty in New Orleans to global superstardom, revealing how even after meteoric success, Jackson maintained an unwavering devotion to Black freedom. In the 1930s in Chicago, even before the Civil Rights Movement took its modern shape, she used her rapturous voice to support independent Black political power. Her work only intensified in the 1940s and beyond when she campaigned first for Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later for Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson; headlined in Montgomery for the 1955-56 bus boycott; sang for the Birmingham campaign and on the Selma March; and performed at the iconic 1963 March on Washington, where she urged Martin Luther King Jr. to "Tell 'em about the dream."
Weaving together Mahalia Jackson's inspiring life journey with her soulful music into a transcendent text, this biography ultimately casts Mahalia Jackson as we've never seen her before, as a guiding light for the Civil Rights Movement, whose message still speaks to our struggles today.
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The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11
by Garrett M. Graff
A modern classic of American history: The first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001-a panoramic narrative woven from voices on the front lines of an unprecedented national trauma. Over the past twenty-five years, monumental literature has been published about 9/11, from Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower to The 9/11 Commission Report. But one perspective has been missing up to this point-a 360-degree account of the day told through the voices of the people who experienced it. Now, Garrett Graff tells the story of the day as it was lived-in the words of those who lived it. Drawing on never-before-published transcripts, declassified documents, original interviews, and oral histories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members, he paints the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet. Beginning in the predawn hours of airports in the Northeast, we meet the ticket agents who unknowingly usher terrorists onto their flights, and the flight attendants inside the hijacked planes. In New York, first responders confront a scene of unimaginable horror at the Twin Towers. From a secret bunker under the White House, officials watch for incoming planes on radar. Aboard unarmed fighter jets in the air, pilots make a pact to fly into a hijacked airliner if necessary to bring it down. In the skies above Pennsylvania, civilians aboard United 93 make the ultimate sacrifice in their place. Then, as the day moves forward and flights are grounded nationwide, Air Force One circles the country alone, its passengers isolated and afraid. More than simply a collection of eyewitness testimonies, The Only Plane in the Sky is the historic narrative of how ordinary people grappled with extraordinary events in real time. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.
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The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn
by Dave Zirin
A biography of iconic radical historian Howard Zinn, examining his life and work as a progressive icon and thought leader through the story of the times that shaped him as well as the United States of America. From The Nation magazine columnist and New York Times bestselling author Dave Zirin, The People's Historian is a deeply researched biography of Howard Zinn, the beloved author of the classic national bestseller with more than four million copies sold, A People's History of the United States. The People's Historian shows Zinn's presence on the great canvases of the 20th century: from the Depression to World War II to the Civil Rights Movement to the war in Vietnam all the way until his death in 2010. With intimately researched stories from Zinn's life and career, such as the way Atlanta's small Spelman College, where Zinn taught as a young professor, helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, Zinn's work traveling to Hanoi to engineer the release of POWs, and his continuing influence in the emerging Democratic Socialist movement, The People's Historian explores Zinn's past while also demonstrating how his 75 years of political engagement with the social struggles of his time informs our perilous present.
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Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind
by Thomas Meyer
The definitive, long-awaited, and revelatory intellectual biography of Hannah Arendt, one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century Drawing on newly discovered archival materials and previously overlooked documents-from both Germany, where Hannah Arendt was born to a Jewish family in 1906, and the United States, where she was a citizen from 1950-Thomas Meyer tells the story of an intellectual icon whose character and ideas continue to captivate and challenge us to this day. Tracing anew Arendt's journey from Konigsberg to Paris, where she fled after being imprisoned in 1933, and finally to New York in 1941, Meyer illuminates her formative years and the development of her radical and brilliant books, as well as her lifelong philosophical debate with Martin Heidegger, whose Nazism was a permanent challenge for her. Meyer's account centers on two pivotal phases-Arendt's years in Paris after fleeing Nazi Germany and her time in the United States leading up to the landmark publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1955-providing not only a meticulous reconstruction of her life but also a compelling invitation to rethink her legacy for our times.
At a time of acute political polarization, with liberalism in crisis and urgent debates about freedom, responsibility, and truth unfolding all around, Arendt's writings and ideas resonate more powerfully than ever. Meyer's account of her extraordinary life is groundbreaking and sensational, not just for his illuminating and peerless research, but also for his incisive exploration of what Arendt's work has meant over the decades-and continues to mean for us today.
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Vonnegut's War: The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five
by Susan Farrell
Banned, burned, and censored, Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five is widely regarded as one of the greatest (and most controversial) novels of the twentieth century. Fusing vivid biography with popular history and close textual analysis, Vonnegut's War tells the fascinating story of the making of a modern classic and the writer that created it.
New archival discoveries and recently released oral histories give us the fullest account yet published of Vonnegut's real-life prisoner-of-war experiences at Stalag IV-B and Dresden, which heavily influenced Slaughterhouse-Five. A recently discovered trove of letters introduces us to his first wife, Jane Cox Vonnegut, and her influence on his writing. Along the way, we also encounter UFOs and aliens, grapple with the shadow cast by the Vietnam war, and unearth the stranger-than-fiction tale of David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden, the historical reference behind Vonnegut's writing about the Dresden firebombing .
This book sheds light on one of America's most beloved writers and explores how cultural forces helped to shape a modern masterpiece of storytelling.
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Focus on: Hispanic Heritage Month
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| Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself by David ArchuletaBy the time David Archuleta was 17, he had become the first runner-up on American Idol and was ready to parlay his newfound fame into a singing career. Except…he experienced persistent feelings of same-sex attraction. David’s long journey toward self-acceptance involved deciding whether he wanted to come out and risk alienating his fans, his Honduran American family, and his Latter-Day Saints church -a struggle many readers will find relatable. |
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| Cesar Romero: The Joker Is Wild by Samuel Garza BernsteinScreenwriter Samuel Garza Bernstein pays tribute to a queer Latine star of stage and screen who wasn’t widely known for either identity in his lifetime. Despite some early leading film parts, actor, singer, and dancer Cesar Romero didn’t attain household-name status until his role as the Joker on the 1960s Batman TV series. As a closeted gay man, Romero was compelled to keep his personal life private, but his long and illustrious career deserves wider recognition. |
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Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America
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They are a mass migration of thousands, yet each one travels alone. Solito, Solita (Alone, Alone) is an urgent collection of oral histories that tells- in their own words- the story of young refugees fleeing countries in Central America and traveling for hundreds of miles to seek safety and protection in the United States.
Fifteen narrators describe why they fled their homes, what happened on their dangerous journeys through Mexico, how they crossed the borders, and for some, their ongoing struggles to survive in the United States. In an era of fear, xenophobia, and outright lies, these stories amplify the compelling voices of migrant youth.
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Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood
by Danny Trejo with Donal Logue
An inspiring, no-holds-barred memoir from perennial Hollywood bad guy Danny Trejo, whose remarkable career has spanned more than 400 film and TV appearances.
Topics include the "macho Chicanismo" of Trejo's youth; his addiction battles and stints in Folsom and San Quentin prisons; finding faith, sobriety, and success in the entertainment industry.
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You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
by Julissa Arce
You sound like a white girl. These were the words spoken to Julissa by a high school crush as she struggled to find her place in America. As a brown immigrant from Mexico, assimilation had been demanded of her since the moment she set foot in San Antonio, Texas, in 1994. She'd spent so much time getting rid of her accent so no one could tell English was her second language that in that moment she felt those words-you sound like a white girl- were a compliment. As a child, she didn't yet understand that assimilating to American culture really meant imitating white America-that sounding like a white girl was a racist idea meant to tame her, change her, and make her small. She ran the race, completing each stage, but never quite fit in, until she stopped running altogether. In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Michigan City Public Library
100 E. 4th Street
Michigan City, Indiana 46360
219-873-3044mclib.org/ |
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