Cultural Memoir

In Hope for the Holler, a seasoned foster parent, Appalachia advocate, and social services professional takes listeners on a no-nonsense, insider’s journey through the foster care crisis in West Virginia. This is a book born of heartbreak, honesty, and hope. From funeral homes and pharmacies to family courtrooms and kitchen tables, the realities of the foster care system come to life—messy, broken, and urgent. What sets this book apart is its raw authenticity and unflinching voice: equal parts social commentary, investigative journalism, and policy proposal.

The Stone Thrower is a moving story about race and destiny written by a daughter looking for answers about her own Black history. Using insightful interviews, archival records, and her personal reflections, Richardson’s journey to learn about her father’s past leads her to her own important discoveries about herself and what it really means to be Black in Canada.

Set in a world of luxury and power, this is the tell-all story of two remarkable women and a friendship that changed both their lives forever. For more than two decades, Mariana Pasternak and Martha Stewart were nearly inseparable. They first met in Westport, Connecticut, two suburban wives with...

From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.

Frank Cascio was a close friend of tragic superstar Michael Jackson for more than twenty-five years. In My Friend Michael, Cascio offers a deeply personal, behind-the-scenes look at the Michael Jackson he knew. Filled with never-before-told stories and intimate details, My Friend Michael is the...

Senior editor at L.A. Magazine RJ Smith saw his first book, The Great Black Way, win the coveted California Book Award. With The One, Smith profiles one of the 20th century’s most innovative musical icons, the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown. Drawing on extensive research and captivating interviews, Smith chronicles Brown’s rise from abject poverty to the pinnacle of fame, while also detailing Brown’s work as a civil rights activist and entrepreneur.

What would life be like for a Black boy growing up in Nazi Germany? This unprecedented autobiography answers that question with the spellbinding true story of Hans J. Massaquoi’s life in Hamburg during the height of Hitler’s regime. Hans is the son of a Black Liberian diplomat father and a white German mother. His father returns to Africa at the beginning of the war, leaving them behind in poverty without the means to flee. Within this tense atmosphere, increasingly violent Nazi policies and Allied bombing raids make Hans and his mother’s lives a day-to-day survival struggle.

Las ideas son las protagonistas de este audio libro, pero no las ideas en abstracto sino las ideas encarnadas en personas con vidas tocadas por la pasión del poder, la historia y la revolución; y también por el amor, la amistad, la familia. Vidas reales, no ideas andantes. Por este audiolibro desfilan profetas de la redención como el heroico Martí, el idealista Rodó, el educador Vasconcelos o el indigenista Mariátegui.

For six decades John Robert Lewis was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble." In this biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."

“I have known Sylvia for twenty years, and I have the greatest respect for her. People seek her out for her much celebrated intuitive skills, however, I have sought her out for her friendship and kindness. I applaud her for the peace and solace that she has brought to so many.” — Montel...

A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser. At 18, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman would pay pretty girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next 18 months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah....

Have you suffered a loss? How was your life changed by the grief you experienced? Did you feel like your grief was properly acknowledged? Mourning is a personal experience and shouldn't be judged. There are no do-overs in death, but there are do-betters. All My Dead Cats is not a book about pet...

The Fulani are the largest surviving group of nomads on the planet. In Walking with Abel, Anna Badkhen embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboys - nomadic herders in Mali's Sahel grasslands - as they embark on their annual migration across the savanna.

This singular memoir from one of Ukraine’s new literary lights tracks her journey from a little girl toiling in the potato fields of the Soviet Union to the shiny but sometimes foreign new world of America. Ruslana’s From Borsch to Burgers elegantly and humorously captures her gleeful yet puzzling journey through new foods, customs, language, and love. Her message of cross-cultural discovery presents enlightening insights into understanding the nuances found in spanning two worlds.

How does a white kid from the New York suburbs, harmonica in hand, end up earning himself a busker's spot on the Harlem sidewalks next to Mr. Satan, a Mississippi-born legend? How did an interracial blues duo fare on the streets of New York during a turbulent, fractious time marked by racially-motivated murders in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and Crown Heights?

A White Duck in a Black Pond is a compelling memoir as engrossing, relevant, and timely today as decades ago. Being the son of a White mother and an African American father during the 1950s presented challenges on its own, but the bane of Dane Wycoff's existence wasn’t that he was mixed; it was because he believed himself one hundred percent Black despite his white skin. His chosen identity led to an endless wave of rejection, violence, and torment. Dane was a Black boy somatically entrapped in white pigmentation, rejected by Black and White peers alike.

For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for the Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other.

From a young age, Victor Steffensen has had a passion for traditional cultural and ecological knowledge. This was further developed after meeting two Elders, who were to become his mentors and teach him the importance of cultural burning. Developed over many generations, this knowledge shows clearly that Australia actually needs fire. Steffensen's story is unassuming and honest, while demonstrating the incredibly sophisticated and complex cultural knowledge that has been passed down to him, which he wants to share with others.

Esmeralda Santiago reminisces about her childhood in Puerto Rico and her early years in Brooklyn as the oldest of seven (soon to be 11) children. Her upbringing is turbulent on account of her parents’ relentless fighting, which only ever seems to stop when they have another baby. When her youngest brother has an accident, her mother decides to move to New York with her children to seek medical treatment. Arriving in the United States, 13-year-old Santiago experiences uprooting and a loss of identity while she tries to adapt to a culture and language that are foreign to her.

1948, Jerusalem. Zakia is forced to flee the only home she’s ever known as war rips through the leafy streets and the bustling spice-filled souqs. Taking just one suitcase, Zakia thinks she’ll be able to return soon. But within weeks, she realizes she won’t be allowed back to her beloved homeland.