Cultural Memoir

Of the great figure in 20th-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age 39. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man.

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform America and the world.

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness. Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she'd even turned 20.

Few people can justify a memoir at the age of 33. Gregory Scofield is the exception, a young man who has inhabited several lives in the time most of us can manage only one. Born into a Métis family of Cree, Scottish, English, and French descent but never told of his heritage, Gregory knew he was different. His father disappeared after he was born, and at five he was separated from his mother and sent to live with strangers and extended family. There, began a childhood marked by constant loss, poverty, violence, and self-hatred.

The Souls of Others is a powerful essay collection by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. Ray depicts the American west as both magnificent and destitute. The mountains are alive. The people are gritty and resilient. Nature offers its bounty but never gives it with ease. Ray, having spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, expertly paints a place of family, sorrow, and a connection to Mother Nature that so many Americans have lost.

A shockingly frank memoir from a prize-winning economist, reflecting on his remarkable personal odyssey and his changing positions on identity, race, and belief.

In this luminous memoir, Rita Moreno shares her remarkable journey from a young girl with simple beginnings in Puerto Rico to Hollywood legend - and one of the few performers, and the only Hispanic, to win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, and two Emmys. Born Rosita Dolores Alverio in the idyll of Puerto Rico, Moreno, at age five, embarked on a harrowing sea voyage with her mother and wound up in the harsh barrios of the Bronx, where she discovered dancing, singing, and acting as ways to escape a tumultuous childhood.

In A Daughter of Isis, Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero and one of the Arab world’s greatest writers, tells the story of the formative years which shaped an iconic voice in global feminism. In poignant and moving prose we learn about her relationships with her family, her traumatic experience of female genital mutilation at seven years old and escaping suitors at ten and her journey from the rural Egyptian village of her birth to metropolitan Cairo to study medicine.

Lea Ypi grew up in the last Stalinist country in Europe: Albania, a place of queuing and scarcity, of political executions and secret police. While family members disappeared to what she was told were "universities" from which few "graduated," she swore loyalty to the Party. In her eyes, people were equal, neighbors helped each other, and children were expected to build a better world.

The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple best-selling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence - a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life.

Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone Colossus," he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called "the only jazz recluse" has gone largely untold—until now. Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins' personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist.

Marion and Huguette Müller’s family was torn apart when the Nazis invaded France in 1940. After their mother was deported to Auschwitz, the sisters fled to the small Alpine ski resort village of Val d'Isère, where they were rescued by a brave young doctor. Through intrepid reporting and meticulous research, Whitehouse traces the story of the Müller sisters, solving decades-old mysteries in her attempt to deliver both closure and justice. With skill and urgency, Whitehouse raises moral questions at the heart of the tragedy of the Shoah.

Born in West Africa in the early 1950s, Somé was kidnapped at age four by a French Jesuit missionary to be trained as a priest, for the next 15 years enduring the harsh regimen of a seminary where his native language and tribal traditions were systematically suppressed. At age 20 he escaped, but when he returned to his Dugara people in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) they rejected him as an outsider. To reconnect with his native culture, Somé underwent a month-long initiation into shamanism.

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

George Manuel (1920-1989) was the strategist and visionary behind the modern Indigenous movement in Canada. A three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, he laid the groundwork for what would become the Assembly of First Nations and was the founding president of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. Authors Peter McFarlane and Doreen Manuel follow him on a riveting journey from his childhood on a Shuswap reserve through three decades of fierce and dedicated activism.

When researching the first occupant of her Saskatoon home, Candace Savage discovers a family more fascinating and heartbreaking than she expected. Napoléon Sureau dit Blondin built the house in the 1920s, an era when French-speakers like him were deemed “undesirable” by the political and social elite, who sought to populate the Canadian prairies with WASPs only. In an atmosphere poisoned first by the Orange Order and then by the Ku Klux Klan, Napoléon and his young family adopted anglicized names and did their best to disguise their “foreignness”.

For more than 40 years—whether writing for Richard Pryor and Saturday Night Live or performing stand-up to sold-out crowds around the country—Paul Mooney has been provocative, incisive...and absolutely hilarious. His comedy has always been indisputably real and raw, reflecting race issues in America, and this fascinating, fearless new memoir continues that unapologetically candid tradition.

Based on the most detailed survey of long married people ever conducted, 30 Lessons for Loving shows the way to lifelong, fulfilling relationships. The author, an internationally renowned gerontologist at Cornell University, offers sage advice from the oldest and wisest Americans on everything from finding a partner, to deciding to commit, to growing old together.

Quickly becoming a cornerstone of Holocaust historiography, this is a devastatingly stark memoir from one of the lone survivors of Treblinka. Why do some live while so many others perish? Tiny children, old men, beautiful girls - in the gas chambers of Treblinka, all are equal. The Nazis kept the fires of Treblinka burning night and day, a central cog in the wheel of the Final Solution.

Appel: A Canadian in the French Foreign Legion is the first-hand account of the author’s six years as a professional soldier during the 1990s, and his experience in the Legion's elite Groupe des Commandos Parachutistes (GCP). Joel Struthers recounts the dangers and demands of military life, from the rigours of recruitment and operational training in the rugged mountains of France, to face-to-face combat in the grasslands of some of Africa’s most troubled nations.