Cultural Memoir

Journalist, attorney, and star of Bravo's The Real Housewives of New York reshapes the cultural landscape of achievement by showing why Black unity is crucial to individual and collective success. When The Real Housewives of New York City hired its first black cast member after more than 13...

Esther Amini grew up in Queens, New York, during the free-wheeling 1960s. She also grew up in a Persian-Jewish household, the American- born daughter of parents who had fled Mashhad, Iran. In Concealed, she tells the story of being caught between these two worlds: the dutiful daughter of tradition-bound parents who hungers for more self-determination than tradition allows.

In this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant eras, Agnes Poirier unspools the stories of the poets, writers, painters, and philosophers whose lives collided to extraordinary effect between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human drama behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd, New Journalism, bebop, and French feminism.

Marcella Hazan is known as America's godmother of Italian cooking. The owner of her own cooking schools, and author of bestselling and award-winning cookbooks, she has collected invitations to cook at top restaurants around the world. Her story begins in Alexandria, Egypt, where an early...

Rocqett Short description 5/08

Auch wenn man dies als Außenstehender gar nicht vermuten sollte, so lässt uns der „Biniak" an seinen Erlebnissen mit den Cologne Streetfighters teilhaben und beweist: Hooligans – zumindest die meisten – sind eigentlich ganz nette Kerle. So lernen wir aber nicht nur die Hooligan-Szene selbst kennen, sondern auch die wiederkehrend anwesenden Polizisten, die Fußballvereine, die Fans und vor allem: die Menschlichkeit zwischen all diesen Gruppen, die man hier wohl am wenigsten erwartet hätte.

As the US occupation of Iraq rages, novelist Mortada Gzar, a student at the University of Baghdad, has a chance encounter with Morise, an African American soldier. It’s love at first sight, a threat to them both, and a moment of self-discovery. Challenged by society’s rejection and Morise’s return to the US, Mortada takes to the page to understand himself. In his affecting memoir, Mortada interweaves tales of his childhood work as a scrap-metal collector in a war zone and the indignities faced by openly gay artists in Iraq with his impossible love story and journey to the US.

Candid and moving, The Face Pressed Against a Window charts the life of one of our most celebrated business leaders. Tim Waterstone is one of Britain's most successful businessmen, having built the Waterstones empire that started with one small bookshop in 1982. In this charming and evocative memoir, he recalls the childhood experiences that led him to become an entrepreneur and outlines the business philosophy that allowed Waterstones to dominate the book-selling business throughout the country.

In her senior year of college, asha bandele and a group of other writers went to a prison to read their works for a Black History Month program. There, she met Rashid, a man who was serving 20 to life for murder, a man who spoke softly and wisely, a man who would become asha’s soul mate. This is her account of a relationship that has thrived despite terrific odds.

Tracing the four days from the moment she gets the call that every immigrant fears to the burial of her mother, Elizabeth Nunez tells the haunting story of her lifelong struggle to cope with the consequences of the 'sterner stuff' of her parents' ambitions for their children and her mother's seemingly unbreakable conviction that displays of affection are not for everyday use. But Nunez sympathizes with her parents.

A major, best-selling novelist and former magazine editor, long married to a handsome and successful stockbroker with whom she has a beautiful daughter and son, Benilde Little once had every reason to feel on top of the world. But as illness, the aging of her parents, and other hurdles interrupted her seemingly perfect life, she took a tailspin into a pit of clinical depression. Told in her own fearless and wise voice, Welcome to My Breakdown chronicles a cavern of depression so dark that Benilde didn't know if she'd ever recover.

Carlyn Montes De Oca grew up surrounded by secrets. She never knew her dad was a Marine during World War II or that her grandmother hired kidnappers to bring her mother back home after her parents eloped. Her mom and dad took an even bigger secret to their graves… Carlyn’s identity. In 2019, at age 57, a DNA test taken for fun revealed that Carlyn’s mom and dad, immigrants from Mexico, were not her biological parents and that most of her extended family, including 63 first cousins, knew the truth but never told her. In that instant, the reality Carlyn had lived with her entire life shattered.

One of crime's most colourful and idiosyncratic leaders is examined in crime writer Nate Hendley's fast-paced book. A treat for fans of true-crime and bizarre mob stories. Nate Hendley brings to the lexicon of gangster profiles a meticulously researched, very human examination of this legendary figure.

Sabor Del Cañaveral son páginas arrancadas del libro de las vivencias del humilde trabajador del cañaveral. El propósito de esta obra es traer al recuerdo vivencias pasadas que son parte de nuestra cultura puertorriqueña. A través de relatos sencillos pero llenos de alma, este libro recoge las memorias del trabajador del cañaveral —ese hombre de manos curtidas y mirada firme que, sin hacer ruido, dejó una huella profunda en nuestra historia. Su jornada era dura, pero aun así encontraba el modo de saborear la vida… aunque a veces supiera a sacrificio.

Not Without Hope is the true story of the headline-making tragedy that took the lives of three football players: NFL stars Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, and Will Bleakley from the University of South Florida. Told by the sole survivor of the ill-fated fishing trip, Nick Schuyler, with New York...

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

The mixed population is the fastest-growing group in the UK today, but the mainstream conversation around mixedness is stilted, repetitive and often problematic. At a time when ethnically ambiguous models fill our Instagram feeds and our high street shop windows, and when children of interracial relationships are lauded as heralding in the dawn of a post-racial utopia, journalist Natalie Morris takes a deep dive into what it really means to be mixed in Britain today.

In honest, confessional prose, Born on the Bayou - a roller-coaster rags-to-riches story - transports us to a pocket of the South where Lourd learns how to be a man from the two people he looks up to the most: his larger-than-life father, "Puffer", a prominent figure in the oil business; and his successful older brother, Bryan.

هذا أوّل كتابٍ أُفرد للمرأة في حياة "طه حسين" وأدبه. فبرغم ما عرف عنه من أنّه كان نصير المرأة والدّاعي قولاً وفعلاً إلى تعليمها، إلّا أنّنا لا نجد سوى بحثٍ يتيمٍ هنا أو مقالٍ صحفيٍّ هناك عن علاقة "طه حسين بالمرأة". تتبّعتُ حضور المرأة في حياته سواءً أكان حضوراً طاغياً مثل زوجته سوزان، أم حضوراً خافتاً مثل أمّه وابنته، وعرضتُ لنساءٍ كان لهنّ تماسٌّ معه مثل حبّه الأول وتلميذته وحتى اللواتي اختلفن معه. واستقصيتُ النماذجَ النسوية التي وردت في أدبه من نساءٍ خاضعاتٍ ضعيفاتٍ إلى نساءٍ متعلّماتٍ متحدّيات، ومن مشرقيّاتٍ مستسلماتٍ لأقدارهنّ إلى أوروبيّاتٍ متحرّرات متحضّرات، في صوَرٍ متعدّدة الجوانب للمرأة عند "طه حسين"، عساها تعطي فكرةً لا أزعمها شاملةً، ولكنها كافيةٌ لتوضيح دور المرأة في حياته وانعكاس هذا الدّور على أدبه.

This book is a raw, unflinching exploration of what it means to grow up in rural Prince Edward Island in the shadow of unspoken rules, generational silence, and emotional survival. Told through layered narratives, lived experience, and cultural insight, it uncovers the quiet tragedies and ordinary dysfunction that shaped a generation. From cold kitchens to rigid mothers, from rooms without doors to voices that never softened, this is not just a memoir, it is a mirror for every adult who walked through childhood learning to shrink.