Cultural Memoir

Born in Africa to a Nigerian princess, Precious Williams was less than one year old when her mother put an ad in Nursery World: "Pretty Nigerian baby girl needs new home." Precious's mother had flown to London in search of a new life - a life in which there was no space for a daughter. The first response came rom a 60-year-old white woman, Nan, who prided herself for being "color blind." Correspondence were exchanged, no questions asked, and Precious left her mother for Nan's home in rural England.

Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, Dorothy Height is a heroine of the Civil Rights movement. At age 91 she takes listeners back through 70 explosive years in search of equality as a Black and as a woman.

Yvette Manessis Corporon grew up listening to her grandmother's stories about how the people of the small Greek island Erikousa hid a Jewish family - a tailor named Savvas and his daughters - from the Nazis during World War II. Nearly 2,000 Jews from that area died in the concentration camps, but even though everyone on Erikousa knew Savvas and his family were hiding on the island, no one ever gave them up, and the family survived the war. Years later, Yvette decided to track down the man's descendants - and eventually found them in Israel.

Ghost Songs charts McBride's teenage struggle to separate madness from imagination and sorrow from devastation in the wake of the shocking deaths of both her parents. Traveling from New York City to the desert of New Mexico to the shores of Ireland, McBride searches for herself, home, and a way to return to the family that remains. Harrowing and haunting, Ghost Songs is a meditation on love and loss and, in the end, a celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit.

Discover the untold story of how freed African American slaves and Black pioneers helped establish Liberia—the first independent Black republic in West Africa. Coming to Africa explores the Back-to-Africa movement and the role of the American Colonization Society in resettling freed slaves on African soil. Through vivid accounts of leaders like Paul Cuffe, Robert Finley, Bushrod Washington, James Monroe, John Kizell, and Zolu Duma (“King Peter”), this book reveals the struggles, resilience, and vision that shaped the birth of a nation.

A survival story and celebration of one woman’s life, My Mother's Legacy is also a glimpse of the spirit, culture, and history of Indigenous Peoples in Canada. From life on the trapline in the Far North to meeting the Pope at the Vatican, this is Angie Mercredi-Crerar’s journey of perseverance and triumph—as told by her daughter.

Painting evocative pictures of the island with her words, Thompson draws the reader into an inner circle that is a slice-of-life slideshow about growing up in Jamaica in the 1960s and 1970s. Set against a backdrop of current events, island life comes alive, from school, church, and extended family, to influential mentors, marriage, children, and a series of successful businesses. Woven throughout this life story is the abiding presence of God and angels guiding and protecting her.

Weeping Becomes a River, narrated by award-winning author and performer Siphokazi Jonas, weaves seemingly discordant worlds, rooted in her experiences of growing up in an Afrikaans dorpie, attending an English boarding school, and going on annual holidays to a village emaXhoseni during the transition years of South Africa’s democracy.

F. L. Jumper, born on the Hollywood reservation of the Seminole Tribe, found herself living with her grandparents at six months old, after her mom divorced her dad. It was there that she learned what forgiveness looked like, sounded like, and felt like, which was helpful when she met her dad and her sister for the first time at age thirteen. Over the course of her adulthood, she grew closer to her dad and learned what it meant to be a member of the Seminole Tribe. With her parents being remarried, she navigated a new reality with their new spouses.

In this “sometimes painful, always compelling story of a high-school dropout” (Peter Goldman), Christopher Zara breaks down his winding journey from dropout to journalist and the impact that his background had in the world of privilege. Boldly honest, wryly funny, and utterly open-hearted...

Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul documents the beloved singing star’s rocky personal life and internationally acclaimed show business career. An in-depth and frank examination of Aretha, this definitive biography traces her career from her beginnings as a 12-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, recording her first album at the age of 14, a major recording contract at 18, and stardom in her 20s, right up through her headline-grabbing 2010 health scare, to her triumphant return: singing to her cheering Detroit hometown fans in summer 2011.

Stevie Wonder's achievements as a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer are extraordinary. During a career that has spanned almost fifty years, he has earned more than 30 Top 10 hits, 26 Grammy Awards, and a place in both the Rock and Roll and Songwriter Halls of Fame - and he's not finished yet. On the verge of turning 60, he is still composing, still touring, and still attracting dedicated fans around the world.

The definitive biography of Creedence Clearwater Revival, exploring the band's legendary rise to fame and how their music embodied the cultural landscape of the late '60s and early '70s From 1969 to 1971, as the United States convulsed with political upheaval and transformative social movements...

Long accused of racism and “white flight”, the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.

From the daughter of the bestselling author of Father Joe: the poignant and ultimately hopeful memoir of a young girl’s struggle to live a normal childhood in the chaotic seventies, and to overcome sexual abuse by her famous father Earlier this year, Tony Hendra’s memoir, Father Joe: The Man...

An important, groundbreaking book - two decades in work - that tells the story of the unlikely but history-changing 28-year bond forged between Pauli Murray (granddaughter of a mulatto slave who, against all odds, as a lesbian Black woman, became a lawyer, civil rights pioneer, Episcopal priest, poet, and activist) and Eleanor Roosevelt (first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1948 and human rights internationalist) that critically shaped Eleanor Roosevelt's, and therefore FDR's, view of race and racism in America.

"My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery," declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the most radical nation‑state during the Age of Revolution and the first country ever to permanently outlaw slavery. Enslaved for the first thirty years of his life, Dessalines (c. 1758–1806) joined the revolution that abolished slavery within the French colony. Then he became a general in the colonial army of the new French Republic. When it was discovered that France once again supported slavery, Dessalines declared war on his former allies.

The author of the classic New York Times bestseller Passages returns with her inspiring memoir—a chronicle of her trials and triumphs as a groundbreaking “girl” journalist in the 1960s, to iconic guide for women and men seeking to have it all, to one of the premier political profilers of...

Come Along with Me is a compelling memoir of resilience, activism, and breaking barriers in the causes of health equity and social justice. Henrie Monteith Treadwell recounts her personal and legal struggles to become the first African American student admitted to the University of South Carolina since Reconstruction, a pivotal moment in civil rights history. More than a personal narrative, this audiobook is a call to action, inspiring young people of color—especially women—to push forward against systemic injustices.

Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home.