Cultural Memoir

Brian Johnson is a man who went looking for gold and found so much more-a soulmate for life, the child he had always dreamed of, and the joy of working alongside people who loved him. Brian Johnson lived his life in unexpected ways, choosing adventure over the predictable day-to-day. Working side-by-side with his brother, Loren, he struck gold repeatedly in the wilderness of Alaska and the Yukon as a modern-day goldminer for more than forty years.

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands is the bold, witty memoir of Mary Seacole, a Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who defied racism and sexism to care for soldiers during the Crimean War in the 1850s. Writing in her own voice, Seacole recounts her travels across the Caribbean, Central America, and Europe, sharing vivid stories of healing, hardship, and independence.

Growing up in Seale, Alabama as a Black Queer kid, then attending the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergraduate, Jon Key hungered to see himself in the fields of Art and Design. But in lectures, critiques, and in the books he read, he struggled to see and learn about people who intersected with his identity or who GOT him. So he started asking himself questions: What did it mean to be a graphic designer with his point of view? What did it mean to be a Black graphic designer?

Today's Birmingham—led by Mayor Randall Woodfin—is a phoenix rising from the ashes of systemic racism and white flight. This first Southern city to pluck the feathers off Jim Crow, where peaceful protesters endured attacks by police dogs, where high-pressure water hoses tore at the flesh of men and women marching for their rights, and where children locked arms and sang "We Shall Overcome," is a living, breathing redemption story.

Thanks to her spiteful, jealous Jamaican mother, Nell Vera Lowe was cut off from her Chinese father, Samuel, when she was just a baby, after he announced that he was taking a Chinese bride. By the time Nell was old enough to travel to her father's shop in St. Anne's Bay, he'd taken his family back to China, never learning what became of his eldest daughter. Bereft, Nell left Jamaica for New York to start a new life.

As a young girl, Razina Theba makes her way every day to the tiny family flat on Vorster Street in Fordsburg. It is here, just outside of the Johannesburg city center, where she grows up, playing in the Yard with countless cousins, learning to enjoy perfect syrupy paan and the best way to brew chai for her bajee. It is also where she observes her family’s harassment by the Security Branch, as well as her parents’ determination to make their business at the Oriental Plaza a success.

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.

Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography can be read as a redemption story echoing many similar voices of its time. Starting from the humiliation he experienced as a slave, he ponders the meaning of identity in a situation that seeks to dehumanize. He furthers his story by expanding on his difficulties in obtaining an education and the need for change in our minds as well as societal structures.

A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, this is Anchee Min's celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao's China. As a child, Min was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at 17, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao's political operas, Min's life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world.

In The Tapestry of My Ancestry, Susan Lorraine Kadera weaves together threads of Cherokee, Lumbee, African, European, and countless other lineages into a poetic journey of remembrance and gratitude. Through DNA revelations and quiet reflection, she uncovers the silent stories of her ancestors—those whose names may be lost but whose presence endures.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a former slave who became a social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. One of the most prominent figures in the anti-slavery movement, Douglass emerged as a national leader of the abolitionist movement, speaking and writing widely on behalf of the cause. In this classic work, Douglass gives a firsthand account of his life from birth through his time spent in slavery, his escape to freedom in 1838, and his transition from bondage to liberty.

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.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

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...

A hopeful look at coping with the ravages of serious chronic illness by an accomplished journalist, a contributing columnist for the New York Times, and former senior producer of the CBS Evening News Richard Cohen, a veteran journalist, has lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years. Diagnosed...

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.

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.

"The numerous voices presenting these oral histories are flowing, velvety, glib, humorous, and always passionate...This is an informative and heartwarming retrospective of life in the Bronx, in addition to an enlightening look at the changes in our society and culture." — Publishers Weekly...

A Universityのテーマは「複雑な世界で、より善く生きる」タイパ・コスパと言った、いかに効率よく生きるかを競うことばかりに注目が集まる時代。