Parenting Memoir

FonoLibro se complace en presentar Cala Contigo: El Poder de Escuchar escrito y narrado por el célebre periodista y presentador de Cala en CNN en Español, Ismael Cala. Ismael, en una excelente narración, nos enseña a escuchar para evolucionar y mejorar nuestras vidas. Tras conversar con presidentes, intelectuales y celebridades de todos los campos, Cala nos confía la clave de su éxito como entrevistador: saber escuchar a los demás, para que compartan con nosotros cómo son y cómo piensan.

Women today feel a constant pressure to improve themselves and just never feel like they’re “enough.” All too often, they live their daily lives disheartened, disillusioned, and disappointed. That’s because joy doesn’t come from a new self-improvement strategy; it comes from rooting their identity in who God says they are and what he has done on their behalf.

Set against a backdrop of East End London, Georgia experienced a childhood few of us could imagine. Though brought up in a loving family, she watched her family break apart through deceit and her mother descend into heroin addiction. Escaping into what she felt was a loving sanctuary, Georgia ended up trapped in a violent relationship with a man who would beat and abuse her. After having her three children by him, she knew she had to escape to finally find safety. Now Georgia is sharing her story of survival to help others and prove there is hope even after trauma and heartache.

Our beauty rituals are so often based around things we think we need to fix, grow, and develop—sometimes tipping into dangerous obsession. So, what seismic shift does it take to break free from this mentality? In Ugly, Anita uncovers where these beauty standards started, unpicks why they've been perpetuated, and unmasks the structures that continue to support them. From the ever-growing cosmetic surgery industry, to the hidden pitfalls of "pretty privilege," it is time to finally break free from those limiting beauty standards.

Gloria Norris grew up in the projects of Manchester, New Hampshire, with her parents; her sister, Virginia; and her cat, Sylvester. A snapshot might show a happy young family, but only a dummkopf would buy that. Nine-year-old Gloria is gutsy and wisecracking. Her father, Jimmy, all dazzle and danger, is often on the far side of the law and makes his own rules - which everyone else better follow. Gloria's mom, Shirley, tries not to rock the boat, Virginia unwisely defies Jimmy, and Gloria fashions herself into his sidekick - the son he never had.

A remarkable teenager who went from public assistance to a million dollar net worth shares his story and offers nine key principles to success. Farrah Gray is no ordinary teenager. He wears a suit and tie; he has an office on Wall Street and another one in Los Angeles...and he sold his first business at the age of 14 for more than a million dollars.

Everyone has the right to choose, but no one gets to choose the consequences. Sometimes we are unfairly forced to live with the consequences of another person’s actions when facing abuse and domestic violence. Further complications come when the abuser is someone we love. Fortunately, hope and choices are always present for those who look for them.

"There are children who blend well into a new family and for that, I salute you. When the transitioning adults are genuine in the approach of creating a safe and solid atmosphere between all parties, harmony flows. However, for the children who get lost in the midst of adults yearning to fulfill missing pieces without properly investigating whether the intended target is healthy for everyone, stories like mine are birthed." - Otishia E.

Fuelled by methamphetamines and deviant motives, nothing was off limits for James Daveggio and Michelle Michaud. Not even their own children. Living out of a specially rigged minivan (a mobile torture chamber that included ropes, hooks, curling irons, duct tape, etc), this cold-blooded murdering duo kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed young girls from Reno, Nevada, to Sacramento, California.

In speed skating, a hard pivot is an aggressive shift of direction that requires courage, practice, and split-second timing. For Apolo Ohno, the most frightening hard pivot of his life didn’t happen on the ice—but rather, when he had to hang up his skates for good. “After my final Olympics, I felt confused, vulnerable, and adrift without purpose,” he says.

For years, Steve DeWitt was the only never married megachurch pastor in the United States. This put him in proximity to thousands of people, yet he lived his daily life alone. Over some 8,000 days as an adult single, and now eleven years of marriage, Pastor Steve has a unique perspective on solitude and aloneness. Loneliness addresses this pervasive ache from his personal experience and pastoral viewpoint.

Solitude is the inspirational core for many writers, artists, and thinkers. Alone with our thoughts, we can make discoveries that matter not only to us but to others. To be solitary is not only to draw sustenance from being alone, but to know that our ultimate responsibility is not only to our partner or our own offspring, but to a larger community. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling.

After trying for years to emulate her boomer parents’ 40-year and still-going-strong marriage, Sophie realized that maybe the love she was looking for was down a road less traveled. In this bold, graphic memoir, she explores her sexuality, her values, and the versions of love our society accepts and practices.

n this unforgettable meet-cute, Samantha Allen traces her story of self-discovery during gender transition and the life-altering partnership that began with a simple hello in an elevator. Feeling “unfinished” at the liminal age of twenty-six, the author had already accumulated decades of emotional baggage growing up in a Mormon family and living with gender dysphoria. When she met Corey midtransition, she felt even more like an awkward shape-shifter. Now Samantha shares how taking a chance on that fortuitous encounter meant having the courage to be herself.

A woman unexpectedly finds her best self through a sleepy bundle handed over at the airport in this heartfelt and surprising memoir. In Make Me a Mother, acclaimed memoirist Susanne Antonetta adopts an infant from Seoul, South Korea. After meeting their six-month-old son, Jin, at the airport - an incident made memorable when Susanne, so eager to meet her son, is chased down by security - Susanne and her husband learn lessons common to all parents, such as the lack of sleep and the worry and joy of loving a child.

In the days before Roe v. Wade, an ambitious young journalist, abandoned by her beau, leaves Michigan for a dream job on the city desk of a Rochester, NY newspaper. Burned once, she's eager for love, but as the only "girl" in the newsroom, she's more concerned about finding allies and making friends. When a new leading man appears, she recognizes a kindred spirit. Soon her bylined stories claim front-page space. However, when she becomes pregnant, she must switch her attention from deadlines to decisions.

At the young age of three, while I was at school, my mother was murdered by her abusive new boyfriend. What would happen to her five unintentionally abandoned children? The heartbreak of the devastating loss of my mother was just the beginning of a series of tragic events that shaped my childhood. Lost in the chaos of abuse, I was the unseen collateral damage of domestic violence. I was forced to take on the role of the invisible child for self-preservation. I figured you can't hurt what you can't see.

Charismatic, beautiful Sally Flynn was the center of her daughters' imaginations, particularly Laura's. Without warning, life as they knew it changed as paranoid schizophrenia overtook Sally. Whether it was accusing Laura’s father of trying to win her over to the side of Satan, or buying only certain products that were evil-free, glimmers of her mother’s future paranoia grew brighter as Laura’s early years passed. Once her husband left the family and filed for divorce, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest, and the three girls united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother had taught them in order to deflect danger.

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.

My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon, begins Shame, the probing story of the 12-year-old girl who will become the author herself and the single traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. With the emotionally rich voice of great fiction and the diamond-sharp analytical eye of a scientist, Annie Ernaux provides a powerful reflection on experience and the power of violent memory to endure through time, to determine the course of a life.