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Big Freedia: God Save the Queen Diva!
Par Big Freedia, Nicole Balin. 2015
From the eponymous star of one of the most popular reality shows in Fuse&’s history, this no-holds-barred memoir and &“snappily…
dictated story of inverted cultural norms in the wards of New Orleans&” (East Bay Express) reveals the fascinating truth about a gay, self-proclaimed mama&’s boy who exploded onto the formerly underground Bounce music scene and found acceptance, healing, self-expression, and stardom. As the &“undisputed ambassador&” of the energetic, New Orleans-based Bounce movement, Big Freedia isn&’t afraid to twerk, wiggle, and shake her way to self-confidence, and is encouraging her fans to do the same. In her engrossing memoir, Big Freedia tells the inside story of her path to fame, the peaks and valleys of her personal life, and the liberation that Bounce music brings to herself and every one of her fans who is searching for freedom.Big Freedia immediately pulls us into the relationship between her personal life and her career as an artist; being a &“twerking sissy&” is not just a job, she says, but a salvation. A place to find solace and escape from the battles she faced growing up in the worst neighborhood in New Orleans. To deal with losing loved ones to the violence on the streets, drug overdoses, and jail. To survive hurricane Katrina by living on her roof for two days with three adults and a child. To grapple with the difficulties and celebrate the joys of living. In this eye-opening memoir that bursts with energy, you&’ll learn the history of the Bounce movement and meet all the colorful characters that pepper its music scene. &“Whether detailing the highs or the lows, Freedia&’s tales pop as much as the booty that made her famous&” (Out Magazine).By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There: A Memoir
Par Tom Sizemore, Anna David. 2013
Tom Sizemore has been called many things. Brilliant. Brutal. Fiercely talented. Angry. Drug addicted. In reality, he’s all of them.…
He’s a survivor of the Detroit ghetto, the fifty-year-old father of twin boys, and a veteran of dozens of movies. He’s also now sober, after his addiction took his life just about as far down as any human being could go. Through screen-stealing performances in the 1990s movies True Romance, Heat, and Natural Born Killers, Sizemore was so in demand that even when it was widely known that he had a drug problem, directors like Steven Spielberg were offering him roles and begging him to stay sober for them. Robert De Niro personally recruited him for the role of Michael Cheritto in Heat after asking him to dinner and expressing his admiration. Jack Nicholson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Johnny Depp each went out of their way to befriend him. But this same man went from romancing Elizabeth Hurley and Juliette Lewis to being accused of domestic violence by the world’s most famous madam, and moved from a Beverly Hills mansion to a solitary-confinement cell at Chino State Prison and later a desolate, abandoned cabin in a town best known for being where Charles Manson hid Rosemary LaBianca’s wallet. For years, Sizemore’s days were filled with overdoses, suicide attempts, and homelessness. The simple fact is that people don’t come back from where Tom Sizemore landed—yet miraculously, he did. By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There is a harrowing journey into the heart of addiction, told in riveting and often shocking detail—a terrifying cautionary tale for anyone who’s peered over the abyss of drug abuse. By turns gritty and heartbreaking, it is also one man’s look at a particular moment in entertainment history—a window into the drug-fueled spotlight that sent Robert Downey, Jr., to jail and killed River Phoenix, Heath Ledger, and Chris Farley and many others far before their time. *** “I CAN’T TELL YOU WHAT I’D GIVE TO BE THE GUY YOU DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT. . . . I’VE DONE A LOT OF THINGS THAT WOULD MAKE THAT IMPOSSIBLE, AND I KNOW THAT TELLING YOU ALL ABOUT THEM WON’T HELP ME TO BECOME AMERICA’S FAVORITE SON. BUT IT MAY HELP YOU TO UNDERSTAND HOW EVERYTHING HAPPENED THE WAY IT DID. . . .” —TOM SIZEMOREWhen the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency
Par Donald Rumsfeld. 1974
&“A personal look behind the scenes&” (Publishers Weekly) of the presidency of Gerald Ford as seen through the eyes of…
Donald Rumsfeld—New York Times bestselling author and Ford&’s former Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff, and longtime personal confidant.In the wake of Richard Nixon&’s Watergate scandal, it seemed the United States was coming apart. America had experienced a decade of horrifying assassinations; the unprecedented resignation of first a vice president and then a president of the United States; intense cultural and social change; and a new mood of cynicism sweeping the country—a mood that, in some ways, lingers today.Into that divided atmosphere stepped an unexpected, unelected, and largely unknown American—Gerald R. Ford. In contrast to every other individual who had ever occupied the Oval Office, he had never appeared on any ballot either for the presidency or the vice presidency. Ford simply and humbly performed his duty to the best of his considerable ability. By the end of his 895 days as president, he would in fact have restored balance to our country, steadied the ship of state, and led his fellow Americans out of the national trauma of Watergate. And yet, Gerald Ford remains one of the least studied and least understood individuals to have held the office of the President of the United States. In turn, his legacy also remains severely underappreciated.In When the Center Held, Ford&’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld candidly shares his personal observations of the man himself, providing a sweeping examination of his crucial years in office. It is a rare and fascinating look behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, including never-before-seen photos, memos, and anecdotes, from a unique insider&’s perspective—&“engrossing and informative&” (Kirkus Reviews) reading for any fan of presidential history.Steve & Me
Par Terri Irwin. 2007
When Terri Raines was twenty-seven years old, she took a vacation that changed her life. Leaving behind her wildlife rescue…
work in Oregon, Terri traveled to Australia, and there, at a small wildlife park, she met and fell in love with a tall, blond force of nature named Steve Irwin. They were married in less than a year, and Terri eagerly joined in Steve's conservation work. The footage filmed on their crocodile-trapping honeymoon became the first episode of The Crocodile Hunter, and together, Steve and Terri began to change the world. In Steve & Me, Terri recounts the unforgettable adventures they shared -- wrangling venomous snakes, saving deadly crocodiles from poachers, swimming among humpback whales. A uniquely gifted naturalist, Steve was first and foremost a wildlife warrior dedicated to rescuing endangered animals -- especially his beloved crocs -- and educating everyone he could reach about the importance of conservation. In the hit TV shows that continue to be broadcast worldwide, Steve's enthusiasm lives on, bringing little-known and often-feared species to light as he reveals and revels in the wonders of our planet. With grace, wit, and candor, Terri Irwin portrays her husband as he really was -- a devoted family man, a fervently dedicated environmentalist, a modest bloke who spoke to millions on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves. Steve & Me is a nonstop adventure, a real-life love story, and a fitting tribute to a man adored by all those whose lives he touched, written by the woman who knew and loved him best of all.Knock Wood
Par Candice Bergen. 1984
It's Always Something: Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Par Gilda Radner. 1989
To honor the twentieth anniversary of beloved comedienne Gilda Radner’s death from ovarian cancer comes a commemo- rative edition of…
her memoir, It’s Always Something—featuring a newly updated resource guide for people living with cancer and a tribute by Radner’s former colleagues at Saturday Night Live.As a cast member on the original Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner created a compelling character named “Roseann Rosannadanna” who habitually ended her routine with the line, “It’s always something,” which was her father’s favorite expression about life. Radner chose the catch- phrase she made famous as the title to her brave, funny, and painfully honest memoir: the story of her struggle against cancer and her determination to continue laughing.Gilda’s Club, a network of affiliate clubhouses that seeks to provide a social and emotional support community to people living with cancer, was founded in Radner’s memory in 1991. The name of the organization comes from a remark Gilda once made, that cancer gave her “membership to an elite club I’d rather not belong to.” In partnership with Gilda’s Club, It’s AlwaysSomething includes valuable information for all whose lives havebeen touched by cancer and reminds us of the important place laughter has in healing.Told as only Gilda Radner could tell it, It’s Always Something is the inspiring story of a courageous, funny woman fighting to enjoy life no matter what the circumstances. She died in 1989. Gilda’s Club is distinguished by its unique philosophy and pro- gram, “cancer support for the whole family, the whole time.” Learn more about Gilda’s Club at GildasClub.org.The Education of Will: Healing a Dog, Facing My Fears, Reclaiming My Life
Par Patricia B. McConnell. 2017
Bestselling author and internationally renowned animal psychologist and dog trainer Patricia McConnell &“gives a voice to those who can&’t speak…
in words and provides hope for fearful animals everywhere&” (Temple Grandin) in this powerful and uplifting memoir about healing.World-renowned as a source of science and soul, Patricia McConnell combines brilliant insights into canine behavior with heartwarming stories of her own dogs and their life on the farm. Now, she reveals that it wasn&’t just the dogs who had serious problems. For decades Dr. McConnell secretly grappled with her own guilt and fear, which were rooted in the harrowing traumas of her youth. Patricia is forced to face her past by her love for a young Border Collie named Will, whose frequent, unpredictable outbreaks of fear and fury shake Patricia to her core. In order to save Will from this dangerous behavior, she must find her own will to heal, and along the way learn that will power by itself is not enough. Interweaving enlightening stories of her clients&’ dogs with tales of her deepening bond with Will, this is a &“compassionate account of the reclamation of the author's life from abuse and shame. An uplifting story of hope about how both dogs and humans need "a sense that they are not helpless victims" (Kirkus Reviews).American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America
Par David O. Stewart. 2011
In this vivid and brilliant biography, David Stewart describes Aaron Burr, the third vice president, as a daring and perhaps…
deluded figure who shook the nation’s foundations in its earliest, most vulnerable decades. In 1805, the United States was not twenty years old, an unformed infant. The government consisted of a few hundred people. The immense frontier swallowed up a tiny army of 3,300 soldiers. Following the Louisiana Purchase, no one even knew where the nation’s western border lay. Secessionist sentiment flared in New England and beyond the Appalachians. Burr had challenged Jefferson, his own running mate, in the presidential election of 1800. Indicted for murder in the dueling death of Alexander Hamilton in 1804, he dreamt huge dreams. He imagined an insurrection in New Orleans, a private invasion of Spanish Mexico and Florida, and a great empire rising on the Gulf of Mexico, which would swell when America’s western lands seceded from the Union. For two years, Burr pursued this audacious dream, enlisting support from the General-in-Chief of the Army, a paid agent of the Spanish king, and from other western leaders, including Andrew Jackson. When the army chief double-crossed Burr, Jefferson finally roused himself and ordered Burr prosecuted for treason. The trial featured the nation’s finest lawyers before the greatest judge in our history, Chief Justice John Marshall, Jefferson’s distant cousin and determined adversary. It became a contest over the nation’s identity: Should individual rights be sacrificed to punish a political apostate who challenged the nation’s very existence? In a revealing reversal of political philosophies, Jefferson championed government power over individual rights, while Marshall shielded the nation’s most notorious defendant. By concealing evidence, appealing to the rule of law, and exploiting the weaknesses of the government’s case, Burr won his freedom. Afterwards Burr left for Europe to pursue an equally outrageous scheme to liberate Spain’s American colonies, but finding no European sponsor, he returned to America and lived to an unrepentant old age. Stewart’s vivid account of Burr’s tumultuous life offers a rare and eye-opening description of the brand-new nation struggling to define itself.King: A Life
Par Jonathan Eig. 2023
A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle AwardNamed one of the ten best books of 2023 by The…
Washington Post | Chicago Tribune | TimeA New York Times bestseller and notable book of 2023 | One of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2023One of The New Yorker's essential reads of 2023 | A Christian Science Monitor best book of the year | One of Air Mail's twelve best books of 2023A Washington Post and National Indie Bestseller | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023 | One of Smithsonian magazine's ten best books of 2023“Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig’s book is worthy of its subject.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)“[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King’s life in a generation.” —Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post“No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome.” —Will Bunch, The Philadelphia InquirerHailed by The New York Times as “the new definitive biography,” King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographsVagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan
Par Ruby Lal. 2024
A captivating biography of one of the world&’s greatest adventurers, the itinerant Mughal Princess Gulbadan, based on her long-forgotten memoir…
&“Finally, a serious consideration of Gulbadan&’s achievement.&’&”—Kirkus Reviews Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor. Gulbadan longed for the exuberant itinerant lifestyle she&’d known. With Akbar&’s blessing, she led an unprecedented sailing and overland voyage and guided harem women on an extended pilgrimage in Arabia. Amid increasing political tensions, the women&’s &“un-Islamic&” behavior forced their return, lengthened by a dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea. Gulbadan wrote a book upon her return, the only extant work of prose by a woman of the age. A portion of it is missing, either lost to history or redacted by officials who did not want the princess to have her say. Vagabond Princess contemplates the story of the missing pages and breathes new life into a daring historical figure. It offers a portal to a richly complex world, rife with movement and migration, where women&’s conviviality, adventure, and autonomies shine through.The Heart of a Superfan: A memoir of grit, love, family and basketball
Par Nav Bhatia. 2024
The Raptors' story is an underdog story—and the same is true for their greatest superfan. This memoir offers a courtside…
view into the extraordinary life of Nav Bhatia.You know him as the Raptors Superfan, but Nav Bhatia's story is bigger than basketball.Nav immigrated to Canada from India after experiencing many hardships—only to face a host of new challenges. Life as an immigrant was gruelling and grey . . . and then, a new basketball team came to town. As Nav cheered on the Toronto Raptors at game after game, as they lost, as they won, on the good days and the bad, he discovered inspiration and community in the greatest game on Earth, formed life-long bonds with many of the best players the sport has ever known, and solidified his own place in the Basketball Hall of Fame.In this memoir, Nav shares his incredible personal story of triumphing over adversity, as well as the lessons that propelled him to success in all facets of life: as an entrepreneur, movie producer, humanitarian, son, father and husband, and the Raptors' most dedicated supporter. And woven throughout the book are intimate, colourful behind-the-scenes stories about the Raptors—from their very first game in 1995 to their 2019 Championship win, and beyond—that only the Superfan could know.This is a book about loyalty, perseverance and the power of sports to unite us across differences—and, most of all, about how following your passions can lead you to the most extraordinary places.Madonna: A Rebel Life
Par Mary Gabriel. 2023
New York Times Editors&’ Choice, One of NPR&’s Best Books of the YearIn this &“infinitely readable&” biography, award-winning author Mary…
Gabriel chronicles the meteoric rise and enduring influence of the greatest female pop icon of the modern era: Madonna (People Magazine) With her arrival on the music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion—as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles—taking the nation by storm with her liberated politics and breathtaking talent. Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest featuring Andy Warhol as a judge, and opened a department called &“Madonna-land.&” But Madonna was more than just a pop star. Everywhere, fans gravitated to her as an emblem of a new age, one in which feminism could shed the buttoned-down demeanor of the 1970s and feel relevant to a new generation. Amid the scourge of AIDS, she brought queer identities into the mainstream, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever—and be whoever—they wanted. Despite fierce criticism, she never separated her music from her political activism. And, as an artist, she never stopped experimenting. Madonna existed to push past boundaries by creating provocative, visionary music, videos, films, and live performances that changed culture globally. Deftly tracing Madonna&’s story from her Michigan roots to her rise to super-stardom, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the dramatic life and achievements of one of the greatest artists of our time.A NATIONAL BESTSELLER! Journalist Sarah Stankorb outlines how access to the internet—its networks, freedom of expression, and resources for deeply…
researching and reporting on powerful church figures—allowed women to begin dismantling the false authority of evangelical communities that had long demanded their submission. A generation of American Christian girls was taught submitting to men is God&’s will. They were taught not to question the men in their families or their pastors. They were told to remain sexually pure and trained to feel shame if a man was tempted. Some of these girls were abused and assaulted. Some made to shrink down so small they became a shadow of themselves. To question their leaders was to question God. All the while, their male leaders built fiefdoms from megachurches and sprawling ministries. They influenced politics and policy. To protect their church&’s influence, these men covered up and hid abuse. American Christian patriarchy, as it rose in political power and cultural sway over the past four decades, hurt many faithful believers. Millions of Americans abandoned churches they once loved. Yet among those who stayed (and a few who still loved the church they fled), a brave group of women spoke up. They built online megaphones, using the democratizing power of technology to create long-overdue change. In Disobedient Women, journalist Sarah Stankorb gives long-overdue recognition for these everyday women as leaders and as voices for a different sort of faith. Their work has driven journalists to help bring abuse stories to national attention. Stankorb weaves together the efforts of these courageous voices in order to present a full, layered portrait of the treatment of women and the fight for change within the modern American church.Disobedient Women is not just a look at the women who have used the internet to bring down the religious power structures that were meant to keep them quiet, but also a picture of the large-scale changes that are happening within evangelical culture regarding women&’s roles, ultimately underscoring the ways technology has created a place for women to challenge traditional institutions from within.I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together: A Memoir
Par Maurice Vellekoop. 2024
&“Maurice Vellekoop's beautiful graphic memoir feels painfully honest. It's about art and life and families and belief, about who we…
are and what forms us, the magic and the hurt, and it evokes times that are well-lost while reminding us of the battles still being fought every day. Most of all, I think, it's about love.&” —Neil GaimanFor fans of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, I&’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an epic graphic memoir about a queer illustrator surviving his intensely Christian childhood in 1970s Toronto.Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of four children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a blue-collar suburb of Toronto. Despite their working-class milieu, the Vellekoops are devoted to art, music, and film, and they instill a deep reverence for the arts in young Maurice—except for literature. He&’d much rather watch Cher and Carol Burnett on TV than read a book. He also loves playing with his girlfriends&’ Barbie dolls and helping his Mum in her hair salon, which she runs out of the basement of their house. In short, he is really, really gay. Which is a huge problem, because the family is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect. They go to church twice on Sunday, and they send their kids to a private Christian school, catechism classes, and the Calvinist Cadet Corps. Needless to say, the church is intolerant of homosexuality. Though she loves her son deeply, Maurice&’s mother, Ann, cannot accept him, setting the course for a long estrangement. Vellekoop struggles through all of this until he graduates from high school and is accepted into the Ontario College of Art in the early 1980s. Here he finds a welcoming community of bohemians, including a brilliant, flamboyantly gay professor who encourages him to come out. But just as he&’s dipping his toes into the waters of gay sex and love, a series of romantic disasters, followed by a violent attack, sets him back severely. And then the shadow of the AIDS era descends. Maurice reacts by retreating to the safety of childhood obsessions, and seeks to satisfy his emotional needs with film- and theatre-going, music, boozy self-medication, and prolific art-making. When these tactics inevitably fail, Vellekoop at last embarks on a journey towards his heart&’s true desire. In psychotherapy, the spiderweb of family, faith, guilt, sexuality, mental health, the intergenerational fallout of World War II, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, French Formula Hairspray, and much more at last begins to untangle. But it&’s going to be a long, messy, and occasionally hilarious process. I&’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an enthralling portrait of what it means to be true to yourself, to learn to forgive, and to be an artist.Whistleblowers: Four Who Fought to Expose the Holocaust to America
Par Rafael Medoff. 2024
A compelling nonfiction graphic novel, Whistleblowers is the true story of four courageous individuals who risked their careers—or their lives—to…
confront the unfolding Holocaust.Who were the whistleblowers?Alan Cranston—a young journalist and future U.S. senator who exposed the truth of Hitler&’s plans.Henry Morgenthau, Jr.—a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet who confronted the President over the plight of Jewish refugees fleeing HitlerJan Karski—an eyewitness to Nazi atrocities who met with American and British officials to alert them about the death camps.Josiah E. DuBois Jr.—an American civil servant who blew the whistle on colleagues inside the Roosevelt administration who were blocking the rescue of refugees.Acclaimed author Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and award-winning comics creator Dean Motter bring to life these tales of moral courage in the face of genocide.Carson McCullers: A Life
Par Mary V. Dearborn. 2024
The first major biography in more than twenty years of one of America&’s greatest writers, based on newly available letters…
and journalsV. S. Pritchett called her &“a genius.&” Gore Vidal described her as a &“beloved novelist of singular brilliance . . . Of all the Southern writers, she is the most apt to endure . . .&” And Tennessee Williams said, &“The only real writer the South ever turned out, was Carson.&”She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she&’d been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout her work. As a child, she said she&’d been &“born a man.&” At twenty, she married Reeves McCullers, a fellow southerner, ex-soldier, and aspiring writer (&“He was the best-looking man I had ever seen&”). They had a fraught, tumultuous marriage lasting twelve years and ending with his suicide in 1953. Reeves was devoted to her and to her writing, and he envied her talent; she yearned for attention, mostly from women who admired her but rebuffed her sexually. Her first novel—The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—was published in 1940, when she was twenty-three, and overnight, Carson McCullers became the most widely talked about writer of the time.While McCullers&’s literary stature continues to endure, her private life has remained enigmatic and largely unexamined. Now, with unprecedented access to the cache of materials that has surfaced in the past decade, Mary Dearborn gives us the first full picture of this brilliant, complex artist who was decades ahead of her time, a writer who understood—and captured—the heart and longing of the outcast.Rebel Girls Celebrate Neurodiversity: 25 Tales of Creative Thinkers (Rebel Girls Minis)
Par Rebel Girls. 2024
TRUE STORIES OF NEURODIVERGENT ICONSThis collection features 25 inspiring tales of neurodivergent artists, athletes, innovators, and more. Read about how…
these women and girls thought creatively, achieved their dreams, and advocated for the rights of neurodivergent people everywhere.Walk the runway with Madeline Stuart, the first professional model with Down syndrome. Steal the scene with Salma Hayek, the award-winning actor with dyslexia. Learn how journalist and TV host Lisa Ling thrives with ADD, and how Temple Grandin&’s autism has opened up new and compassionate ways of interacting with animals.This book pairs inspiring, easy-to-read text with colorful full-page portraits created by female and nonbinary artists from all around the world. Plus, scannable codes let you listen to longer stories on the Rebel Girls app!Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm
Par Emmeline Clein. 2024
A personal and cultural look at the dark underbelly of Western beauty standards and the lethal culture of disordered eating…
they've wrought&“Electric with insight, and suffused with a strange, stubborn tenderness—a deep regard for what intimacy, hope, and resistance might look like in a world where women are taught to devote their lives to destroying themselves.&” —Leslie Jamison, author of The RecoveringIn Dead Weight, Emmeline Clein recounts her struggle with disordered eating alongside the stories of other women: historical figures, pop culture celebrities, and the girls she&’s known and loved. Through the story of her own sickness, the raw recollections of interview subjects, and dispatches from social media rabbit holes, Clein challenges stereotypes and renders statistics and science deeply personal and urgent. From her first encounters with icons of the thin ideal to her years ricocheting between hunger and bingeing, from the pro-anorexia blog that unexpectedly saved someone&’s life to the residential treatment centers that make so many people sicker, from a wrenching elegy for those who didn&’t survive to a manifesto for sisterhood, solidarity, and recovery, Clein uncovers girlhood&’s appetites and injuries to reveal the economic, cultural, and political history of an epidemic.Dead Weight makes the case that we are faced with a culture of suppression, self-denial, and self-harm, an insidious, pervasive, and dangerous American cult of femininity rooted in racism and misogyny. Tracing the medical and cultural histories of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder and investigating the recent rise of orthorexia, Clein reveals the economic conditions underpinning diet culture, and grapples with the ways today&’s feminism can be complicit in propping up the fetish of self-shrinking.Drawing on a kaleidoscopic array of sources—from cult classic films like Jennifer&’s Body to the aughts-era Tumblrverse, the writing of Simone Weil, Chris Kraus, and Anne Boyer to the medieval canon of anorexic saints—Clein calls for a feminism that doesn&’t compel women to shrink their bodies to increase their value, urging radical acceptance of all our appetites instead: for food, connection, and love. A sharp, perceptive, and revelatory polemic about the external forces that shape our lives, Dead Weight is electrifying, unapologetically bold, and fiercely compassionate.American Negra: A Memoir
Par Natasha S. Alford. 2024
Award-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto…
Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part memoir, part cultural analysis, Alford reflects on growing up in a working-class family from the city of Syracuse, NY.In smart, vivid prose, Alford illustrates the complexity of being multiethnic in Upstate New York and society’s flawed teachings about matters of identity. When she travels to Puerto Rico for the first time, she is the darkest in her family, and navigates shame for not speaking Spanish fluently. She visits African-American hair salons where she’s told that she has “good” hair, while internalizing images that as a Latina she has "bad” hair or pelo malo.When Alford goes from an underfunded public school system to Harvard University surrounded by privilege and pedigree, she wrestles with more than her own ethnic identity, as she is faced with imposter syndrome, a shocking medical diagnosis, and a struggle to define success on her own terms. A study abroad trip to the Dominican Republic changes her perspective on Afro-Latinidad and sets her on a path to better understand her own Latin roots.Alford then embarks on a whirlwind journey to find her authentic voice, taking her across the United States from a hedge fund boardroom to a classroom and ultimately a newsroom, as a journalist. A coming-of-age story about what it's like to live at the intersections of race, culture, gender, and class, all while staying true to yourself, American Negra is a captivating look at one woman’s experience being Negra in the United States. As the movement to highlight Afro-Latin identity and overlooked histories of the African diaspora grows, American Negra illustrates the diversity of the Black experience in the larger fabric of American society.Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School
Par Tiffany Jewell. 2024
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Book Is Anti-Racist and The Antiracist Kid, Tiffany Jewell, this…
YA nonfiction book, highlighting inequities Black and Brown students face from preschool through college, is the most important, empowering read this year.From preschool to higher education and everything in between, Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School focuses on the experiences Black and Brown students face as a direct result of the racism built into schools across the United States.The overarching nonfiction narrative follows author Tiffany Jewell from early elementary school through her time at college, unpacking the history of systemic racism in the American educational system along the way. Throughout the book, other writers of the global majority share a wide variety of personal narratives and stories based on their own school experiences.Contributors include New York Times bestseller Joanna Ho; award winners Minh Lê, Randy Ribay, and Torrey Maldonado; authors James Bird and Rebekah Borucki; author-educators Amelia A. Sherwood, Roberto Germán, Liz Kleinrock, Gary R. Gray Jr., Lorena Germán, Patrick Harris II, shea wesley martin, David Ryan Barcega Castro-Harris, Ozy Aloziem, Gayatri Sethi, and Dulce-Marie Flecha; and even a couple of teen writers!Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School provides young folks with the context to think critically about and chart their own course through their current schooling—and any future schooling they may pursue.