Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

My Hidden Race is the story of Olympic medalist Anyika Onuora, who stood on the podium at every major championship in athletics. This book won't go into detail about the technicalities of her sport or the beauty of the Olympic spirit however. In the era of the Black Lives Matter and Me Too, this is an unflinching testimony of what it takes to pursue your dreams as a Black British woman against all odds. This three-time Olympian will lift the lid on the reality of life as a black female athlete in Britain in a way that nobody else has done before her.

Meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations, from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.

Authored with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this audiobook is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic '60s, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.

Charles M. Blow’s mother was a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, and a job plucking poultry at a factory near their segregated Louisiana town, where slavery's legacy felt close. When her philandering husband finally pushed her over the edge, she fired a pistol at his fleeing back, missing every shot, thanks to “love that blurred her vision and bent the barrel.” Charles was the baby of the family, fiercely attached to his “do-right” mother. Until one day that divided his life into Before and After—the day an older cousin took advantage of the young boy.

A hundred years ago, a girl was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar. Before she was 10 years old, Yetemegnu was married to a man two decades her senior, an ambitious poet-priest. Over the next century her world changed beyond recognition. She witnessed Fascist invasion and occupation, Allied bombardment and exile from her city, the ascent and fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, revolution and civil war. She endured all these things alongside parenthood, widowhood and the death of children.

Award-winning author and columnist Leslie Anne Tarabella leads us on a fun spin through her hometown of Fairhope, Alabama, with heartwarming short stories and laughs along the way that will inspire listeners to find the joy and uniqueness in their own hometowns.

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the gruelling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself. The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.

Question: What do you do when the kitchen wall collapses into the vat of beans being cooked for a horde of hungry schoolboys? Answer: You serve it up anyway! Why let a few lumps of clay and the odd metal screw spoil a decent meal? When Bunmi Asaolu arrived at the grand gates of St. John/Mary's Unity Secondary School (SAJOMACO) as a first-year student, you'd be forgiven for assuming he was swapping life on the serene university campus he grew up on for another of equal civility. Wrong! Behind the gates of SAJOMACO lay a world of contradictions.

Frederick Douglass, prominent abolitionist, civil rights activist, and reform journalist, was raised in the malicious system of slavery. His keen intellect as an anti-slavery crusader led some to question his past as a slave. To counter doubts about his life experience as a slave, Douglass wrote an autobiography providing full details of his life. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, is an emotional journey into the atrocious system of slavery, and the inspirational triumph against insurmountable odds.

The only biography of Sam Cooke that his family has claimed as being both truthful and inclusive of not only his life, but his death. Today, Sam Cooke's music has enjoyed a cultural resurgence, yet the movies that try to tell his story fall short, mostly because they fail to also include the stories told by his family and closest friends.

Cinelle Barnes was barely three years old when her family moved into Mansion Royale, a stately ten-bedroom home in the Philippines. Filled with her mother’s opulent social aspirations and the gloriously excessive evidence of her father’s self-made success, it was a girl’s storybook playland. But when a monsoon hits, her father leaves, and her mother’s terrible lover takes the reins, Cinelle’s fantastical childhood turns toward tyranny she could never have imagined.

Raised in a traditional Iranian family, eighteen-year-old Parvin Kolahdooz felt increasingly restricted after the 1979 Islamic revolution. She was trapped in a society where just a few strands of her hair showing from under her hijab could land her in jail, where her fatherlessness left her increasingly vulnerable to being given away in marriage, and where venturing alone put her at risk of sexual harassment or death. Left with no other choice, Parvin prepared to flee.

In this provocative and captivating dialogue, bell hooks and Cornel West come together to discuss the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. The two friends and comrades in struggle talk, argue, and disagree about everything from community to capitalism in a series of intimate conversations that range from playful to probing to revelatory. In evoking the act of breaking bread, the book calls upon the various traditions of sharing that take place in domestic, secular, and sacred life.

Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic and controversial Black activist, stepped onto the pages of history when he called for "Black Power" during a speech one humid Mississippi night in 1966. Carmichael’s life changed that day, and so did America’s struggle for civil rights. "Black Power" became the slogan of an era, provoking a national reckoning on race and democracy. In Stokely, preeminent civil rights scholar Peniel E. Joseph presents a groundbreaking biography of Carmichael.

Growing up in New Jersey as the only African American Muslim at school, Ibtihaj Muhammad always had to find her own way. When she discovered fencing, a sport traditionally reserved for the wealthy, she had to defy expectations and make a place for herself in a sport she grew to love. From winning state championships to three-time All-America selections at Duke University, Ibtihaj was poised for success, but the fencing community wasn't ready to welcome her with open arms just yet.

In Across That Bridge, Congressman John Lewis draws from his experience as a prominent leader of the civil rights movement to offer timeless wisdom, poignant recollections, and powerful principles for anyone interested in challenging injustices and inspiring real change toward a freer, more peaceful society. The civil rights movement gave rise to the protest culture we know today, and the experiences of leaders like Congressman Lewis, a close confidant to Martin Luther King, Jr., have never been more relevant.

Saint Patrick was, by his own admission, a controversial figure. Convicted in a trial by his elders in Britain and hounded by rumors that he settled in Ireland for financial gain, the man who was to become Ireland’s patron saint battled against great odds before succeeding as a missionary. Saint Patrick Retold draws on recent research to offer a fresh assessment of Patrick’s travails and achievements. This is the first biography in nearly 50 years to explore Patrick’s career against the background of historical events in late antique Britain and Ireland.

In an era of stark racial injustice and decisive action, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to the struggle for change, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at age 19. Through his eyes, we see the courage of a generation that stood up to injustice, their political triumphs and tragedies, and the unforgettable legacy of Black Power.

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.