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Biography and Memoir February 2019
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| The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala HarrisA candid and inspiring memoir from California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, who recently announced her 2020 presidential run.
Topics include: Harris' immigrant parents and her Oakland upbringing; her tenure as the District Attorney for San Francisco and the Attorney General of California.
Who it's for: readers interested in Harris' solutions to tackling some of the most divisive issues in American politics, including immigration, national security, income inequality, and the opioid crisis. |
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| Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie LandAt 28, Stephanie Land's plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer, were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet, and with a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly.
She wrote the true stories that weren't being told: the stories of overworked and underpaid Americans. Of living on food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) coupons to eat. Of the government programs that provided her housing, but that doubled as halfway houses. The aloof government employees who called her lucky for receiving assistance while she didn't feel lucky at all. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor.
Maid explores the underbelly of upper-middle class America and the reality of what it's like to be in service to them. "I'd become a nameless ghost," Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients' lives-their sadness and love, too-she begins to find hope in her own path. |
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Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster
by Stephen L. Carter
She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s―and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city’s underworld, she was the only member of his team who was not a white male.
Eunice Hunton Carter, Stephen Carter’s grandmother, was raised in a world of stultifying expectations about race and gender, yet by the 1940s, her professional and political successes had made her one of the most famous black women in America. But her triumphs were shadowed by prejudice and tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who―together with his friend Dashiell Hammett―would go to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed.
Moving, haunting, and as fast-paced as a novel, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, her long forgotten story is once again visible.
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| Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani ShapiroWhat makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us?
In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history--the life she had lived--crumbled beneath her.
Inheritance is a book about secrets--secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in--a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover. |
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| The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper & Gloria VanderbiltAn intimate year-long email correspondence between journalist Anderson Cooper and his fashion designer mother Gloria Vanderbilt, which began after Vanderbilt became gravely ill in 2015.
Read it for the growing closeness that develops between the pair.
Further reading: Will Schwalbe's reflective memoir The End of Your Life Book Club similarly explores a relationship with an ailing parent. |
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| Mockingbird Songs: My Friendship with Harper Lee by Wayne FlyntCovers Historian Wayne Flynt's 20-year-long, late-in-life friendship with author Harper Lee, nurtured primarily via their witty and admiring letters to each other.
This concise and touching work arranges the duo's letters thematically as well as chronologically.
Chapters include: "Celebrity, Kinship, and Calamity;" "Imperfect Fathers, Imperfect Towns;" "An Author Shapes Her Own Identity" |
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| Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise ParkerA lyrical and nostalgic collection of letters addressed (but never sent) to the men (both real and hypothetical) who have impacted Mary-Louise Parker's life.
Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress Parker is best known for her starring role in the television series Weeds.
Don't miss Parker's touching letter to her deceased father: "To convey in any existing language how much I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean." |
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| Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home by Nina StibbeWhile working as a 20-year-old nanny in early 1980s London, Nina Stibbe wrote gossipy letters home detailing life with her charges and their famous parents.
Featuring: Stibbe's employers, London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers and film director Stephen Frears; playwright Alan Bennett, a frequent dinner guest.
For fans of quirky British humor and snappy dialogue. |
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Contact the Library for more great titles! |
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