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Biography and Memoir October 2020
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| Eat a Peach by David ChangWhat it's about: chef, Momofuku restaurateur, and Ugly Delicious host David Chang's path to culinary stardom.
Topics include: Chang's upbringing in a religious Korean American family; his battles with bipolar disorder and suicidal ideation; career triumphs and missteps; his friendship with the late Anthony Bourdain.
Don't miss: the author's self-deprecating sense of humor, which he reveals in playful prose, cheeky footnotes, and rules for becoming a chef. |
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| Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila LalamiWhat it is: an unflinching examination of how immigrants and naturalized citizens in America are dehumanized.
What sets it apart: In this incisive essay collection, Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami offers eye-opening insights from her experiences as a Moroccan American Muslim woman navigating post-9/11 Islamophobia.
Try this next: For another thought-provoking own voices memoir about immigration, check out Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee. |
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Here for it : or, how to save your soul in America ; essays
by R. Eric Thomas
R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents' house was an anomalous bright spot, and the verdant school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, about the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election as well as the seismic change that came thereafter.
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| Crazy Brave by Joy HarjoWhat it is: a reflective memoir from Muscogee poet, musician, and Native Writers' Circle Lifetime Achievement Award winner Joy Harjo.
Topics include: the author's fraught family dynamics and single teenage motherhood; her schooling at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
What sets it apart: Harjo's candid, lyrical writing conveys the "intricate and metaphorical language of my ancestors." |
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| Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez CastilloWhat it's about: the author's traumatic coming of age as an undocumented immigrant, which was compounded by frequent ICE raids, his father's deportation back to Mexico, and the rigidity of the U.S. immigration system.
Want a taste? "We were still trying to cross, still moving in maddening helplessness, a revolving door without an exit."
Awards buzz: Children of the Land is a 2020 International Latino Book Award finalist. |
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| The Argonauts by Maggie NelsonWhat it is: a 2015 New York Times Notable Book that offers a thought-provoking exploration of gender, sexuality, and parenthood.
What sets it apart: Poet Maggie Nelson's genre-defying, fourth-wall breaking memoir unfolds in fragments and incorporates poetry and quotes from noted gender theorists, philosophers, and psychologists.
Reviewers say: "A book that will challenge readers as much as the author has challenged herself" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Love unknown : the life and worlds of Elizabeth Bishop
by Thomas J. Travisano
Shedding new light on one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century, this biography shows how she was able to marry her talent for life with her talent for writing in order to create a brilliant array of poems, prose and letters. Illustrations.
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My name is why : a memoir
by Lemn Sissay
At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in an adopted family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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