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Biography and Memoir February 2021
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Recent Releases & Hidden Gems |
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Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two WWII Correspondents...
by Bill Lascher
American journalists Mel and Annalee Jacoby married shortly before Pearl Harbor and were working in China until just before the Japanese invasion (they got out just in time). Throughout World War II, they managed to keep a step ahead of the enemy forces while reporting on the Pacific theater. In this swiftly paced dual biography, author Bill Lascher, a distant cousin of the Jacobys, recounts their exploits while chronicling the war's major events "in an utterly detailed and beguiling way" (Booklist, starred review).
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| All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South by Ruth Coker Burks with Kevin Carr O'LearyWhat it's about: In 1980s Hot Springs, Arkansas, young single mom Ruth Coker Burks became an outcast in her conservative community when she began caring for dying AIDS patients.
Why you should read it: Coker Burks' candid account of her life in activism offers a bittersweet front-line perspective on the AIDS crisis.
Don't miss: The author burying men in her family's cemetery after their own families wouldn't claim them, eventually earning the moniker "Cemetery Angel" for her efforts. |
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The light of the world : a memoir
by Elizabeth Alexander
A Pulitzer Prize-finalist poet reflects with gratitude on her life after the sudden death of her husband. 40,000 first printing.
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Focus on: Black History Month
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Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and...
by Emily Bernard
What it is: a lyrical memoir in essays that examines author Emily Bernard's relationship to her blackness and her Southern heritage.
Topics include: Bernard's interracial marriage and adoption of twin girls from Ethiopia; her grandmother's Jim Crow-era Mississippi childhood.
Want a taste? "I am black -- and brown, too. Brown is the body I was born into. Black is the body of the stories I tell."
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The struggle is eternal : Gloria Richardson and black liberation
by Joseph R. Fitzgerald
"Many prominent and well-known figures greatly impacted the civil rights movement, but one of the most influential and unsung leaders of that period was Gloria Richardson. As the leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), a multifaceted liberation campaign formed to target segregation and racial inequality in Cambridge, Maryland, Richardson advocated for economic justice and tactics beyond nonviolent demonstrations. Her philosophies and strategies--including her belief that black people had a right to self-defense--were adopted, often without credit, by a number of civil rights and black power leaders and activists. The Struggle Is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation explores the largely forgotten but deeply significant life of this central figure and her determination to improve the lives of black people. Using a wide range of source materials, including interviews with Richardson and her personal papers, as well as interviews with dozens of her friends, relatives, and civilrights colleagues, Joseph R. Fitzgerald presents an all-encompassing narrative. From Richardson's childhood, when her parents taught her the importance of racial pride, through the next eight decades, Fitzgerald relates a detailed and compelling story ofher life. He reveals how Richardson's human rights activism extended far beyond Cambridge and how her leadership style and vision for liberation were embraced by the younger activists of the black power movement, who would carry the struggle on throughout the late 1960s and into the 1970s"
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| The Book of Delights by Ross GayWhat it is: National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet Ross Gay's wide-ranging collection of 102 "essayettes" celebrating life's big and small joys.
Why it matters: Gay's engaging reflections on everything from race and masculinity to hobbies and popular culture offer a thought-provoking rejoinder to narratives that center on Black suffering. |
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Zora and Langston : a story of friendship and betrayal
by Yuval Taylor
Traces the story of the literary friendship of Harlem Renaissance figures Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, tracing their folklore-collecting journeys through the 1920s South, their influential creative collaborations and their passionate but mysterious falling out.
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Men we reaped : a memoir
by Jesmyn Ward
A National Book Award winner recounts the loss of five young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men, sharing her experiences of living through the dying as she searches through answers in her community.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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