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Biography and Memoir June 2019
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| African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey GirardWho it's about: Yasuke, the 16th-century African slave who served as a vassal to powerful warlord Oda Nobunaga and became Japan's first foreign-born samurai.
Read it for: the action-packed narrative; the evocative depiction of feudal Japan.
Movie buzz: Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman is set to play Yasuke in a forthcoming film. |
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We were rich and we didn't know it : a memoir of my Irish boyhood
by Tom Phelan
What's it about: An author recalls his formative years growing up in the Irish midlands in the 1940s, working on his family farm in an isolated rural community without electricity, telephones or indoor plumbing.
Why you might like it: In the tradition of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Alice Taylor's To School Through the Fields, Tom Phelan's We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It is a heartfelt and masterfully written memoir of growing up in Ireland in the 1940s .
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Heavy: An American Memoir
by Kiese Laymon
What it's about: In this compelling and complex memoir, Kiese Laymon examines the burdens of the frequently policed and politicized black male body. Growing up obese in 1980s Mississippi, his was no exception, and he grappled with abuse, anorexia, and addiction.
What sets it apart: Laymon's eloquent, stylistic narrative is a direct address to "you" -- his mother, an academic who instilled in him a love of language and reading.
Want a taste? "I didn’t know how to tell you or anyone else the stories my body told me, but, like you, I knew how to run, deflect, and duck."
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Interesting or Eccentric? |
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| A Curious Man: The Strange & Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley by Neal ThompsonWho it's about: eccentric playboy and cartoonist Robert Ripley, who parlayed his curiosity for all things weird into the successful multimedia empire "Believe It or Not!"
What's inside: chapter breaks interspersed with fun "Believe It!" facts.
Did you know? In his lifetime Ripley visited 150 countries, amassing oddities such as torture devices from around the world. |
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Running with scissors : a memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
What it's about: The author of Sellevision describes his bizarre coming-of-age years after his adoption by his mother's psychiatrist, during which he witnessed such misadventures as a fake suicide attempt, a pedophile's life in a barn, and front-lawn family/patient sleepovers.
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Driving Mr. Albert : a trip across America with Einstein's brain
by Michael Paterniti
What it's about: Part travelogue, part memoir, this unique book follows an eighty-four-year-old pathologist and a young journalist across the country with Albert Einstein's brain in Tupperware bowl filled with formaldehyde in the trunk of their car.
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Johnny Appleseed : the man, the myth, the American story
by Howard B. Means
What it's about: A profile of the real Johnny Appleseed goes behind his folk-legend persona to reveal his contributions as an animal whisperer, vegetarian and pacifist at a time when such practices were virtually non-existent, offering insight into his additional work as an evangelist and land speculator.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Central Mississippi Regional Library System
100 Tamberline Street
Brandon, Mississippi 39042
601-825-0100
http://www.cmrls.lib.ms.us
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