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New Biographies at Riverside Public Library |
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Newest Books are at the Top Click on a title for more information or to place a hold. |
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Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis's Trans Pioneer
by Julie Kliegman
Fifty years ago, tennis player Renee Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women's draw of the 1977 US Open--marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renee eventually won her case. Though she lost in the first round of the singles tournament, she and her tennis partner made it to the finals in doubles, losing to Martina Navratilova and her partner. Finding Renee Richards chronicles Richards's extraordinary life, moving from her tumultuous upbringing in Queens, New York, to her career as a successful eye surgeon; her years as a star tennis player to her role as a transgender pioneer. Now in her nineties, Renee remains a complex figure: A person who changed the sports world forever yet questions the place of trans athletes in that world today. GLAAD award-nominated sports journalist Julie Kliegman deftly probes these contradictions, drawing on intimate interviews and offering critical reflections on what is at stake for athletes, fans, and the queer community today, at a time when trans participation in sports is more hotly contested--and condemned--than ever before. Finding Renee Richards includes a 20-page photo insert featuring never-before-seen archival images.
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The Wound Is Where the Light Enters: A Memoir of Resilience
by Chris Young
The inspiring memoir of a brilliant young man who, sentenced to life in prison, refused to surrender his future--a story so powerful that it transformed even the judge who handed down the sentence. If our world were more just, Chris Young would have been crossing a stage at college graduation at the age of 22. Instead, he was marched into a maximum-security federal prison, facing life under mandatory drug sentencing laws. Like far too many young Black men from his neighborhood in Clarksville, Tennessee, this was where his story was supposed to end. But one day in the prison library, a book caught his eye: an encyclopedia. As he began to turn the pages, Chris felt himself transported. Knowledge became a portal. He began to confront the nihilism around him, the trauma of his past, and the cruelty of a system determined to confine him. From the library, his cell, and even solitary confinement, Chris built an education from scratch, studying philosophy, art, anthropology, history, physics, and politics. He learned to analyze
the stock market and taught himself how to code without a computer.
He trained his mind--and refused to let prison dictate the limits of his imagination. At his sentencing hearing, Chris gave such a moving
speech that the judge resigned from his lifetime appointment to the bench and fought to free him. Started in solitary confinement and finished beyond bars, The Wound Is Where the Light Enters is a
powerful meditation on choice, consequence, and human potential,
told through the story of a man who was never given a chance--and
who fought until, at last, he was.
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Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland
by Betsy Cornwell
At twenty-four, Betsy Cornwell runs away to Ireland for a fresh start. Leaving behind a painful past, she chases her dream of becoming a novelist to the misty shores of the Aran Islands. There she meets a handsome and charming horse trainer, and her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when they elope to Gretna Green. Five years later, her
happy ending has twisted into a nightmare. Betsy is trapped in an abusive marriage, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby. On her son's first birthday, she must flee home again, this time turning to the women around her--her local survivor support group, a trusted family friend,
and an online Smith College alumnae network--for help she'd never known she could ask for. After a brush with homelessness, she
struggles to scrape together a living for herself and her son. On
sleepless nights, she scrolls through real estate listings that might as
well be castles in the air, and starts to foster an impossible dream: What if she could use her writing to buy a home, one that no one could take away from her and her baby? One that might become a haven, not just for her family, but other single parent artists and writers, too? When she discovers a historic knitting factory and former cinema on Ireland's rugged Connemara coastline, left empty and crumbling for years, that precarious dream becomes her lifeline. Over the next two years she works to crowdfund the old knitting factory's purchase by sharing its story and her own, in candid posts that range from the unexpectedly steep learning curves she encounters with home renovations and internet dating, to her heartbreaking fight to keep custody of her son, with her growing online community. But as the deadline to buy nears, she realizes she will have to reckon with everything she believes about family, survival, and what happily-ever-after truly means for her dream
to have any chance of coming true.
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Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe
by Gail Crowther
Far from the spotlights of the Hollywood film sets and the flashbulbs of the press, Marilyn Monroe was a great reader and lover of books. Her association with writers did not stop at reading their words on the page. She was, of course, briefly married to one of America's best-known playwrights, Arthur Miller, and met a number of other writers who
moved in his literary world. But she also met authors independently of Miller, many of whom were fans of her films and keen to meet her. Marilyn And Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe charts the intellectual life of a screen legend, revealing how Monroe, who left high school before graduation, embarked on an impressive and progressive program of self-education, hungry for knowledge and devouring books
as an active and engaged reader. Her personal library reflects this inquiring mind.
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Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith
by J. D. Vance
Communion is a spiritual exploration of what it means to be a Christian in all the seasons of life JD Vance has experienced—as a child, a young man, a husband, a father, and a leader. Picking up in some ways where Hillbilly Elegy left off, Communion recounts how Vance's pursuit of material privileges ultimately led him into a secular wilderness. Communion reveals how Vance regained his faith and discusses his conversion to Catholicism, how his faith guides his work in public life, and how it shapes his thoughts about the future.
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