Download or read book In the Country of Women written by Susan Straight and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of NPR's Best Books of the Year “Straight’s memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women’s stories . . . The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.” —San Francisco Chronicle In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self–proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close–knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post–slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother–in–law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California. A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.” “Certain books give off the sense that you won’t want them to end, so splendid the writing, so lyrical the stories. Such is the case with Southern California novelist Susan Straight’s new memoir, In the Country of Women . . . Her vibrant pages are filled with people of churned–together blood culled from scattered immigrants and native peoples, indomitable women and their babies. Yet they never succumb . . . Straight gives us permission to remember what went before with passion and attachment.” ––Los Angeles Times

Download or read book Memoirs from the Women s Prison written by Nawāl Saʻdāwī and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-11-18 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If Kafka had been a feminist, his prisoner might have had Nawal el Sa'adawi's feistiness, maybe, like her, he would have hoed a prison garden, led veiled and unveiled cellmates in rebellious calisthenics, strategized with a murderess to foil state illogic. This book gives me hope, even makes me laugh."—Cynthia Enloe, author of The Morning After

Download or read book Once Upon a Life written by Temsula Ao and published by Zubaan. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in 1945 in the Assamese town of Jorhat, Temsula Ao, her father's favourite of his six daughters, remembers her childhood as a time of happiness. The sudden loss of both parents mean that the orphaned children were left to fend for themselves as best they could. Desperately poor, emotionally scarred, lonely and often hungry, the young Temsula made up for her lack of resources with courage and determination. From these unpromising beginnings, Ao went on to become one of Northeast India's best known writers and to build a distinguished teaching career, serving as Director of the Northeast Zone Cultural Centre, and finally, Dean of the School of Humanities and Education, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Temsula Ao describes her memoir as 'an attempt to exorcise my own personal ghosts from a fractured childhood that was ripped apart by a series of tragedies... [it] is about love and what it is like to be deprived of it.' For her readers, Ao’s memoir gives not only an insight into her role as a leading figure in the Northeast, but is also a moving account of a writerly life. Published by Zubaan.

Download or read book Difficult Women written by David Plante and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Plante's dazzling portraits of three influential women in the literary world, now back in print for the first time in decades. Difficult Women presents portraits of three extraordinary, complicated, and, yes, difficult women, while also raising intriguing and, in their own way, difficult questions about the character and motivations of the keenly and often cruelly observant portraitist himself. The book begins with David Plante’s portrait of Jean Rhys in her old age, when the publication of The Wide Sargasso Sea, after years of silence that had made Rhys’s great novels of the 1920s and ’30s as good as unknown, had at last gained genuine recognition for her. Rhys, however, can hardly be said to be enjoying her new fame. A terminal alcoholic, she curses and staggers and rants like King Lear on the heath in the hotel room that she has made her home, while Plante looks impassively on. Sonia Orwell is his second subject, a suave exploiter and hapless victim of her beauty and social prowess, while the unflappable, brilliant, and impossibly opinionated Germaine Greer sails through the final pages, ever ready to set the world, and any erring companion, right.

Download or read book The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-01-02 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A triumphant tale of a young woman and her difficult childhood, The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience, redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and wonderfully vibrant. Jeannette Walls was the second of four children raised by anti-institutional parents in a household of extremes.

Download or read book About My Life and the Kept Woman written by John Rechy and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited memoir by “one of the few original American writers of the last century” is a testament to the power of self-acceptance (Gore Vidal). John Rechy, author of City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw, has always known discrimination. Raised Mexican-American in El Paso, Texas, at a time when Latino children were routinely segregated, Rechy was often assumed to be Anglo because of his light skin, and had his name “changed” for him by a teacher, from Juan to John. As he grew older—and as his fascination with the memory of a notorious kept woman in his childhood deepened—Rechy became aware that his differences lay not just in his heritage, but in his sexuality. While he performed the roles expected of him by others—the authoritarians in the US Army during the Korean War, the bigoted relatives of his Anglo college classmates, or the men and women who wanted him to be something he was not—he never allowed them to define him. The “riveting” story of a life that bears witness to some of the most riotous changes of the past century, About My Life and the Kept Woman is as much a portrait of intolerance as of an individual who defied it to forge his own path (The Advocate). “Rechy might be called the first bard of West Hollywood.” —The New York Times “A skillfully paced story . . . As a memoirist, Rechy is both participant and observer, and he segues as easily between narrative and exegesis as his younger self did between the lure of the wild streets and the embrace of his traditional family.” —Los Angeles Magazine

Download or read book Girlhood written by Melissa Febos and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle Award Winner National Bestseller Lambda Literary Award Finalist NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys “Irreverent and original.” –New York Times “Magisterial.” –The New Yorker “An intoxicating writer.” –The Atlantic “A classic!” –Mary Karr “A true light in the dark.” –Stephanie Danler “An essential, heartbreaking project.” –Carmen Maria Machado A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society. In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.

Download or read book The Book of Gutsy Women written by Hillary Rodham Clinton and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon to be an eight-part docuseries on Apple TV+ Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them—women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. “Go ahead, ask your question,” her father urged, nudging her forward. She smiled shyly and said, “You’re my hero. Who’s yours?” Many people—especially girls—have asked us that same question over the years. It’s one of our favorite topics. HILLARY: Growing up, I knew hardly any women who worked outside the home. So I looked to my mother, my teachers, and the pages of Life magazine for inspiration. After learning that Amelia Earhart kept a scrapbook with newspaper articles about successful women in male-dominated jobs, I started a scrapbook of my own. Long after I stopped clipping articles, I continued to seek out stories of women who seemed to be redefining what was possible. CHELSEA: This book is the continuation of a conversation the two of us have been having since I was little. For me, too, my mom was a hero; so were my grandmothers. My early teachers were also women. But I grew up in a world very different from theirs. My pediatrician was a woman, and so was the first mayor of Little Rock who I remember from my childhood. Most of my close friends’ moms worked outside the home as nurses, doctors, teachers, professors, and in business. And women were going into space and breaking records here on Earth. Ensuring the rights and opportunities of women and girls remains a big piece of the unfinished business of the twenty-first century. While there’s a lot of work to do, we know that throughout history and around the globe women have overcome the toughest resistance imaginable to win victories that have made progress possible for all of us. That is the achievement of each of the women in this book. So how did they do it? The answers are as unique as the women themselves. Civil rights activist Dorothy Height, LGBTQ trailblazer Edie Windsor, and swimmer Diana Nyad kept pushing forward, no matter what. Writers like Rachel Carson and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie named something no one had dared talk about before. Historian Mary Beard used wit to open doors that were once closed, and Wangari Maathai, who sparked a movement to plant trees, understood the power of role modeling. Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousafzai looked fear in the face and persevered. Nearly every single one of these women was fiercely optimistic—they had faith that their actions could make a difference. And they were right. To us, they are all gutsy women—leaders with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. So in the moments when the long haul seems awfully long, we hope you will draw strength from these stories. We do. Because if history shows one thing, it’s that the world needs gutsy women.

Download or read book 500 Great Books by Women written by Erica Bauermeister and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1994 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often poorly represented in buyers' guides, women's books are now covered in this articulate and intentionally eclectic reader's guide. Covering a wealth of remarkable novels, narratives, biographies, and more, this resource for general readers offers more than 500 entries--capturing the flavor of each book. Includes seven cross-referenced indexes.

Download or read book Almost a Woman written by Esmeralda Santiago and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the enchanting story recounted in When I Was Puerto Rican of the author’s emergence from the barrios of Brooklyn to the prestigious Performing Arts High School in Manhattan, Esmeralda Santiago delivers the tale of her young adulthood, where she continually strives to find a balance between becoming American and staying Puerto Rican. While translating for her mother Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York’s prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she begins to defy her mother’s protective rules, only to find that independence brings new dangers and dilemmas.

Download or read book Till My Tale Is Told written by Semen Samuilovich Vilenskiĭ and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-13 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How extraordinary it is that compassion and tenderness may flourish in the cruellest conditions; how stubbornly and bravely people survive them. This is not a depressing book but an inspiriting and encouraging one." —Doris Lessing "The sixteen life stories are riveting. . . . testimony to the complexity of the human spirit[,] to miracles of survival and endurance in the most hellish of conditions. . . . Till My Tale Is Told remind[s] us of the importance of remembrance and testimony about this particularly brutal chapter of human history." —The Women's Review of Books Arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, trial and sentencing, transport, labor camps, internal exile, sometimes release, often followed by re-arrest and re-imprisonment and, for those who outlived Stalin, eventual reprieve and rehabilitation these are the outlines of the experiences recorded by 16 courageous Russian women whose moving testimonies, most of them written in secret and at great personal risk, are presented here.

Download or read book My Remarkable Journey written by Katherine Johnson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times bestseller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change. In 2015, at the age of 97, Katherine Johnson became a global celebrity. President Barack Obama awarded her the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor—for her pioneering work as a mathematician on NASA’s first flights into space. Her contributions to America’s space program were celebrated in a blockbuster and Academy-award nominated movie. In this memoir, Katherine shares her personal journey from child prodigy in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to NASA human computer. In her life after retirement, she served as a beacon of light for her family and community alike. Her story is centered around the basic tenets of her life—no one is better than you, education is paramount, and asking questions can break barriers. The memoir captures the many facets of this unique woman: the curious “daddy’s girl,” pioneering professional, and sage elder. This multidimensional portrait is also the record of a century of racial history that reveals the influential role educators at segregated schools and Historically Black Colleges and Universities played in nurturing the dreams of trailblazers like Katherine. The author pays homage to her mentor—the African American professor who inspired her to become a research mathematician despite having his own dream crushed by racism. Infused with the uplifting wisdom of a woman who handled great fame with genuine humility and great tragedy with enduring hope, My Remarkable Journey ultimately brings into focus a determined woman who navigated tough racial terrain with soft-spoken grace—and the unrelenting grit required to make history and inspire future generations.

Download or read book Hold Still written by Sally Mann and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This National Book Award finalist is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder." In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

Download or read book A Woman First First Woman written by Selina Meyer and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious parody memoir for the beloved Veep character portrayed for seven seasons by Emmy-winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Born and raised deep in the American heartland of God-fearing suburban Maryland, young Selina Eaton learned to love her country and her fellow man from her parents, Catherine, a sportswoman, dog lover, and philanthropist, and Gordon, or “Daddy” as she always called him, a businessman and entrepreneur. From an early age, Selina, an active, curious, happy-go-lucky child, showed an uncanny ability to relate to others and to solve their real-world problems with real-world solutions. In this she was inspired by her idol: feminist, humanitarian, stateswoman, and first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt maintained a lively relationship with many prominent figures of her time, including Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Albert Schweitzer, and probably Pablo Casals. She inspired countless women to break out of the established roles for women in society, among them the pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart, with whom she flew several times. Dubbed the “Queen of the Air,” Amelia Earhart captivated the nation both with her bravery, skill, and daring when flying her planes and when challenging society’s hidebound attitudes as to what constituted a proper place for women. America mourned when she disappeared mysteriously somewhere in the Pacific during an attempted around-the-world flight in 1937. Speculation continues to this day as to Amelia’s ultimate fate, even as hope has faded that she may yet be found alive. With wit, wisdom, eloquence, and fearless honesty, Selina Meyer reveals for the first time what really goes on in the halls of power, including the ultimate hall, the White House. It’s all here: the triumphs, the tragedies, the personalities, and the momentous events that have shaped our times, brought together in a page-turning tale told as only Selina Meyer could tell it. Selina Meyer’s compassion, her sense of humor, her grace, and her uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this story revelatory, beautifully rendered, and unlike any other president’s memoir ever written. First Woman: A Woman First would be a fitting title for a book about Selina Meyer, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Amelia Earhart, but in this case, it is about Selina Meyer.

Download or read book True Pleasures written by Lucinda Holdforth and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the dazzling women of Paris; from Colette to Nancy Mitford; Marie Antoinette to Coco Chanel; Napoleon's Josephine to Edith Wharton. Rule-breakers and style-setters, these women were utterly diverse, yet they shared one common passion - Paris, the world's headquarters of femininity. At a turning point in her life, Lucinda Holdforth journeys to Paris and takes a very personal tour through the lives, loves and losses of its celebrated women. She evokes the incarnations of the city from Louis XIV through the French Revolution, two world wars and the Paris of the new millennium. And, as she walks in their footsteps, Lucinda draws inspiration from the fascinating women who created and nurtured the world's most civilised city. This enjoyable companion will seduce and delight - and inspire every woman in search of her own true pleasures...

Download or read book The Book of Separation written by Tova Mirvis and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. This will mean forging a new way of life not just for herself, but for her children, who are struggling with what the divorce and her new status as “not Orthodox” mean for them. This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. To free the part of yourself that has been suppressed, even if it means walking away from the only life you’ve ever known. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness.

Download or read book Tenemental written by Vikki Warner and published by Feminist Press at CUNY. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartfelt coming-of-age memoir about taking the unbeaten path, owning a home, and holding it all—including yourself—together. Detouring from the traditional timeline of marriage-kids-house, twenty-six-year-old Vikki Warner skips straight to homeownership. She buys a downtrodden three-story house in Providence, Rhode Island, and suddenly finds herself responsible for a rotating cast of colorful tenants. Adulthood comes with unforeseen challenges: backed-up sewage, gentrification, global economic downturn. A candid portrait of how sharing space profoundly reshapes our lives, and forces us to grow into ourselves. “Forget the marriage plot; 26-year-old Warner is after a plot of land…. [An] ebullient memoir.”—O, The Oprah Magazine “Refreshingly original reading.”—Kirkus Reviews “A thoughtful meditation on communal living and urban identity…. Quirky and fun.”—The Providence Monthly “Wry, smart, personal, and pretty damn punk rock.”—Kate Schatz, author of Rad Women Worldwide “Cheers to Vikki Warner, whose tenacious and inspiring coming-of-age story gives voice to a new generation of independent women and grown-ass boss ladies.”—Margot Kahn, coeditor of This is the Place “Full of color, life, and that special type of real, earned wisdom that only comes with taking risks and trusting completely in your own young self.”—Kate Bolick, author of Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own “An ode to the messiness of life, Tenemental is the incredibly raw, touching, and laugh-out-loud story of a woman figuring out how to get by in the world.”—Emma Ramadan, co-owner of Riffraff Bookstore