Download or read book Misgivings written by C. K. Williams and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intense, refractory memoir by a major poet Misgivings is C. K. Williams's searing recollection of his family's extreme dynamics and of his parents' deaths after years of struggle, bitterness, and inner conflict. Like Kafka's self-revealing Letter to His Father, Misgivings is full of doubt, both philosophical and personal, but as a work of art it is sure and true. Williams's father was an "ordinary businessman"--angry, demanding, addicted to the tension he created with the people he loved; a man who could read the Greek myths aloud to his son yet vowed never to apologize to anybody. His mother was a housewife, a woman with a great capacity for pleasure, who was stoical about the family's dire early poverty yet remained affected by it even when they became well-off. Together, these two formed what Williams calls the "conspiracy that made me who I am." His account of their life together and their deaths--his father's with suicidal despair, and his mother's with calm resignation--is a literary form of the reconciliation the family achieved at the end of his parents' lives. And as literary form it is novel, a series of brilliant short takes, a double helix of experience and recollection. Few contemporary writers have understood their origins so acutely, or so eloquently.
Download or read book Forgiving My Father Forgiving Myself written by Ruth Graham and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we live with unresolved anger or hurt, the result is nearly always bitterness, broken relationships, and unhealthy behaviors. Unforgiveness not only sabotages our interactions with those around us, it impedes our own spiritual growth and inner peace. And it can happen to anyone. In her most vulnerable writing yet, Ruth Graham reveals how a visit to Angola Prison inspired her to release the unforgiveness lurking in her own heart--toward others, herself, and even her heavenly Father and her earthly father, evangelist Billy Graham. In this encouraging book, she weaves her own personal experiences with biblical examples to explore what holds us back from forgiving others and ourselves--and what we gain when we finally discover the power to forgive. Along the way, she guides us into our own deeply personal experiences of forgiveness that will penetrate our protective walls and unleash true transformation in our lives.
Download or read book My Father and Myself written by J. R. Ackerley and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This heartfelt gay memoir about an adult son uncovering his father’s secrets is “a cross between Dickens’s David Copperfield, Rousseau’s Confessions, and the new pornography” (Donald Windham). When his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own—this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley’s pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self—making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
Download or read book Chasing the Hawk written by Andrew Sheehan and published by Delta. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I have always chased my father, chased after his love, chased him through his many changes. I chased him even when I thought I was running in the other direction. Today, even though he is gone, I chase him still. I know he is the key to my freedom.” To runners around the world, Dr. George Sheehan, author of the landmark New York Times bestseller Running and Being, was nothing short of a guru — the country’s “greatest philosopher of sport.” But to his son Andrew, who had spent his entire boyhood longing for the attention and approval of an emotionally distant father, he was an incomprehensible paradox: a lifelong loner, who was now sunning himself in the spotlight of the nation’s press; a hero to millions, who seemed to have no time for his own son. The events that transformed George Sheehan from doctor to family man to bestselling author and media magnet began at the depths of what we would now call a midlife crisis, when he rediscovered an old love — running. Twenty-five years after his days on a high school cross-country team, he remembered how running made him feel free, and began beating a solitary path down his suburban streets. With running as his new religion, the formerly quiet, withdrawn man became an unlikely evangelist, converting a sedentary nation to the theology of fitness, and in the process becoming an internationally known figure. But the freedom he found in running was not enough, and one day he left his family, having decided that life was “an experiment of one,” and it was time for him to start living it. Angry and disillusioned after years of enduring his father’s self-absorption, and hurt by his apparent indifference, Andrew had long since begun the search for his own version of freedom, looking first to drugs and later to alcohol. By his twenties he was a confirmed alcoholic. By his thirties his marriage had fallen apart and he was drinking more heavily than ever. It was at that moment that his father threw him a lifeline. Although he was struggling with the cancer that would eventually end his life, Dr. Sheehan was the first to notice his son’s pain, and to reach out to him. In this stunningly candid book, Andrew Sheehan describes the process through which these two men carefully and lovingly rebuilt their relationship. And in the effort to understand and forgive the dark side of his father’s psyche, Andrew shows how he came to understand, and to transcend, his own. A gracefully written paean to the healing power of forgiveness, a memoir that will resonate with any “fallible” parent or child, Chasing the Hawk traces the arduous steps that carry father and son down the hard road to resolution, healing, and love.
Download or read book My Father My King written by Zelig Pliskin and published by Mesorah Publications. This book was released on 1996 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspiring, comprehensive overview of basic Torah principles from G-d's perspective, with insights and examples drawn from the author's extensive teaching and counseling experience. This is a book that will enlighten both the beginner and the scholar. It will help make us aware of G-d's presence to intensify spiritual experiences and elevate the mundane.
Download or read book Reading My Father written by Alexandra Styron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Reading My Father" is an intimate, moving, and beautifully written portrait of the novelist William Styron by his daughter, Alexandra.
Download or read book My Father My Self written by Masa A. Goetz and published by Element Books. This book was released on 1998-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Goetz describes how a father's positive and negative qualities can affect children and their development into adults, shows how to stop negative cycles, and tells how men can imprint positive influences.
Download or read book Dreams from My Father written by Barack Obama and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman
Download or read book My Father is a Book written by Janna Malamud Smith and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Malamud was one of the most accomplished American novelists of the postwar years. From the Pulitzer Prize winner The Fixer as well as The Assistant, named one of the best "100 All–Time Novels" by Time Magazine—to mention only two of the more than a dozen published books—he not only established himself in the first rank of American writers but also took the country's literature in new and important directions. In her signature memoir, Smith explores her renowned father's life and literary legacy. Malamud was among the most brilliant novelists of his era, and counted among his friends Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Theodore Roethke, and Shirley Jackson. Yet Malamud was also very private. Only his family has had full access to his personal papers, including letters and journals that offer unique insight into the man and his work. In her candid, evocative, and loving memoir, his daughter brings Malamud to vivid life.
Download or read book Days with My Father written by Phillip Toledano and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Days With My Father is a son's photo journal of his aging father's last years. Following the death of his mother, photographer Phillip Toledano was shocked to learn of the extent of his father's severe memory loss. He started a blog on which he posted photographs and accompanying reflections on his father's changing state. Through sometimes sad, often funny, and always loving observations, we follow Toledano as he learns to reconcile the elderly man living in a twilight of half memories with the ambitious and handsome young man he occasionally still glimpses. Days With My Father is an honest and moving reflection about coming to terms with an aging parent.
Download or read book Finding My Father written by Blair Linne and published by The Good Book Company. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A personal story of learning to trust our heavenly Father when you feel your earthly father has let you down. Blair Linne’s personal story of growing up without a father at home reflects the experiences of millions. She weaves her personal story with thoughtful theological reflection, inviting readers to learn from God what "father" really means and to trust him, even if they feel their earthly father has let them down. This book will help readers to shift their eyes from what they do not have in their earthly fathers (who, whether present or absent, loving or the opposite, can never be perfect) to what they do have in their eternal Father, who will never disappoint, reject or abandon them. Readers will see that the gospel promises not just forgiveness but also a place in God's family, experienced in a local church, where they can enjoy the fullness of his fatherly joy, care, wisdom, provision, protection and security. Also includes a chapter by Blair’s husband, the Christian hip-hop artist Shai, on his own story of fatherlessness and faith.
Download or read book Legends from Camp written by Lawson Fusao Inada and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AUTOGRAPHED TO TIM BY THE AUTHOR.
Download or read book My Father Left Me Ireland written by Michael Brendan Dougherty and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perfect gift for parents this Father’s Day: a beautiful, gut-wrenching memoir of Irish identity, fatherhood, and what we owe to the past. “A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace.” –J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy “…a lovely little book.” –Ross Douthat, The New York Times The child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon. Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth. Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book. Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history. In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.
Download or read book Bless Me Too My Father written by Katie Funk Wiebe and published by Herald Press (VA). This book was released on 1988 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Katie Funk Wiebe writes about the many changes we face at midlife. She assures readers that change is normal at this time and need not be disastrous.Wiebe covers many topics, including forgiveness, loneliness, mentoring, women in the church, peace concerns, suffering, and growing older.
Download or read book Mining for Gold written by Tom Camacho and published by Inter-Varsity Press. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Godly thriving leaders are precious and valuable, but developing those leaders is not easy. Many leaders feel stuck, tired and frustrated in their growth and calling. This can change. In Mining for Gold, pastor and master-coach, Tom Camacho, offers a fresh perspective on how to draw out the best in ourselves and in those around us. Cutting through the complexity and challenges of leadership development, he gives us practical and effective tools to help leaders grow personally and develop those around them. Coaching, through the power of the Holy Spirit, provides the clarity and momentum we need to grow. When we get clarity, everything changes. Coaching helps us better understand our identity in Christ, our God-given wiring, and how we naturally bear the most fruit. There is gold in God’s people, waiting to be discovered. Let’s learn to draw out that treasure and help others flourish in their life and leadership.
Download or read book My Father the Pornographer written by Chris Offutt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir in which "writer Chris Offutt struggles to understand his recently deceased father based on his reading of the 400-plus novels [Andrew Offutt]--a well-known writer of pornography in the 1970s and 80s--left him in his will"--Publisher marketing.
Download or read book Stories I Tell Myself written by Juan F. Thompson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunter S. Thompson, “smart hillbilly,” boy of the South, born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky, son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom, public school-educated, jailed at seventeen on a bogus petty robbery charge, member of the U.S. Air Force (Airmen Second Class), copy boy for Time, writer for The National Observer, et cetera. From the outset he was the Wild Man of American journalism with a journalistic appetite that touched on subjects that drove his sense of justice and intrigue, from biker gangs and 1960s counterculture to presidential campaigns and psychedelic drugs. He lived larger than life and pulled it up around him in a mad effort to make it as electric, anger-ridden, and drug-fueled as possible. Now Juan Thompson tells the story of his father and of their getting to know each other during their forty-one fraught years together. He writes of the many dark times, of how far they ricocheted away from each other, and of how they found their way back before it was too late. He writes of growing up in an old farmhouse in a narrow mountain valley outside of Aspen—Woody Creek, Colorado, a ranching community with Hereford cattle and clover fields . . . of the presence of guns in the house, the boxes of ammo on the kitchen shelves behind the glass doors of the country cabinets, where others might have placed china and knickknacks . . . of climbing on the back of Hunter’s Bultaco Matador trail motorcycle as a young boy, and father and son roaring up the dirt road, trailing a cloud of dust . . . of being taken to bars in town as a small boy, Hunter holding court while Juan crawled around under the bar stools, picking up change and taking his found loot to Carl’s Pharmacy to buy Archie comic books . . . of going with his parents as a baby to a Ken Kesey/Hells Angels party with dozens of people wandering around the forest in various stages of undress, stoned on pot, tripping on LSD . . . He writes of his growing fear of his father; of the arguments between his parents reaching frightening levels; and of his finally fighting back, trying to protect his mother as the state troopers are called in to separate father and son. And of the inevitable—of mother and son driving west in their Datsun to make a new home, a new life, away from Hunter; of Juan’s first taste of what “normal” could feel like . . . We see Juan going to Concord Academy, a stranger in a strange land, coming from a school that was a log cabin in the middle of hay fields, Juan without manners or socialization . . . going on to college at Tufts; spending a crucial week with his father; Hunter asking for Juan’s opinion of his writing; and he writes of their dirt biking on a hilltop overlooking Woody Creek Valley, acting as if all the horrible things that had happened between them had never taken place, and of being there, together, side by side . . . And finally, movingly, he writes of their long, slow pull toward reconciliation . . . of Juan’s marriage and the birth of his own son; of watching Hunter love his grandson and Juan’s coming to understand how Hunter loved him; of Hunter’s growing illness, and Juan’s becoming both son and father to his father . . .
