Download or read book Happy Life Blues written by Cecily Mattocks Marshall and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Livin the Blues written by Frank Marshall Davis and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2003-04-15 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank Marshall Davis was a prominent poet, journalist, jazz critic, and civil rights activist on the Chicago and Atlanta scene from the 1920s through 1940s. He was an intimate of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright and an influential editor at the Chicago Evening Bulletin, the Chicago Whip, the Chicago Star, and the Atlanta World. He renounced his writing career in 1948 and moved to Hawaii, forgotten until the Black Arts Movement rediscovered him in the 1960s. Because of his early self-exile from the literary limelight, Davis's life and work have been shrouded in mystery. Livin' the Blues offers us a chance to rediscover this talented poet and writer and stands as an important example of black autobiography, similar in form, style, and message to those of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. "Both a social commentary and intellectual exploration into African American life in the twentieth century."—Charles Vincent, Atlanta History

Download or read book Little Boy Blues written by Malcolm Jones and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Malcolm Jones, his parents’ disintegrating marriage was at the center of life in North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s. His father, charming but careless, was often drunk and away from home; his mother, a schoolteacher and faded Southern belle, clung to the past and hungered for respectability. In Little Boy Lost, Jones—one of our most admired cultural observers—recalls a childhood in which this relationship played out against the larger cracks of society: the convulsions of desegregation and a popular culture that threatens the church-centered life of his family. He richly evokes a time and place with rare depth and candor, giving us the fundamental stories of a life—where he comes from, who he was, who he has become.

Download or read book Blues All Around Me written by B. B. King and published by It Books. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: B. B. King has the blues running through his blood. Growing up in the rural poverty of the Mississippi Delta, King first experienced the blues at nine years old, when his mother passed away. The man of the house before the end of his first decade, he used this strife as a source of inspiration and launched one of the most celebrated musical careers in American history. King has led a remarkable life, and this riveting autobiography dramatizes his whirlwind adventures from the Memphis of the forties to the Moscow of the nineties with unflinching candor and sincerity. But most of all, B.B.'s story is the story of the blues—the evolution from country acoustic to urban electric, the birth and explosion of rock 'n' roll—and B.B.'s own long, but ultimately triumphant, struggle for crossover success, during which he remained unwaveringly true to the music of his heart.

Download or read book Bourgeois Blues written by Jake Lamar and published by Plume Books. This book was released on 1992 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning memoir of a gifted young middle-class black man and his struggle to succeed in white America. Born in 1961, Jake Lamar was unable to escape a heritage of racism despite being well-educated and accomplished. Here Lamar, a former associate editor for Time magazine, illuminates the ironies of integration and America's history of prejudice.

Download or read book Blue Sky Dream written by David Beers and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2012-05-02 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America’s Fall from Grace, award-winner David Beers offers a powerful, personal vision of the rise and fall of the American middle class. Here is a dazzling literary chronicle of a family, a people, and a nation: the “blue sky tribe” of ever-optimistic middle-class Americans who believed in something called the American Dream, then woke up one day to discover it was gone. Blue Sky Dream is a book incredibly rich in ideas, in ways of seeing the recent past with stunning clarity. David Beers explores issues that define our times—downsizing, middle-class anxiety, the profound anger with government, the sense that something has gone awry with the United States—with such skill, personal immediacy, and compassion that readers will see their own histories in his prose. Blue Sky Dream can rightly be called a communal memoir, because in telling his family’s tale—growing tensions and disillusionment in their suburban paradise, a son rejecting his parents’ values, one sudden and inexplicable moment of violence—Beers tells the story of his people, the blue sky tribe “who imagined ourselves to be living the inevitable future, and are very surprised today to discover we were but a strange and aberrant moment that is now receding into history.”

Download or read book The Blue Cascade written by Mike Scotti and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this searing and beautifully written memoir, Marine Lieutenant and CNN Op-Ed contributor Mike Scotti charts a course from the front lines of Iraq back home to New York, showing how sometimes the hardest battle is the one after the war. Sometimes the hardest battle is the one after the war. As one of the soldiers on the front line of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Lieutenant Scotti was taught that weakness is what gets you killed: no hesitation, focus your energies on your objective, and complete the mission. Upon returning from war, Scotti approached his new life the same way. He ignored the creeping depression and numbness he called "The Blue Cascade" and charged ahead toward his goal to get an MBA, secure a high-paying finance job, and retire young and rich. But he was being eaten away inside, and scenes of drunken emotion and raging violence were becoming more and more frequent. Years after returning from active combat, he eventually found himself contemplating suicide. Through a series of powerful events, Scotti was ultimately able to find a path to healing and begin his journey back to life, finally emerging with the following wisdom for fellow sufferers of post-traumatic stress:It's ok if you are not ok.

Download or read book Mister Satan s Apprentice written by Adam Gussow and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Gussow is a writer and blues harmonica player. He is associate professor of English and southern studies at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

Download or read book Monkey House Blues written by Dominic Stevenson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1993, Dominic Stevenson left a comfortable life with his girlfriend in Kyoto, Japan, to travel to China. His journey took him to some of the most inhospitable and dangerous places in the world, from the poppy fields of the Afghan-Pakistan border to the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road, before he was arrested for drug smuggling while boarding a boat from Shanghai to Japan. After eight months on remand in a Chinese police lock-up, Stevenson was sentenced to two and a half years in one of the biggest prisons in the world, the Shanghai Municipal Prison aka 'The Monkey House'. There, he was imprisoned alongside just five westerners amongst five thousand Chinese criminals in a block for death row inmates and political prisoners, where the guards drank green tea and let the prison run itself. The experience led him to reflect on his previous life in Japan, India and Thailand, during which time he took on a varied array of jobs, including English teacher, karaoke-bar host, factory worker, busker, crystal seller and dope smuggler. From Afghan gun shops to Tibetan monasteries, Thai brothels and the stirrings of the rave culture in Goa, Monkey House Blues is a tale of discovery and rediscovery, of friendship and betrayal.

Download or read book Good Morning Blues written by Count Basie and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Count Basie was one of America’s pre-eminent and influential jazz pianists, bandleaders, and composers, known for such classics as “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” “Goin’ to Chicago Blues,” “Sent for You Yesterday and Here You Come Today,” and “One O’Clock Jump.” In Good Morning Blues, Basie recounts his life story to Albert Murray, from his childhood years playing ragtime with his own pickup band at dances and pig roasts, to his years in New York City in search of opportunity, to rollicking anecdotes of Basie’s encounters with Fats Waller, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr., Quincy Jones, Billie Holliday, and Tony Bennett. In this classic of jazz autobiography that was ten years in the making, Albert Murray brings the voice of Count Basie to the printed page in what is both testimony and tribute to an incredibly rich life.

Download or read book Blue written by David Coggins and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He gained instant fans around the world with tales of his family's many years visiting Paris in winter. Now David Coggins brings to curious, travel-loving readers the same degree of enviable stories and charming illustrations, this time from St. Barts--a perfect compliment to the first book in the series. Blue: A St. Barts Memoir by artist and writer David Coggins is an affectionate, poetic account of his family's annual visits to St. Barthelemy in the French West Indies. As in his popular Paris in Winter, the pages of Blue are full of lyrical writing and vivid watercolors and ink drawings. Coggins and his family have a passion for the simple yet sophisticated pleasures of life on the beautiful French island. That passion is contagious, and the reader is soon caught up in rituals developed and refined over 20 years. Much of it centers around the mountain villa where they stay and the timeless joys of the Caribbean: swimming, reading, sailing, meals overlooking the sea. Coggins describes the natural world lovingly, and captures it in his drawings--sublime sky and sea, lush tropical gardens, abundant wildlife from iguanas to whales. He writes about social life, about the famous and glamorous but more about people who live on the island, chefs, artists, wine sellers, sailors. Blue is a delight for the eye and the mind, an antidote to the pressures of urban life. It's a deeply personal telling of one family's experiences in an idyllic setting, but Coggins's gifts as storyteller and illustrator, conveyed with humanity and a love of life, make Blue universally enchanting.

Download or read book Blue Suburbia written by Laurie Albanese and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2004-03-16 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blue Suburbia is a searing memoir so fresh, original, and honest that it will break your heart and renew your faith in the human spirit. With each spare stroke of her pen, Laurie Lico Albanese paints a vivid portrait of the blue-collar landscape of her childhood -- rusted swing sets, auto body shops, greasy hands, home improvements -- taking readers along for the wild, treacherous ride that leads to her escape. Her mother may stand silently at the sink year after year, or lie in the basement weeping, but Albanese is determined to flee the deadening certainty of her parents' lives. Her story does not disappoint us. By turns haunting, hilarious, tragic, and romantic, Blue Suburbia is the chronicle of a determined young woman who overcomes family limitations, socio-economic obstacles, and personal fears to build a happy -- and blessedly ordinary -- life. Written entirely in free verse, Blue Suburbia's cadence is a steady, rhythmic heartbeat, pulsing with pain, rebellion, love, and triumph. This is the story many of us might tell, if we had the courage.

Download or read book Father Of The Blues written by W. C. Handy and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1991-03-22 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: W. C. Handy's blues—“Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "St. Louis Blues"—changed America's music forever. In Father of the Blues, Handy presents his own story: a vivid picture of American life now vanished. W. C. Handy (1873–1958) was a sensitive child who loved nature and music; but not until he had won a reputation did his father, a preacher of stern Calvinist faith, forgive him for following the "devilish" calling of black music and theater. Here Handy tells of this and other struggles: the lot of a black musician with entertainment groups in the turn-of-the-century South; his days in minstrel shows, and then in his own band; how he made his first 100 from "Memphis Blues"; how his orchestra came to grief with the First World War; his successful career in New York as publisher and song writer; his association with the literati of the Harlem Renaissance.Handy's remarkable tale—pervaded with his unique personality and humor—reveals not only the career of the man who brought the blues to the world's attention, but the whole scope of American music, from the days of the old popular songs of the South, through ragtime to the great era of jazz.

Download or read book Alabama Blue written by Toni K. Pacini and published by . This book was released on 2016-04-09 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From white trash mill village girl to Senior-Cinderella. In Alabama Blue, Toni K. Pacini, shares her tumultuous journey. A girl raised-up like an invasive weed in an Alabama cotton mill village where illiteracy, bigotry, religious fanaticism, and abuse were as commonplace as fried chicken on Sunday. From pillar to post, and coast to coast, she sought a dauntingly illusive refuge. Toni fled a life predestined for sorrow from cold cradle to cold crypt, and she made it! Her life needed a major re-write, and in Alabama Blue, she rewrote the hopelessness into hope, the sorrow into joy, and left the past to rest, as she moved forward into a new tomorrow.

Download or read book Bluets written by Maggie Nelson and published by Wave Books. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . . A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.

Download or read book Blue Eyed Boy written by Robert Timberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From journalist Robert Timberg, a memoir of the struggle to reclaim his life after being severely burned as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam. In January 1967, Robert Timberg was a short-timer, counting down the days until his combat tour ended. He had thirteen days to go when his vehicle struck a Viet Cong land mine, resulting in third-degree burns of his face and much of his body. He survived, barely, then began the arduous battle back, determined to build a new life and make it matter. Remarkable as was his return to health--he endured no less than thirty-five operations--perhaps more remarkable was his decision to reinvent himself as a journalist, one of the most public of professions. Blue-Eyed Boy is a gripping, occasionally comic account of what it took for an ambitious man, aware of his frightful appearance but hungry for meaning and accomplishment, to master a new craft amid the pitying stares and shocked reactions of many he encountered on a daily basis. Timberg was at the top of his game as White House correspondent for The Baltimore Sun when suddenly his work brought his life full circle: the Iran-Contra scandal broke. At its heart were three fellow Naval Academy graduates and Vietnam-era veterans. Timberg's coverage of that story resulted in his first book, The Nightingale's Song, a powerful work of narrative nonfiction that follows the three academy graduates most deeply involved in Iran-Contra--Oliver North among them--as well as two other well-known Navy men, John McCain and James Webb, from the academy through Vietnam and into the Reagan years. In Blue-Eyed Boy, Timberg relates how he came to know these five men and how their stories helped him understand the ways the Vietnam War and the furor that swirled around it continue to haunt the nation, even now, nearly four decades after its dismal conclusion. Timberg is no saint, and he has traveled a hard and often bitter road.

Download or read book All Boys Aren t Blue written by George M. Johnson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. A New York Times Bestseller! Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, Today Show, and MSNBC feature stories From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. Velshi Banned Book Club Indie Bestseller Teen Vogue Recommended Read Buzzfeed Recommended Read People Magazine Best Book of the Summer A New York Library Best Book of 2020 A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2020 ... and more!