Download or read book Memoirs of a Brooklyn Girl written by Christine A. Shanklin and published by America Star Books. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the true life story of Chrissie; walk with this little girl hand in hand from her childhood into early adolescence through the streets of Brooklyn, New York, through the 70's and into the 80's. At the same time, you will walk with her hand in hand through her home, its dark dysfunctionality, the terror and the morbid experiences and situations she is thrust into. Ultimately understanding why she unequivocally loathes the people that most people call family, and what molded Chrissie into a tough trite and true New Yorker. What began as a therapeutic task, quickly bloomed into a story the grown-up Chrissie found compelled to tell in its entirety, so she could rid herself of the insanity, horror, fear and guilt that has haunted and shaped her life since childhood.

Download or read book A Girl from Brooklyn written by Barbara Ponte and published by . This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Memoir of a New Jersey woman born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

Download or read book Give a Girl a Knife written by Amy Thielen and published by Clarkson Potter Publishers. This book was released on 2017 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amy Thielen, author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook The New Midwestern Table, traces her journey from Park Rapids, Minnesota, to cooking professionally under some of New York City's finest chefs -- including David Bouley, Daniel Boulud, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten -- and then back home again. A love of food and an overwhelming desire to get the hell out of small-town America drive Thielen to New York to seek out its intense culinary world, which she embraces enthusiastically, while her boyfriend finds success in its fickle art world. After years of living in the city, with frequent trips back home in the summertime, the couple eventually chooses life deep in the woods in a cabin Thielen's husband built by hand. There Aaron can practice his craft while Amy takes the skills she learned cooking professionally and turns them to undoing years of processed foods to uncover true Midwestern cooking, which begins simply with humble workhorse ingredients such as potatoes and onions.

Download or read book Recollections of My Life as a Woman written by Diane di Prima and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-03-26 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Recollections of My Life as a Woman, Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

Download or read book The Girl s Guide to Homelessness written by Brianna Karp and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brianna Karp entered the workforce at age ten, supporting her mother and sister throughout her teen years in Southern California. Although her young life was scarred by violence and abuse, Karp stayed focused on her dream of a steady job and a home of her own. By age twenty-two her dream became reality. Karp loved her job as an executive assistant and signed the lease on a tiny cottage near the beach. And then the Great Recession hit. Karp, like millions of others, lost her job. In the six months between the day she was laid off and the day she was forced out onto the street, Karp scrambled for temp work and filed hundreds of job applications, only to find all doors closed. When she inherited a thirty-foot travel trailer after her father's suicide, Karp parked it in a Walmart parking lot and began to blog about her search for work and a way back.

Download or read book What Clouds There Were Were White written by Josephine Fincken and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2003-12-26 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If America had a heart, one might call it Brooklyn. This story is a small piece of that heart, told with verve by a young girl who dreams of becoming a writer. In these pages, she records her travel from fourteen through "sweet sixteen" (1929-1930), mixing the routines of her neighborhood life in Flatbush with poems, radio song lyrics, her love of books, regular trips to the theater to watch the latest "pictures," illustrations of her Jazz Age clothes, and her romantic notions about boys. Here, at the beginning of the Depression, she reluctantly shortens her education to learn marketable skills at a business schooltyping, shorthand, letter-writingand finds her first job in Manhattan at a fan manufacturing firm for $15/week. Though the novel she is co-writing with her girl friend is ultimately burned in the winter woods, this, the truer, fuller story, survives. It is, at heart, a coming-of-ages narrative. Posthumously published, this book finally fulfills her girlhood dream.

Download or read book Duck and Cover written by Rosemary Neri Villanella and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on 2017-04-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Duck and Cover is a memoir born of Rosemary's desire to transport readers back to the beloved 1960's Brooklyn of her youth, with its familiar streets and stoops, during a more innocent time in this fabled borough. Yet Duck and Cover is also a coming-of-age tale, spotlighting the universal struggle of a young girl forging an individual identity- and trying not to attract too much attention-while carefully navigating her way across that crucial border between childhood and adolescence.

Download or read book Low Country written by J. Nicole Jones and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From horse thieves to hurricanes, from shattered Southern myths to fractured family ties, from Nashville to Myrtle Beach to Miami, Low Country is a lyrical, devastating, fiercely original memoir" of one family's changing fortunes in the Low Country of South Carolina (Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost). J. Nicole Jones is the only daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, a family that grew rich building the hotels and seafood restaurants that draw tourists to Myrtle Beach. But at home, she is surrounded by violence and capriciousness: a grandfather who beats his wife, a barman father who dreams of being a country music star. At one time, Jones's parents can barely afford groceries; at another, her volatile grandfather presents her with a fur coat. After a girlhood of extreme wealth and deep debt, of ghosts and folklore, of cruel men and unwanted spectacle, Jones finds herself face to face with an explosive possibility concerning her long-abused grandmother that she can neither speak nor shake. And through the lens of her own family's catastrophes and triumphs, Jones pays homage to the landscapes and legends of her childhood home, a region haunted by its history: Eliza Pinckney cultivates indigo, Blackbeard ransacks the coast, and the Gray Man paces the beach, warning of Hurricane Hazel.

Download or read book Persian Girls written by Nahid Rachlin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-12-27 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years, heartache prevented Nahid Rachlin from turning her sharp novelist's eye inward: to tell the story of how her own life diverged from that of her closest confidante and beloved sister, Pari. Growing up in Iran, both refused to accept traditional Muslim mores, and dreamed of careers in literature and on the stage. Their lives changed abruptly when Pari was coerced by their father into marrying a wealthy and cruel suitor. Nahid narrowly avoided a similar fate, and instead negotiated with him to pursue her studies in America. When Nahid received the unsettling and mysterious news that Pari had died after falling down a flight of stairs, she traveled back to Iran--now under the Islamic regime--to find out what happened to her truest friend, confront her past, and evaluate what the future holds for the heartbroken in a tale of crushing sorrow, sisterhood, and ultimately, hope.

Download or read book An Italian Girl in Brooklyn written by Santa Montefiore and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From #1 internationally bestselling author Santa Montefiore comes a spellbinding new novel about dark secrets and hidden sorrows—set in war-torn Italy and the streets of New York. New York, 1979. It is Thanksgiving and Evelina has her close family and beloved friends gathered around, her heart weighted with gratitude for what she has and regret for what she has given up. She has lived in America for over thirty years, but she is still Italian in her soul. Northern Italy, 1934. Evelina leads a sheltered life with her parents and siblings in a villa of fading grandeur. When her elder sister Benedetta marries a banker, to suit her father’s wishes rather than her own, Evelina swears that she will never marry out of duty. She knows nothing of romantic love, but when she meets Ezra, son of the local dressmaker, her heart recognises it like an old friend. Evelina wants these carefree days to last forever. She wants to bask in sunshine, beauty, and love, and pay no heed to the grey clouds gathering on the horizon. But nothing lasts forever. The shadows of war are darkening over Europe and precious lives are under threat…

Download or read book When I Was Puerto Rican written by Esmeralda Santiago and published by Palabra. This book was released on 2006-02-28 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic, sexual tension, high comedy, and intense drama move through an enchanted yet harsh autobiography, in the story of a young girl who leaves rural Puerto Rico for New York's tenements and a chance for success.

Download or read book Cook Korean written by Robin Ha and published by Ten Speed Graphic. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller • A charming introduction to the basics of Korean cooking in graphic novel form, with 64 recipes, ingredient profiles, and more, presented through light-hearted comics. Fun to look at and easy to use, this unique combination of cookbook and graphic novel is the ideal introduction to cooking Korean cuisine at home. Robin Ha’s colorful and humorous one-to three-page comics fully illustrate the steps and ingredients needed to bring more than sixty traditional (and some not-so-traditional) dishes to life. In these playful but exact recipes, you’ll learn how to create everything from easy kimchi (mak kimchi) and soy garlic beef over rice (bulgogi dupbap) to seaweed rice rolls (gimbap) and beyond. Friendly and inviting, Cook Korean! is perfect for beginners and seasoned cooks alike. Each chapter includes personal anecdotes and cultural insights from Ha, providing an intimate entry point for those looking to try their hand at this cuisine.

Download or read book The Black Girl Next Door written by Jennifer Baszile and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-01-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in "integrated," post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s. At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people "have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people." When she asked her teacher about it, it was confirmed as true. The next morning, Jennifer's father accompanied her to school, careful to "assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom." This was the first of many skirmishes in Jennifer's childhood-long struggle to define herself as "the black girl next door" while living out her parents' dreams. Success for her was being the smartest and achieving the most, with the consequence that much of her girlhood did not seem like her own but more like the "family project." But integration took a toll on everyone in the family when strain in her parents' marriage emerged in her teenage years, and the struggle to be the perfect black family became an unbearable burden. A deeply personal view of a significant period of American social history, The Black Girl Next Door deftly balances childhood experiences with adult observations, creating an illuminating and poignant look at a unique time in our country's history.

Download or read book Brooklyn Story written by Suzanne Corso and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-12-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfectly evoking the sights and sounds of the summer of 1978 in Brooklyn, Suzanne Corso makes an acclaimed fiction debut with this powerful coming-of-age tale, told from an adult perspective, of family, best friends, first loves, and big dreams waiting to come true. Samantha Bonti is fifteen years old, half Jewish and half Italian, and hesitantly edging toward pure Brooklyn. She lives in Bensonhurst with her mother, Joan, a woman poisoned with cynicism and shackled by addictions; and with her Grandma Ruth, Samantha’s loudest and most opinionated source of encouragement. As flawed as they are, they are family. And this is home—a tight-knit community of ancestors and traditions, of controlling mobsters, compliant wives, and charismatic young guys willing to engage in anything illegal to get a shot at playing with the big boys. Yet Samantha has something that even her most simpatico girlfriend, Janice Caputo, doesn’t share—a desire to become a writer and to escape their insular, overcrowded little world and the destiny that is assumed for all of them. Then comes Tony Kroon. He’s a gorgeous mobster wannabe, a Bensonhurst Adonis whose seductive charms Samantha finds irresistible—even when she knows she’s too smart to fall this deep . . . but Samantha soon finds herself swallowed up by dangerous circumstances that threaten to jeopardize more than her dreams. Grandma Ruth’s advice: Samantha had better write herself out of this story and into a new one, fast.

Download or read book Such a Pretty Girl written by Nadina LaSpina and published by New Village Press. This book was released on 2019-07-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir by a disability rights activist Such a Pretty Girl is Nadina LaSpina's story—from her early years in her native Sicily, where still a baby she contracts polio, a fact that makes her the object of well-meaning pity and the target of messages of hopelessness; to her adolescence and youth in America, spent almost entirely in hospitals, where she is tortured in the quest for a cure and made to feel that her body no longer belongs to her; to her rebellion and her activism in the disability rights movement. LaSpina’s personal growth parallels the movement’s political development—from coming together, organizing, and fighting against exclusion from public and social life, to the forging of a common identity, the blossoming of disability arts and culture, and the embracing of disability pride. While unique, the author's journey is also one with which many disabled people can identify. It is the journey to find one's place in an ableist world—a world not made for disabled people, where disability is only seen in negative terms. La Spina refutes all stereotypical narratives of disability. Through the telling of her life’s story, without editorializing, she shows the harm that the overwhelming focus on pity and on a cure that remains elusive has done to disabled people. Her story exposes the disability prejudice ingrained in our sociopolitical system and denounces the oppressive standards of normalcy in a society that devalues those who are different and denies them basic rights. Written as continuous narrative and in a subtle and intimate voice, Such a Pretty Girl is a memoir as captivating as a novel. It is one of the few disability memoirs to focus on activism, and one of the first by an immigrant.

Download or read book Good Girl written by Sarah Tomlinson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-04-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Told with raw, rugged honesty, this heartrending memoir recounts the author's unconventional upbringing and coming-of-age as colored by her complicated relationship with her father"--

Download or read book Knocked Down written by Aileen Weintraub and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A laugh-out-loud memoir about a free-spirited, commitment-phobic Brooklyn girl who, after a whirlwind romance, finds herself living in a rickety farmhouse, pregnant, and faced with five months of doctor-prescribed bed rest because of unusually large fibroids. Aileen Weintraub has been running away from commitment her entire life, hopping from one job and one relationship to the next. When her father suddenly dies, she flees her Jewish Brooklyn community for the wilds of the country, where she unexpectedly falls in love with a man who knows a lot about produce, tractors, and how to take a person down in one jiu-jitsu move. Within months of saying “I do” she’s pregnant, life is on track, and then wham! Her doctor slaps a high-risk label on her uterus and sends her to bed for five months. As her husband’s bucolic (and possibly haunted) farmhouse begins to collapse and her marriage starts to do the same, Weintraub finally confronts her grief for her father while fighting for the survival of her unborn baby. In her precarious situation, will she stay or will she once again run away from it all? Knocked Down is an emotionally charged, laugh-out-loud roller-coaster ride of survival and growth. It is a story about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take.