Biographies
The important thing about Margaret Wise Brown
Mac Barnett
jE Barnett
Picture Books, Biographies
A picture book biography of the children's book author shares insights into her life and enduring literary influence.
Looking for Lorraine : the radiant and radical life of Lorraine Hansberry
Imani Perry
BIOGRAPHY /Hansberry, Lorraine
Biographies, LGBTQ+
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work--until now. In 2018, Hansberry will get the recognition she deserves with the PBS American Masters documentary "Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart" and Imani Perry's multi-dimensional, illuminating biography, Looking for Lorraine. After the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry used her prominence in myriad ways: challenging President Kennedy and his brother to take bolder stances on Civil Rights, supporting African anti-colonial leaders, and confronting the romantic racism of the Beat poets and Village hipsters. Though she married a man, she identified as lesbian and, risking censure and the prospect of being outed, joined one of the nation's first lesbian organizations. Hansberry associated with many activists, writers, and musicians, including Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others. Looking for Lorraine is a powerful insight into Hansberry's extraordinary life--a life that was tragically cut far too short.
Added by Melody
The new Negro : the life of Alain Locke
Jeffrey C. Stewart
BIOGRAPHY /Locke, Alain
Biographies, LGBTQ+
A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro--the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness. In The New Negro : The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar and earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. Locke also received a cosmopolitan, aesthetic education through his travels in continental Europe, where he came to appreciate the beauty of art and experienced a freedom unknown to him in the United States. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America and his promotion of the literary and artistic work of African Americans as the quintessential creations of American modernism. In the process he looked to Africa to find the proud and beautiful roots of the race. Shifting the discussion of race from politics and economics to the arts, he helped establish the idea that Black urban communities could be crucibles of creativity. Stewart explores both Locke's professional and private life, including his relationships with his mother, his friends, and his white patrons, as well as his lifelong search for love as a gay man. Stewart's thought-provoking biography recreates the worlds of this illustrious, enigmatic man who, in promoting the cultural heritage of Black people, became--in the process--a New Negro himself.
Added by Melody
Queer, there, and everywhere : 23 people who changed the world
Sarah Prager
306.76 /Prager
Biographies, LGBTQ+
World history has been made by countless lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals -- and you've never heard of many of them. Queer author and activist Sarah Prager delves deep into the lives of 23 people who fought, created, and loved on their own terms. From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn't make it into your history books, these true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era.
Added by Melody
The good neighbor : the life and work of Fred Rogers
Maxwell (Maxwell Evarts Perkins) King
791.45028092 /Rogers
Biographies
Drawing on original interviews, oral histories and archival documents, the author traces the iconic children's program host's personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work.
With biographer, Maxwell King, scheduled to visit Iowa City this Spring, now is the perfect time to dive into this comprehensive account of the life of Fred Rogers, known to many as Mister Rogers. For an informative and inspirational read, place your hold on this book now! -Shawna
I'm still here : black dignity in a world made for whiteness
Austin Channing Brown
305.896 /Brown
Memoir, Biographies
The author's first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when her parents told her they named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. She grew up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, and has spent her life navigating America's racial divide as a writer, a speaker, and an expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion. While so many institutions claim to value diversity in their mission statements, many fall short of matching actions to words. Brown highlights how white middle-class evangelicalism has participated in the rise of racial hostility, and encourages the reader to confront apathy and recognize God's ongoing work in the world.
Brown's powerful memoir dives deep into her experience as a black woman in the United States. She takes a holistic approach in describing interactions and relationships with white people from interviews to neighborhoods to school. Brown is a writer and lecturer on Christianity and she addresses race and religion in this book. -Anne M
Sign my name to freedom : a memoir of a pioneering life
Betty Reid Soskin
979.4 /Soskin
Memoir, Biographies
"In Betty Reid Soskin's 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for black folk that followed. In her lifetime, Betty has watched the nation begin to confront its race and gender biases when forced to come together in the World War II era; seen our differences nearly break us apart again in the upheavals of the civil rights and Black Power eras; and, finally, lived long enough to witness both the election of an African-American president and the re-emergence of a militant, racist far right. Blending together selections from many of Betty's hundreds of blog entries with interviews, letters, and speeches, Sign My Name to Freedom invites you along on that journey, through the words and thoughts of a national treasure who has never stopped looking at herself, the nation, or the world with fresh eyes"--
For another memoir spanning the 20th Century, check out National Park Ranger and nonagenarian Betty Reid Soskin’s “Sign My Name to Freedom: a Memoir of a Pioneering Life.” -Anne M
Becoming
Michelle Obama
BIOGRAPHY Obama, Michelle
Memoir, Biographies
"An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. When she was a little girl, Michelle Robinson's world was the South Side of Chicago, where she and her brother, Craig, shared a bedroom in their family's upstairs apartment and played catch in the park, and where her parents, Fraser and Marian Robinson, raised her to be outspoken and unafraid. But life soon look her much further afield, from the halls of Princeton, where she learned for the first time what if felt like to be the only black woman in a room, to the glassy office tower where she worked as a high-powered corporate lawyer--and where, one summer morning, a law student named Barack Obama appeared in her office and upended all her carefully made plans. Here, for the first time, Michelle Obama describes the early years of her marriage as she struggles to balance her work and family with her husband's fast-moving political career. She takes us inside their private debate over whether he should make a run for the presidency and her subsequent role as a popular but oft-criticized figure during his campaign. Narrating with grace, good humor, and uncommon candor, she provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of her family's history-making launch into the global limelight as well as their life inside the White House over eight momentous years--as she comes to know her country and her country comes to know her. [This book] takes us through modest Iowa kitchens and ballrooms at Buckingham Palace, through moments of heart-stopping grief and profound resilience, bringing us deep into the soul of a singular, groundbreaking figure in history as she strives to live authentically, marshaling her personal strength and voice in service of a set of higher ideals. In telling her story with honesty and boldness, she issues a challenge to the rest of us: Who are we and who do we want to become?"--Dust jacket.
The most popular book at the Iowa City Public Library right now is Michelle Obama’s new memoir, “Becoming.” Obama gives an intimate account of her life growing up in a working class family in Chicago to serving as the First Lady of the United States—a life of contrasts. Her memoir is honest and real, making the life of an American icon tangible. -Anne M
Song in a weary throat : memoir of an American pilgrimage
Pauli Murray
BIOGRAPHY Murray, Pauli
Biographies
"A prophetic memoir by the activist who "articulated the intellectual foundations" (The New Yorker) of the civil rights and women's rights movements. Poet, memoirist, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray helped transform the law of the land. Arrested in 1940 for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus, Murray propelled that life-defining event into a Howard law degree and a fight against "Jane Crow" sexism. Her legal brilliance was pivotal to the overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson, the success of Brown v. Board of Education, and the Supreme Court's recognition that the equal protection clause applies to women; it also connected her with such progressive leaders as Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, Betty Friedan, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Now Murray is finally getting long-deserved recognition: the first African American woman to receive a doctorate of law at Yale, her name graces one of the university's new colleges. Handsomely republished with a new introduction, Murray's remarkable memoir takes its rightful place among the great civil rights autobiographies of the twentieth century."--Provided by publisher.
There is a long-overdue, new edition of Pauli Murray’s “Song in a Weary Throat.” Originally published in 1987, Murray’s memoir encompasses the multitudes she contained. She was a poet, an academic, an ordained Episcopal priest, a Civil Rights activist, and a brilliant lawyer, influential in the pivotal Civil Rights cases of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Murray’s memoir shows that none of this was enough—a book that describes the discrimination she faced because of her race and because of her gender. -Anne M
Romantic outlaws : the extraordinary lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley
Charlotte Gordon
BIOGRAPHY Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Biographies
Mary Shelley's 1818 publication of Frankenstein brought life to one of the most recognizable horror creatures. Learn more about her and her mother, philosopher and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft in this 2015 Biography. -Shawna
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