Memoir
Long live the tribe of fatherless girls
T Kira Madden
BIOGRAPHY /Madden, T Kira
Memoir, LGBTQ+
The acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut is a memoir about coming of age as a queer, biracial teenager within the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where cult-like privilege, shocking social and racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hide in plain sight. As a child in Florida, T Kira Madden lived a life of extravagance--from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoes, she had plenty to envy. But beneath the surface, life in "the rat's mouth" of Boca Raton was dangerous. Left to her own devices as both parents battled drug addiction, Kira navigated the perils of coming of age too quickly, and without guidance--oblivious parents and misguided babysitters at home, tormentors at school, sexual predators at the mall, and the confused, often destructive, desperately loving friendship of fatherless girls. With unflinching honesty and moving, lyrical prose, and spanning from 1960's Hawai'i to the nip and tuck rooms of 1990s Florida to the present-day struggle of a young woman in a culture of harassment, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is the story of families both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful
All the Wild Hungers
Karen Babine
616.994 /Babine
Memoir, Literary Nonfiction
“My sister is pregnant with a Lemon this week, Week 14, and this is amusing. My mother’s uterine tumor, the size of a cabbage, is Week 30, and this is terrifying.” When her mother is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Karen Babine—a cook, collector of thrifted vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits herself to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving headfirst into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast. In these essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. What draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease? What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found—and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations? Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family’s experience of illness and of a writer’s culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable.
Really beautiful language and emotionally gripping. -Melody
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
The only street in Paris : life on the Rue des Martyrs
Elaine Sciolino
944.361 /Sciolino
Nonfiction, Memoir
Rue des Martyrs is more than just a street, it's an enchanting and bustling community in Paris. At just over half a mile long, spanning between the Ninth and 18th arrondissements, this street is filled with four- and five-story buildings of varying architectural designs, with picturesque wrought-iron balconies and shuttered windows and small businesses at street level. As the author (La Seduction), a former Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, explores her neighborhood, she describes its fascinating history, from ancient churches and the saints and martyrs the street may be named after to the 19th-century Cirque Medrano. The quaint cafés and shops remain locally owned, per Paris law, and their merchants and artisans are the leading characters of the book--and of the street. There's Roger Henri, who pushes a cart with a bell offering his knife-sharpening services; Michou, the owner and creator of the transvestite cabaret at No. 80; and Laurence Gillery, the woman who restores antique barometers, the last of her kind. The atmosphere on rue des Martyrs is refreshing and enticing in our modern world.
Elaine Sciolino's book is a lovely paean to the Rue des Martrys, a street that runs north-south through the 9th arrondisement of Paris, and into the village of Montmartre. She chronicles the lives and activities of the storefronts and shopkeepers who live and work there, as well as the life and changing nature of the street itself. The assortment of shops--many of them providing fresh foods and personal services--help to create a sense of community among the residents that seems uniquely Parisian, and possibly of a bygone era. -Candice
Hey, kiddo
Jarrett Krosoczka
362.2913 /Krosoczka
Graphic Novels, Memoir, Young Adult
"In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka's teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett's family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an addict, in and out of rehab, and in and out of Jarrett's life. His father is a mystery -- Jarrett doesn't know where to find him, or even what his name is. Jarrett lives with his grandparents -- two very loud, very loving, very opinionated people who had thought they were through with raising children until Jarrett came along"--
This book is getting rave reviews and was easy to see why. Hey, Kiddo is the graphic memoir of author-illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Raised by his colorful grandparents, who adopted him because his mother was an incarcerated heroin addict, Krosoczka didn't know his father's name until he saw his birth certificate when registering for a school ski trip. Hey, Kiddo traces Krosoczka's search for his father, his difficult interactions with his mother, his day-to-day life with his grandparents, and his path to becoming an artist. The artwork does, as intended, look like a memory or dream sequence and adds to the intensity of the book. It is a very honest description of his life growing up and at times can be very dark. Knowing the books he now writes and illustrates for children, it is amazing to see him overcome his upbringing to be the success he is today, it proves to be a very powerful message for everyone to take away. -Angie
Lab girl
Hope Jahren
570.92 /Jahren
Nonfiction, Science, Memoir
"An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world,"--Amazon.com.
Added by Jason
The art of the wasted day
Patricia Hampl
818.5409 /Hampl
Nonfiction, Literary Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel
In an effort to discover the value of daydreaming and leisure, the author sets out on a journey that will take her to the homes of people who famously wasted time daydreaming, but were better for it, including Gregor Mendel.
Hampl extols the happiness and contentment that can come from simply being, the up-side of letting things go, taking a look around, going within. She travels far and wide to find others who hit upon this idea in one way or another, at the same time seeking to recover some sort of 'ease' that has missing from her life since the death of her husband. A sweet, quiet book. -Candice
Apprenticed to Venus : my secret life with Anaïs Nin
Tristine Rainer
818.52 NinYr
Memoir
“I first met Anaïs in 1962 at her Village apartment, when I was an eighteen-year-old virgin.” And so begins Tristine Rainer’s years as Anaïs Nin’s accomplice, keeping Nin’s confidences—including that of her bigamy—even after Nin’s death and the passing of her husbands, until now. Apprenticed to Venus charts Rainer’s coming of age under the guidance of Anaïs Nin: lover to Henry Miller, Parisian diarist, author of the erotic bestseller Delta of Venus, and feminist icon of the sexual revolution. As an inexperienced young woman, Tristine was dazzled by the sophisticated bohemian author and sought her instruction in becoming a woman. From their first meeting in Greenwich Village through Nin’s death in 1977, Tristine remained a fixture of Anaïs Nin’s inner circle, implicated in the mysterious author’s secrets—while simultaneously finding her own way through love, lust, and loss. From personal memories to dramatized scenarios based on Nin’s revelations to the author, Apprenticed to Venus blurs the lines between novel and memoir, bringing Anaïs Nin to life in new way—a pioneer whose mantra was, “A woman has as much right to pleasure as a man!” A compelling look at the intricacies—and risks—of female friendship and the mentor-protégé relationship, Tristine Rainer’s Apprenticed to Venus is the intimate story of an entanglement only she could tell.
I have always been interested in the literary figure Anais Nin, ever since I was 12 and discovered a dusty old bound copy of her diaries in a library. This is an interesting perspective on Nin from a person who got closer to her than most. Nin was purposefully very secretive and enigmatic - there is much, much more on that topic in this book. Recommended if you like literary memoirs and/or Anais Nin. -Heidi K
Added by Melody