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The non-fiction saga of Villasenor's family, focusing on three generations. Their cultural and spiritual roots are in Mexico, but their…
future is in California; their story is the all-American story of overcoming poverty and prejudice to achieve success. Violence and strong language
From the bestselling author of Sweetbitter , a memoir of growing up in a family shattered by lies and addiction,…
and of one woman's attempts to find a life beyond the limits of her past. Stray is a moving, sometimes devastating, brilliantly written and ultimately inspiring exploration of the landscapes of damage and survival. After selling her first novel—a dream she'd worked long and hard for—Stephanie Danler knew she should be happy. Instead, she found herself driven to face the difficult past she'd left behind a decade ago: a mother disabled by years of alcoholism, further handicapped by a tragic brain aneurysm; a father who abandoned the family when she was three, now a meth addict in and out of recovery. After years in New York City she's pulled home to Southern California by forces she doesn't totally understand, haunted by questions of legacy and trauma. Here, she works toward answers, uncovering hard truths about her parents and herself as she explores whether it's possible to change the course of her history. Lucid and honest, heart-breaking and full of hope, Stray is an examination of what we inherit and what we don't have to, of what we have to face in ourselves to move forward, and what it's like to let go of one's parents in order to find a peace—and family—of one's own
Frank McCourt recollects his "miserable Irish Catholic childhood" in the squalor of Limerick. Absent any support from his glib, but…
shiftless, alcoholic father, the family suffered hunger, cruelty, disease, and the death of children. McCourt recounts his story without rancour. Strong language. Winner of the 1998 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. Pulitzer Prize Winner. 1996.
Evocation de l'enfance de l'écrivain quand il vivait chez ses grands-parents, dans un petit village de Bourgogne. Tout ici devient…
une fête, qu'il s'agisse de la visite d'une cousine extraordinaire, nourrice à Paris ou de ses repas interminables de fin d'année au cours desquels le petit garçon écoute, fasciné, les récits des hôtes.
Tentant de suivre l'itinéraire de ses ancêtres depuis l'arrivée de Robert Caron à Québec, en 1634, l'auteure décrit avec émotion…
et sur un ton anecdotique les traditions locales de la Mauricie. Récit qui tient à la fois de la chronique et de la littérature. 1993.
Dave's parents died from cancer within a month of each other when he was 21 and his brother Christopher was…
seven. They left the Chicago suburb where they had grown up and moved to San Francisco. This book tells the story of their life together. Some descriptions of sex. 2000.
This biography of the author's early years recounts how her family lost their farm during the Depression and were forced…
to move to the city. Her father, who loved the outdoors, spent years as a bank guard while her possessive and domineering mother devoted herself to Beverly. For junior and senior high readers. 1998.
Qais Akbar Omar was born in Kabul in a time of relative peace. Until he was 7, he lived with…
his well-to-do parents in the spacious, garden-filled compound his grandfather had built. Noisy with the laughter of his cousins, home was the idyllic centre of their quiet, comfortable life. But in the wake of the Russian withdrawal and the bloody civil conflict that erupted, his family was forced to flee and take refuge in the legendary Fort of Nine Towers, a centuries-old palace in the hills on the far side of Kabul. On a perilous trip home, Omar and his father were kidnapped, narrowly escaping, and the family fled again, his parents leading their six children on a remarkable, sometimes wondrous journey. 2013.
Reporter for MSNBC.com looks back on her unsettled life. Describes growing up in a dysfunctional family, which was always on…
the move. She recalls her father's dream of building a "glass castle," and relates how she and her siblings escaped to make lives of their own. Strong language. 2005.
On 17th November 1989 Anna Blundy received a phone call to say that her father, David Blundy, a foreign correspondent,…
had been killed in El Salvador. In a way she had expected this all her life. Every time they said goodbye, she knew he might not return. Eight years later, Anna went to El Salvador to try to discover the truth about his death, and finally, to come to terms with her loss.
Frank McCourt recollects his "miserable Irish Catholic childhood" in the squalor of Limerick. Absent any support from his glib, but…
shiftless, alcoholic father, the family suffered hunger, cruelty, disease, and the death of children. McCourt recounts his story without rancour. Strong language. Winner of the 1998 CNIB Talking Book of the Year Award. Pulitzer Prize Winner.
Walter Gretzky is considered by many to be the ultimate dad, the man who first coached son Wayne Gretzky in…
hockey. Here he tells the story of his life, including growing up on a small farm, his marriage, children, work, and most importantly, his values. He also describes his debilitating stroke in 1991, his recovery, and his discovery of a calling to help others. 2001.
Jean and Gordon Hay were a formidable pair. She was an artist and superlatively frugal; he was a proud and…
well-mannered schoolteacher with a temper that could be explosive. Elizabeth, their oldest daughter, was said to be a difficult and selfish child. Elizabeth always suspected she would end up caring for her parents in their final years, a way of making up for the sins of her childhood, proving herself to be a good daughter after all. But as her parents, who had been ferociously independent people, became increasingly dependent on her, their lives changed utterly and so did hers. Philip Roth once said, "Old age is a massacre." This book takes you inside the massacre. Bestseller. Winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. 2018.
"A Man Named Dave" is the conclusion to Dave Pelzer's trilogy of memoirs about how he has overcome his abusive…
childhood. With extraordinary generosity of spirit, Dave takes us on his journey confronting his past. In a dramatic reunion he confronts his father and ultimately faces the mother who so brutally abused him. Finally Dave finds the courage to break the chains of the past and learn to love, trust and live for the future. Sequel to "The lost boy". Strong language and some descriptions of violence. 2001.
A man recounts the years of torture and starvation that he experienced as a child at the hands of his…
alcoholic mother. Chronicles the incidents of maltreatment, his ultimate rescue from the abusive home, and his recovery. Followed by "Lost boy" (EB69381). For junior and senior high readers. 2000.
Ignatieff chronicles his mother's family, the Grants, including his great-grandfather George Monro Grant, who, with Sandford Fleming, would map out…
Canada's national railway line, and his grandfather William, who fought at the Somme in World War I. Ignatieff retells the history of his ancestors as a story of one family's search for Canada. 2009.
Sons clash with fathers, particularly with towering, authoritarian figures like Gaston Senior. Fairly or unfairly, sons look for reasons to…
rebel, particularly against boring suburban fathers who seem to prize conformity above all else. And fairly or unfairly, sons judge their fathers when they can't handle their booze. But even a father and son as doomed to clash as Gaston and his father could fish together. When Gaston's father dies, this is the memory of his father that he keeps alive. In the years that follow, however, he learns more about his father's realtionship with his father. It too was marked by heavy drinking, though it took a much darker turn. What Gaston comes to realize is that the man his younger self had been so eager to judge was in fact capable of near-heroic feats of self-mastery. And as a father of grown sons himself, he acutely feels the wounds he must have inflicted years before by withholding so much he now knows that fathers long for. 2018.
Profile of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer by his son, Israel Zamir. Abandoned by his father in 1935, Zamir initiates…
contact with Singer twenty years later in New York. Slowly and with much difficulty, father and son forge a relationship despite profound differences in philosophy, spirituality, and politics. Zamir eventually agrees to translate his father's works from Yiddish to Hebrew. 1995. Uniform title: Avi, Yitsḥaḳ Bashevis-Zinger.
In narrating his search for his roots, Vietnamese-American Pham alternates between two story lines: the first chronicles the author's hair-raising…
escape to the U.S. in 1977 and his family's subsequent and somewhat troubled life in California. The second recounts his return to Vietnam almost two decades later as an Americanized but culturally confused young man. Pham pedals his bike the length of his native country while exploring the dilemma of being an outsider in both America and Vietnam. 2000 Whiting Writers' Award. Explicit strong language, some descriptions of sex, and some descriptions of violence. 2000, c1999.
After the struggle of growing up in the poverty of Liverpool during the depression of the thirties, the author begins…
to discover that there is more to life than mere survival. For one thing, there is falling in love... Sequel to "Twopence to cross the Mersey" (DC10855). Followed by "Minerva's stepchild" (DC35993). 1981. (Autobiography ; 2)