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Showing 8221 - 8240 of 16083 items
By Michelle Tea. 2022
From PEN/America Award winner, 2021 Guggenheim fellow, and beloved literary and tarot icon Michelle Tea, the hilarious, powerfully written, taboo-breaking…
story of her journey to pregnancy and motherhood as a 40 year-old, queer, uninsured womanWritten in intimate, gleefully TMI prose, Knocking Myself Up is the irreverent account of Tea’s route to parenthood—with a group of ride-or-die friends, a generous drag queen, and a whole lot of can-do pluck. Along the way she falls in love with a wholesome genderqueer a decade her junior, attempts biohacking herself a baby with black market fertility meds (and magicking herself an offspring with witch-enchanted honey), learns her eggs are busted, and enters the Fertility Industrial Complex in order to carry her younger lover’s baby.With the signature sharp wit and wild heart that have made her a favorite to so many readers, Tea guides us through the maze of medical procedures, frustrations and astonishments on the path to getting pregnant, wryly critiquing some of the systems that facilitate that choice (“a great, punk, daredevil thing to do”). In Knocking Myself Up, Tea has crafted a deeply entertaining and profound memoir, a testament to the power of love and family-making, however complex our lives may be, to transform and enrich us.By Peter Coleman. 2022
The 'peacock's tail' is used to describe a wine that is wonderfully complex and ultimately rewarding. Surely there's no better…
metaphor for life.Weekends with Matt is a classic odd-couple tale of two very different men and the common ground that can be found over a shared passion.It was at the bottle shop, somewhere between the chardonnay and the zinfandel, that Peter realised he didn't have a clue about wine. On his way to a dinner party and in a mild panic, he called Matt, a wine-loving acquaintance who expertly steered him towards the perfect bottle. The selection was a hit, but it was Matt's passion that stuck in Peter's mind. He decided to visit Matt's vineyard for an introduction to the noble grape. One visit led to another and this unlikely pairing of a Proust-quoting intellectual and a farmer with a love of hunting found themselves bonding over life, ideas, vulnerability, aspiration, nature, philosophy - and, of course, a glass or three of wine.Like a tipsy Tuesdays with Morrie, this well-crafted tale is as much a guide to life as the mysteries of wine. With thought-provoking notes and philosophical undertones, this is a delightful story that readers will love to sip and savour.By Alora Young. 2022
An &“extraordinary&” (Laurie Halse Anderson) young poet traces the lives of her foremothers in West Tennessee, from those enslaved centuries…
ago to her grandmother, her mother, and finally herself, in this stunning debut celebrating Black girlhood and womanhood throughout American history.&“A masterpiece that beautifully captures the heartbreak that accompanies coming of age for Black girls becoming Black women.&”—Evette Dionne, author of Lifting as We Climb, longlisted for the National Book AwardWalking Gentry Home tells the story of Alora Young&’s ancestors, from the unnamed women forgotten by the historical record but brought to life through Young&’s imagination; to Amy, the first of Young&’s foremothers to arrive in Tennessee, buried in an unmarked grave, unlike the white man who enslaved her and fathered her child; through Young&’s great-grandmother Gentry, unhappily married at fourteen; to her own mother, the teenage beauty queen rejected by her white neighbors; down to Young in the present day as she leaves childhood behind and becomes a young woman. The lives of these girls and women come together to form a unique American epic in verse, one that speaks of generational curses, coming of age, homes and small towns, fleeting loves and lasting consequences, and the brutal and ever-present legacy of slavery in our nation&’s psyche. Each poem is a story in verse, and together they form a heart-wrenching and inspiring family saga of girls and women connected through blood and history.Informed by archival research, the last will and testament of an enslaver, formal interviews, family lore, and even a DNA test, Walking Gentry Home gives voice to those too often muted in America: Black girls and women.By E. B. Bartels. 2022
An unexpected, poignant, and personal account of loving and losing pets, exploring the singular bonds we have with our companion…
animals, and how to grieve them once they’ve passed.E.B. Bartels has had a lot of pets—dogs, birds, fish, tortoises. As varied a bunch as they are, they’ve taught her one universal truth: to own a pet is to love a pet, and to own a pet is also—with rare exception—to lose that pet in time.But while we have codified traditions to mark the passing of our fellow humans, most cultures don’t have the same for pets. Bartels takes us from Massachusetts to Japan, from ancient Egypt to the modern era, in search of the good pet death. We meet veterinarians, archaeologists, ministers, and more, offering an idiosyncratic, inspiring array of rituals—from the traditional (scattering ashes, commissioning a portrait), to the grand (funereal processions, mausoleums), to the unexpected (taxidermy, cloning). The central lesson: there is no best practice when it comes to mourning your pet, except to care for them in death as you did in life, and find the space to participate in their end as fully as you can.Punctuated by wry, bighearted accounts of Bartels’s own pets and their deaths, Good Grief is a cathartic companion through loving and losing our animal family.By Jaivet Ealom. 2022
The awe-inspiring story of the only person to successfully escape Australia's notorious offshore detention centre--and his long search for freedom.In…
2013 Jaivet Ealom fled Myanmar's brutal regime, where Rohingya like him were being persecuted and killed, and boarded a boat of asylum seekers bound for Australia. Instead of finding refuge, he was transported to Australia's infamous Manus Regional Processing Centre. Blistering hot days spent in shipping containers on the island melted into weeks, then years . . . until, finally, facing either jail in Papua New Guinea or being returned to almost certain death in Myanmar, he took matters into his own hands. Drawing inspiration from the hit show Prison Break, Jaivet meticulously planned his escape. He made it out alive but was stateless, with no ID or passport. While the nightmare of Manus was behind him, his true escape to freedom had only just begun. How Jaivet made it to sanctuary in Canada in a six-month-long odyssey by foot, boat, car, and plane, with nothing but his instinct for survival, is miraculous. His story will astonish, anger and inspire you. It will make you reassess what it means to give refuge and redefine what can be achieved by one man determined to beat the odds.By Brandi Morin. 2022
A wildfire of a debut memoir by internationally recognized French/Cree/Iroquois journalist Brandi Morin set to transform the narrative around Indigenous…
Peoples. Brandi Morin is known for her clear-eyed and empathetic reporting on Indigenous oppression in North America. She is also a survivor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis and uses her experience to tell the stories of those who did not survive the rampant violence. From her time as a foster kid and runaway who fell victim to predatory men and an oppressive system to her career as an internationally acclaimed journalist, Our Voice of Fire chronicles Morin’s journey to overcome enormous adversity and find her purpose, and her power, through journalism. This compelling, honest book is full of self-compassion and the purifying fire of a pursuit for justice.By Wayne Big Bradshaw, Douglas P. Love. 2016
The only patch-wearing outlaw biker to become a sworn police officer — and live to tell his taleIn 1977, Wayne…
“Big Chuck” Bradshaw was Jersey tough. He was a member of the outlaw Pagans bike gang, a One Percenter, and had earned his colours in a world of boozing, bloody bar fights, and high-stakes crime. But after getting too close to extreme violence, Bradshaw made the life-threatening decision to change his path.The toughness Bradshaw used to survive biker life led him to a distinguished and heroic career as an undercover narcotics officer for the same New Jersey police department that had once arrested him. Bradshaw tells his story with the truth of the streets, from his time in the U.S. Army to his decision to join the Pagans, to the wild adventures of working narcotic stings. He rode with truly dangerous criminals and then returned to those same places as a cop. He tracks down fugitives in Jersey’s toughest neighbourhoods, risks his life rescuing dozens from a fire in a seniors’ residence, and volunteers in the aftermath of 9/11.Jersey Tough is an unflinching memoir of personal struggle, of battling with darkness, and ultimately of redemption.By Otto Rosenberg. 2012
Otto Rosenberg is 9 and living in Berlin, poor but happy, when his family are first detained. All around them,…
Sinti and Roma families are being torn from their homes by Nazis , leaving behind schools, jobs, friends, and businesses to live in forced encampments outside the city. One by one, families are broken up, adults and children disappear or are 'sent East'.Otto arrives in Auschwitz aged 15 and is later transferred to Buechenwald and Bergen-Belsen. He works, scrounges food whenever he can, witnesses and suffers horrific violence and is driven close to death by illness more than once. Unbelievably, he also joins an armed revolt of prisoners who, facing the SS and certain death, refuse to back down. Somehow, through luck, sheer human will to live, or both, he survives.The stories of Sinti and Roma suffering in Nazi Germany are all too often lost or untold. In this haunting account, Otto shares his story with a remarkable simplicity. Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust.By Otto Rosenberg. 2012
Otto Rosenberg is 9 and living in Berlin, poor but happy, when his family are first detained. All around them,…
Sinti and Roma families are being torn from their homes by Nazis , leaving behind schools, jobs, friends, and businesses to live in forced encampments outside the city. One by one, families are broken up, adults and children disappear or are 'sent East'.Otto arrives in Auschwitz aged 15 and is later transferred to Buechenwald and Bergen-Belsen. He works, scrounges food whenever he can, witnesses and suffers horrific violence and is driven close to death by illness more than once. Unbelievably, he also joins an armed revolt of prisoners who, facing the SS and certain death, refuse to back down. Somehow, through luck, sheer human will to live, or both, he survives.The stories of Sinti and Roma suffering in Nazi Germany are all too often lost or untold. In this haunting account, Otto shares his story with a remarkable simplicity. Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust.By Mandy Burton. 2023
The gap between what the law and legal processes deliver for victims of domestic abuse and what they actually need…
has, in some instances, arguably widened. This book provides the reader with a thorough understanding of the remedies available to victims in the civil, family and criminal law. It contends that expectations of the legal remedies have increased as the number and scope of remedies has proliferated. It further examines how legal responses to domestic abuse have evolved over the past decade and explores how the victim’s rights narrative and associated litigation, which has become prevalent in legal discourse and criminal justice reforms, has shifted expectations and impacted domestic abuse policy and law. The book presents a valuable addition to the literature in drawing on a discourse familiar to those with an interest in human rights, demonstrating its impact on a substantive area of law of great significance to both family and criminal lawyers and anyone with an interest in domestic abuse and legal responses.By Juan Antonio Juarez. 2004
A former Chicago cop exposes shocking truths about the abuses of power within the city's police department in this memoir…
of violence, drugs, and men with badges. Juarez becomes a police officer because he wants to make a difference in gang-infested neighborhoods; but, as this book reveals, he ends up a corrupt member of the most powerful gang of all--the Chicago police force. Juarez shares the horrific indiscretions he witnessed during his seven years of service, from the sexually predatory officer, X, who routinely stops beautiful women for made-up traffic offenses and flirts with domestic violence victims, to sadistic Locallo, known on the streets as Locoman, who routinely stops gang members and beats them senseless. Working as a narcotics officer, Juarez begins to join his fellow officers in crossing the line between cop and criminal, as he takes advantage of his position and also becomes a participant in a system of racial profiling legitimized by the war on drugs. Ultimately, as Juarez discusses, his conscience gets the better of him and he tries to reform, only to be brought down by his own excesses. From the perspective of an insider, he tells of widespread abuses of power, random acts of brutality, and the code of silence that keeps law enforcers untouchable.By Nona Willis Aronowitz. 2022
Named a Most Anticipated Book by Bustle, Esquire, Nylon, and The Millions&“Intimate, thoughtful, and accessible to anyone struggling with the…
persistent, maddening inequities of contemporary sex.&” –Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of Good and MadFrom Teen Vogue sex and love columnist Nona Willis Aronowitz, a blend of memoir, social history, and cultural criticism that probes the meaning of desire and sexual freedom today.At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona Willis Aronowitz&’s life, and in America, was in disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were both in overdrive. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, her assumptions of what &“sexual liberation&” meant were suddenly up for debate. In the thick of personal and political turmoil, Nona turned to the words of history&’s sexual revolutionaries—including her late mother, early radical pro-sex feminist Ellen Willis. At a time when sex has never been more accepted and feminism has never been more mainstream, Nona asked herself: What, exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy?Nona&’s attempt to find the answer places her search for authentic intimacy alongside her family history and other stories stretching back nearly two hundred years. Stories of ambivalent wives and unchill sluts, free lovers and radical lesbians, sensitive men and woke misogynists, women who risk everything for sex—who buy sex, reject sex, have bad sex and good sex. The result is a brave, bold, and vulnerable exploration of what sexual freedom can mean. Bad Sex is Nona&’s own journey to sexual satisfaction and romantic happiness, which not only lays bare the triumphs and flaws of contemporary feminism but also shines a light on universal questions of desire.By Alice Feiring. 2022
From veteran wine writer and James Beard Award winner Alice Feiring, an insightful and entertaining memoir of wine, love, heartbreak,…
and the never-ending process of coming-of-age.Called everything from the Patti Smith to the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of natural wines, Alice Feiring is a special sort of wine writer—the kind who dares to disagree with wine &“experts,&” and who believes wholeheartedly that the best wine writing is about life. To Fall in Love, Drink This is both a love letter to wine and a lifelong coming-of-age story. In a series of candid, wise, and humorous personal essays, Feiring serves up a memoir in vignettes. She tells the story of her parents&’ divorce, her first big wine assignment, the end of an eleven-year relationship, the death of her father, a near-fatal brush with a serial killer, pandemic lockdown, and more—and suffuses each with love, romance, pain, joy, and wine. Each essay is &“accompanied&” by a no-nonsense wine take-away designed to answer the questions everyday wine lovers have about wine—age, price, grapes, vineyards, and vintners. This frank, charismatic work is a refreshingly grounded addition to the popular—and notoriously stuffy—genre of wine-writing. Feiring has crafted a timeless, positively unpretentious memoir that will appeal to everyone who has ever enjoyed a glass of wine.By Kendra Allen. 2022
An arresting and one-of-a-kind memoir about the alternately exultant and harrowing trip growing up as a Black child desperate to…
create a clear reality for herself in this countryWritten in a distinctive voice and filled with personality, humor, and pathos, Fruit Punch is a memoir unlike any other, from a one-of-a-kind millennial talent. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, in the nineties and early 2000s, Kendra Allen had a complicated, loving, and intense family life filled with desire and community but also undercurrents of violence and turmoil. “We equate suffering to perseverance and misinterpret the weight of shame,” she writes. As she makes her way through a world of obscureness, Kendra finds herself slowly discovering outlets to help navigate growing up and against the expected performance of being a young Black woman in the South—a complex interplay of race, class, and gender that proves to be ever-shifting ground.Fruit Punch touches on everything from questions of beauty and how we form concepts of ourselves—as a small rebellion, young Kendra scratched a hole into every pair of stockings she was forced to wear—to what it means to grow up in her great uncle’s Southern Baptist church—with rules including “No uncrossed ankles” and “No questions.” Inflected by a powerful sense of place and touched by poetry, Fruit Punch is a stunning achievement—a memoir born of love and endurance, fight or flight, and what it means to be a witness, from a blisteringly honest and observant voice.By Elliot Ackerman. 2022
A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war&’s echoing legacyElliot…
Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and later as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. Afghan nationals who had worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities for years now faced brutal reprisal and sought frantically to flee the country with their families. The official US government evacuation effort was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. With former colleagues and friends protecting the airport in Kabul, Ackerman joined an impromptu effort by a group of journalists and other veterans to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America's longest war. For Ackerman, it also became a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week, the week the war ended. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves a personal history of the war's long progression, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts, the fifth act being the story&’s tragic denouement, a prelude to Afghanistan's dark future. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war&’s trajectory will find a trenchant account here. But The Fifth Act also brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, American and Afghan, who fought the war with courage and dedication, and at great personal cost. Ackerman's story is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.By Edward Chisholm. 2022
Inspired by George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, A Waiter in Paris is a brilliant portrait of…
the underbelly of contemporary Paris through the eyes of a young waiter scraping out a living in the City of Light. A waiter’s job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door … is hell. Edward Chisholm’s spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you below the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world and right into its glorious underbelly. There, Chisholm inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep, and dive bars. He scrapes by on coffee, bread, and cigarettes, often working under sadistic managers, for a wage so low he’s forced to fight his colleagues for tips. And these colleagues — thieves, narcissists, ex-Legionnaires, paperless immigrants, wannabe actors, and drug dealers — are the closest thing he has to family. Waiting tables is physically demanding work, frequently humiliating, and incredibly competitive. But it doesn’t matter because you’re in Paris, the centre of the universe, and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be in the world.By Edoardo Nesi. 2022
In a warm, perceptive essay that touches on economics, fashion, literature, and politics, the Strega Prize–winning author of Story of My…
People reflects on the seismic shifts of 2020 and the diverse ways we&’re adapting.Attempting to make sense of the incredible upheaval of 2020—from the devastating impact of COVID-19 to the sudden loss of his father—Edoardo Nesi considers the changing global economy and its effect on our lives. He shares the stories of Alberto Magelli, a small textile entrepreneur; Livia Firth, a prominent advocate for sustainability; Elisa Martelli, a young Sangiovese winemaker; Enrico Giovannini, a leading economist and statistician; Rino Pratesi, a proud butcher from the heart of Tuscany; and more. From the overworked to the unemployed, we&’re all grappling with difficult questions about our current disorienting world: Will we ever feel healthy again, and what will it take to regain &“normality?&” What does progress mean today? Have science and technology let us down? What will the increased prevalence of remote working mean for our cities, and for our lifestyles generally? Deftly weaving together the personal and the economic, Nesi takes us on a fascinating journey to understanding.By Rifqa Bary. 2015
"After four years of hiding my faith from my family, I knew that it was time. I wrote with shaky…
hands, 'Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. I refuse to deny him....' There was no turning back now. I had to get out of that house if I wanted to live. Was this worth risking everything for? Yes." Rifqa Bary grew up in a devout Muslim home, obediently following her parents' orders to practice the rituals of Islam. But God was calling her to freedom and love. He was calling her to true faith. He was calling her to give up everything. Leaving Islam for Christianity cost her more than she imagined but gave more than she could have dreamed. Hiding in the Light is the story of Rifqa's remarkable spiritual journey from Islam to Christianity. It is also the untold story of how she ran from her father's threats to find refuge with strangers in Florida, only to face a controversial court case that reached national headlines. Most of all, it is the story of a young girl who made life-changing sacrifices to follow Jesus--and who inspires us to do the same.By Leah McLaren. 2022
When eight-year-old Leah's parents get divorced, her mother, Cessie, flees her conventional life as a suburban housewife in search of…
a glamorous big city career in journalism. In the chaotic years that follow Cessie lurches from one apartment, job and toxic romance to the next, with her adoring daughter in tow. Cessie describes her parenting style as 'benign neglect' and their family motto 'Commitment sucks the life right out of you' is tacked up on every rental fridge. In the aftermath of a disturbing sexual experience at a pool party, Leah finds herself crippled with anxiety. When she confides in her mother, Cessie makes an astonishing disclosure in turn, one that alters everything: from the age of twelve to fifteen she was in a clandestine relationship with her middle-aged, married riding instructor. The damage inflicted by the 'Horseman', Cessie explains, is the reason for all her regrettable life choices - marriage, divorce and even motherhood itself. Both women spend the ensuing decades haunted by the spectre of the Horseman, until they decide to investigate what became of him - an ill-conceived quest that will test the bonds of love and redefine their relationship forever.Written with unflinching candour and wit, Where You End and I Begin explores the dark reverberations of victim narratives and the power of filial love.By Stephanie S. Covington, Dan Griffin, Rick Dauer. 2022
AN INSIGHTFUL, EFFECTIVE, AND CONTEMPORARY APPROACH TO ADDICTION TREATMENT FOR THOSE WHO ARE IMPACTED BY THE JUSTICE SYSTEM In the…
newly revised second edition of Helping Men Recover: A Program for Treating Addiction, Special Edition for Use in the Justice System, a team of experts delivers a practical and straightforward framework to assist men struggling with substance use disorders. Targeting the four areas most consistently identified by men as triggering relapse—the self, sexuality, spirituality, and relationships—this therapeutic program has twenty-one sessions and explores topics like self-awareness and identity, the impact of family, abuse and trauma, communication, male socialization, and many more. Readers will also find: Three additional sessions with new exercises Comprehensive strategies for the creation of safe spaces in which men will feel comfortable expressing themselves, reflecting, and learning Information about how men experience and recover from addictions and trauma Ways to develop and learn teach the skills men need to maintain and sustain recovery from substance use disorders and live the life they want to live An indispensable collection of exercises and other resources for men in the criminal justice system who are struggling with substance misuse. Helping Men Recover belongs on the bookshelves of social workers, clinicians, and other correctional system professionals.