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By Rev Jen. 2011
Meet Rev Jen, patron saint of the uncool, cheerleader for nonconformists, geeks, and oddballs the world over. From her tiny…
rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan's hip Lower East Side, she holds court over a wacky cast of friends and lovers with an unchecked candor that makes her impossible not to love. Zany and wry, Rev Jen will charm readers with these fun and irreverent true stories of her meteoric rise from art school misfit to neighborhood celebrity and all-around good-time gal. Whether she is dressing up as Doo-Doo, the hard-drinking Teletubby who's been expelled from Teletubbyland, or starring in her one-woman musical Rats, the shortest running show on Broadway, Jen's quirky humor and genuine heart make Elf Girl an anthem for misfits everywhere. f, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was hailed as a must-read by Bust magazine, The Village Voice, Bookslut.com, and many more, Elf Girl is infused with Jen's zany sense of humor and a surprising amount of heart. Featuring an Introduction by Bored to Death creator Jonathan Ames, who even based a character on Rev Jen (elf ears and all!) in the HBO hit show's second season, this is an anthem for dorky girls everywhere--a sharply observant and entertaining memoir.By Sharon Salzberg, Allan Lokos. 2015
After miraculously surviving a plane crash in Myanmar, Allan Lokos shares what his long and painful recovery process is teaching…
him about humanity's ability to survive--and even thrive--in the face of suffering. In Through the Flames, Allan Lokos tells the terrifying story of being on board a plane on Christmas Day with his wife, Susanna, when it crashed and exploded in flames. Lokos was severely burned in the accident, and in the days and weeks following the crash, Susanna was told by the many doctors who examined Lokos that he would not survive.As founder and guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center in New York City, Lokos had spent decades cultivating compassion and non-attachment. Since the plane crash, his Buddhist practice has been mightily tested. In this inspiring account of his against-all-odds recovery, Lokos uses his experience as a window through which to examine the challenge of human suffering in general and addresses the question of how we can thrive in the midst of pain and uncertainty.By George W. Bush, Claudia Casanova. 2015
Nunca desde los tiempos de John Quincy Adams y John Adams en la Casa Blanca hace 190 años han sido…
padre e hijo presidentes de los Estados Unidos. En 41: un retrato de mi padre, George W. Bush el presidente número 43, nos guía a lo largo de la vida y el liderazgo de su padre, George H.W. Bush, el presidente número 41. Íntimo y conmovedor, 41 es un libro que solo un hijo --y también presidente-- podía escribir. La vida de George H.W. Bush es una gran historia americana. A raíz del ataque a Pearl Harbor y contra los deseos de su padre, pospuso sus estudios para pilotar en las fuerzas armadas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Tras varias misiones en el Pacífico, regreso a Estados Unidos donde se casó con Barbara Pierce, la mujer que tanta influencia tendría sobre padre e hijo. Tras una exitosa carrera en Wall Street, su espíritu aventurero hizo que la joven familia se trasladara a Texas. Recordando su niñez en Midland, Texas, George W. Bush explora como su padre desarrolló su instinto, su capacidad para las relaciones personales, y su habilidad para arriesgar al tiempo que triunfaba en el mundo del petróleo primero y en política después. George W. Bush describe las extraordinarias tres décadas de su padre en la política --en el Congreso primero, más tarde como embajador, director de la CIA, vicepresidente bajo Ronald Reagan y finalmente presidente de los Estados Unidos en 1988. Pero más que una biografía, 41 nos ofrece las lecciones que un hijo aprendió del hombre al que admira y adora. George W. Bush reflexiona sobre la influencia que su padre tuvo en su vida tanto personal como política, y revela como el apoyo constante y silencioso de su padre lo ayudó en los momentos más difíciles. George H.W. Bush fue uno de los políticos más influyentes norteamericano del siglo XX, y uno de los hombres de estado más queridos del siglo XXI. 41 es un emotivo tributo a un inspirador padre y a un gran estadounidense.By Juette, Melvin, Berger, Ronald J.. 2000
Melvin Juette has said that becoming paralyzed in a gang-related shooting was “both the worst and best thing that happened”…
to him. The incident, he believes, surely spared the then sixteen year-old African American from prison and/or an early death. It transformed him in other ways, too. He attended college and made wheelchair basketball his passion—ultimately becoming a star athlete and playing on the U. S. National Wheelchair Basketball Team. In Wheelchair Warrior, Juette reconstructs the defining moments of his life with the assistance of sociologist Ronald Berger. His poignant memoir is bracketed by Berger’s thoughtful introduction and conclusion, which places this narrative of race, class, masculinity and identity into proper sociological context, showing how larger social structural forces defined his experiences. While Juette’s story never gives into despair, it does challenge the idea of the “supercrip. ”By Kevin Brockmeier. 2014
At age twelve, Kevin Brockmeier is ready to become a different person: not the boy he has always been--the one…
who cries too easily and laughs too easily, who lives in an otherland of sparkling daydreams and imaginary catastrophes--but someone else altogether. Over the course of one school year--seventh grade--he sets out in search of himself. Along the way, he happens into his first kiss at a church party, struggles to understand why his old friends tease him at the lunch table, becomes the talk of the entire school thanks to his Halloween costume, and booby-traps his lunch to deter a thief. With the same deep feeling and oddly dreamlike precision that are the hallmarks of his fiction, the acclaimed novelist now explores the dream of his own past and recovers the person he used to be.From the Hardcover edition. he kept, the books he read--everything that was once his life. He has written a singularly candid, daring, and open-hearted memoir that unfolds with the immediacy of a novel and richly recreates a particular time, place, and consciousness, one that every reader will recognize.By Joshua Hirsch. 2004
The appearance of Alain Resnais' 1955 French documentaryNight and Fogheralded the beginning of a new form of cinema, one that…
used the narrative techniques of modernism to provoke a new historical consciousness. Afterimagepresents a theory of posttraumatic film based on the encounter between cinema and the Holocaust. Locating its origin in the vivid shock of wartime footage,Afterimagefocuses on a group of crucial documentary and fiction films that were pivotal to the spread of this cinematic form across different nations and genres. Joshua Hirsch explores the changes in documentary brought about by cinema verite, culminating in Shoah. He then turns to the appearance of a fictional posttraumatic cinema, tracing its development through the vivid flashbacks in Resnais'Hiroshima, mon amourto the portrayal of pain and memory inThe Pawnbroker. He excavates a posttraumatic autobiography in three early films by the Hungarian IstvÁn SzabÓ. Finally, Hirsch examines the effects of postmodernism on posttraumatic cinema, looking atSchindler's Listand a work about a different form of historical trauma,History and Memory, a videotape dealing with the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Sweeping in its scope,Afterimagepresents a new way of thinking about film and history, trauma and its representation. Author note: Joshua Hirschis visiting lecturer in Film and Electronic Arts at the California State University, Long Beach.An exploration of women navigating serious health issues at an age where they’re expected to be healthy, dating, having careers…
and children.Miriam’s doctor didn’t believe she had breast cancer. She did.Sophie navigates being the only black scientist in her lab while studying the very disease, HIV, that she hides from her coworkers.For Victoria, coming out as a transgender woman was less difficult than coming out as bipolar.Author Michele Lent Hirsch knew she couldn’t be the only woman who’s faced serious health issues at a young age, as well as the resulting effects on her career, her relationships, and her sense of self. What she found while researching Invisible was a surprisingly large and overlooked population with important stories to tell.Though young women with serious illness tend to be seen as outliers, young female patients are in fact the primary demographic for many illnesses. They are also one of the most ignored groups in our medical system—a system where young women, especially women of color and trans women, are invisible.And because of expectations about gender and age, young women with health issues must often deal with bias in their careers and personal lives. Not only do they feel pressured to seem perfect and youthful, they also find themselves amid labyrinthine obstacles in a culture that has one narrow idea of womanhood.Lent Hirsch weaves her own harrowing experiences together with stories from other women, perspectives from sociologists on structural inequality, and insights from neuroscientists on misogyny in health research. She shows how health issues and disabilities amplify what women in general already confront: warped beauty standards, workplace sexism, worries about romantic partners, and mistrust of their own bodies. By shining a light on this hidden demographic, Lent Hirsch explores the challenges that all women face.By Lisa Genova, Greg O'Brien. 2014
This is a book about living with Alzheimer’s, not dying with it. It is a book about hope, faith, and…
humor—a prescription far more powerful than the conventional medication available today to fight this disease. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the US—and the only one of these diseases on the rise. More than 5 million Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or a related dementia; about 35 million people worldwide. Greg O’Brien, an award-winning investigative reporter, has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and is one of those faceless numbers. Acting on long-term memory and skill coupled with well-developed journalistic grit, O’Brien decided to tackle the disease and his imminent decline by writing frankly about the journey. O’Brien is a master storyteller. His story is naked, wrenching, and soul searching for a generation and their loved ones about to cross the threshold of this death in slow motion. On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s is a trail-blazing roadmap for a generation—both a “how to” for fighting a disease, and a “how not” to give up!By Kristi Coulter. 2018
Nothing Good Can Come from This is a book about generative discomfort surprising sources of beauty and the…
odd often hilarious business of being human Leslie Jamison author of The Empathy Exams and The RecoveringKristi Coulter inspired and incensed the internet when she wrote about what happened when she stopped drinking Nothing Good Can Come from This is her debut--a frank funny and feminist essay collection by a keen-eyed observer no longer numbed into complacency When Kristi stopped drinking she started noticing things Like when you give up a debilitating habit it leaves a space one that can t easily be filled by mocktails or ice cream or sex or crafting And when you cancel Ros Season for yourself you re left with just Summer and that s when you notice that the women around you are tanked that alcohol is the oil in the motors that keeps them purring when they could be making other kinds of noise In her sharp incisive debut essay collection Coulter reveals a portrait of a life in transition By turns hilarious and heartrending Nothing Good Can Come from This introduces a fierce new voice to fans of Sloane Crosley David Sedaris and Cheryl Strayed perfect for anyone who has ever stood in the middle of a so-called perfect life and looked for an escape hatchBy Sam Benjamin. 2011
A thoughtful, hilarious, and compulsively readable memoir by an Ivy League graduate-turned-pornographer who sets out to bring sophistication and equality…
to sexual cinema--only to find that he can't change porn, but porn can certainly change him.American Gangbang heralds the arrival of a profound and gifted new voice in narrative nonfiction. In 1999, after four years of studying at Brown University, Sam Benjamin heads to California in a twenty-year-old Volvo, dead set on turning himself into an artist, despite his complete lack of talent. There, stoned, he has an epiphany--he will make progressive porn. And so begins his turbulent journey. . . .In whip-smart, lyrical prose, Benjamin traces his three-year immersion into the world of Hollywood's bleak, screen glow-lit doppelganger: the southern California sex industry. His rapid ascent from the dingy storefront rental of a starving artist to the multimillion-dollar Malibu villa of a full-fledged porn producer confronts him with the uncomfortably alluring realities of America's strangest industry: gun-toting actors, high on terrible, drug-induced potency; giggling actresses battling internal demons in wobbly heels and pink fishnets; the insatiable consumer demands to sink ever lower, more exploitative, nastier. The result is the titillating, dramatic chronicle of a young man who invites the deepest, most troubling parts of himself to rise to the surface in order to get a good look at them--only to find that what he sees makes his world seem suddenly very small.A provocative, universal coming-of-age story, American Gangbang explores with unflinching honesty the darkly rich junction of sex and self-discovery.By Lisa Genova, Greg O'Brien. 2018
This is a book about living with Alzheimer’s, not dying with it. It is a book about hope, faith, and…
humor—a prescription far more powerful than the conventional medication available today to fight this disease. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the US—and the only one of these diseases on the rise. More than 5 million Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or a related dementia; about 35 million people worldwide. Greg O’Brien, an award-winning investigative reporter, has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and is one of those faceless numbers. Acting on long-term memory and skill coupled with well-developed journalistic grit, O’Brien decided to tackle the disease and his imminent decline by writing frankly about the journey. O’Brien is a master storyteller. His story is naked, wrenching, and soul searching for a generation and their loved ones about to cross the threshold of this death in slow motion. On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s is a trail-blazing roadmap for a generation—both a “how to” for fighting a disease, and a “how not” to give up!By Michael Walzer, Carlos Fraenkel. 2015
Teaching Plato in Palestine is part intellectual travelogue, part plea for integrating philosophy into our personal and public life. Philosophical…
toolkit in tow, Carlos Fraenkel invites readers on a tour around the world as he meets students at Palestinian and Indonesian universities, lapsed Hasidic Jews in New York, teenagers from poor neighborhoods in Brazil, and the descendants of Iroquois warriors in Canada. They turn to Plato and Aristotle, al-Ghaz?l? and Maimonides, Spinoza and Nietzsche for help to tackle big questions: Does God exist? Is piety worth it? Can violence be justified? What is social justice and how can we get there? Who should rule? And how shall we deal with the legacy of colonialism? Fraenkel shows how useful the tools of philosophy can be--particularly in places fraught with conflict--to clarify such questions and explore answers to them. In the course of the discussions, different viewpoints often clash. That's a good thing, Fraenkel argues, as long as we turn our disagreements on moral, religious, and philosophical issues into what he calls a "culture of debate." Conceived as a joint search for the truth, a culture of debate gives us a chance to examine the beliefs and values we were brought up with and often take for granted. It won't lead to easy answers, Fraenkel admits, but debate, if philosophically nuanced, is more attractive than either forcing our views on others or becoming mired in multicultural complacency--and behaving as if differences didn't matter at all.By Grant Stoddard. 2007
A twenty-two-year-old perennial virgin, Englishman Grant Stoddard didn't know what to do with his life in America--until he won an…
X-rated online contest, the prize being intercourse with an infamous married sex columnist. He consequently wound up delivering mail at Nerve.com but accidentally found his calling as a gonzo sex reporter who would try any and every lurid activity his crafty coworkers devised--from offering himself up as man-bait at a hard-core gay bar to attending an elite orgy, to being a hapless participant in a sexual home invasion--all the while wishing he could be safely tucked in bed. Working Stiff is the humble, hilarious, and delightfully salacious fish-into-water story of a young man who followed his heart--and other organs--into places where few would dare to venture.By Agatha Christie. 1977
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Now, in…
this fascinating travelogue of the prolific author's yearlong trip around the British Empire in 1922, Christie provides the clues to the origins of the plots and locales of some of her bestselling mystery novels. Containing never-before-published letters and photos from her travels, and filled with intriguing details about the exotic locations she visited, The Grand Tour is an important book for Agatha Christie fans, revealing an unexpected side to the world's most renowned mystery writer.By Alexandra Fuller. 2011
In this tour-de-force sequel to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller returns to Africa with the story…
of her unforgettable family.In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller braids a multi-layered narrative around the Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war-torn Africa of her own childhood. Born on the Scottish Isle of Skye and raised in Kenya, Nicola Fuller holds dear the kinds of values most likely to get you hurt or killed in Africa: loyalty to blood, passion for land and a holy belief in the restorative power of all animals.Fuller captures her mother's distinctive voice with remarkable precision, rendering a life story that is as funny, terrifying, exotic and unselfconscious as Nicola herself. We see Nicola and Tim Fuller in their honeymoon period, when East Africa lies before them with all the promise of its liquid equatorial light, even as the British Empire wanes. But in short order, an accumulation of mishaps and tragedies bump up against history until the couple find themselves in a world they hardly recognize. We follow the Fullers as they run from war and unspeakable heartbreak, from Kenya to Rhodesia to Zambia, even returning to England briefly. But just when it seems that Nicola has been broken entirely by Africa, it is the African earth itself that revives her.In the end we find Nicola and Tim at a coffee table under their Tree of Forgetfulness on the banana and fish farm where they plan to spend their final days. In local custom, the Tree is where villagers meet to resolve disputes--and it is here that the Fullers at last find an African kind of peace. Following the ghosts and dreams of memory, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is Alexandra Fuller at her very best.From the Hardcover edition.By Ariel Levy. 2017
A gorgeous memoir about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention for readers of Cheryl Strayed and…
Joan Didion When thirty-eight-year-old New Yorker writer Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012 she was pregnant married financially secure and successful on her own terms A month later none of that was true Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed Like much of her generation she was raised to resist traditional rules about work about love and about womanhood I wanted what we all want everything We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic surprising We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers We want intimacy and autonomy safety and stimulation reassurance and novelty coziness and thrills But we can t have it all In this profound and beautiful memoir Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses Her own story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture of what has changed and of what is eternal Advance praise for The Rules Do Not Apply I read The Rules Do Not Apply in one long rapt sitting Unflinching and intimate wrenching and revelatory Ariel Levy s powerful memoir about love loss and finding one s way shimmers with truth and heart on every page Cheryl Strayed Every deep feeling a human is capable of will be shaken loose by this profound book Ariel Levy has taken grief and made art out of it David Sedaris Ariel Levy is a writer of uncompromising honesty remarkable clarity and surprising humor gathered from the wreckage of tragedy Her account of life doing its darnedest to topple her and her refusal to be knocked down will leave you shaken and inspired I am the better for having read this book Lena Dunham A great memoir is not a trip through someone else s life but a series of long looks into your own Ariel Levy s book grieving hopeful painful funny is that Amy Bloom It s become a truism that feminists are living out our mothers unlived lives But Ariel Levy seems to be living out the unlived lives of an entire generation of women simultaneously Free to do whatever she chooses she chooses everything While reinventing work marriage family pregnancy sex and divorce for herself from the ground up Levy experiences devastating loss And she recounts it all here with searing intimacy and an unsentimental yet openhearted rigor Alison Bechdel The Rules Do Not Apply is heartbreaking brilliant and disarming the kind of book that may change you Ariel Levy writes with a beauty that is ferociously honest and with the fervor of an explorer No one else has written so insightfully about the current legacy of feminism s lavish gift of freedom Levy has a voice unlike any other This is a devastating and inspired book Ren SteinkeBy Liz Pryor. 2016
For readers of Orange Is the New Black and The Glass Castle, a riveting memoir about a lifelong secret and…
a girl finding strength in the most unlikely place In 1979, Liz Pryor is a seventeen-year-old girl from a good family in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Halfway through her senior year of high school, she discovers that she is pregnant--a fact her parents are determined to keep a secret from her friends, siblings, and community forever. One snowy January day, after driving across three states, her mother drops her off at what Liz thinks is a Catholic home for unwed mothers--but which is, in truth, a locked government-run facility for delinquent and impoverished pregnant teenage girls.In the cement-block residence, Liz is alone and terrified, a fish out of water--a girl from a privileged, sheltered background living amid tough, street-savvy girls who come from the foster care system or juvenile detention. But over the next six months, isolated and in involuntary hiding from everyone she knows, Liz develops a surprising bond with the other girls and begins to question everything she once held true. Told with tenderness, humor, and an open heart, Look at You Now is a deeply moving story about the most vulnerable moments in our lives--and how a willingness to trust ourselves can permanently change who we are and how we see the world.Advance praise for Look at You Now "Engrossing . . . Readers will swiftly be drawn into the author's compassionate retelling of her teen pregnancy--her fear, shame, regret, joy, and even her forgiveness of her parents for sending her away. This coming-of-age memoir is authentic and unforgettable."--Publishers Weekly "Pryor's refusal to bury the truth of her experiences is the greatest strength of her book. Her honesty about a youthful error and desire to let that honesty define the rest of her life are both uplifting and inspiring. An unsentimental yet moving coming-of-age memoir."--Kirkus Reviews"I started reading this book thinking it was a compelling, honest, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant look at the world of teenage pregnancy, and knowing it would offer an inside look at the places where girls used to be hidden away until their babies came. I finished it damp-eyed and understanding that Look at You Now is much more than that. It is a story about how family dynamics work. It is about how wrenching it is to give away something born of your flesh, even if you know it's the right decision. It's about how much we can learn from people very much different from us. Most of all, it is a subtle, graceful story about how sometimes the worst things in our lives work best to shape our characters into something shining and true, something that will serve us for the rest of our lives. Liz Pryor says she will never forget the girls she shared that time of her life with. I will never forget this book. I really, really loved it."--Elizabeth Berg, author of The Dream Lover "Liz Pryor's story is shocking, moving, riveting, and, ultimately, inspiring. She writes like a natural, can balance humor and sorrow perfectly, and in Look at You Now, has written a pitch-perfect memoir."--Darin Strauss, author of Half a LifeFrom the Hardcover edition.By Miranda Kennedy. 2011
When twentysomething reporter Miranda Kennedy leaves her job in New York City and travels to India with no employment prospects,…
she longs to immerse herself in the turmoil and excitement of a rapidly developing country. What she quickly learns in Delhi about renting an apartment as a single woman--it's next to impossible--and the proper way for women in India to ride scooters--perched sideways--are early signs that life here is less Westernized than she'd counted on. Living in Delhi for more than five years, and finding a city pulsing with possibility and hope, Kennedy experiences friendships, love affairs, and losses that open a window onto the opaque world of Indian politics and culture--and alter her own attitudes about everything from food and clothes to marriage and family. Along the way, Kennedy is drawn into the lives of several Indian women, including her charismatic friend Geeta--a self-described "modern girl" who attempts to squeeze herself into the traditional role of wife and mother; Radha, a proud Brahmin widow who denies herself simple pleasures in order to live by high-caste Hindu principles; and Parvati, who defiantly chain-smokes and drinks whiskey, yet feels compelled to keep her boyfriend a secret from her family. In her effort to understand the hopes and dreams that motivate her new friends, Kennedy peels back India's globalized image as a land of call centers and fast-food chains and finds an ancient place where, in many ways, women's lives have scarcely changed for centuries. Incisive, witty, and written with a keen eye for the lush vibrancy of the country that Kennedy comes to love, Sideways on a Scooter is both a remarkable memoir and a cultural revelation.From the Hardcover edition.Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her…
twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion—and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college—and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.By Najla Said. 2013
A frank and entertaining memoir, from the daughter of Edward Said, about growing up second-generation Arab American and struggling with…
that identity. The daughter of a prominent Palestinian father and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her. The fact that her father was the famous intellectual and outspoken Palestinian advocate Edward Said only made things more complicated. She may have been born a Palestinian Lebanese American, but in Said's mind she grew up first as a WASP, having been baptized Episcopalian in Boston and attending the wealthy Upper East Side girls' school Chapin, then as a teenage Jew, essentially denying her true roots, even to herself--until, ultimately, the psychological toll of all this self-hatred began to threaten her health. As she grew older, making increased visits to Palestine and Beirut, Said's worldview shifted. The attacks on the World Trade Center, and some of the ways in which Americans responded, finally made it impossible for Said to continue to pick and choose her identity, forcing her to see herself and her passions more clearly. Today, she has become an important voice for second-generation Arab Americans nationwide.