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Showing 21 - 40 of 448 items
By Ta-Nehisi Coates. 2008
Son of Vietnam vet and black awareness advocate Paul Coates - a poor man who set out to publish lost…
classics of black history - Ta-Nehisi drifts toward salvation at Howard University, while his ominous brother Big Bill finds his own rhythm hustling. 2008.By Vivian Jeanette Kaplan. 2002
For a brief period between 1938 and 1941, roughly 20,000 Jews found refuge from the Nazis in the one place…
not requiring visas, police certificates or proofs of financial independence: Shanghai. In 1939, the author's family made a month-long, 7,000-mile journey to Shanghai, struggling with heat, disease, poverty, and fear. With the war's end came the shock of learning what became of family and friends left behind in Europe. Descriptions of violence. 2002.By Derek Tangye. 1982
By John E Mack, Rita S Rogers. 1988
Internationally known child psychologist Rita Rogers grew up in Romania, the daughter of a prominent Jewish family. Her idyllic childhood…
came to an abrupt end with the arrival of Nazi troops. 1988.By Olive Spencer Loggins. 1983
By Bob Greene. 1997
A journalist's humorous and nostalgic ruminations on his life at the half-century mark. He reflects wistfully on the youthful joys…
of junk food and junk music, the thrill of anticipation of his first kiss, and the lost innocence of the America he knew as a child. c1997.By Tania Alexander. 1987
After fleeing revolutionary Russia, Tania's family settled in Estonia. Tania and her brother grew up in semi-poverty, raised by aunts…
and servants while their mother, Baroness Budberg, had love affairs with H.G. Wells, Robert Bruce Lockhart, Maxim Gorky, and other well-known figures. Previously published as "A little of all these". 1988, c1987. Uniform title: Little of all theseBy Eva Figes. 2003
This captivating memoir explores the relationship between the author and her young granddaughter, whose questions about Figes's upbringing unwittingly opens…
a door into the author's privileged childhood in Germany. But when the Nazis rose to power, Figes and her family fled to England, leaving her own grandparents behind. 2003.By Miriam Toews. 2000
Speaking in the voice of her deceased father, Miriam Toews recounts his lifelong battle with depression that led to his…
eventual suicide. Mel Toews was a bubbly, creative and talkative teacher in Manitoba, who privately struggled with depression and personal torment. The author chronicles his experiences, as she imagines he would have told them.By Lisa Brennan-Jobs. 2018
Lisa's father, Steve Jobs, was a mythical figure rarely present in her life. As she grew older, he ushered her…
into a new world of mansions, vacations, and private schools. But he could also be cold, critical, and unpredictable. When her relationship with her mother grew strained in high school, Lisa moved in with her father, hoping he'd become the parent she'd always wanted him to be. Bestseller. 2018.By Maria L Cioni. 2006
Genesio (Gene) Cioni was sixteen when he left Italy in the 1920s to find a vibrant, close-knit Italian community in…
the burgeoning city of Calgary. Gene left behind the barber trade to follow his passion for food and cooking, as he worked his way up from busboy to cook to become one of western Canada's first celebrity chefs. His daughter Maria's recollections of growing up in the family restaurant bring alive the food and treasured traditions that enriched her family's life. Includes recipes. 2006.By Lorna Crozier. 2009
Poet Crozier vividly depicts her hometown of Swift Current, with its one main street, two high schools, and three beer…
parlours - where her father spent most of his evenings. She writes unflinchingly about the grief and shame caused by poverty and alcoholism, while at the heart of the book is her fierce love for her mother, Peggy. The narratives of daily life - sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking - are interspersed with prose poems. Some strong language. 2009.By Heather Summerhayes Cariou. 2006
At the age of four, Cariou's sister Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, a terminal disease of the lungs and…
pancreas marked by severe coughing and malnutrition; unable to pronounce her condition, young Pam dubs it instead "Sixtyfive Roses." Written to fulfill a deathbed promise Cariou made to write "our" story, and a promise to her mother to tell the truth, the result is an honest and gritty description of a family dealing with chronic illness. Canada Reads 2012. 2006.By Constance Taber Colby, Gladys Bagg Taber. 1981
The late author's last book is a folksy account of her leisurely day-to-day life at the seaside spot she loved.…
She recounts the constantly changing beauties of cape cod, the ways of birds and animals, and her dealings with friends and neighbours. 1981.By Alexandra Popoff. 2010
As Leo Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstoy experienced both glory and condemnation during their forty-eight-year marriage. Drawing on newly available archival…
material, including Sophia's unpublished memoir, Alexandra Popoff presents a dramatically different and accurate portrait of the woman and the marriage. Some descriptions of sex. c2010.By Rosemary Trollope. 1998
The author, Joanna Trollope's mother, portrays her own and her mother's Glasgow childhood. The grandparental Glasgow house was the steadfast…
rock. Later came a move to rural Herefordshire, but for Rosemary there was always a loyalty to Glasgow. This book is packed with memories of a vivid childhood, also revealing how that childhood shaped the author's subsequent life and ideas. 1998.A Los Angeles family, weary of city living, found a satisfactory alternative in northern British Columbia. The years in the…
wilderness, highlighted by the discovery of an important jade deposit, are humourously described. c1977.By Andrew Crofts, Zana Muhsen. 1994
Fifteen year old Zana Muhsen and her younger sister Nadia, born and raised in Birmingham, travelled to visit relatives in…
North Yemen for a holiday, to discover their father had sold them into marriage. They were helpless prisoners, forced to adapt to a primitive way of life, rape and frequent beatings. After eight years of misery and humiliation Zana escaped. This book tells of her experience and her fight to bring her sister home. 1994.By Gail Sheehy. 1986
The author tells the story of Phat Mohm, an 11-year-old Cambodian refugee adopted by Sheehy. She describes the process that…
the two undertook to accommodate their different lives and backgrounds. Descriptions of violence. c1986.By Rachel Manley. 2000
Michael Manley, three-term prime minister of Jamaica, had stood at the heart of a decade of radical social reform in…
the 70s. From the vantage point of her father's bedside during his last six months of life, Rachel Manley searches the shadows that he cast on her as a child and as a woman. She explores how the enduring bonds that held them were tested time and again, not only by the ordinary conflicts of family life but by the heavy demands of the political arena and by a succession of five marriages. 2000.