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Apron strings: navigating food and family in France, Italy, and China
By Jan Wong. 2017
Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking…
in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn't keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up. On their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures. In southeast France, they move in with a family sheltering undocumented migrants. From Bernadette, the housekeeper, they learn classic French family fare such as blanquette de veau. In a hamlet in the heart of Italy's Slow Food country, the locals teach them how to make authentic spaghetti alle vongole and a proper risotto with leeks. In Shanghai, they cook firecracker chicken and scallion pancakes with the nouveaux riches and their migrant maids, who are part of the biggest demographic shift in world history. Along the way, mother and son explore their sometimes-fraught relationship, uniting--and occasionally clashing--over their mutual love of cooking. 2017.AIDS activist: Michael Lynch and the politics of community
By Ann Silversides. 2003
Michael Lynch, the central figure of this book, was a long-time gay activist and a dynamic force in organizing an…
early response to the AIDS epidemic. Lynch's prescient articles in 'The Body Politic' spoke to the gay communities of Toronto, New York, and San Francisco; his organizing efforts meant change and hope. The author also furnishes a snap-shot history of how the AIDS crisis unfolded and of some of the heroic responses to it, and provides an emphasis on the politics of the gay community's response. Some strong language. 2003.Accepted: how the first gay superstar changed WWE
By Bertrand Hébert, Pat Patterson. 2016
When Pat Patterson was 17 years old, he was asked to leave his home after telling his parents he was…
in love... with a man. Moving from Montreal to the United States in the 1960s, barely knowing a word of English, when homophobia was widespread, Pat lived in the super-macho world of pro wrestling. In this memoir, pioneer and creative savant Patterson recalls the trials and tribulations of climbing to the upper ranks of sports-entertainment - as a performer and, later, as a backstage creative force. 2016.Intolerable: a memoir of extremes
By Kamal Al-Solaylee. 2012
As a gay man living in an intolerant Middle East, Al-Solaylee escaped first to England and eventually to Canada, where…
he became a journalist and academic. While he was enjoying the cultural and personal freedoms of life in the West, his once-liberal family slowly fell into the hard-line interpretations of Islam that were sweeping large parts of the Arab-Muslim world in the 1980s and 1990s. The differences between his life and theirs were brought into sharp relief by the 2011 revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Yemen. Bestseller. Canada Reads 2015. 2012.Visions and revisions
By Dale Peck. 2015
Novelist and critic Dale Peck's latest work - part memoir, part extended essay - is a foray into what the…
author calls "the second half of the first half AIDS epidemic," i.e., the period between 1987, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was founded, and 1996, when the advent of combination therapy transformed AIDS from a virtual death sentence into a chronic manageable illness. 2015.Tomboy survival guide
By Ivan E Coyote. 2016
A memoir told in stories, about how Coyote learned to embrace their tomboy past while carving out a space for…
those of us who don't fit neatly into boxes or identities or labels. Ivan writes about their years as a young butch, dealing with new infatuations and old baggage, and life as a gender-box-defying adult, in which they offer advice to young people while seeking guidance from others. (And for tomboys in training, there are even directions on building your very own unicorn trap.) Recounts Ivan's past as a diffident yet free-spirited tomboy, and maps their journey through treacherous gender landscapes and a maze of labels that don't quite stick, to a place of self-acceptance and an authentic and personal strength. 2016.The milk lady of Bangalore: an unexpected adventure
By Shoba Narayan. 2018
When Shoba Narayan, a writer and cookbook author who had lived for years in Manhattan, moves back to Bangalore with…
her family, she befriends the milk lady, from whom she buys fresh milk every day. These two women from very different backgrounds bond over not only cows, considered holy in India, but also family, food, and life. After Narayan agrees to buy her milk lady a new cow (she needs one and Narayan can afford it, so why not?), they set off looking for just the right cow. What was at first a simple economic transaction becomes something much more complicated, though never without a hint of slapstick. 2018.The inheritance of shame: a memoir
By Peter Gajdics. 2017
Author Peter Gajdics spent six years in a bizarre form of conversion therapy that attempted to “cure” him of his…
homosexuality. Kept with other patients in a cult-like home in British Columbia, Canada, Gajdics was under the authority of a rogue psychiatrist who controlled his patients, in part, by creating and exploiting a false sense of family. Juxtaposed against his parents’ tormented past--his mother’s incarceration and escape from a communist concentration camp in post-World War II Yugoslavia, and his father’s upbringing as an orphan in war-torn Hungary--Gajdics explores the universal themes of childhood trauma, oppression, and intergenerational pain. 2017.Ike's mystery man: the secret lives of Robert Cutler
By Peter Shinkle. 2018
This Cold War narrative takes listeners from top secret Cabinet Room meetings to exclusive social clubs, and into the pages…
of a powerful man's intimate diary to bring new dimension to our understanding of the inner workings of the Eisenhower White House. 2018.In search of pure lust: a memoir
By Lise Weil. 2018
When Lise Weil came out in 1976, lesbian desire was the pulsing center of an entire way of life, a…
culture, a movement. The air throbbed with possibility. But after fifteen years of torrid but ultimately failed relationships, Weil had to admit that desire was also a conduit for childhood wounds--and it tended to trump love, over and over again. When a friend invited her to attend a Zen retreat in the mid-'80s, she was desperate enough to say yes. Her first day of sitting zazen was mostly hell--but, smitten with the (female) roshi, she stuck with it. Ultimately, the dive into Zen practice became a turning point in her quest for love. 2018.Getting a life: the social worlds of geek culture
By Benjamin Woo. 2018
Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today’s pop-culture landscape, and the people we…
used to deride as “nerds” or “geeks” have ridden their popularity and visibility to mainstream recognition. Yet these conventionalized representations of geek culture typically ignore the real people who have invested time and resources to make it what it is. Woo recentres our understanding of geek culture on the everyday lives of its participants, drawing on fieldwork in comic book shops, game stores, and conventions. He shows how geek culture is a set of interconnected social practices that are associated with popular media and argues that typical depictions of mass-mediated entertainment as something that isolates and pacifies its audiences are flawed because they do not account for the conversations, relationships, communities, and identities that are created by engaging with the products of mass culture. 2018. "What is a nerd?" -- Talk nerdy to me: the meaning of geek culture -- Taking geek culture seriously: a practice-theoretic account -- Values and virtues: what is best in life? -- Careers: boldly going on -- Making communities from mass culture -- Institutions: building worlds between production and consumption -- The limits of participation -- The geek, the bad, and the ugly --The last whalers: three years in the far Pacific with a courageous tribe and a vanishing way of life
By Doug Bock Clark. 2019
Journalist Doug Bock Clark tells the stunning inside story of the Lamalerans, an ancient tribe of 1,500 hunter-gatherers who live…
on a volcanic island so remote it is known by other Indonesians as "The Land Left Behind." They have survived for centuries by taking whales with bamboo harpoons, but now are being pushed toward collapse by the encroachment of the modern world. 2019.Jimmy Neurosis: a memoir
By James Oseland. 2019
Before James Oseland was a judge on Top Chef Masters, he was a teenage rebel growing up in the California…
suburbs. Diving headfirst into the churning mayhem of punk, he renamed himself Jimmy Neurosis and journeyed into a vibrant underground world of visionary musicians and artists. With humor and verve, Oseland brings to life the effervescent cocktail of music, art, drugs, and sexual adventure that characterized the end of the seventies. Through his account of how creativity saved his life, he tells a thrilling and uniquely American coming-of-age story. 2019.The queen of Whale Cay
By Kate Summerscale. 1997
Joe Carstairs was renowned in the 1920s as an 'invert' who smoked cheroots and dressed as a man, as an…
heiress to the Standard Oil fortune and as the fastest female speedboat racer in the world. In 1934 she disappeared to create her own kingdom, founding and ruling a colony of 500 black Bahamians.The making of home: the 500-year story of how our houses became our homes
By Judith Flanders. 2014
Flanders traces the evolution of the house from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century across northern Europe and America,…
showing how the homes we know today bear only a faint resemblance to homes though history. What turned a house into a home? Why did northwestern Europe, a politically unimportant, sociologically underdeveloped region of the world, suddenly became the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution, the capitalist crucible that created modernity? While investigating these important questions, Flanders uncovers the fascinating development of ordinary household items--from cutlery, chairs and curtains, to fitted kitchens, plumbing and windows--while also dismantling many domestic myths.The Book of Pride: LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World
By Mason Funk. 2019
THE BOOK OF PRIDE captures the true story of the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, through…
richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the movement and made it happen. These individuals fought battles both personal and political, often without the support of family or friends, frequently under the threat of violence and persecution. By shining a light on these remarkable stories of bravery and determination, THE BOOK OF PRIDE not only honors an important chapter in American history, but also empowers young people today (both LGBTQ and straight) to discover their own courage in order to create positive change. Furthermore, it serves a critically important role in ensuring the history of the LGBTQ movement can never be erased, inspiring us to resist all forms of oppression with ferocity, community, and, most importantly, pride.JAY-Z: Made in America
By Michael Eric Dyson. 2019
"If you want the definitive treatment of a man who took it from Marcy Projects to the White House with…
wit, wisdom, and talent, and changed hip hop along the way, look no further than this insightful, brilliant and moving book." -Common JAY-Z is America at its scrappy, brash, irreverent, soulful, ingenious best: as transcendent a cultural icon as Frank Sinatra, as adventurous a self-made billionaire as Mark Zuckerberg, as gifted a poet as Walt Whitman. As he reaches the half-century mark, logs thirty years as a recording artist, becomes the genre's first billionaire, reigns as an elder statesman in a field teeming with artists half his age, and continues to make relevant rap records that chart-and that chart an artistic and political response to revived racism and renewed hostility to blackness-it is an auspicious time to examine JAY-Z's ideas, gifts and impact, to take measure of his stride as a cultural colossus. And there is no one better suited to the task than Michael Eric Dyson, who has investigated and championed hip hop, and the work of JAY-Z, as a critical American art form, for decades.High School
By Sara Quin, Tegan Quin. 2019
This program is read by the authors and features bonus interviews and rough recordings of Tegan and Sara's first songs,…
recorded on cassette tapes in the late '90s, and rediscovered 20 years later while writing High School. From the iconic musicians Tegan and Sara comes a memoir about high school, detailing their first loves and first songs in a compelling look back at their humble beginnings. High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, who grew up at the height of grunge and rave culture in the '90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents' divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan's and Sara's points of view, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music, and friendship they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, High School captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from each another. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir
By Saeed Jones. 2019
From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir written at the crossroads…
of sex, race, and power. "People don't just happen," writes Saeed Jones. "We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The 'I' it seems doesn't exist until we are able to say, 'I am no longer yours.' " Haunted and haunting, Jones's memoir tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence-into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another-and to one another-as we fight to become ourselves. Blending poetry and prose, Jones has developed a style that is equal parts sensual, beautiful, and powerful-a voice that's by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one of a kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.I.M.: A Memoir
By Isaac Mizrahi. 2019
"Mizrahi speaks passionately...the warmth in both his voice and writing creates a singularly satisfying listening experience."-AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner…
This program is read by Isaac Mizrahi, whose "warm and wry voice provides an extra incentive to check out this version of his story."-LitHub "Isaac Mizrahi is a true Renaissance man. He can do it all! He's managed to live several lives in one lifetime."-RuPaul Isaac Mizrahi is sui generis: designer, cabaret performer, talk-show host, a TV celebrity. Yet ever since he shot to fame in the late 1980s, the private Isaac Mizrahi has remained under wraps. Until now. In I.M., Isaac Mizrahi offers a poignant, candid, and touching look back on his life so far. Growing up gay in a sheltered Syrian Jewish Orthodox family, Isaac had unique talents that ultimately drew him into fashion and later into celebrity circles that read like a who's who of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Richard Avedon, Audrey Hepburn, Anna Wintour, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Meryl Streep, and Oprah Winfrey, to name only a few. In his elegant memoir, Isaac delves into his lifelong battles with weight, insomnia, and depression. He tells what it was like to be an out gay man in a homophobic age and to witness the ravaging effects of the AIDS epidemic. Brimming with intimate details and inimitable wit, Isaac's narrative reveals not just the glamour of his years, but the grit beneath the glitz. Rich with memorable stories from in and out of the spotlight, I.M.illuminates deep emotional truths. Praise for I.M.: "I.M. has everything! It's colorful, hysterical, touching, bold, and heartbreaking. It's about coming of age, creativity, being yourself, Jewish mothers, fashion, art, loss, and glamour. I loved it." -Andy Cohen, New York Times bestselling author of Superficial "The key to the warmth and overall success of the memoir is Mizrahi's unapologetic, bare-all approach as he shares the best and worst aspects of his life...? charming and witty memoir."-Kirkus