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Showing 1 - 13 of 13 items
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material, including Sophia's unpublished memoir, Alexandra Popoff presents a dramatically different and accurate portrait of the woman and the marriage.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 Alan D McMillan. 1988
A comprehensive overview of all the native groups of Canada -- Indian, Metis and Inuit. Describes their traditional ways of…
life from prehistoric times to the present issues of land claims and self-government. 1988.By Helen Forrester. 1979
The Forrester family are slowly winning their fight for survival, but for 14 year old Helen, the battle is with…
her parents: to be allowed to lead her own life, after the years of neglect and inadequate schooling while she cared for her six younger siblings. She struggles against illness, caused by severe malnutrition and dirt, and the selfish demands of her parents, with amazing courage and perseverance. Sequel to "By the waters of Liverpool" (DC29720), followed by "Lime Street at two" (DC29719). 1979. (Autobiography ; 3)By Molly Phillips. 1990
Born in Hong Kong in 1909, the author has witnessed the three modern eras of Chinese history: the final days…
of the Imperial Ching dynasty; the republican rule of Chiang Kai-Shek; and Communist rule since 1949. She describes the people, culture, and history of China as she experienced them. 1990.By Lee Maracle. 1990
The majority of this book, originally published in the 1970s, is an account of the author's early years as a…
native woman in Vancouver, California and Toronto. Filled with anger, pain and apathy, she found the strength to turn her life around.By Louise de Kiriline Lawrence. 1987
Louise de Kiriline Lawrence describes her aristocratic Swedish childhood during the 1890s, her gruelling experiences as a Red Cross nurse,…
her passionate marriage to a Russian army officer, and her heartbreak during the Russian Revolution. 1987.By Margaret Wente. 2004
Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente traces her true-life coming-of-age as an expatriate American in suburban Toronto. She also comments,…
often comically, on such topics as Google, day spas, obesity, building your own home, and so-called Canadian royalty, chiefly Adrienne Clarkson and John Ralston Saul and Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel. 2004.By Cynthia J Faryon. 2004
Gwendolyn Cramer was one of 48,000 war brides transported to Canada between 1942 and 1947. Many of them were escorted…
across the ocean and handed over to their husbands with nothing more than a handshake and a cookbook. Following her heart to rural Saskatchewan, Gwen felt like a fish out of water, unable to milk a cow or cook on a wood stove, and then she had her in-laws to contend with. Some descriptions of violence. 2004.By Hamida Ghafour. 2007
In 2003, journalist Ghafour was sent to Afghanistan, which she had fled in 1981, to cover the country's reconstruction. In…
a place totally changed from the world her parents had described, she discovered a school which teaches women a new kind of independence, her cousin's determined parliamentary campaign, and the archaeologist digging for his country's lost civilization in the form of a giant sleeping Buddha. Some descriptions of violence. 2007.By Gale Garnett. 2003
Johnny Reed is a gifted black actor who leaves America for Greece, where he now has a job and a…
family. Theddo Daniels is an African-American civil rights activist and a closeted homosexual in the early stages of AIDS, in Greece to write his memoirs. The two men meet and become friends, while they and Johnny's wife must deal with the secrets and horrors of their pasts. Some strong language. Some descriptions of sex and violence. 2003.By Catherine Gildiner. 1999
A coming of age memoir about growing up in Lewiston, New York, in the 1950's. Though told with humour, the…
author underscores the dark side of what at first seems a Norman Rockwell existence. Her reminiscences include stories about her mother - with her intellectual preoccupations and aversion to housework and visiting neighbours, she is an emblem of prefeminist frustration, and Hollywood - Gildiner delivered sleeping pills to Marilyn Monroe on the set of Niagara. Strong language. Canada Reads 2012. 1999.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.By Ange Zhang. 2004
In 1966, Zhang was a teen in Beijing when Mao Zedong began the Cultural Revolution. Though he was the son…
of a "bad guy" (a famous writer), he became swept up in the revolution, until the violence and his father's arrest made him question its goals. In 1968 was sent to a small village to learn how to farm, where he discovered his true calling - art. Some descriptions of violence. Grades 2-4 and older readers. 2004.