What is the purpose of my life? What is friendship? What is faith? These universal questions, which are especially relevant to young adults, form the heart of this compelling story, told through real letters and diary entries.Anni, who grows from her teenage years to adulthood over the course of the book, is passionate about life and unsparing in her search for authenticity. Articulate and probing, her words have a contemporary ring as she plumbs t...

This National Book Award finalist is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann.In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.Sorting through boxes of family papers and ...

Joseph Sebarenzi’s parents, seven siblings, and countless other family members were among 800,000 Tutsi brutally murdered over the course of ninety days in 1994 by extremist Rwandan Hutu—an efficiency that exceeded even that of the Nazi Holocaust. His father sent him away to school in Congo as a teenager, telling him, “If we are killed, you will survive.” When Sebarenzi returned to Rwanda after the genocide, he was elected speaker of parliament, only to be forced into a daring escape again...

A startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed t...

Living in Hell is a true story providing a window into the life of a young woman growing up in Iran. It is also an educational history of Iran and its people. Although this story is entirely mine, it is also the story of too many women in the Middle East who suffer similar fates. Iranian women have come a long way since I grew up in Iran but still much needs to be done for them, as well other women of the Middle East, to become completely independent, able to make their own decisions and s...

'Brett was the sweetest, funniest, cleverest man I've ever known, my confidant and best friend. He had a rare radiance, an inner certainty which was compelling and hugely attractive.'Frannie Hopkirk knew Brett Whiteley all his life. He was her brother. Here, for the first time, one of those closest to Brett presents a vivid and movingly personal insight into his life and work.Throughout their lives, despite the sometimes vast geographical distances that sep...

Growing up in the small town of Maden in Turkey, Fethiye Çetin knew her grandmother as a happy and respected Muslim housewife called Seher.Only decades later did she discover the truth. Her grandmother’s name was not Seher but Heranus. She was born a Christian Armenian. Most of the men in her village had been slaughtered in 1915. A Turkish gendarme had stolen her from her mother and adopted her. Çetin’s family history tied her directly to the terrible origins of modern Turkey and t...

In this captivating new memoir, award-winning writer Jessica B. Harris recalls her youth “surrounded by some of the most famous creative minds of the seventies and eighties…James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Nina Simone” (New York magazine)—in a vibrant, lost era of New York City.In the Technicolor glow of the early seventies, Jessica B. Harris debated, celebrated, and danced her way from the jazz clubs of the Manhattan’s West Side to the restaura...

In 2009, Raquel Cepeda embarked on an exploration of her genealogy using DNA testing to uncover the truth about her family and the tapestry of races and ethnicities that came together in an ambiguous mix in her features, resulting in “a beautiful story of reconciliation and redemption” (HuffPost) and what it means to be Latina.Digging through memories long buried, Cepeda journeyed not only into her ancestry but also into her own history. Born in Harlem to ...

"A multilayered, utterly gripping account of life among the developing world's blind population." — New York TimesRosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school. Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindn...

Many books have been written about the problems of racial hostility and cultural diversity-but none like Ebony and Ivory.This powerful collection offers a refreshing and humorous look at these serious issues that face our society. The fables and articles in Ebony and Ivory will make the reader laugh, cry, and shout and will also cause us to do some deep self-evaluation.

A New York Times Notable BookDaring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, who...