Memoir genre books (768)


221.

From Here to Eternity : Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
A New York Times and Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Doughty chronicles [death] practices with tenderheartedness, a technician’s fascination, and an unsentimental respect for grief.” —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American fune... continue

222.

From My Mother's Back: A Journey from Kenya to Canada by Njoki Wane EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Kenya flag Kenya
Description:
In this warm and honest memoir, celebrated academic Njoki Wane shares her journey from her parents' small coffee farm in Kenya, where she helped her mother in the fields as a child, to her current work as a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Moving smoothly between time and place, Wane uses memories, painful and tender, to show how her early lessons and the support given by her family allowed her to succeed as a woman of colour in the academy, and to later lift up her students facing their own difficult journeys.

223.

From the Four Winds by Hayim Sabato EN

0 Ratings
Country: Africa / Egypt flag Egypt
Description:
Haim Sabato draws us into his childhood with this evocative rendering of his experiences as a young boy whose family immigrates to Israel in the 1950's, settling in a Ma'abara - a transit camp. He notices his fellow immigrants' concealment of their pasts. He accepts this secrecy, sensing that everything will reveal itself eventually. And this revelation does come, in the form of Farkash, a mysterious, dynamic man who takes Haim under his wing and gradually divulges to him his sorrowful, uplifting story, one that profoundly impacts Haim for the rest of his life...

224.

From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey by Pascal Khoo Thwe EN

Rating: 4 (4 votes)
Country: Asia / Myanmar flag Myanmar
Description:
A former Burma student rebel leader describes his tribal upbringing, experiences with political turmoil and poverty, participation in the insurrection of 1988, and flight to England, where he attended Cambridge University.

225.

Funny in Farsi : A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Country: Asia / Iran flag Iran
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir This Random House Reader’s Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner! “Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America.”—San Francisco Chronicle In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California... continue

226.
Funny, You Don't Look Autistic

Funny, You Don't Look Autistic : A Comedian's Guide to Life on the Spectrum by Michael McCreary EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Like many others on the autism spectrum, 20-something stand-up comic Michael McCreary has been told by more than a few well-meaning folks that he doesn't "look" autistic. But, as he's quick to point out in this memoir, autism "looks" different for just about everyone with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Diagnosed with ASD at age five, McCreary got hit with the performance bug not much later. During a difficult time in junior high, he started journaling, eventually turning his pain e into something empowering--and funny. He scored his first stand-up gig at age 14, and hasn't looked back. This u... continue

227.

Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou EN

0 Ratings
Description:
In this second volume of her poignant autobiographical series, Maya Angelou powerfully captures the struggles and triumphs of her passionate life with dignity, wisdom, humor, and humanity. “A curiously heartening story in which decency, honor, truth, love do exist, imperfectly, fractionally and flickeringly, not in some Platonic realm of the ideal, but in the flawed lives of real men and women.”—The Washington Post Gather Together in My Name continues Maya Angelou’s personal story, begun so unforgettably in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The time is the end of World War II and there is a sen... continue

228.

Geisha : A Life by Mineko Iwasaki EN

Rating: 4.5 (3 votes)
Country: Asia / Japan flag Japan
Description:
A Kyoto geisha describes her initiation into an okiya at the age of four, the intricate training that made up most of her education, her successful career, and the traditions surrounding the geisha culture.

229.

Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
Faith struggles to make sense of the complex world in which she lives and come to terms with the beliefs her society and upbringing have inculcated in her. This tale of courage, set against the backdrop of a chaotically divided country, recreates the voice of a young girl growing up during the height of apartheid unrest in South Africa.