Biography Girls

In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits a night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It was the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18, and the man she had given herself to had moved on. She'd submitted her will to his and then found that she was a slave without a master.

In January of 2019, I was trapped in a hotel room in the DusitD2 in Nairobi for 17 long hours while Al-Shabaab terrorists attacked the property. I was completely alone, and certain I was going to die. However, thanks to the incomprehensibly brave men who fought to get us out, hundreds of us were extracted to safety. After the attack, though, PTSD made me so miserable that I started to wish I had died after all. This book is the in-depth retelling of the attack, combined with my personal journal entries about PTSD afterward. It's a true story about trauma.

In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems, blending the confessional, political, and literary, Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the questions that haunt social movements today. With the author's characteristic eloquence and honesty, I Hope We Choose Love proposes heartfelt solutions on the topics of violence, complicity, family, vengeance, and forgiveness.

Jayne Mansfield was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known for her platinum blonde hair, hourglass figure, outrageously low necklines, and flamboyant lifestyle. Mansfield proved early in her career that she was adept in both comic and dramatic roles, but her tenacious search for the spotlight and her risqué stunts caused her to be increasingly snubbed in Hollywood. In the first definitive biography of Mansfield, Eve Golden offers a joyful account of the star Andy Warhol called “the poet of publicity.”

The Jan Broberg Story tells the winding tale of the Brobergs, a church-going, Idaho family that falls prey to a sociopathic neighbor who will stop at nothing to be with their young daughter. Robert Berchtold, furniture store owner and family man, coaxes his way into the Broberg’s life, meticulously building their trust and bonding with their young girls. One day, Robert offers to take their 12-year-old daughter, Jan, horseback riding, only he doesn’t return her home.

The best-selling memoir by Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. I Am Malala. This is my story. Malala Yousafzai was only 10 years old when the Taliban took control of her region. They said music was a crime. They said women weren't allowed to go to the market. They said girls couldn't go to school. Raised in a once-peaceful area of Pakistan transformed by terrorism, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. So she fought for her right to be educated.

In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.

From New York Times best-selling author Rachel Held Evans: a must-listen for anyone on the journey of doubt, deconstruction, and ultimately faith reborn. Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial made a spectacle of Christian fundamentalism and brought national attention to her hometown, Rachel Held Evans faced a trial of her own when she began to have doubts about her faith. Rachel recounts growing up in a culture obsessed with apologetics, struggling as her own faith unraveled one unexpected question at a time.

This inspiring, compelling debut memoir chronicles the experiences of a female captain serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, and her journey to make space for herself in a traditionally masculine world. Girls Need Not Apply is a refreshingly honest story of conviction, determination, and empowerment, and a bit of a love story, too.

What does it mean to endure as a woman? Percy, who has written extensively on trauma responses and PTSD, revisits these subjects using her personal experience, including sexual assault, to examine a broader social and cultural history of trauma. Beginning with her childhood in rural Oregon, Percy dissects the moments that shaped her girlhood.

Online sensation, fearless feminist heroine and scourge of trolls and misogynists everywhere, Clementine Ford is a beacon of hope and inspiration to thousands of Australian women and girls. Her incendiary debut, Fight Like a Girl, is an essential manifesto for feminists new, old and soon to be and exposes just how unequal the world continues to be for women.

At age six, Sasha DiGiulian stepped into a climbing gym for the first time and was competing within a year. Decked out in all-pink gear and with her blonde hair tied into pigtails, Sasha knew from an early age what it was like to be a girl in a traditionally male-dominated sport, vowing to never sacrifice her femininity to fit in. With a fierce love for the climb and incredible natural talent, Sasha soon won her first National Sport Climbing Championship at only seventeen, and a year later took the title of World Champion.

Being a Girl with Glasses isn't just a style choice; it's a way of life. If you've ever had your specs steam up when walking into a bar, squinted into the sun on the soccer field, or laid eyes on a new haircut only after your locks are strewn across the floor, you know what it's like to be a GWG. Marissa Walsh has worn glasses since third grade. Now - 10 pairs of glasses, one pair of prescription sunglasses, and endless pairs of contacts later - she has fully embraced her four-eyed fate.

This extraordinary memoir details the monumental journey of one young Gambian woman from survivor of FGM and forced child marriage, to global activist and political leader who became UN Women's first Goodwill Ambassador for Africa, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, and among the youngest people nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World is the third book in the New York Times best-selling series for children. Packed with 100 all-new bedtime stories about the lives of incredible female figures from the past and the present, this volume recognizes women who left their birth countries for a multitude of reasons: Some for new opportunities, some out of necessity. Listeners will whip up a plate with Asma Khan, strategize global affairs alongside Madeleine Albright, venture into business with Rihanna, and many more.

During her teens, Rachel Lloyd ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. With time, through incredible resilience, and with the help of a local church community, she finally broke free of her pimp and her past and devoted herself to helping other young girls escape "the life". In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark world of commercial sex trafficking in cinematic detail and tells the story of her groundbreaking nonprofit organization: GEMS.

The facts are brutally straightforward. On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound and gagged bodies of four girls - each one shot in the head - were found in an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror spread out from their families and friends to overtake the city itself. Though all branches of law enforcement were brought to bear, the investigation was often misdirected, and after eight years only two men (then teenagers) were tried.

They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded—fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls—as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South.

Widowed Blanche Taylor Moore was about to lose her second spouse to symptoms that mysteriously mirrored those that killed her first husband—as well as her previous boyfriend. When an investigation reveals arsenic poisoning, the hideous truth about the wife and mother comes to light. Did the abuse Blanche suffered as a child at the hands of her alcoholic father turn her into a murderer she became?

A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser. At 18, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman would pay pretty girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next 18 months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah....