Childhood Biography

In her memoir, Jevranne explores the effects trauma has on the body and how it can often result in blocked-out memories. She shares her personal journey with grief and the struggles that appeared when silencing herself because of not feeling valid in her pain- a childhood and generational wound embedded through the years.

Best-selling author Rafe Esquith, the only teacher to receive the National Medal of Arts, has garnered the American Teacher Award and numerous other honors. Still teaching fifth graders in a small, leaky classroom in downtown Los Angeles, Esquith fosters a wholesome climate where character, humility, and diligence matter and support is unconditional. For his mostly poor and Hispanic students, Esquith models two maxims: Be nice and work hard, and There are no shortcuts. And his students thrive!

Madhur (meaning sweet as honey) Jaffrey grew up in a large family compound by the Yamuna River in Delhi where her grandfather often presided over dinners with forty or more members of his extended family savoring together the wonderfully flavorful dishes that were forever imprinted on Madhur's palate.

Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time, shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this best-selling spiritual classic. This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to be treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power of spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou’s latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth in every minute.

When Claire Hoffman's alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven - Iowa - to live in Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire's mother, Transcendental Meditation - the Maharishi's method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life - was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart.

In this memoir, Natasha takes on the therapist's role with her past selves to drag her social anxiety into the open. From feisty Miss 6, lonely Miss 14 reeling from a tumultuous childhood, and defiant Miss 18 pushing back against a world where she didn't fit, through to her present self, Natasha explores the way social anxiety colored her experiences and finds healing through self-acceptance.

Are you a survivor of childhood sexual abuse? Are you tired of the painful memories of your abuse resurfacing again and again? Do you feel shame, anger, worthlessness, fear, etc. related to the abuse? In this book, I share my own story, how I discovered the lies I was living, how I overcame them (along with many other detrimental effects of the abuse), and offer hope and direction along the road to recovery from childhood sexual abuse

Mary MacLeod's mother died in childbirth when Mary was five, an event that marked for the child a "before time" - a lost joyful time - and after. She was shunted from one relative to another while her father coped with his grief. He married again only nine months later, perhaps to have a mother for his child, but her new mum, harsh and withholding of her love, quickly exerted complete control over her thoughts and deeds, with her father oblivious.

Published in 1913, My Childhood is the first in an autobiographical trilogy by the Russian writer and five-time Nobel Prize-nominee Maxim Gorky. Painfully moving in places, the book tells of the experiences of a young boy who goes to live with his grandparents following the death of his father. Gorky’s depiction of 19th-century Russia through the eyes of his younger self is remarkable. As he recalls memories of his youth, contrasting themes and emotions are revealed, from barbaric joy to dark gloom, genuine cruelty and saint-like forbearance.

Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.

Drawing on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

The sweet-natured Laura Meer dreams of a superhero and spends days trying to provide for herself while being half-neglected by her parents, who couldn’t take good care even of themselves. Her father constantly tries to kill her mother, and the police refuse to help. Developing faith in God is Laura’s only strength. But will she be able to protect her mother?

By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere.

As a neurodivergent child in a hundred-year-old house, Zaji Cox collects grammar books, second-hand toys, and sightings of feral cats. She dances and cartwheels through self-discovery and doubt, guided by her big sister and their devoted single mother. Through short essays that evoke the abundant imagination of childhood, Plums for Months explores the challenges of growing up mixed race and low-income on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon.

Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.

Aké. Los años de la niñez es el relato en primera persona de la infancia de Soyinka en una aldea de Nigeria llamada Aké, en los años en torno a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Allí el pequeño Wole, un muchacho de una curiosidad infinita, amante de los libros y propenso a meterse en líos y aventuras, crece con la doble influencia de los aires occidentales y de las antiguas tradiciones espirituales youruba.

Nowhere Like This Place is a coming-of-age memoir set against the backdrop of the weirdness of an enclave with more PhDs per capita than anywhere else on Earth. It’s steeped in thinly-veiled sexism and the searing angst of an artsy child trapped in a terrarium full of white-bread nuclear scientists and their nuclear families. Everything happens, and nothing happens, and it all works out in the end. Maybe.

Much is written about children's infancy and toddler years, which is good, since children will never remember those times themselves. It is ages four to 14 that make up the second act, as Catherine Newman puts it in this delightfully candid, outlandishly funny new memoir about the years that "your children will remember as childhood". Following Newman's son and daughter as they blossom from preschoolers into teenagers, Catastrophic Happiness is about the bittersweet joy of raising children and the ever-evolving landscape of issues parents traverse.

In this follow-up to Billy's first international best seller, an autobiography set largely in Thailand's infamous prison system, Billy sets out to explore his experience of childhood abuse that would lead to a life of drug addiction and near-constant incarceration. After Billy's sentence in Klong Prem prison was commuted as a result of his extraordinary success as a Muay Thai boxer, he returned to the UK. In this vividly told story, Liverpudlian Billy contrasts his first-hand experience of one of the cruellest prison systems in the world with his experience of UK prisons.

A simple car accident changed the path of six-year-old Sean Rogers’ life forever. His single mother checked into the hospital as a vibrant young woman and checked out as a full-blown opioid addict. From that day forward, Sean’s life became a silent nightmare of abuse, neglect, chronic hunger, and slow, helpless withdrawal from everything and everyone he loved.