Childhood Memoir

Justin Webb's childhood was far from ordinary. Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems and his step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best. But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions, Quaker boarding school wasn't much better. And the backdrop to this coming of age story? Britain in the 1970s. Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin and Free. Strikes, inflation and IRA bombings. A time in which attitudes towards mental illness, parenting and masculinity were worlds apart from the attitudes we have today.

W. Nikola-Lisa explores new terrain - his childhood experiences growing up in south Texas during the early 1960s. Unlike his previous books, this is not a book for young children as the author explores the darker elements growing up in a harsh environment. Although the work feels like a memoir, it sounds like a novel with the author's spare, unrelenting narrative a perfect accompaniment to the time, place, and underlying familial issues.

Nestled within the deep Alabama forest lies a community built on ancient Indian burial ground and almost completely hidden away from the world if not for the winding main road which leads to it from the highway. Within this community rests scenic streets, quaint suburban homes, happy families...and ghostly legends that will chill your bones. Here lies a collection of some of the scariest Southern ghost stories.

'I have just had one of those absolutely mad mornings when you go out to have a browse at tagines and end up coming home with a brand-new gas ring expander. I think I was probably as surprised as anybody. Sometimes life is just like that, isn't it?' Award-winning food writer Damien Trench takes you on a journey through his childhood and his early inspirations - culinary and otherwise - with occasional diversions to the present.

This is an engaging account of childhood years lived in the famous religious and socialist commune in upstate New York (1848-1880) dedicated to sharing property, work, and love. It is full of sketches of many community members and of their employees. It conveys the look and feel of the communal home, the Mansion House, and the surrounding world.

When Julia Scully was seven years old, her father committed suicide, and she and her sister were sent to an orphanage. Julia sought comfort in the rituals of the orphanage - learning to knit, roller-skating after dinner, listening to One Man's Family on the radio - and tried to adapt. But two years later, emotionally damaged by the isolation and brutality of the orphanage, the girls followed their mother to the near-wilderness of the gold-mining territory north of Nome, Alaska.

This is the true story of a unique man who lived among the Indians in the early 1800's, and who in his twenties learned to read and write this book. He was a favorite in Europe. He spent time with Thomas Jefferson, shortly thereafter Mr. Hunter was assassinated in Texas while attempting to establish a home for numerous Indian tribes.

Frank and funny, these stories, written originally for the Bengali children's magazine Sandesh, are an essential listen for all Ray enthusiasts as well as those who want to know Ray, the writer and filmmaker, better. In this volume, Ray also shares some of his experiences while shooting Pather Panchali - his epic debut, and subsequent films, particularly for children.

During World War II, the Japanese invaded a Dutch colony located in South East Asia called the Dutch East Indies (today known as the Republic of Indonesia).This story follows the trials and tribulations of a Dutch family while living on the idyllic island of Java. This pertinent story of innocent lives caught up in world politics illustrates how a happy and carefree childhood changed overnight into a seemingly never-ending nightmare. 

With a cancer diagnosis in his early forties, the author is compelled to revisit and resolve the mystery of his family’s sadness. The fourth of six children in an Irish-American household distinctly out-of-place in this affluent suburb of New York City, O’Brien grows up in a claustrophobic milieu of secrecy, lies, and mental illness. The turning point in his maturation is an older brother’s attempted suicide—an event he witnesses firsthand. From Scarsdale traces with sensitivity the complex histories and dynamics that lead to this trauma.

From the ghetto paved and unpaved streets of Indianapolis, Indiana, this book begins telling the story of one fat kid's rise from the projects, to his fall serving over seven years in as many prisons, and how he was able to come out a prison scholar. That led to him to writing 18 phenomenal books about redemption and attending Georgia State University, graduating number one in his undergraduate class. He earned a 4.13 GPA and went on to grad school, where he excelled, graduating at top of his class, before becoming a very popular African-American Studies professor at Georgia State University.

Tendöl Namling turned 60 in March 2019. She was born at the time when the Dalai Lama fled from Lhasa and the uprising of his people by the Chinese People's Army was brutally suppressed. She has lived for 22 years under Chinese rule. As the daughter of a high government official, she underwent the ordeal of "re-education" with full force. All she has kept from these years are painful memories and some crumpled photographs. They show her with her friends and cousins in Lhasa, smiling as if nothing had happened.

"We live so far in the backwoods, we have to pump sunshine through hollow logs," young Susanette's daddy says, when asked where the Howell family lives. Their cracker house, which has never been slapped by a loaded paintbrush, sits on a small tobacco farm near the Suwannee River in North Florida, 18 miles from the small town of Live Oak - a town that was, at the turn of the 19th century, the fifth largest town in Florida and the largest inland city in the state.

A small and effeminate boy bullied for years while growing up in an alcoholic family in suburban Cleveland Gil finds refuge in the equestrian world. A coach instills in him the dream of going to the Olympics and becomes his mentor, his guide and his predator. Gil survives rape, betrayals, setbacks, and the loss of family and friends all while on a quest to fulfill his dream. This book is not only about surviving; it's about the resilience of the human spirit and the pursuit of dreams against all odds.

How can I possibly be 53 years old when I still feel like that wisp of a seven-year-old, bursting with energy, racing from the '60s to the '70s? How can it be the 21st century when images of school milk, beetle drives, chopper bikes, and flared trousers are still so vivid in my head? A gentler age has been and gone, but as long as we groovy glamsters are still around, it lives on - at least in our hearts.... A memoir - 42 delightful tales of days gone by.

Whether she’s taking a face plant in a second-grade war, lying her way into pet ownership, setting the fondue kit on fire or taking the Fifth after an epic food fight, Confessions of a Helmet-Free Childhood chronicles Cinnia Curran Finfer finding her way through childhood by trial and error - heavy on the error. She wasn’t trying to be funny; it just keeps turning out that way. Born the second of four girls in New York City, Cinnia’s childhood played out in five different grade schools and three different high schools in New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Illinois.

When Gail Gallant was five months old, she died. A year later, she was reborn. Or so her mother said. The crash occurred on a July night in 1955. The truck hit the Gallant family's car head-on; a few weeks later, newborn baby Gail died from her injuries. Mad with grief, her mother prayed feverishly for Gail's return, convinced that God would bring her child back to her. And when she gave birth within a year to a baby girl who looked identical to her lost child, she believed her prayers had been answered. She named that newborn baby Gail.

In this vivid memoir, Neidhardt explores her childhood in wider familial and social contexts. Drawing upon a trove of family letters and other archival material, she follows her parents’ journey from privilege to food stamps—from their formative youths, to their embrace of pioneer homemaking and rural poverty, to their sudden and wrenching return to conventional society—and explores the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s as it was, and as she lived it.

For a long time, years, Jensen Anderson debated if he should write his memoir or not. This is because one of the abusers who still denies what she did to him is still alive. Now that he has decided to write his memoir, he won’t let her know about it. He will keep it from her so she doesn’t do whatever she might do to him if she was to know.

Upon returning home from golf on a rare afternoon free of responsibilities, Dr. Beverly Joyce, a busy and beloved OB-GYN, listened to a phone message that would shake her identity and send her on a life-changing journey of self-discovery. That call would instantly help free her from the hidden doubt, guilt, and shame that had plagued her throughout her life.