Cultural Memoir

Welcome to Madison Park, a small community in Alabama founded by freed slaves in 1880. And meet Eric Motley, a native son who came of age in this remarkable place where constant lessons in self-determination, hope, and unceasing belief in the American dream taught him everything he needed for his journey to the Oval Office as a Special Assistant to President George W. Bush. This charming, engaging, and deeply inspiring memoir will help you remember that we can create a world of shared values based on love and hope.

In this provocative and captivating dialogue, bell hooks and Cornel West come together to discuss the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. The two friends and comrades in struggle talk, argue, and disagree about everything from community to capitalism in a series of intimate conversations that range from playful to probing to revelatory. In evoking the act of breaking bread, the book calls upon the various traditions of sharing that take place in domestic, secular, and sacred life.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses - men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the Black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story.

Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told by his boss, "It makes no difference whether you’re here or not," and that his presence contributed nothing to the company. Morimoto began to wonder whether a person who "does nothing" could still have actual value and a place in the world. Perhaps he could turn "doing nothing" into a service? With one tweet, Rental Person was born.

Jack Ma is the quintessential simpleton who has a big heart and wants everyone to share in prosperity. He comes from humble beginnings, had trouble getting to school, had trouble finding a job, but did everything right despite the forces that were arrayed against his intentions. We all have that life where we feel the world just doesn’t value what we have to offer. Jack certainly felt that way, but eventually he found his stride. Today he sits at the top of a global behemoth that boasts sales of $1 billion in the first five minutes of its annual sales event.

In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women’s March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the South. Despite having her speaking time cut short, the appearance only deepened her commitment to speaking up for communities on the margins. In this memoir, Raquel Willis recounts with passion and candor her experiences straddling the Obama and Trump eras, the possibility of transformation after tragedy, and how complex moments can push us all to take necessary risks and bloom toward collective liberation.

In his sparkling memoir, M.K. Raina documents the many lives he has lived. From sharing the stage with some of the most celebrated actors in India to his journey as a young man witnessing the violence and horrors rampant through the streets of Kashmir, an entire history of northern India is painted with subtle elegance. Brimming with delightful anecdotes as well as poignant, painful memories of a region that once was, this book is a tour de force.

More than a biography, Serena Williams: Tennis Champion, Sports Legend, and Cultural Heroine not only tells the story of her upbringing and remarkable career but also looks at Williams as a sports pioneer. Merlisa Lawrence Corbett explores Williams’ influence on cultural and political issues such as body shaming, gender equality, and racism in sports and society. Corbett also analyzes Williams’ impact on discussions of feminism, the sports celebrity, and the marketing of female athletes.

Meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations, from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.

In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)

The story of pioneer fire chief Ed Caswell and the early years of Cochrane, Ontario, which survived a string of major fires and other challenges. In celebrating Cochrane, the book strives to explain stubborn persistence by focusing on Caswell. At the time of his death in1950, he was not only regarded as the last surviving pioneer of the town’s early days, but also as the one who best represented a deep commitment to the town and its fortunes.

We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments.

In late December 2008, Ian Halperin told the world that Michael Jackson had only six months to live. His investigation into Jackson`s failing health made headlines around the globe. Six months and a day later, the King of Pop was dead.It was greed that killed Michael Jackson. Friends and associates paint a tragic picture of the last years and days of his life as Jackson made desperate attempts to prepare for a planned concert series at London's 02 Arena in July 2009.

There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind”. For millennia, blind­ness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil).

Pure Land is the story of the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon and how McGivney's quest to investigate the victim's life and death wound up guiding the author through her own life-threatening crisis. On this journey stretching from the southern tip of Japan to the bottom of Grand Canyon, and into the ugliest aspects of human behavior, Pure Land offers proof of the healing power of nature and of the resiliency of the human spirit.

In her extraordinary follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age tragically interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16. At once a poignant mother and daughter story and a magnificent snapshot of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, The Arrogant Years is a stunning work of memory and resilience that ranges from Cairo to Brooklyn and beyond - the unforgettable true story of a remarkable young woman’s determination to push past the boundaries of her life and make her way in the wider world.

When Reyna Grande was nine years old, she walked across the US-Mexico border in search of a home, desperate to be reunited with the parents who had left her behind years before for a better life in the City of Angels. What she found instead was an indifferent mother, an abusive, alcoholic father, and a school system that belittled her heritage. With so few resources at her disposal, Reyna finds refuge in words, and it is her love of reading and writing that propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Shoshana Johnson, the first black female soldier in America's history to be taken as a prisoner of war, presents the much-anticipated story of her capture and imprisonment in Iraq and what happened after her rescue.

In these nine essays, Susan Lieberman is exploring The Country of Old, in which she finds herself a new immigrant. She examines the difficulties of leaving "that other place" and making sense of this new country. Lieberman's touch is light but her analysis of the challenges/opportunities of aging is provocative. "If we are not old, then we are dead," she notes. And if we are, indeed, not dead then how can we live well in this moment in our life span?

No singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than jazz legend Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herself with her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues - and this authentic biography sets the record straight. Donald Clarke was given unrivaled access to a treasure trove of interviews from the 1970s with those who knew Lady Day in all stages of her short, tragic life - from her childhood in the streets and good-time houses of Baltimore, through the early days of success in New York and the years of fame, to her tragic decline.