memoir

Type: 
Topical Term
Subfield: 
a
Alias: 
memoir

From scratch

a memoir of love, Sicily, and finding home
2019
"A . . . cross-cultural love story set against the lush backdrop of the Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hour"--Provided by publisher.

The unexpected spy

from the CIA to the FBI, my secret life taking down some of the world's most notorious terrorists
2020
An account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs. When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she'd fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI.

Sigh, gone

a misfit's memoir of great books, punk rock, and the fight to fit in
2020
In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, teenage rebellion, and assimilation, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents.

Karamo

my story of embracing purpose, healing, and hope
2019
The author shares his story for the first time, exploring how the challenges in his own life have allowed him to forever transform the lives of those in need.
Cover image of Karamo

Acid for the children

a memoir
2019
Rock musician and co-founder of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea (nee Michael Balzary), chronicles his life from his birth in Australia and upbringing on the streets of Los Angeles through his career as a bass guitarist and his rise to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.
Cover image of Acid for the children

Dressed in dreams

a black girl's love letter to the power of fashion
2019
Fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings, and the #BlackLivesMatter-inspired hoodies of today. The history of these garments is deeply intertwined with Ford's story as a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city. She experimented with the Jheri curl; discovered how wearing the wrong color tennis shoes at the roller rink during the drug and gang wars of the 1980s could get you beaten; and rocked oversized, brightly colored jeans and Timberlands at an elite boarding school where the white upper crust wore conservative wool shift dresses.
Cover image of Dressed in dreams

Life's accessories: a memoir

and fashion guide
2019
Rachel Levy Lesser can relive almost every significant life event through an accessory. A scarf, a pair of earrings, a bag, even a fleece pair of socks?each contains the elements that put together the story of a life. Life?s Accessories is a funny, sad, touching, relatable, shake-your-head-right-along-as-you-laugh-and-wipe-away-tears, coming-of-age memoir. In fourteen essays, Lesser tackles sensitive issues like anxiety, illness, and loss in a way that feels a bit like having a chat with a good friend. Out of the stories comes solid life?and fashion?advice. About far more than just a hair tie, a bracelet, or a belt, Life?s Accessories is a window into the many ways in which Lesser has come to understand life?in all of its beauty, its joys, its sorrows, its heartaches, its challenges, and its absurdity.
Cover image of Life's accessories: a memoir

Qualification

a graphic memoir in twelve steps
2019
From the author of My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down, a new graphic memoir brimming with black humor, that explores the ultimate irony: the author's addiction to 12-step programs. David Heatley had an unquestionably troubled and eccentric childhood: father a sexually repressed alcoholic, mother an overworked compulsive overeater.Then David's parents enter the world of 12-step programs and find a sense of support and community. It seems to help. David, meanwhile, grows up struggling with his own troublesome sexual urges and seeking some way to make sense of it all. Eventually he starts attending meetings too. Alcoholics Anonymous. Narcotics Anonymous. Overeaters Anonymous. Debtors Anonymous. Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. More and more meetings. Meetings for issues he doesn't have. With stark, sharply drawn art and unflinching honesty, Heatley explores the strange and touching relationships he develops, and the truths about himself and his family he is forced to confront while "working" an ever-increasing number of programs. The result is a complicated, unsettling, and hilarious journey--of far more than 12 steps.
Cover image of Qualification

Out loud

a memoir
2019
Before Mark Morris became 'the most successful and influential choreographer alive' (The New York Times), he was a six year-old in Seattle cramming his feet into Tupperware glasses so that he could practice walking on pointe. Moving to New York at nineteen, he arrived to one of the great booms of dance in America. Morris was flat broke but found a group of like-minded artists that danced together, travelled together, slept together. This collective, led by Morris's fiercely original vision, became the famed Mark Morris Dance Group. Suddenly, Morris was making a fast ascent. Celebrated by The New Yorker's critic as one of the great young talents, an androgynous beauty in the vein of Michelangelo's David, he and his company had arrived. Collaborations with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma, Lou Harrison, and Howard Hodgkin followed. And so did controversy: from the circus of his tenure at La Monnaie in Belgium to his work on the biggest flop in Broadway history. But through the Reagan-Bush era, the worst of the AIDS epidemic, through rehearsal squabbles and backstage intrigues, Morris emerged as one of the great visionaries of modern dance, a force of nature with a dedication to beauty and a love of the body, an artist as joyful as he is provocative. Out Loud is the bighearted and outspoken story of a man as formidable on the page as he is on the boards. With unusual candour and disarming wit, Morris's memoir captures the life of a performer who broke the mould, a brilliant misfit who found his home in the collective and liberating world of music and dance.
Cover image of Out loud

Long way home

2019
Douglas is born into wealth, privilege, and comfort. His father a superstar, his mother a beautiful socialite, his grandfather a legend. But by the age of 32 he had become a drug addict, an armed robber, and-- after a DEA drug bust-- a convicted drug dealer sentenced to five years in prison. In prison he began to reverse his savage transformation, to understand the psychological turmoil that has tormented him for years, and prepare for what will be a profoundly challenging, but eventually deeply satisfying and successful re-entry into society at large.
Cover image of Long way home

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - memoir