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Not for Everyday Use

Not for Everyday Use
Author: Elizabeth Nunez
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2014-03-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1617752789

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The author explores her mother’s marriage—and fourteen pregnancies—in this “powerful memoir” (Ebony). One of Oprah.com’s Best Memoirs of the Year Winner of the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction Tracing the four days between the moment she gets the dreaded call and the burial of her mother, Elizabeth Nunez tells of her lifelong struggle to cope with her parents’ ambitions for their children—and her mother’s seemingly unbreakable conviction that displays of affection are not for everyday use. Yet Nunez sympathizes with her parents, whose happiness is constrained by the oppressive strictures of colonialism; by the Catholic Church’s prohibition of artificial birth control which her mother obeys, terrified by the threat of eternal damnation (her mother gets pregnant fourteen times: nine live births and five miscarriages which almost kill her); and by the complexities of skin color in Caribbean society. Through it all, a fierce love holds this family together, and helps carry Nunez through her grief, in this “intriguing [and] courageous memoir” (Kirkus Reviews). “Nunez ponders the cultural, racial, familial, social, and personal experiences that led to what she ultimately understands was a deeply loving union between her parents. A beautifully written exploration of the complexities of marriage and family life.” —Booklist


I Am Not Myself These Days

I Am Not Myself These Days
Author: Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2009-10-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0061860840

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“A glittering, bittersweet vision of an outsider who turned himself into the life and soul of the party. Kilmer-Purcell’s cast is part freak-show, part soap-opera, but his prose is graced with such insight and wit that the laughter is revelatory, and the tears—and there are tears to be shed along this extraordinary journey—are shed for people in whom everybody will find something of themselves. In a word, wonderful.” — Clive Barker “Absolutely hilarious and heartbreaking and heartfelt.” —Armistead Maupin, author of Tales of the City The New York Times bestselling, darkly funny memoir of a young New Yorker's daring dual life—advertising art director by day, glitter-dripping drag queen and nightclub beauty-pageant hopeful by night—was a smash literary debut for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, now known for his popular Planet Green television series The Fabulous Beekman Boys. His story begins here—before the homemade goat milk soaps and hand-gathered honeys, before his memoir of the city mouse’s move to the country, The Bucolic Plague—in I Am Not Myself These Days, with “plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight” (Washington Post).


Sempre Susan

Sempre Susan
Author: Sigrid Nunez
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2014-10-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1594633347

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From the author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award. "The masterpiece of the ‘I knew Susan’ minigenre" – A.O. Scott, The New York Times A poignant, intimate memoir of one of America’s most esteemed and fascinating cultural figures, and a deeply felt tribute. Sigrid Nunez was an aspiring writer when she first met Susan Sontag, already a legendary figure known for her polemical essays, blinding intelligence, and edgy personal style. Sontag introduced Nunez to her son, the writer David Rieff, and the two began dating. Soon Nunez moved into the apartment that Rieff and Sontag shared. As Sontag told Nunez, “Who says we have to live like everyone else?” Sontag’s influence on Nunez, who went on to become a successful novelist, would be profound. Described by Nunez as “a natural mentor” who saw educating others as both a moral obligation and a source of endless pleasure, Sontag inevitably infected those around her with her many cultural and intellectual passions. In this poignant, intimate memoir, Nunez speaks of her gratitude for having had, as an early model, “someone who held such an exalted, unironic view of the writer’s vocation.” Published more than six years after Sontag’s death, Sempre Susan is a startlingly truthful portrait of this outsized personality, who made being an intellectual a glamorous occupation.


Prospero's Daughter

Prospero's Daughter
Author: Elizabeth Nunez
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2016-10-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1617755427

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Set on a Caribbean island in the grip of colonialism, this novel is “masterful . . . simply wonderful . . . [an] exquisite retelling of The Tempest” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). When Peter Gardner’s ruthless medical genius leads him to experiment on his unwitting patients—often at the expense of their lives—he flees England, seeking an environ where his experiments might continue without scrutiny. He arrives with his three-year-old-daughter, Virginia, in Chacachacare, an isolated island off the coast of Trinidad, in the early 1960s. Gardner considers the locals to be nothing more than savages. He assumes ownership of the home of a servant boy named Carlos, seeing in him a suitable subject for his amoral medical work. Nonetheless, he educates the boy alongside Virginia. As Virginia and Carlos come of age together, they form a covert relationship that violates the outdated mores of colonial rule. When Gardner unveils the pair’s relationship and accuses Carlos of a monstrous act, the investigation into the truth is left up to a curt, stonehearted British inspector, whose inquiries bring to light a horrendous secret. At turns epic and intimate, Prospero's Daughter, from American Book Award winner Elizabeth Nunez, uses Shakespeare’s play as a template to address questions of race, class, and power, in the story of an unlikely bond between a boy and a girl of disparate backgrounds on a verdant Caribbean island during the height of tensions between the native population and British colonists. “Gripping and richly imagined . . . a master at pacing and plotting . . . an entirely new story that is inspired by Shakespeare, but not beholden to him.” —The New York Times Book Review “Absorbing . . . [Nunez] writes novels that resound with thunder and fury.” —Essence “A story about the transformative power of love . . . Readers are sure to enjoy the journey.” —Black Issues Book Review (Novel of the Year)


Blow Your House Down

Blow Your House Down
Author: Gina Frangello
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 164009525X

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A Good Morning America Recommended Book • A BuzzFeed Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of the Month "A pathbreaking feminist manifesto, impossible to put down or dismiss. Gina Frangello tells the morally complex story of her adulterous relationship with a lover and her shortcomings as a mother, and in doing so, highlights the forces that shaped, silenced, and shamed her: everyday misogyny, puritanical expectations regarding female sexuality and maternal sacrifice, and male oppression." —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game Gina Frangello spent her early adulthood trying to outrun a youth marked by poverty and violence. Now a long-married wife and devoted mother, the better life she carefully built is emotionally upended by the death of her closest friend. Soon, awakened to fault lines in her troubled marriage, Frangello is caught up in a recklessly passionate affair, leading a double life while continuing to project the image of the perfect family. When her secrets are finally uncovered, both her home and her identity will implode, testing the limits of desire, responsibility, love, and forgiveness. Blow Your House Down is a powerful testimony about the ways our culture seeks to cage women in traditional narratives of self-sacrifice and erasure. Frangello uses her personal story to examine the place of women in contemporary society: the violence they experience, the rage they suppress, the ways their bodies often reveal what they cannot say aloud, and finally, what it means to transgress "being good" in order to reclaim your own life.


A Normal Life

A Normal Life
Author: Kim Rich
Publisher: Graphic Arts Books
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 194332851X

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After an unconventional childhood that ended in the tragic death of her mother and the murder of her Alaskan mobster father, Kim Rich was left on her own at the young age of fifteen to fend for herself. Ever since then, she began a nearly lifelong pursuit in chasing what most others had—a normal life. Rich tugs at your heartstrings as you follow her journey toward normalcy, from her teen years, freshly orphaned, through her high school years spent couch-surfing at local families’ homes, then through her college years, a failed first marriage, and a rising career as a journalist. Through frank and down-to-earth storytelling, Rich also tells of her grandfather’s kidnapping, a frightening health crisis, and a six-year attempt to have children. Picking up right where her first memoir, Johnny’s Girl, left off, A Normal Life recounts the author’s vivid story of being an ordinary girl faced with extraordinary circumstances—at seemingly every turn in life—with grace, humility, and wit.


The Bright Hour

The Bright Hour
Author: Nina Riggs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2017-06-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501169351

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"Built on her ... Modern Love column, 'When a Couch is More Than a Couch' (9/23/2016), a ... memoir of living meaningfully with 'death in the room' by the 38-year-old great-great-great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson--mother to two young boys, wife of 16 years--after her terminal cancer diagnosis"--


So, Anyway...

So, Anyway...
Author: John Cleese
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2014-11-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0385348258

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “John Cleese’s memoir is just about everything one would expect of its author—smart, thoughtful, provocative and above all funny. . . . A picture, if you will, of the artist as a young man.”—The Washington Post The legendary writer and performer of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame takes readers on a grand tour of his ascent in the entertainment world John Cleese’s huge comedic influence has stretched across generations; his sharp irreverent eye and the unique brand of physical comedy he perfected now seem written into comedy’s DNA. In this rollicking memoir, Cleese recalls his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town, his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman), and the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown. Cleese was just days away from graduating Cambridge and setting off on a law career when he was visited by two BBC executives, who offered him a job writing comedy for radio. That fateful moment—and a near-simultaneous offer to take his university humor revue to London’s famed West End—propelled him down a different path, cutting his teeth writing for stars like David Frost and Peter Sellers, and eventually joining the five other Pythons to pioneer a new kind of comedy that prized invention, silliness, and absurdity. Along the way, he found his first true love with the actress Connie Booth and transformed himself from a reluctant performer to a world class actor and back again. Twisting and turning through surprising stories and hilarious digressions—with some brief pauses along the way that comprise a fascinating primer on what’s funny and why—this story of a young man’s journey to the pinnacle of comedy is a masterly performance by a master performer.


Empty

Empty
Author: Susan Burton
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 081298272X

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An editor at This American Life reveals the searing story of the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still. “Her tale of compulsion and healing is candid and powerful.”—People NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE For almost thirty years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret. When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents’ abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But in the fallout from her parents’ breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from “peculiarity to pathology.” Susan entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success—she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse—she’d binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again—and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to “quit food.” Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of narrative and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.


Anna In-Between

Anna In-Between
Author: Elizabeth Nunez
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1936070189

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“Deftly explores family strife and immigrant identity . . . expressive prose and convincing characters that immediately hook the reader.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Winner of the PEN Oakland Award for Literary Excellence Long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award When Anna takes a break from her successful publishing career in the US and visits the Caribbean island home of her birth, she is upset to discover that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. The family is upper class, and treatment in America may offer her a chance of survival. But, believing that she would never receive quality care there as a black woman, she rejects all efforts to persuade her as the clock keeps ticking on her illness . . . From the American Book Award–winning author of Prospero’s Daughter, this is a “moving exploration of immigrant identity [with] a protagonist caught between race, class, and a mother’s love” (Ms. Magazine). “A psychologically and emotionally astute family portrait, with dark themes like racism, cancer, and the bittersweet longing of the immigrant.” —The New York Times Book Review “Nunez has created a moving and insightful character study while delving into the complexities of identity politics. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal “An intimate portrait of the unknowable secrets and indelible ties that bind husbands and wives, mothers and daughters.” —Booklist “Probing and lyrical . . . one of Nunez’s best yet.” —Edwidge Danticat