Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
...this writing thing was some kind of magic trick I didn't yet understand... Nikki Grimes discovered the power of writing at the tender age of six, when, alone in her room, she poured her fears, anger, and tears onto a piece of paper - and felt sweet relief. Words and faith were her most enduring companions as life flung her headlong from one harrowing experience to the next through her childhood and teenage years. Words, spilled into notebook after...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"Jesmyn Ward's universally acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from, in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young men dear to her, including her beloved brother--to accidents, murder, and suicide. Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their lives had been connected, by identity and place, and as Jesmyn dealt with these losses,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2024 Women's History Month for Kids
Black Authors to Know @ DGPL
Black Authors: Youth Biographies (SCPL-YS)
More Lists...
Black Authors to Know @ DGPL
Black Authors: Youth Biographies (SCPL-YS)
More Lists...
Description
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson's...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. The Yellow House expands...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Hispanic & Latino Authors: Youth Nonfiction (SCPL-YS)
HPL Domestic Violence Awareness
Middle School Books (teens)
More Lists...
HPL Domestic Violence Awareness
Middle School Books (teens)
More Lists...
Description
The story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents cross the Mexican border in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are left behind with their grandmother. Her mother returns to bring Reyna and her siblings to America and a new life in a new country.
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A memoir about the author's coming of age as she grapples with her identity as an artist, her family's racial history, and her mother's death from cancer"--
"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: a deeply moving memoir that explores coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter. Tracy K. Smith had a fairly typical upbringing in suburban California: the youngest...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"From the beloved author of The House on Mango Street: a richly illustrated compilation of true stories and nonfiction pieces that, taken together, form a jigsaw autobiography: an intimate album of a literary legend's life and career. From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street to her abode in Mexico, in a region where "my ancestors lived for centuries," the places Sandra Cisneros has lived...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
This memoir is a tough-minded search for belonging, for love, an identity, a home, and a mother by the author of "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit"--winner of the Whitbread First Novel award and the inspiration behind the award-winning BBC television adaptation "Oranges."
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A memoir of survival, self-discovery, and forgiveness. For decades, Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. Women We Buried, Women We Burned is her own story. Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"A deeply validating manifesto on the gender politics of marriage (bad) and divorce (actually pretty good!) in America today, and an argument that the former needs a reboot-from journalist and proud divorcée Lyz Lenz. Studies show that nearly 70 percent of divorces are initiated by women-women who are tired, fed up, exhausted, and unhappy. We've all seen how the media portrays divorcées: sad, lonely, drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine. Lyz...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
2024 Juneteenth Reading for Kids
Books Written in Verse- Youth and Teen
K&T - National Poetry Month
More Lists...
Books Written in Verse- Youth and Teen
K&T - National Poetry Month
More Lists...
Description
"Bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and...
Author
Language
English
Description
"A memoir of Wayne Flynt's friendship with Harper Lee, centered on a collection of letters between Harper Lee, her sisters ... Wayne Flynt, and his wife"--
"The violent racism of the American South drove Wayne Flynt away from his home state of Alabama, but the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's classic novel about courage, community, and equality, inspired him to return in the early 1960s and craft a career documenting and teaching...
Author
Language
English
Description
"No one said motherhood would be easy. For Adiba Nelson, the journey to parenthood started with a big bang and continues with a breakdown (or two) and several "why?" questions for God. Witty and bold, Afro-Latina Adiba grew up in survival mode. Her sometimes complicated relationship with her strong-willed, vibrant, religious mother marked her views of mothering and love. When a chance encounter with a tall-ish, brown-skinned brotha at Ruby Tuesday's...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"In this insightful, funny, and whip-smart book, acclaimed writer Evette Dionne explores the minefields fat Black women are forced to navigate in the course of everyday life. From her early experiences of harassment to adolescent self-discovery in internet chatrooms to a diagnosis of heart failure at age twenty- nine, Dionne tracks her relationship with friends, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image. Along the way, she...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A collection of stories that reveal Kinsey's origins-- and Grafton's past. The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness.
Author
Language
English
Description
"The award-winning author of The Good Negress shares invaluable insights on the precarious journey toward creativity that is the writer's life, and tells the compelling story of her relationship with Toni Morrison, painting an illuminating portrait of this towering yet enigmatic cultural icon. With the publication of her debut novel The Good Negress in 1995, A. J. Verdelle became an overnight sensation, winning critical acclaim and competing for prestigious...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family,...