Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

From heading an ashram at Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, USA, in the 1980s to allegedly spearheading what is known as the largest bioterror attack in American history and spending thirty-nine months in prison, Ma Anand Sheela's life is one that fascinates and intrigues. But who is the woman beyond the...

An “engrossing and important book" (Wall Street Journal) that brings to life the fateful friendship between Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali In 1962, boxing writers and fans considered Cassius Clay an obnoxious self-promoter, and few believed that he would become the heavyweight champion of the...

The story follows an immigrant girl who navigates a difficult childhood marked by trauma and pain while moving between various cities. Throughout her 46 years, she makes her share of mistakes but ultimately learns and grows from them. After a long journey, she finally meets her soulmate, and they experience an immediate, profound connection. Their shared histories of pain and trauma draw them together, creating a bond that feels timeless. Despite having crossed paths in 2005, it wasn't until later that their souls truly connected.

The late Grammy-winning founder of the legendary pop/R&B/soul/funk/disco group tells his story and charts the rise of his legendary band in this sincere memoir that captures the heart and soul of an artist whose groundbreaking sound continues to influence music today. With a foreword by David...

Unabridged, 7 hours Read by the author A pitch-perfect account of how hip-hop culture drew in the author and how his father drew him out again-with love, perseverance, and fifteen thousand books...

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".   

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known, a new one opened. As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal”, Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost....

Before the Soviet invasion of 1980, Enjeela Ahmadi remembers her home - Kabul, Afghanistan - as peaceful, prosperous, and filled with people from all walks of life. But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.

To define Nigeria is to tell a half-truth. Many have tried, but most have concluded that it is impossible to capture the true scope and significance of Africa’s most populous nation through words or images. Yet here, through personal essays from twenty-four of its writers, a more accurate...

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the gruelling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself. The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

Experience the stunning rise, fall, and legacy of N.W.A. and how they put their stamp on pop culture, black culture, and hip-hop music forever in this “incredibly vivid look at one of music’s most iconic groups” (Associated Press). In 1986, a group was formed that would establish the...

Growing up Amish and leaving the fold, Emma Gingerich left her Amish community in Eagleville, Missouri, at the age of 18. Her memoir Runaway Amish Girl: The Great Escape captivates even the timid listener. Disagreeing with the beliefs of Amish traditions and upbringing, the pressure became too much for her to bear. Forced to make a personal decision, Emma found the courage to leave the only life she had ever known. She had no idea the emotional turmoil she'd inflict on her family and friends.  

This is the story of Veronica Walker. A second generation white African. This is the story of how one woman learnt to accept loss and rebuild her life time and again and how she learnt to fight for herself against a society where women were deemed as second class citizens and the possession of their husbands or fathers. Fighting for her children's safety, Veronica learns to demand her voice be heard and she be accepted for the independent woman she was.

Growing up in Seale, Alabama as a Black Queer kid, then attending the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergraduate, Jon Key hungered to see himself in the fields of Art and Design. But in lectures, critiques, and in the books he read, he struggled to see and learn about people who intersected with his identity or who GOT him. So he started asking himself questions: What did it mean to be a graphic designer with his point of view? What did it mean to be a Black graphic designer?

Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, and a New Yorker best book of 2024, a “startling glimpse into the meatpacking industry’s abuse of undocumented and incarcerated workers” (The New York Times Book Review) and those who had the courage to fight back. On June 27, 2011, a...

Lynn Knight tells the remarkable story of the three adoptions, spanning three generations, within her remarkable family: of her great-grandfather, a fairground boy, given away when his parents left for America in 1865; of her great-aunt, rescued from an industrial school in 1909; and of her mother, adopted as a baby in 1930, and brought to Chesterfield from London.

The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that...

Writing Black Panther demonstrates key aspects of Coates's comics narratives that overlap with major themes and topics in African American literature. These include the depiction of multiple Black characters, exploration of intra-racial and interracial conflicts, excavations of Black histories, displays of Afrofuturist aesthetics, and attention to cultural geography.

Whether he's initiating a coup d'état against new regulations with the residents, or forging a bond with the 98-year-old who once called him a fat slut, Pope Lonergan's work is infinitely varied. This no-holds-barred account shows what life inside a care home is really like, for both residents and carers. Featuring night-time drama, incontinence pads and the uniquely dark humour of one double-amputee Alzheimer's patient, here you can learn everything you ever wanted to know (and a few things you probably really didn't) about Britain's care system.