Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Some people think Jay-Z is just another rapper. Others see him as just another celebrity/mega-star. The reality is, no matter what you think Jay-Z is, he is first and foremost a business. And as much as Martha Stewart or Oprah, he has turned himself into a lifestyle. This audiobook explains just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world.

Habiburahman was born in 1979 and raised in a small village in western Burma. When he was three years old, the country’s military leader declared that his people, the Rohingya, were not a recognized ethnic group. Since 1982, millions of Rohingya have had to flee their homes as a result of extreme prejudice and persecution. Here, for the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the truth behind this global humanitarian crisis. Through the eyes of a child, we learn about the historic persecution of the Rohingya people and witness the violence Habiburahman endured.

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.

Born in a remote village in Kenya, Nice Leng'ete saw the young girls she grew up with receive the cut, the rite of passage into female adulthood in Masai culture. Every girl got the cut, and once you did, you'd be married off to a man triple your age. You might be his second or third wife. You'd have children in your teens. This is exactly what happened to Nice's sister. To resist the cut meant becoming an outcast in Masai culture.

What is it like to be a refugee? It is a question few in the West give much thought to, and yet to be a refugee - or an immigrant - is to grapple with your place in the world, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with the unfamiliar. With this comes the weight of the expectations (and fears and resentment) of those born in the host country; foremost is the burden of gratitude: to be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed.

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 Foster.

How does a white kid from the New York suburbs, harmonica in hand, end up earning himself a busker's spot on the Harlem sidewalks next to Mr. Satan, a Mississippi-born legend? How did an interracial blues duo fare on the streets of New York during a turbulent, fractious time marked by racially-motivated murders in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and Crown Heights?

Trying to navigate her Indian world at home and the British world outside her front door, Anita Rani was a girl who didn't ­fit in anywhere. She was always destined to stand out: from playing Mary in her otherwise all white nursery nativity to growing up in '80s Yorkshire with her Punjabi family, spending evenings in the factory her parents owned whilst trying to ­figure out how best to get rid of hair that seemed to be growing everywhere.

A deeply felt meditation on race, sex and American culture - at once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac. The daughter of a successful paediatrician and a fashionable socialite, Margo Jefferson spent her childhood among Chicago's Black elite. She calls this society 'Negroland': 'a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty'. With privilege came expectation.

Kimi’s Obaachan, her grandmother, had always been a silent presence throughout her youth. Sipping tea by the fire, preparing sushi for the family, or indulgently listening to Ojichan’s (grandfather’s) stories for the thousandth time, Obaachan was a missing link to Kimi’s Japanese heritage, something she had had a mixed relationship with all her life. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, all Kimi ever wanted to do was fit in, spurning traditional Japanese cuisine and her grandfather’s attempts to teach her the language.

Comedian Oliver Twist was four years old when he and his family fled the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda for Malawi, their exile for the next fourteen years. Twist has turned the turmoil he and his family endured into a thrilling adventure of a hero's journey. A natural born storyteller, propelled from the cold alleys of a Malawian refugee camp to the warm spotlight of the Australian stage, he vividly describes what it's like to leave your homeland behind and to have to wait your whole childhood for life to begin.

A beautiful and compelling family memoir retracing the love story between Sabrin Hasbun's Palestinian father and Italian mother, and the life of her half-Italian, half-Palestinian family from the 1960s to 2020. After the loss of her mother, Sabrin tries to renegotiate her mixed identity and understand her mother's choices which led her from an oppressive childhood in a village in Tuscany to finding love and community activism in Palestine.

In this distinct, subversive and intimate hybrid memoir, Katie Goh explores the orange as a means of understanding the world, and herself within it. What she finds is a world of violence, colonialism, resilience, survival, adaptation - and of unexpected beauty and sweetness against all odds. The orange's odyssey parallels Katie's search for her own heritage and, drawing on her family history as well as extensive travel and research, she follows it from east-to-west and west-to-east - from Longyan, China, to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur and the groves of California.

At age eleven, Sola Mahfouz was told she could no longer attend school. The Taliban threatened that any girl who dared to continue their education would have acid thrown in their face, be kidnapped, or worse. Confined to the walls of her home, Sola watched as the few freedoms of childhood were stripped away. She was forbidden to play, to sing, even to laugh. Her early teenage years were consumed by restrictions. Realising that she would have to either succumb to this life or find a way out, she decided on the latter.

A Croft in the Hills captures, in simple, moving descriptions, what it was really like trying to make a living out of a hill croft near Loch Ness fifty years ago. A couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, immerse themselves in the practicalities of looking after sheep, cattle and hens, mending fences, baking bread, and surviving the worst that Scottish winters can throw at them. Their neighbors are few, but among them they find the generosity and community spirit that has survived in the Highlands for generations.

The history of the Yan family is inseparable from the history of China over the last century. One of the most influential businesswomen of China today, Lan Yan grew up in the company of the country's powerful elite, including Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and other top leaders. In recounting her family history, Lan Yan brings to life a century of Chinese history from the last emperor to present day, including the Cultural Revolution which tore her childhood apart. The little girl who was crushed by the Cultural Revolution has become one of the most active businesswomen in her country.

Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography can be read as a redemption story echoing many similar voices of its time. Starting from the humiliation he experienced as a slave, he ponders the meaning of identity in a situation that seeks to dehumanize. He furthers his story by expanding on his difficulties in obtaining an education and the need for change in our minds as well as societal structures.

Abdi's world fell apart when he was only 15 and Somalia's vicious civil war hit Mogadishu. Unable to find his family and effectively an orphan, he fled with some 60 others, heading to Kenya. On the way, death squads hunted them and they daily faced violence, danger and starvation. After almost four months, they arrived in at refugee camps in Kenya - of the group he'd set out with, only five had survived.

The author was a United States Peace Corps volunteer in the Kingdom of Tonga from 1984 to 1986. His observations and experiences are frankly recounted in two intertwined short stories. Names have been changed, and the narrative placed in the third person. The first short story, An American Volunteer at Work, describes a typical day in the volunteer’s assigned job as a statistician with the Statistics Department, which was part of the Ministry of Finance, in Nuku’alofa.

I was born a BASTARD of southwest Philadelphia and raised in a rundown row house in one of America's most notorious GHETTOS, Camden, New Jersey. My upbringing was marked by a resilient mother, an inconsistent father, and the harsh realities of a city that claimed several of my immediate family member's lives, the youngest among them being a victim of police violence. I found myself embodying the archetype of an American stereotype.