Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

It’s the early seventies in rural Zimbabwe. Three-year-old Mercy lives with her beloved grandma, helping tend the chickens and goats, learning the importance of growing the crops that will feed them throughout the year, and many other skills.

In the early hours of March 24th, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumbled with tanks as soldiers seized the presidential palace, overthrowing Argentina’s leader. To many, it seemed like just another coup in a continent troubled by them, amid political violence and Cold War tensions. But there was something darker about this new regime. A compelling mystery and deeply researched account of a pivotal era in world history, A Flower Traveled in My Blood takes listeners on a journey of love, resilience, and redemption, revealing new truths about memory, identity, and family.

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.

At the age of 23, Ayesha removed her face veil to begin her studies in New York City. Braiding together Western, South-Asian and Qur’anic storytelling styles, the author illuminates what it means to exist in a world that demands something different from each of her identities. With lyrical prose and scholarly precision, she weaves her personal experiences with incisive social commentary to uncover the meaning of faith and belonging, love and betrayal, family and womanhood. In so doing, she offers us a vision of freedom that isn’t measured in fabric.

This memoir tells the story of Dr. Joseph Sebarenzi, whose parents, seven siblings, and countless other family members were among 800,000 Tutsi brutally murdered over the course of 90 days in 1994 by extremist Rwandan Hutu - an efficiency that exceeded even that of the Nazi Holocaust. Outbreaks of ethnic violence had been occurring in Rwanda since colonial times when the Belgians ruled the region. As a child, Sebarenzi twice hid with his mother during episodes of killing, narrowly escaping with his life.

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.

Confessions of a Token Black Girl is a snappy comedic tale framing Danielle's first-hand experiences in Wisconsin and other places as the perpetual "token Black girl", fraught with dark moments and hate crimes. It's a coming-of-age-story but instead of finding herself during a road trip, Danielle found herself through the effects of racism. This book humorously chronicles Danielle's quest for understanding what Black identity means to her - instead of what it means to everyone else.

When acclaimed Washington Post writer Wil Haygood had an early hunch that Obama would win the 2008 election, he thought he'd highlight the singular moment by exploring the life of someone who had come of age when segregation was so embedded in the culture as to make the very thought of a black president inconceivable. He struck gold when he tracked down Eugene Allen, a butler who had served eight presidents, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. Forest Whitaker narrates the story of this remarkable man who, while serving tea and supervising buffets, was also a witness to history.

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.

All I Could Bare is the story of a mild-mannered graduate student who "took the road less clothed". Seymour embarked on his journey in the 1990s, when Washington, D.C.'s gay club scene was notoriously no-holds-barred, all the while trying to keep his newfound vocation a secret from his parents and maintain a relationship with his boyfriend, Seth. Along the way he met some unforgettable characters....

Rory and Ita, Roddy Doyle's first nonfiction book, tells, largely in their own words, the story of his parents' lives from their first memories to the present. Born in 1923 and 1925 respectively, they met at a New Year's Eve dance in 1947 and married in 1951. They remember every detail of their Dublin childhoods, the people, the politics, idyllic times in the Wexford countryside for Ita, for Rory, his apprenticeship as a printer.

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.

This stirring memoir traverses Africa and Australia following the Speer-Jordan family, who fled persecution and poverty in Varniai, Lithuania, to South Africa. The political machinations they witnessed in that time in South Africa changed the women forever in this unusual family.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian chef Olia Hercules decided it was finally time to tell her story. Strong Roots is the story of a century in Ukraine told through four generations of one extraordinary family. It takes us from years of Russification, to Olia’s grandmother’s deportation to snowy wastelands under Stalin, to her Aunt Zhenia's school protest, to her own parents’ flight from Ukraine when their town was occupied in 2022.

his book is about the memories that I have of growing up next to the beer joint. There were many men that made me laugh and there were a few that didn't. My Papaw, Marshall Millay, built the beer joint in 1942; he was curious to see what his old customers were up to... My Uncle, Stirman Millay, died at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. He wanted to go see what the dumbbutts were up to. He pestered the other ghosts until they agreed to go with him.

1944: Heavy footfalls thud on the road on a rainy May night. A band of gunmen scour a hilltop farm, acting on rumors that it harbors a Jewish family. For 18 months, the Rozeneks have been hiding safely, but their luck is about to run out. Only one from the family of six will live to see the sunrise. Sixteen-year-old Hena Rozenek shelters in the woods until morning . . . and then she runs.

When Shane McCrae was eighteen months old, he was removed from his parents and taken to suburban Texas. His mom was white and his dad was Black, and to hide his Blackness from him, his maternal grandparents stole him. In the years that followed, they manipulated and controlled him, believing they were doing what was best for him. His grandmother loved Shane but hated people who looked like him. His grandfather policed any perceived signs of Blackness his grandson showed. In their house, Blackness would always be the worst thing about him.

Quando, nel 1972, Tiziano Terzani arrivò in Vietnam, era – come scrive lui stesso – il giovane corrispondente «ottimista, sorridente e speranzoso raffigurato coi sandali di gomma dei vietcong in copertina». Consegnò la propria esperienza di testimone della guerra al diario che l’anno dopo apparve col titolo Pelle di leopardo, con riferimento alla carta del Vietnam a chiazze, a seconda che una zona fosse occupata dall’una o dall’altra delle parti in lotta. Si ritrovò di nuovo in Vietnam nel 1975, e fu uno dei pochissimi giornalisti occidentali testimoni della liberazione di Saigon.

A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces. In this book, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level.

On August 4, 1972, Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of over 80,000 Ugandan Asians from the country. A brave few stayed, but most left to Asia or Europe. Stripped of everything, my family chose to start over in Britain. Our story is just one of tens of thousands. I lived history. Though others may tell it differently, this is my experience. My family and I built ourselves from the ground up, standing strong against an endless wave of racism that sought to keep us in our place. To be able to simply walk down the street in peace once seemed impossible.