Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" 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.

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.

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.

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.

Malorie Blackman OBE is one of Britain's best loved and most widely read writers, and this is her long-awaited autobiography. For more than 30 years, her books have helped to shape British culture and inspired generations of younger readers and writers. The Noughts and Crosses series, started in 2000, sparked a new and necessary conversation about race and identity in the UK and are already undisputed classics of 21st-century children's literature.

Ian Edwards, a physiotherapist, and his partner, Anne (a midwife), set out in 1983 to work in Russian occupied Afghanistan. Communication lines in and out of the country are poor in those days. He is under the impression that he will work in a rehabilitation unit with an orthopaedic surgeon. Instead, upon arrival, he finds out that he is in charge of the first physiotherapy training program and school in the country - a program and school that don't yet exist. After four years of hard work, Ian is burnt out and returns to Australia in ill health.

"La scène se joue non loin du lac Baïkal, où je vis, où j'aime, à Irkoutsk, capitale de la Sibérie orientale. Des hommes cagoulés surgissent, c'est le matin. Ma fille crie. Elle a cinq ans. Je suis arrêté sous ses yeux, frappé ensuite avec science, interrogé, mais surtout accusé d'un crime ignominieux. Dans l'ombre, des hommes ont enclenché une mécanique de destruction, grossière et implacable, elle porte un nom inventé par le KGB : kompromat. On me promet quinze années de camp à régime sévère. L'histoire de mes évasions peut commencer."

The mixed population is the fastest-growing group in the UK today, but the mainstream conversation around mixedness is stilted, repetitive and often problematic. At a time when ethnically ambiguous models fill our Instagram feeds and our high street shop windows, and when children of interracial relationships are lauded as heralding in the dawn of a post-racial utopia, journalist Natalie Morris takes a deep dive into what it really means to be mixed in Britain today.

Whilst it’s impossible to capture the essence of Nigeria in one story, its writers have given listeners the opportunity to experience the many different parts that make up Africa’s most populous nation. In Of This Our Country, acclaimed and award-winning Nigerian writers go a step further and describe their Nigeria, sharing personal essays about a country that holds so much more than any one perspective could. Through the words of these writers, a living portrait of Nigeria is woven, one that is as beautiful as it is complex.

When George Alagiah was dropped off at a Hampshire boarding school as a child back in 1967, he was confronted with an extreme version of the private struggle faced by all immigrants: the battle to leave the past behind and fit into a new culture. His arrival in Britain coincided with the unhappy intrusion of race into politics. A key part of the ensuing fight against racism was the concept of multiculturalism. But in a closely argued and forthright chapter, Alagiah suggests that far from improving the prospects for some immigrants, multiculturalism may be an impediment to integration.

In an era of stark racial injustice and decisive action, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to the struggle for change, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at age 19. Through his eyes, we see the courage of a generation that stood up to injustice, their political triumphs and tragedies, and the unforgettable legacy of Black Power.

Most Polish Jews who survived the Second World War did not go to concentration camps, but were banished by Stalin to the remote prison settlements and Gulags of the Soviet Union. Less than ten percent of Polish Jews came out of the war alive-the largest population of Jews who endured-for whom Soviet exile was the main chance for survival. Ellen G. Friedman's The Seven, a Family Holocaust Story is an account of this displacement.

Jack Ma is the quintessential simpleton who has a big heart and wants everyone to share in prosperity. He comes from humble beginnings, had trouble getting to school, had trouble finding a job, but did everything right despite the forces that were arrayed against his intentions. We all have that life where we feel the world just doesn’t value what we have to offer. Jack certainly felt that way, but eventually he found his stride. Today he sits at the top of a global behemoth that boasts sales of $1 billion in the first five minutes of its annual sales event.

In this poetic and inspiring memoir, one of America’s most revered actresses uses the imagery of flowers and the art of Ikebana to depict the unique creative bond that she has had with her mother throughout the years - and how, together, they are facing her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

No Justice is the harrowing story of Robbie Tolan, who early on one New Year's Eve morning, found himself being rushed to the hospital. A White police officer had shot him in the chest after mistakenly accusing him of stealing his own car...while in his own driveway.

Pure Land is the story of the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon and how McGivney's quest to investigate the victim's life and death wound up guiding the author through her own life-threatening crisis. On this journey stretching from the southern tip of Japan to the bottom of Grand Canyon, and into the ugliest aspects of human behavior, Pure Land offers proof of the healing power of nature and of the resiliency of the human spirit.

Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions - poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can't go, it's all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide.

This revelatory memoir by the mother of Michael Brown, the African American teenager killed by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, sheds light on one of the landmark events in recent history. Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil is a portrait of our time, an urgent call to action, and a moving testament to the undying bond between mothers and sons.

Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.