Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

James Moody of the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion found an Egyptian dog in 1940, who became Horrie, the Battalion's mascot. He wrote it first as a simple tale, augmented by his own photographs of Horrie and his mates in action in Greece, Crete and Palestine. This was sent to Ion Idriess, who developed the book with a series of questions, to finally develop the classic tale of man's best friend: Horrie the Wog Dog.

Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a "minority student" who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation - from his past, his parents, his culture - and so describes the high price of "making it" in middle-class America.

In her riveting memoir, Susan recounts her struggle to be the perfect traditional “Chinese” wife to her increasingly controlling and abusive husband. With keen insight and heart-wrenching candor, she confronts the hopes and hazards of intercultural marriage, including dismissing her own values and needs to save her relationship and protect her newborn son, Jake. But when Cai threatens to take Jake back to China for good, Susan must find the courage to stand up for herself, her son, and her future.

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. 

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.

The uplifting story of a young Black scientist’s challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature’s most misunderstood animal—the shark. "Jasmin Graham has that winning combination of talent and grit needed to excel...

This gifted storyteller poignantly shares the memories of those mentors and teachers who profoundly influenced her life. She speaks of her voluntary muteness as a child. Even in this silence, "Mama" (Angelou's grandmother) spoke prophetically to the child's unbelieving ears: "You'll speak about the glorious nature of the human spirit and what we can be striving for."

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

When Aamna Mohdin travelled to Calais to report on the refugee crisis, she was confronted by a reality she had been outrunning for two decades: that she had been a child refugee herself. Determined to piece her scattered family history together, Mohdin set off on a mission. Her journey would see her cross the world: from the rooftops of Mogadishu to a reunion with a long-lost friend in Amsterdam to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Scattered is a powerful investigation into the aftershocks of displacement, written by a young woman uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience.

When Ye Pei dreamed of Venice as a girl, she imagined a magical floating city of canals and gondola rides. And she imagined her mother, successful in her new life and eager to embrace the daughter she had never forgotten. But when Ye Pei arrives in Italy, she learns her mother works on a farm far from the city. Her only connection, a mean-spirited Chinese auntie, puts Ye Pei to work in a small-town café. Rather than giving up and returning to China, a determined Ye Pei takes on a grueling schedule.

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.

In February 2018, twenty-four members of Gulchehra Hoja's family disappeared overnight Among them were her elderly parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and their spouses; everyone she had left behind in Ürümchi when she fled to a new life in the United States, arrested by the Chinese state as a direct retaliation for Gulchehra's investigations into the Uyghur plight for Radio Free Asia. For the Uyghur people, this kind of oppression is not unusual. A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs is Gulchehra's stunning memoir, an account of life under Chinese rule in East Turkestan. 

In the sequel to Seamus O'Rourke's popular first memoir, Standing in Gaps, this innocent Leitrim lad finally flees the nest, briefly sampling life in New York, Dublin and London – before inevitably returning to his beloved, duller than dishwater existence at home, a life which now includes alcohol, Doctor Hook and some low-budget romance. But man does not live on romance alone and Seamus needs to get to the bottom of his general uselessness, spurred on as always by his ever-the-realist father, who prophesised his mediocrity from an early age.

Melissa, an English dominatrix, has just lost her mother. But she has also promised to fly to Massachusetts to play the cane-happy headmistress of a girls’ boarding school in a film funded by a wealthy benefactor—and to give a keynote address on birching bare bottoms at a spanking conference in Texas four weeks later.

In Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, professor and author Bert Ashe delivers a witty, fascinating, and unprecedented account of Black male identity as seen through our culture's perceptions of hair. It is a deeply personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with Ashe's own midlife journey to lock his hair.

From the best-selling author of Londoners, a symphony of contemporary New York in the magnificent words of its people. Terror Blackout Hurricane Recession Pandemic A symphony of contemporary New York told through the magnificent words of its people - from the best-selling author of Londoners. In...

At 20, Tiger Woods made his debut in a Nike commercial. “Hello, World,” he said. “Are you ready for me?” The world was ready. His handlers kept a tight rein on the private superstar, carefully controlling his media coverage. Although everyone recognizes Tiger Woods, his true character has remained a mystery.

A feminist biography of the only woman to become prime minister of Israel In this authoritative and empathetic biography, Pnina Lahav reexamines the life of Golda Meir (1898-1978) through a feminist lens, focusing on her recurring role as a woman standing alone among men. The Only Woman in the Room is the first book to contend with Meir’s full identity as a woman, Jew, Zionist leader, and one of the founders of Israel, providing a richer portrait of her persona and legacy.  

Saving Abigail is a true story about a little girl taken hostage by Hamas the morning of October 7, 2023, after thousands of terrorists breached Israel by land, sea, and air. That day, Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children, and 246 innocent people were dragged across the border into Gaza against their will. Among them was three-year-old Abigail Mor Edan.

In this heartbreaking true story, the abduction of his daughter has a father on an emotional and difficult journey through Family Court in pursuit of justice. The battle is bitter and brutal, with the child stuck in the middle of a heartless and inept UK legal system. Constant and baseless accusations from the mother further derail proceedings, causing delays and torment for their daughter. This story is about courage, angst, perseverance, selfishness, love, and pain.