Memoir

Between Two Kingdoms

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Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted Cover Image

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted (Hardcover)

By Suleika Jaouad
$22.40
ISBN: 9780399588587
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House - February 9th, 2021

Joauad’s memoir is a primer for all of us slowly emerging from lockdown.  Her young life was abruptly interrupted in her early 20’s when she received a devastating diagnosis followed by 3 and a half years of isolating treatment. Her very brave battle continued after her release from hospital as she took stock of what she’d lost, who she had become, and how to live again. You won’t be able to put this down.

Endpapers

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Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home Cover Image

Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home (Hardcover)

By Alexander Wolff
$28.00
ISBN: 9780802158253
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Atlantic Monthly Press - March 2nd, 2021

Endpapers is a thoroughly captivating book that at first seems to be a family
memoir but is really an extraordinary look at the intellectual milieu of 20th
century German literary culture and its collision with the historical upheavals of the first half of the century. Wolff continues the story postwar delving into the complexities of how those upheavals play out in the dynamics of his own family.

Dale

We Keep the Dead Close

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We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence (Hardcover)

By Becky Cooper
$29.00
ISBN: 9781538746837
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Grand Central Publishing - November 10th, 2020

 

More than a true crime book, more than a memoir, Becky Cooper weaves a compelling and vivid portrait of an unsolved murder at Harvard and pulls together threads of misogyny, issues with academic culture, silencing at elite institutions, and the ways that we rewrite the stories of female victims. A striking portrait for fans of I'll Be Gone in the Dark. 

April

All the Young Men

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All the Young Men (Hardcover)

By Ruth Coker Burks, Kevin Carr O'Leary
$26.00
ISBN: 9780802157249
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Grove Press - December 1st, 2020

When a single mom visiting a friend at the hospital helps out an AIDS patient the nurses won't touch, she has no idea she'll spend the next decade as an advocate and caretaker for gay men in Arkansas, even burying them in her family's cemetery plot when their families reject them. The book is both a time capsule -- including an appearance by early-career Bill Clinton -- and the compelling story of a woman who made a difference in the world without being remotely saintly.

Sarah

Banned Book Club

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Banned Book Club (Paperback)

By Kim Hyun Sook, Ryan Estrada, Hyung-Ju Ko (Illustrator)
$15.00
ISBN: 9781945820427
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Iron Circus Comics - May 19th, 2020

 

A gorgeously drawn comics memoir of joining a college book  club in South Korea 1983, and the thoughts, choices, and trials it sparked. Fast-paced, smart, and utterly compelling, this is the activist comics memoir YA readers are looking for.

Marika

BECOMING EVE

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Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman (Hardcover)

By Abby Stein
$28.00
ISBN: 9781580059169
Availability: Available at Wholesaler
Published: Seal Press - November 12th, 2019

Abby Stein’s memoir is an engaging story of growing up as a queer person (a trans woman, specifically) in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Funny, heartbreaking, and always compassionate, this is a great read for anyone interested in trans life stories, intersections between queerness and religion, or communal responses to trauma.

 

Sacha Lamb, Writer in Residence for Young Readers

Ungrateful Refugee

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The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You Cover Image

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You (Hardcover)

By Dina Nayeri
$26.00
ISBN: 9781948226424
Availability: Available at Wholesaler
Published: Catapult - September 3rd, 2019

 

A refugee who escaped Iran under threat of religious persecution in 1989, Dina Nayeri writes with lyricism and incredible clarity about the refugee experience. She weaves her own story in with those of fellow Iranian refugees, as well those waiting in the camps in Greece today to show the insidious power of Western privilege, the hopelessness of the asylum seeker, and to make the plea for dignity for the misplaced. A necessary read.

Meaghan

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