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Invisible prisons : Jack Whalen's tireless fight for justice / by Moore, Lisa,1964-author.; Whalen, Jack(Jack William),author.;
"Riveting nonfiction from multi-award-winning author Lisa Moore, based on the shocking true story of a teenaged boy who endured abuse and solitary confinement at a reform school in Newfoundland, but survived through grit and redemptive love. An exposé in the vein of Unholy Orders, written in the style of Linden MacIntyre's In the Wake. Invisible Prisons is an extraordinary, empathetic collaboration between the magnificent writer Lisa Moore, best-known for her award-winning fiction, and a man named Jack Whalen, who as a child was held for four years at a reform school for boys in St John's, where he suffered jaw-dropping abuses and deprivations. Despite the odds stacked against him, he found love on the other side, and managed to turn his life around as a husband and father. His daughter, Brittany, vowed at a young age to become a lawyer so that she could seek justice for him. Today, that is exactly what she is doing -- and Jack's case forms part of a class action lawsuit currently before the courts. The story has obvious parallels with Unholy Orders by Michael Harris about the Mount Cashel orphanage, and the series "The Boys of St Vincent," as well as the film Spotlight, and the many horrific stories coming out about residential schools -- all of which expose a paternalistic state causing harm and looking away. Yet two powerful qualities set this story apart. As much as it is about an abusive system preying on children, it is also a tender tale of love between Jack and his wife Glennis, who saw the good man inside a damaged person and believed in him. And it is written in a novelistic way by the great Lisa Moore, who makes starkly and magically real every moment and character in these pages."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Whalen, Jack (Jack William); Whalen, Jack (Jack William); Whalen, Jack (Jack William); Adult child abuse victims; Students;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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I'm laughing because I'm crying : a memoir / by Mayer, Youngmi,author.;
""Do you know what happens if you laugh while crying? Hair grows out of your butthole." So went the saying Youngmi Mayer's mother would recite-a saying Youngmi didn't take to but lived through in every situation: laughing and crying at a funeral, laughing and crying at her family's traumatic history, even laughing and crying as her mother berated her for taking too long to put her socks back on. And it is with her mother's words and Youngmi's brash wit and irreverence that takes readers through I'm Laughing Because I'm Crying and into the complexities of her identity as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan, a place next to a place that Americans might know. It takes us through an adolescence where she has to parent her own parents: a mother who married her husband because he looked like Jesus and also The Bee Gees (all of them). And, she takes us through a century of colonialism and war in Korea and how that has shaped her family and now, a hundred years later, still affects her in New York City as a queer single mom, all the while interrogating whiteness, gender, and sexuality. And she may make you cry, but most of all, she wants you to laugh. Because one cannot exist without the other. And like a yin and yang, this duality is reflected in this whip-smart, heart-wrenching, and disarmingly funny memoir. So, here it is. She hopes it makes you laugh while crying. And she hopes it makes you grow hair out of your butthole"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Mayer, Youngmi; Mayer, Youngmi.; Comedians; Korean Americans; Multiracial people; Multiracial people; Podcasters; Women comedians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

This time next year we'll be laughing : a memoir / by Winspear, Jacqueline,1955-author.;
"After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents' years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline's own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception. An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely see, This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing is the story of a childhood in the English countryside, of working class indomitability and family secrets, of artistic inspiration and the price of memory"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Winspear, Jacqueline, 1955-; Winspear, Jacqueline, 1955-; Authors, English; Working class families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sins of the mother / by Kelly, Irene.; Weitz, Katyauthor.;
Subjects: Kelly, Irene (Author); Abused children; Adult child abuse victims; Adult child abuse victims; Adult child abuse victims;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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I felt the end before it came : memoirs of a queer ex-Jehovah's Witness / by Cox, Daniel Allen,author.;
Includes bibliographical references.""I spent eighteen years in a group that taught me to hate myself. You cannot be queer and a Jehovah's Witness--it's one or the other." Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his religion considered unacceptable: celebrating birthdays and holidays; voting in elections, pursuing higher education, and other forays into independent thought. Their opposition to blood transfusions would have consequences for his mother, just as their stance on homosexuality would for him. But even years after whispers of his sexual orientation reached his congregation's presiding elder, catalyzing his disassociation, the distinction between "in" and "out" isn't always clear. Still in the midst of a lifelong disentanglement, Cox grapples with the group's cultish tactics--from gaslighting to shunning--and their resulting harms--from simmering anger to substance abuse--all while redefining its concepts through a queer lens. Can Paradise be a bathhouse, a concert hall, or a room full of books? With great candour and disarming self-awareness, Cox takes readers on a journey from his early days as a solicitous door-to-door preacher in Montreal to a stint in New York City, where he's swept up in a scene of photographers and hustlers blurring the line between art and pornography. The culmination of years spent both processing and avoiding a complicated past, I Felt the End Before It Came reckons with memory and language just as it provides a blueprint to surviving a litany of Armageddons."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Creative nonfiction.; Cox, Daniel Allen; Cox, Daniel Allen.; Ex-church members; Ex-church members; Gay men; Authors, Canadian (English);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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House of sticks : a memoir / by Tran, Ly,1989-author.;
"A powerful memoir by 25-year-old Ly Tran about her immigrant experience and her recent family history in the aftermath of the war that spans from Vietnam to Brooklyn, and ultimately to the Ivy League."--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Tran, Ly, 1989-; Tran, Ly, 1989-; Immigrant youth; Vietnamese American women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Did everyone have an imaginary friend (or just me)? : adventures in boyhood / by Ellis, Jay,1981-author.;
"What to do when you're the perpetual new kid, only child, military brat hustling school-to-school each year and everyone's looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from every child's favorite co-conspirator -- their imaginary best friend. Born in the perfect storm of especially ferocious rain and a sugar-fueled imagination, Mikey, his imaginary best friend, steps in to figuratively hold Jay's hand through various youthful shenanigans. A testament to the importance of imagination, trusting oneself, and making space for your creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend or Just Me? is a memoir of a 90s kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate everything from parallel pop culture universes, like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews, to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides him through greater tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target drive-by and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver's license. As imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking within yourself for guidance to some of life's biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homie"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Ellis, Jay, 1981-; Ellis, Jay, 1981-; African American actors; African American children; Imaginary companions.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The girls in the wild fig tree : how I fought to save myself, my sister, and thousands of girls worldwide / by Leng'ete, Nice,author.; Butler-Witter, Elizabeth,author.;
"Nice Leng`ete was raised in a Maasai village in Kenya by relatively progressive parents. Her father established a wildlife sanctuary, which was managed by the Maasai themselves rather than outside interests, and watching how he created a consensus by meeting people where they are gave Nice a lesson for the rest of her life. In 1998, when Nice was six, her parents both fell sick and died - it took years for her to understand that they had died of AIDS. Nice and Soila were taken in by their father's brother, who had little interest in whether the girls stayed in school. He expected that the sisters would undergo the ritual referred to as "the cut" (female genital mutilation), which would make them acceptable Maasai women and signal their readiness to be married. Fearing the ritual cut, which Nice had witnessed as a painful, bloody, and sometimes deadly procedure, Nice and Soila climbed a tree to hide. Nice hoped they could eventually run away, and delay the cut forever, but Soila knew that their uncle would not let both girls defy the rules. But maybe one of them could escape it, if the other submitted. After Soila chose to undergo the surgery, sparing Nice, who was still only nine, their lives diverged in the ways Nice had predicted. While Soila married, dropped out of school, and had children - all in her teenage years - Nice continued with her education, postponing receiving the cut at each school break, and became the first in her family to attend college. While at boarding school, at around age 16, Nice began training with Amref, an organization working for healthcare advances in Africa, after they had heard that she had been successfully talking to girls in her village about FGM. Even after she departed for Nairobi for college, she continued her outreach and made inroads in improving sexual education and feminine hygiene by conversing with the young girls, using herself as an example for what was possible. Changing the minds of the men was the biggest obstacle - as a rule in Maasai culture, women do not lead discussions with men - but again she started at the base, with the young unmarried men, before bringing her ideas about new, alternative ceremonial rites for girls to the tribe's elders. One by one, families agreed to end FGM. Girls were allowed to forgo the cut and stay in school. Men began marrying women who were whole. Nice's town has since ended FGM entirely, and her goal is to end the practice worldwide. Nice's journey from "heartbroken child and community outcast, to leader of the Maasai" is an inspiration and a reminder that one person can change the world - and every girl is worth saving"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Leng'ete, Nice; Amref Health Africa.; Female circumcision; Maasai (African people); Maasai (African people); Women, Maasai;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
unAPI

Where beauty survived : an Africadian memoir / by Clarke, George Elliott,author.;
'Where Beauty Survived' is a vibrant, revealing memoir about the cultural and familial pressures that shaped George Elliott Clarke's early life in the Black Canadian community that he calls Africadia, centered in Halifax, NS.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Clarke, George Elliott; Authors, Canadian; Authors, Black; Authors, Canadian (English); Black Canadian authors;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sex cult nun : breaking away from the Children of God, a wild, radical religious cult / by Jones, Faith,author.;
'Educated' meets 'The Vow' in this story of liberation and self-empowerment - an inspiring and crazier-than-fiction memoir of growing up in and breaking free from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Jones, Faith; Jones, Faith; Family International (Organization); Children of God (Movement); Communal living.; Cult members; Ex-cultists; Sexually abused girls;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Results 121 to 130 of 1,244 | « previous |