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From the ashes : my story of being Métis, homeless, and finding my way / by Thistle, Jesse,author.;
"From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, but their tough-love attitudes meant conflicts became commonplace. And the ghost of Jesse's drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. One day, he finally realized he would die unless he turned his life around. In this heartwarming and heartbreaking memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful experiences with abuse, uncovering the truth about his parents, and how he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family through education. An eloquent exploration of what it means to live in a world surrounded by prejudice and racism and to be cast adrift, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help one find happiness despite the odds."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Thistle, Jesse.; Métis; Addicts; Homeless persons;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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From the ashes : my story of being Métis, homeless, and finding my way [Book Club Set] / by Thistle, Jesse,author.;
"From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, but their tough-love attitudes meant conflicts became commonplace. And the ghost of Jesse's drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. One day, he finally realized he would die unless he turned his life around. In this heartwarming and heartbreaking memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful experiences with abuse, uncovering the truth about his parents, and how he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family through education. An eloquent exploration of what it means to live in a world surrounded by prejudice and racism and to be cast adrift, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help one find happiness despite the odds."-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Thistle, Jesse.; Métis; Addicts; Homeless persons;
Available copies: 14 / Total copies: 14
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Dominion [game] / by Please return all components in the container. ;
"You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams. You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion. In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodum. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner. But wait. It must be something in the air, several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn't be proud, but your grandparents, would be delighted" - from Amazon.Ages 14+.
Subjects: Board games.; Library of things.; Toys and instruments.;
© [2016]., Rio Grande Games,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Nishga / by Abel, Jordan,1985-author.;
"From Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel comes a groundbreaking and emotionally devastating autobiographical meditation on the complicated legacies that Canada's reservation school system has cast on his grandparents', his parents' and his own generation. NISHGA is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence. As a Nisga'a writer, Jordan Abel often finds himself in a position where he is asked to explain his relationship to Nisga'a language, Nisga'a community, and Nisga'a cultural knowledge. However, as an intergenerational survivor of residential school--both of his grandparents attended the same residential school in Chilliwack, British Columbia--his relationship to his own Indigenous identity is complicated to say the least. NISHGA explores those complications and is invested in understanding how the colonial violence originating at the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School impacted his grandparents' generation, then his father's generation, and ultimately his own. The project is rooted in a desire to illuminate the realities of intergenerational survivors of residential school, but sheds light on Indigenous experiences that may not seem to be immediately (or inherently) Indigenous. Drawing on autobiography, a series of interconnected documents (including pieces of memoir, transcriptions of talks, and photography), NISHGA is a book about confronting difficult truths and it is about how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples engage with a history of colonial violence that is quite often rendered invisible."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Abel, Jordan, 1985-; Indigenous authors; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous children; Indigenous children; Indigenous peoples;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Jennie's boy : a Newfoundland childhood / by Johnston, Wayne,author.;
"Consummate storyteller and bestselling novelist Wayne Johnston reaches back into his past to bring us a sad, tender and at times extremely funny memoir of a Newfoundland boyhood few thought he would survive, including him. For six months between 1966 and 1967, Wayne Johnston and his family lived in a wreck of a house across from his grandparents in Goulds, Newfoundland, which was not so much a place as a scattering of houses along an unpaved road. At seven, Wayne was sickly and skinny, unable to keep food down, unable to sleep, plagued with a relentless cough that no doctor could diagnose, though they had already removed his tonsils, adenoids and appendix. Heart murmur, pleurisy, a tapeworm? All were suspected, and none confirmed. To the community he was known as "Jennie's boy," and his tiny, ferocious mother felt judged for Wayne's condition at the same time as worried he might not grow up to be his own man. While his brothers went off to school, and his parents to work, trying to stave off the next eviction, Wayne spent his days with his witty, religious, deeply eccentric maternal grandmother, Lucy, who kept a statue of the Blessed Virgin in one of her bedrooms along with a photo of her son Leonard, who had died at seven. During these six months of Wayne's childhood, he and Lucy faced two life-or-death crises, and only one of them lived to tell the tale. Jennie's Boy is Wayne's tribute to a family and a community that were simultaneously fiercely protective of him and fed up with having to make allowances for him: grandparents, parents and siblings, aunts and uncles, and the people of the Goulds, whose pet and nuisance he was. He recalls a boyhood full of pain, yes, but also laughter, tenderness, and the kind of wit that is peculiar to Newfoundlanders. By that wit, and by their love for each other--so often expressed in the most unloving ways--he, and they, survived."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Johnston, Wayne; Johnston, Wayne; Johnston, Wayne.; Families.; Authors, Canadian (English);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Red at the bone / by Woodson, Jacqueline,author.;
"An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be"--
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Domestic fiction.; Mothers and daughters; African American families; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The mystery of the painted fan / by Trinh, Linda.; Nguyen, Clayton.;
"The third book in the early chapter book series. The Nguyen Kids features the youngest sibling, Jacob, and continues the series' exploration of social justice themes, specifically gender expression and identity, with a supernatural twist. Thoughtful and creative, Jacob is tired of being the baby of the family. He is ready to fully express himself in all of the ways that feel right to him, but not everyone seems as eager to accept change--even his own parents. He still loves hockey, yet he also wants to try something new, even if others may not understand. Confused and frustrated, Jacob turns to the beautiful fan his Grandma Nội gave him, which features all of the Vietnamese zodiac animals. With the mysterious fan and memories of Grandma guiding him, Jacob finds the power to remain true to himself, and show his family who he could be"--
Subjects: Vietnamese Canadians; Families; Grandparent and child; Vietnamese;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Earthlings : a novel / by Murata, Sayaka,1979-author.; Takemori, Ginny Tapley,translator.; translation of:Murata, Sayaka,1979-Chikyu seijin.English.;
"As a child, Natsuki doesn't fit into her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut who has explained to her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. Each summer, Natsuki counts down the days until her family drives into the mountains of Nagano to visit her grandparents in their wooden house in the forest. One summer, her cousin Yuu confides to Natsuki that he is an extraterrestrial, and Natsuki starts to wonder if she might be an alien too. Later, as a married woman, Natsuki feels forced to fit in to a society she deems a "baby factory" but wonders if there is more to the world than the mundane reality everyone else seems to accept. The answers are out there, and Natsuki has the power to find them. Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata's status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe"--
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Magic realist fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Cousins; Extraterrestrial beings; Families; Identity (Psychology); Imaginary companions; Imagination in children;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Nikhil out loud / by Pancholy, Maulik,1974-;
"From the acclaimed actor and Stonewall Honor-winning author of The Best at It, Maulik Pancholy, comes a new middle grade novel about a gay Indian American boy who learns the power of using his voice. Thirteen-year-old Nikhil Shah is the beloved voice actor for Raj Reddy on the hit animated series Raj Reddy in Outer Space. But being a star on TV doesn't mean you have everything figured out behind the scenes... When his mom temporarily moves them to the small town in Ohio where she grew up to take care of Nikhil's sick grandfather, Nikhil feels as out of orbit as his character. Nikhil's fame lands him the lead in the school musical, but he's terrified that everyone will realize he's a fraud once they find out he can't sing. And when a group of conservative parents start to protest, making it clear they're not happy with an openly gay TV star being in the starring role, Nikhil feels like his life would be easier if only he could be Raj Reddy full-time. Then Nikhil wakes up one morning and hears a crack in his voice, which means his job playing Raj will have to come to an end. Life on earth is way more complicated than life on television. And some mysteries--like new friendships or a sick grandparent or finding the courage to speak out about what's right--don't wrap up neatly between commercial breaks." --From publisher.LSC
Subjects: Bildungsromans.; Gay teenagers; East Indians; Entertainers; Adolescence; Grandparent and child; Diseases; Coming of age;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Small Angels : a novel / by Owen, Lauren,1985-author.;
"As a teenager, Kate found a safe harbor from her parents' constant fighting in the company of the four Gonne sisters, who lived with their strict grandparents next to Small Angels, a church right on the edge of dense green woods. The first outsider to ever get close to the sisters, Kate eventually learned the family's secret: The woods are home to a capricious, menacing ghost whom generations of Gonnes had been charged with stopping from venturing into the village itself. But as the sisters grew older, braver, and more independent, and started bucking against the family's burden, the bulwark began to crack, culminating in a horrifying act of violence that drove a terrible wedge between the sisters and Kate. Chloe has been planning her dream wedding for months. She has the dress, the flowers, and the perfect venue: Small Angels, a charming old church in the village her fiancé, Sam, and his sister, Kate, grew up in. But, days before the ceremony, she starts to hear unsettling stories about Small Angels. And worse, she begins to see, smell, and hear things that couldn't possibly be real. Now, Kate is returning home for the first time in years, for Sam and Chloe's wedding. But the woods are coming alive again, and Kate must reconnect with Lucia, the most troubled of the sisters and her first love, to protect Chloe, the village, and herself"--
Subjects: Ghost stories.; Gothic fiction.; Novels.; Church buildings; Family secrets; Forests and forestry; Ghosts; Lesbians; Sisters; Villages; Weddings;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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