Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation's capital. In setting up his household, he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn't get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Washington decided to circumvent the law.

Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the gruelling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself. The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

When I navigate the currents of the soul, I find myself within my ancestral pool. I find myself swimming in their grief, and the longing during the great event and initiation called the Middle Passage. I find myself in their collective soul journey from a place of homeland to a dream of the Promised Land. This audiobook is a telling of the soul-striving of people of African heritage into the American experience of creating a community - a community created for the possibilities of new covenants within the larger collective sphere of human life.

Mister Good Times is the enthralling story of a black kid growing up in a (largely white) working class world; of vivid, often violent experiences on the football terraces; of the emerging club scene growing out of a melting pot of styles; of how Jay, with his contemporaries, took the music of black America, gave it a distinctly London twist and used the marriage of styles to forge a hugely successful career as a trailblazing DJ and broadcaster, becoming an inspiration to a whole generation of dance music fans, black and white, without ever compromising his integrity.

In the spring of 1980, the British colony of Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. Tonderai Munyevu, a born-free, was part of the hopeful next generation from a new country with a new leader, Robert Gabriel Mugabe. While exploring Tonderai’s personal story and his relationship with his father, Mugabe, My Dad and Me charts the rise and fall of one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century.

When Saroo Brierley used Google Earth to find his long-lost home town half a world away, he made global headlines. Saroo had become lost on a train in India at the age of five. Not knowing the name of his family or where he was from, he survived for weeks on the streets of Kolkata, before being taken into an orphanage and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite being happy in his new family, Saroo always wondered about his origins. He spent hours staring at the map of India on his bedroom wall.

With chapters covering sexual and cultural identity, body hair, colourism and mental health, and a particular focus on the suffocating beauty standards South Asian women are expected to adhere to, Sharan Dhaliwal speaks openly about her journey toward loving herself, offering advice, support and comfort to people that are encountering the same issues.

Miles to Go is a frank and intimate exploration of Miles Davis' eccentric working life, drug habits, paranoia, depression, and subsequent recovery. Murphy explores Davis' troubled relationship with his children and the controversial role Cicely Tyson played in his life. The book also delves into the dynamics that made Davis' band work so well together, placing Davis' work in a historic, literary, and musical framework.

It hasn’t been easy being Michael Arceneaux. Equality for LGBTQ people has come a long way and all, but voices of persons of color within the community are still often silenced, and being Black in America is...well, have you watched the news? With the characteristic wit and candor that have made him one of today’s boldest writers on social issues, I Can’t Date Jesus is Michael Arceneaux’s impassioned, forthright, and refreshing look at minority life in today’s America.

Abdul is just seven years old when his parents are killed before his eyes. As a brutal war sweeps Sudan, Abdul and his three-year-old brother are forced to flee. Their gruelling journey across the Sahara to a refugee camp in Chad is fraught with danger, and every day is a struggle against hunger and disease. Until one day Abdul is offered a chance to escape. A chance that could save him, but will force him to make the most heartbreaking decision of his life. Abdul's death-defying flight leaves deep scars.

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/film actress, and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze that "spread the power of Swing across the world like Wildfire". It was a time when the music was Swing, and Harlem was king.

In this now classic text, Martha Beckwith skillfully navigated an expansive collection of books, articles, and manuscripts to compile the definitive collection of mythological narratives of the native Hawaiian peoples. In addition to its importance for Hawaiian folklore and ethnology proper, Beckwith situates these stories within their broader regional context, offering comparisons to the traditions of Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa and other island nations.

Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one Black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade?

As a bored, moody teenager, Emma Beddington came across a copy of French ELLE in the library of her austere Yorkshire school. As she turned the pages, full of philosophy, sex and lipstick, she realized that her life had one purpose and one purpose only: she needed to be French. Instead of skulking in her bedroom listening to The Smiths or trudging to Betty's Tea Room to buy fondant fancies, she would be free and solitary, sitting outside the Cafe de Flore with a Scottie dog at her feet....

How does a white kid from the New York suburbs, harmonica in hand, end up earning himself a busker's spot on the Harlem sidewalks next to Mr. Satan, a Mississippi-born legend? How did an interracial blues duo fare on the streets of New York during a turbulent, fractious time marked by racially-motivated murders in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and Crown Heights?

World-renowned poet and Professor of African American Studies at U.C., Berkeley, June Jordan writes a deeply personal memoir of her formative years. June recalls her childhood experiences and reveals the duality of her parents’ influence on her stellar achievement as a poet. The first 12 years in Harlem were both peaceful and tumultuous for June, as she was raised the daughter of dirt-poor West Indian immigrants.

In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".

Historian Sunil Khilnani, Professor of History and Politics at Ashoka University, takes listeners on an immersive, whirlwind journey from ancient India to the 21st century through the life stories of 50 remarkable individuals, exploring their surprising legacies and illuminating both the wonders and the urgent conflicts of India today.