Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Whether or not we trace our families from beyond the shores of Britain, we British people deserve a better understanding of our shared past, and opportunities to explore and recognise the complexities and contractions of empire. Careless or wilful amnesia has allowed the British migration narrative to begin in the mid-twentieth century, with migrants from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean forming the foundation of present-day multicultural Britain. For people of colour the questions: Where are you from? No, where are you really from? often imply more than simple curiosity.

Question: What do you do when the kitchen wall collapses into the vat of beans being cooked for a horde of hungry schoolboys? Answer: You serve it up anyway! Why let a few lumps of clay and the odd metal screw spoil a decent meal? When Bunmi Asaolu arrived at the grand gates of St. John/Mary's Unity Secondary School (SAJOMACO) as a first-year student, you'd be forgiven for assuming he was swapping life on the serene university campus he grew up on for another of equal civility. Wrong! Behind the gates of SAJOMACO lay a world of contradictions.

The Terrible Truth About the Truth is an all-in-one dramatic, romantic, horrific, true story, not without some humor. As a Tutsi who experienced a number of close calls during the Tutsis genocide conducted by extremists Hutus, Emma identifies herself as a Tutsi and a genocide survivor, but many of her compatriots question that reality.

In late December 2008, Ian Halperin told the world that Michael Jackson had only six months to live. His investigation into Jackson`s failing health made headlines around the globe. Six months and a day later, the King of Pop was dead.It was greed that killed Michael Jackson. Friends and associates paint a tragic picture of the last years and days of his life as Jackson made desperate attempts to prepare for a planned concert series at London's 02 Arena in July 2009.

Having been raised in Jamaica and worked in Panama, Mary Seacole came to England in the 1850s and volunteered to help out during the Crimean War. When her services were turned down, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where she earned her reputation as a nurse and for her compassion. Popularly known as ‘Mother Seacole’, she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation—an extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain.

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.

English born Joe Riley recounts his extraordinary childhood in a small town on the rugged West coast of Ireland, where he was abandoned by his abusive father at the age of four and raised by a loving older couple and their children. Emotionally unsettled for most of Joe Riley’s adulthood, Joe feels inspired to revisit his childhood and write a memoir.

Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples.

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.

Sadia is a comedian who loves sex. She is also a hijab-wearing Muslim woman. The two are in a lifelong relationship, but it's complicated. Sadia Azmat has many different sides to her, she is the good Muslim sister and the loud and proud comedian, she is the quiet and loving friend and the horny and outspoken one. So why does everyone put her in a box and expect her to choose between one or the other?

Here is the Whitney only family would know.... Somewhere outside the glare of the concert spotlights...behind the tawdry entertainment news headlines...beyond the crush of the scandal-seeking paparazzi...lies the truth about Whitney Houston. And few individuals are better qualified to show us that complicated, funny, generous, troubled, extremely loyal Whitney than the friend she called "brother", Bebe Winans.

Jimmy O. Yang is a stand-up comedian, film and TV actor and fan favorite as the character Jian Yang from the popular HBO series Silicon Valley. In How to American, he shares his story of growing up as a Chinese immigrant who pursued a Hollywood career against the wishes of his parents: Yang arrived in Los Angeles from Hong Kong at age 13, learned English by watching BET's Rap City for three hours a day, and worked as a strip club DJ while pursuing his comedy career.

In this first of six volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life.

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.

The daughter of a prominent Palestinian father and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her.

Rory and Ita, Roddy Doyle's first nonfiction book, tells, largely in their own words, the story of his parents' lives from their first memories to the present. Born in 1923 and 1925 respectively, they met at a New Year's Eve dance in 1947 and married in 1951. They remember every detail of their Dublin childhoods, the people, the politics, idyllic times in the Wexford countryside for Ita, for Rory, his apprenticeship as a printer.

It’s 1970, and Jerry Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose beliefs he finds not only confusing but terrifying. Composed of a hodgepodge of requirements and restrictions—including a prohibition against doctors and hospitals—the underpinning tenet of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God was that its members were divinely chosen and all others would soon perish in rivers of flames.

In the first full biography of actor Sidney Poitier, Aram Goudsouzian analyzes the life and career of a Hollywood legend, from his childhood in the Bahamas to his 2002 Oscar for lifetime achievement. Poitier is a gifted actor, a great American success story, an intriguing personality, and a political symbol; his life and career illuminate America's racial history.

A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.

United States Senator Cory Booker makes the case that the virtues of empathy, responsibility, and action must guide our nation toward a brighter future. Raised in northern New Jersey, Cory Booker went to Stanford University on a football scholarship, accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, then studied at Yale Law School. Graduating from Yale, his options were limitless. He chose public service.