Author: Jamie Figueroa
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0553387685
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
A searing memoir that explores the institutions that defined a Puerto Rican woman and what she unlearned to rediscover herself • "A lushly written, deeply felt investigation into the meanings of home, lineage and selfhood." —Melissa Febos, bestselling author of Body Work and Girlhood Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Puerto Rican mother who was abandoned by her family, Jamie Figueroa and her sisters were estranged from their culture, consumed by the whiteness that surrounded them. In Mother Island, Figueroa traces her search for identity as shaped by and against a mother who settled into the safety of assimilation. In lyrical, blistering prose, Figueroa recalls a childhood in Ohio in which she was relegated to the background of her mother’s string of failed marriages; her own marriage in her early twenties to a man twice her age; how her work as a licensed massage therapist helped her heal her body trauma; and how becoming a mother has reshaped her relationship to her family and herself. Only as an adult in New Mexico was Figueroa able to forge her own path, using writing to recast her origin story. In a journey that takes her to Puerto Rico and back, Figueroa looks to her ancestors to reimagine her relationship to the past and to her mother’s native island, reaching beyond her own mother into a greater experience of mothering and claiming herself. Drawing from Puerto Rican folklore and mythology, a literary lineage of women writers of color, and narratives of identity, Figueroa presents a cultural coming-of-age story. Candid and raw, Mother Island gets to the heart of the question: Who do we become when we are no longer trying to be someone else?
Author: Bethan Roberts
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448190886
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
This is the story of two women, Nula and Maggie, joined by old family history and love for the same little boy. Nula, struggling with her new baby and feeling alone in her marriage, employs her cousin Maggie as a nanny when she returns to work. But it's not long before Nula finds herself theatened by Maggie's close bond with her son, Samuel. Nula's outwardly perfect house crackles with unspoken jealousies and rivalry until Maggie's intense love for Samuel tips into obsession and she decides her only option is to abduct the child. As Maggie makes her desperate bid for safety, the women's shared past of trauma and loss comes to the fore once more. WINNER OF THE JERWOOD FICTION UNCOVERED PRIZE 2015.
Author: Paula Fox
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504037413
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 83
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Book Description
Eleven-year-old Clay must find a home on the streets of New York City in this award-winning, heartbreakingly honest novel. He was eleven years old, and he had never felt so alone in his life. Clay Garrity lived a normal life until his father lost his job and abandoned the family. Now his pregnant mother has deserted him too, leaving Clay alone in a welfare hotel with a jar of peanut butter and half a loaf of bread. Fearing being placed in foster care, Clay runs away. Alone in the city, Clay wanders down streets with boarded-up buildings and through dark alleys, until he comes to a small triangular park that looks like an island in a stream. In the light of a street lamp, he sees cardboard boxes, blankets, bundles—and people. Some are lying on benches, others inside boxes. Two of the men, Calvin and Buddy, offer to share their shelter, and Clay is grateful to have a place to stay during the bitter November cold. Before long, Calvin, Buddy, and Clay form a family amid the threatening dangers and despair of the streets. Clay knows that leaving the streets and going into foster care means that he may never see his parents again. But if he stays, he may not survive at all. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults, this acclaimed novel offers an intensely moving and candid look at the all-too-real lives of homeless teens.
Author: Lisa See
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154877
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A mesmerizing new historical novel” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point. “This vivid…thoughtful and empathetic” novel (The New York Times Book Review) illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge and the men take care of the children. “A wonderful ode to a truly singular group of women” (Publishers Weekly), The Island of Sea Women is a “beautiful story…about the endurance of friendship when it’s pushed to its limits, and you…will love it” (Cosmopolitan).
Author: Judith Ortiz Cofer
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820347639
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
"The Cruel Country is a memoir centered around the author's journey to Puerto Rico after her mother had been diagnosed with late stage lung cancer. The story takes us through Cofer's journey as she sits by the her mother's hospital bed during the last moments of her life, through the grieving process and Catholic funereal rites that follow her mother's death and her return to her life in the U.S. Cofer's writerly talents richly inform this narrative meditation on her family's life in Puerto Rico and the States, her frantic research on cancer, considerations of Catholicism, family, and culture , and much more. The book at the same time is very much a study of cultural differences and the balance that the author must find as a Puerto-Rican American, not wholly part of her mother's culture. We see this come to a head as she communicates with doctors, participates in funeral arrangements and sacraments, and recollects her Anglo husband John's father's death. This very personal story about the author's life will resonate with Cofer's legions of fans including students and those interested in memoir, ethnic and cultural crossings, spirituality, loss, grief, and reconciliation"--
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72
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Book Description
Boys' Life is the official youth magazine for the Boy Scouts of America. Published since 1911, it contains a proven mix of news, nature, sports, history, fiction, science, comics, and Scouting.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Book Description
Author: David Pearce Penhallow-Scott
Publisher: Jane Lasswell Hoff
ISBN: 1707269777
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
David Penhallow-Scott and Jane Hoff have written a fascinating and charming biography of Anna and the five generations of her family as it settled in the Hawaiian Islands. They came as missionaries and sea captains but grew to be power-brokers who mingled and intermarried with royalty. Family photographs and letters complete the intimate look into the sometimes eccentric goulash of relatives who left an indelible mark on Hawaii as it grew from a kingdom into a U.S. territory and state.
Author: United States. War Department
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Cover title: List of mothers and widows of American soldiers, sailors and marines entitled to make a pilgrimage to the war cemetaries in Europe.
Author: Francis Augustus MacNutt
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3734067502
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Reproduction of the original: De Orbe Novo by Francis Augustus MacNutt
