The Song Poet

The Song Poet PDF Author: Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1627794956
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This “memorable and moving immigrant story” chronicles the life of the author’s father, a Hmong refugee and keeper of cultural memory (Booklist). Winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses. He keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet—a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by America’s Secret War. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. The songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a St. Paul housing project and on the factory floor, until, with the death of Bee’s mother, they leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has burnished a life of poverty for his children, polishing their grim reality so that they might shine.

The Song Poet

The Song Poet PDF Author: Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1627794956
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
This “memorable and moving immigrant story” chronicles the life of the author’s father, a Hmong refugee and keeper of cultural memory (Booklist). Winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses. He keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning memoir The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father, Bee Yang, the song poet—a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by America’s Secret War. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. The songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a St. Paul housing project and on the factory floor, until, with the death of Bee’s mother, they leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has burnished a life of poverty for his children, polishing their grim reality so that they might shine.

My Father's Love: Portrait of the poet as a young girl: a memoir

My Father's Love: Portrait of the poet as a young girl: a memoir PDF Author: Sharon Doubiago
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984130405
Category : Poets, American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. In this first volume of her two-volume memoir, prize-winning poet Sharon Doubiago writes an extraordinary memoir of growing up in the 1940s and 50s in South Central Los Angeles and the desert mountain town of Ramona. MY FATHER'S LOVE addresses the current controversies of memory and memoir and sets new standards for the genre by adhering to historical records, letters, diaries, interviews, and a drive to know the unfabricated truth, while weaving these, in stunning language and imagery with remembering and reliving. This book attempts to understand her family rooted deep in the history of America, in both its Southern aristocracy and its victims. It looks at the world through the eyes of a child who knows what love is, a girl labeled beautiful, a victim of rape, incest and psychological terrorism, depicting the genesis of an American epic poet. It will change your perspective of the world forever.

Fairyland

Fairyland PDF Author: Alysia Abbott
Publisher: WW Norton
ISBN: 0393082520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and ’80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation—few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene. He takes Alysia to raucous parties, pushes her in front of the microphone at poetry readings, and introduces her to a world of artists, thinkers, and writers. But the pair live like nomads, moving from apartment to apartment, with a revolving cast of roommates and little structure. As a child Alysia views her father as a loving playmate who can transform the ordinary into magic, but as she gets older Alysia wants more than anything to fit in. The world, she learns, is hostile to difference. In Alysia’s teens, Steve’s friends—several of whom she has befriended—fall ill as AIDS starts its rampage through their community. While Alysia is studying in New York and then in France, her father tells her it’s time to come home; he’s sick with AIDS. Alysia must choose whether to take on the responsibility of caring for her father or continue the independent life she has worked so hard to create. Reconstructing their life together from a remarkable cache of her father’s journals, letters, and writings, Alysia Abbott gives us an unforgettable portrait of a tumultuous, historic time in San Francisco as well as an exquisitely moving account of a father’s legacy and a daughter’s love.

In The Shadow Of The Banyan

In The Shadow Of The Banyan PDF Author: Vaddey Ratner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1849837619
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
A stunning, powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Cambodian War, perfect for fans of Chris Cleave and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyanis testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. 'In the Shadow of the Banyanis one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand 'Ratner is a fearless writer, and the novel explores important themes such as power, the relationship between love and guilt, and class. Most remarkably, it depicts the lives of characters forced to live in extreme circumstances, and investigates how that changes them. To read In the Shadow of the Banyan is to be left with a profound sense of being witness to a tragedy of history' Guardian 'This is an extraordinary debut … as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Mail on Sunday

My Father's Suitcase

My Father's Suitcase PDF Author: Orhan Pamuk
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571238613
Category : Nobel Prizes
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description


Poetry of Resistance

Poetry of Resistance PDF Author: Francisco X. Alarcón
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081650279X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
My Sweet Dream / My Living Nightmare: Adobe Walls

My Father's Love

My Father's Love PDF Author: Sharon Doubiago
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poets, American
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description


The Latehomecomer

The Latehomecomer PDF Author: Kao Kalia Yang
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566892627
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.

In My Father's Footsteps

In My Father's Footsteps PDF Author: Sebastian Matthews
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393057386
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
A brilliant father, a complicated legacy, and a son's hard-won journey of self-discovery. William Matthews was a much-admired, award-winning poet and teacher who lived hard and died in 1997 at the age of 55. This clear-eyed, often wryly funny memoir pays homage to a charismatic father as the son struggles to step out from his considerable shadow.

Crazy Brave: A Memoir

Crazy Brave: A Memoir PDF Author: Joy Harjo
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083896
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 139

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Book Description
A “raw and honest” (Los Angeles Review of Books) memoir from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice.