Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Based on more than a decade of archival research and interviews with dozens of surviving friends and colleagues of Rustin's, Lost Prophet is a triumph. Rustin emerges as a hero of the black freedom struggle and a singularly important figure in the lost gay history of the mid-20th century. John D'Emilio's compelling narrative rescues a forgotten figure and brings alive a time of great hope and great tragedy in the not-so-distant past.

Growing up on the whitewashed Central Coast in the 1980s and attending an elite school as a scholarship student from the wrong side of the tracks, Lebanese-Cypriot Simone Amelia Jordan felt like an outcast among her peers for years. Her lifeline was hip-hop, then in its golden age. From girlhood, Simone recognised the art form's pro-Black consciousness, and the rappers' resonant words inspired her to embrace her own identity and back herself.

"Mississippi Hippie: A Life in 49 Pieces" invites you to embark on an extraordinary odyssey through the soul-stirring landscapes of the storied Mississippi Delta and the humming streetscapes of 1970s Memphis. Willy Bearden, a master storyteller, unveils his life's mosaic in a series of poignant and evocative vignettes that resonate with the echoes of a bygone era.

This is a first hand account of some horrendous but true stories onboard a small 60-foot wooden fishing boat fishing off the north coast of Scotland around the 1980 period.

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass covers the life of the prominent abolitionist during and after the Civil War. Here, Douglass provides a fuller account of his escape from slavery and the underground railway to freedom. It includes his recollections of presidents Garfield and Lincoln, Johnson and Garfield, and an account of his service as Marshall of the District of Columbia.

When interracial romance novels written by her long-dead father landed on Julia McKenzie Munemo’s kitchen table, she - a White woman - had been married to a Black man for six years, and their first son was a toddler. Out of shame about her father’s secret career as a writer of “slavery porn”, she hid the books from herself and from her growing mixed-race family for more than a decade.

The Jews of Aleppo, Syria, had been part of the city's fabric for more than two thousand years, in good times and bad, through conquerors and kings. But in the middle years of the twentieth century, all that changed. To Selim Sutton, a merchant with centuries of roots in the Syrian soil, the dangers of rising anti-Semitism made clear that his family must find a new home. With several young children and no prospect of securing visas to the United States, he devised a savvy plan for getting his family out: "exporting" his sons.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier on the farm adjacent to Daniel Boone’s, “rented” out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as “Sandy” reinvented himself as “William Wells” Brown after escaping to freedom. He lifted himself out of illiteracy and soon became an innovative, widely admired, and hugely popular speaker on antislavery circuits (both American and British) and went on to write the earliest African American works in a plethora of genres....

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and Black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life.

Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball's bold expansion to California. He was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Now, James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.

Sarfraz Manzoor was two years old when, in 1974, he emigrated from Pakistan to Britain with his mother, brother, and sister. Sarfraz spent his teenage years in a constant battle, trying to reconcile being both British and Muslim, trying to fit in at school and at home. But it was when his best friend introduced him to the music of Bruce Springsteen that his life changed completely. Both a tribute to Springsteen and a story of personal discovery, Greetings from Bury Park is a warm, irreverent, and exceptionally perceptive memoir about how music transcends religion and race.

After his father died, Leon Wieseltier began to observe the traditional year-long period of mourning, going to the synagogue three times a day to recite the prayer known as the mourner's Kaddish. Struck by the profound, yet unexpected power of this practice and the poverty of his knowledge about it, Leon began to study the history and meaning of this ancient ritual.

The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the city that would later became the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre—an atrocity by the Assad regime. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the US to study law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in love with a Southern belle. Bashar, meanwhile, stayed in Syria and embarked on a brilliant legal career under the same corrupt Assad government that Riyad despised.

Feisty is the story of a woman with attitude—told in short reflections that capture a life of awakening activism. From her exploits as a five-year-old New Jersey cowboy to hosting Gloria Steinem in Alabama and an awkward drink with a young Clarence Thomas, Jean Peelen shares her civil rights journey and the most vulnerable moments in her life.

As a young girl, Razina Theba makes her way every day to the tiny family flat on Vorster Street in Fordsburg. It is here, just outside of the Johannesburg city center, where she grows up, playing in the Yard with countless cousins, learning to enjoy perfect syrupy paan and the best way to brew chai for her bajee. It is also where she observes her family’s harassment by the Security Branch, as well as her parents’ determination to make their business at the Oriental Plaza a success.

Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.

La conmovedora historia de Armenuhi, abuela de la autora, que sobrevivió a la persecución y muerte en el Genocidio Armenio y llegó sola a la Argentina a los 14 años. Armenuhi enhebró en Buenos Aires el presente y futuro de toda la familia. Fue paciente, amorosa y determinada. Protegió y guió a cada uno de los suyos, como lo había hecho su padre cuando escapaban por el desierto con hambre, frío y sed.

"Questo libro raccoglie alcune cose che ho imparato in tanti anni di professione, di incontri, di esperienze, di libri letti e scritti, di speranze e delusioni..." Così Piero Angela riassume e spiega la sua ultima fatica, un testo scritto di getto e nato dall'urgenza del momento, e dalle enormi sfide che ci attendono. Un lascito morale, dopo una lunghissima carriera al servizio dell'informazione e della formazione di generazioni di italiani.

Twelve Years a Slave is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of twelve years. Northup's account is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar plantation and the daily routine of slave life during the first part of the 19th century.

Available once again, the definitive biography of the pioneering Black performer - the first nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award - who broke new ground in Hollywood and helped transform American society in the years before Civil Rights movement - a remarkable woman of her time who also transcended it.