Book picks similar to
Ella Baker: Community Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement by J. Todd Moye
history
biography-memoir
social-justice
nonfiction
And Life Continues: Sex Trafficking and My Journey To Freedom
Wendy Barnes - 2015
And Life Continues is her story: how she became a victim of human trafficking, why she was unable to leave the man who enslaved her for fifteen years, and the obstacles she overcame to heal and rebuild her life after she was rescued.
This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Kay Mills - 1993
"Riveting. Provides a history that helps us to understand the choices made by so many black men and women of Hamer's generation, who somehow found the courage to join a movement in which they risked everything." New York Times Book Review "One is forced to pause and consider that this black daughter of the Old South might have been braver than King and Malcolm." Washington Post Book World "An epic that nurtures us as we confront today's challenges and helps us Keep Hope Alive.'" Jesse L. Jackson "Not only does This Little Light of Mine recount a vital part of America"s history, but it lights our future as readers are inspired anew by Mrs. Hamer's spirit, courage, and commitment." Marian Wright Edelman "This book is the essence of raw courage. It must be read." Rep. John Lewis
The Log Cabin Lady
Anonymous - 1922
Dear, simple mother, in her terrible clothes, and the twins, got up with more thought for economy than for beauty! I shopped extravagantly with them. The youngsters wanted to see everything in New York; but mother, despite all of those hard, lonely years in our rough country and the many interesting things for her to do and see in New York-- mother wanted nothing better than to stay with the baby.
All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
Theodore Rosengarten - 1974
"On a cold January morning in 1969, a young white graduate student from Massachusetts, stumbling along the dim trail of a long-defunct radical organization of the 1930s, the Alabama Sharecropper Union, heard that there was a survivor and went looking for him. In a rural settlement 20 miles or so from Tuskegee in east-central Alabama he found him—the man he calls Nate Shaw—a black man, 84 years old, in full possession of every moment of his life and every facet of its meaning. . . . Theodore Rosengarten, the student, had found a black Homer, bursting with his black Odyssey and able to tell it with awesome intellectual power, with passion, with the almost frightening power of memory in a man who could neither read nor write but who sensed that the substance of his own life, and a million other black lives like his, were the very fiber of the nation's history." —H. Jack Geiger, New York Times Book Review
King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero
David Remnick - 1998
He changed the world of sports and went on to change the world itself. As Muhammad Ali, he would become the most recognized face on the planet. Ali was a transcendent athlete and entertainer, a heavyweight Fred Astaire, a rapper before rap was born. He was a mirror of his era, a dynamic figure in the racial and cultural battles of his time. This unforgettable story of his rise and self-creation, told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, places Ali in a heritage of great American originals. Cassius Clay grew up in the Jim Crow South and came of athletic age when boxers were at the mercy of the mob. From the start, Clay rebelled against everything and everyone who would keep him and his people down. He refused the old stereotypes and refused the glad hand of the mob. And, to the confusion and fury of white sportswriters, who were far more comfortable with the self-effacing Joe Louis, Clay came forward as a rebel, insistent on his political views, on his new religion, and, eventually, on a new name. His rebellion nearly cost him the chance to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world. King of the World features some of the pivotal figures of the 1960s--Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, John F. Kennedy--and its pivotal events: the civil rights movement, political assassinations, the war in Vietnam. Muhammad Ali is a great hero and a beloved figure in American life. King of the World takes us back to the days when his life was a series of battles, inside the ring and out. A master storyteller at the height of his powers, David Remnick has written a book worthy of America's most dynamic modern hero.
Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away
June Cross - 2006
In 1957, when June Cross was four years old, she was sent by her white mother to live with a black family in Atlantic City. Her mother, Norma, had left June’s abusive father, a comic in the well-known black vaudeville duo Stump and Stumpy, and gave June up when it became clear that her dark-skinned, kinky-haired child could no longer "pass." Within her adopted family, June struggled with her identity as the black radicalism of the times collided head on with her family’s more traditional ideals. Summer vacations were spent with her mother, now in Hollywood and married to F Troop TV actor Larry Storch. For many years, Norma, afraid that Larry’s career would suffer if anyone discovered the truth about her illegitimate daughter, told friends and reporters that June was adopted.Secret Daughter, which grew out of Cross’s Emmy Award–winning documentary, traces this thorny story with poignancy and skill. It is both a vivid snapshot of race relations in America and an inspiring journey of understanding between a mother and daughter.
Brother, I'm Dying
Edwidge Danticat - 2007
Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who “knew all the verses for love.” And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known. Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name—and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic—into the next generation. Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both.
The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada
Josiah Henson - 1858
Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
Fit Not Healthy
Vanessa Alford - 2015
She soon discovers she has a talent for long-distance running and trains for her first marathon. . She loves it – and soon sets her sights on the 2005 Melbourne Marathon. When she finishes in under three hours and in third place, Vanessa is offered commercial sponsorships and attracts the attentions of elite coaches. Instead of enjoying her win however, she is driven to improve her performance. She pushes her body harder and further, determined to become the best runner she can be. Despite her increasing success and her own training as a physiotherapist she soon finds herself trapped in a spiral of extreme dieting and exercise in order to improve her performances and maintain her ‘fit and healthy’ look.Ignoring the growing concern of her family and friends, Vanessa denies there is anything unhealthy about her fitness training, until the day she finds her body has started rebelling against her …A compelling story about the dangers of overexercising and chasing perfection in a society that rewards and applauds the fastest and the fittest.
Lakota Woman
Mary Crow Dog - 1990
Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Saidiya Hartman - 1997
Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the black family.In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship that were indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work.Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives recreates the experience of young urban black women who desired an existence qualitatively different than the one that had been scripted for them—domestic service, second-class citizenship, and respectable poverty—and whose intimate revolution was apprehended as crime and pathology. For the first time, young black women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives recovers their radical aspirations and insurgent desires.
Marie Antoinette: An Intimate History
Melanie Clegg - 2015
As wife of Louis XVI of France she was first feted and adored and then universally hated as tales of her dissipated lifestyle and extravagance pulled the already discredited monarchy into a maelstrom of revolution, disaster and tragedy.This illustrated first biography by historian and writer Melanie Clegg takes a fresh look at the story of this most fascinating and misunderstood of queens, exploring her personal tribulations as well as the series of disasters that brought her to the guillotine in October 1793.Melanie Clegg is the author of five historical novels and is also a regular contributor to Majesty magazine and her own women's history blog Madame Guillotine. Her second biography, a life of Marie de Guise, is due to be published by Pen and Sword Books in 2016.
The Rifle: Combat Stories from America's Last WWII Veterans, Told Through an M1 Garand
Andrew Biggio - 2021
Marine, Andrew Biggio, who returned home from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, full of questions about the price of war. He found answers from those who survived the costliest war of all -- WWII veterans. It began when Biggio bought a 1945 M1 Garand Rifle, the most common rifle used in WWII, to honor his great uncle, a U.S. Army soldier who died on the hills of the Italian countryside. When Biggio showed the gun to his neighbor, WWII veteran Corporal Joseph Drago, it unlocked memories Drago had kept unspoken for 50 years. On the spur of the moment, Biggio asked Drago to sign the rifle. Thus began this Marine’s mission to find as many WWII veterans as he could, get their signatures on the rifle, and document their stories. For two years, Biggio traveled across the country to interview America’s last-living WWII veterans. Each time he put the M1 Garand Rifle in their hands, their eyes lit up with memories triggered by holding the weapon that had been with them every step of the war. With each visit and every story told to Biggio, the veterans signed their names to the rifle. 96 signatures now cover that rifle, each a reminder of the price of war and the courage of our soldiers.
Queen Noor
Susan Muaddi Darraj - 2004
Delve deep into the lives of the world's most powerful women in politics, and learn how ambition and altruism make these extraordinary women truly extraordinary leaders. Lisa Halaby, whose Arab-American father was the CEO of Pan Am Airlines and a former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, led a fairly routine life until she was introduced to Jordan's King Hussein. Within months, the golden-haired Arab-American was married to King Hussein and crowned queen of Jordan.
Unsinkable
Debbie Reynolds - 2013
After two broken marriages, this third, she believed, was her lucky charm. But within a few years, Debbie discovered that he had betrayed her emotionally and financially, nearly destroying her life.Today, she writes, "When I read the optimistic ending of my last memoir now, I can't believe how naive I was when I wrote it. In Unsinkable, I look back at the many years since then, and share my memories of a film career that took me from the Miss Burbank Contest of 1948 to the work I did in 2012. . . . To paraphrase Bette Davis: Fasten your seatbelts, I've had a bumpy ride."Unsinkable shines a spotlight on the resilient woman whose talent and passion for her work have endured for more than six decades. In her engaging, down-to-earth voice, Debbie shares private details about her man and money troubles, including building and losing her Las Vegas dream hotel and her treasured Hollywood memorabilia collection. Yet no matter how difficult the problems, the show always goes on.Debbie also invites us into the close circle of her family, speaking with deep affection and honesty about her relationships with her children, Carrie and Todd Fisher. She looks back at her life as an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age—"the most magical time you could imagine"—including her lifelong friendship with (and years-long estrangement from) the legendary Elizabeth Taylor. Here, too, are stories that never reached the tabloids about numerous celebrities, such as Ava Gardner, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Mick Jagger, Gene Kelly, and many more. She takes us on a guided tour through her movies with delightful, often hilarious behind-the-scenes anecdotes about every film in which she was involved, from 1948 to the present.Frank and forthright, and featuring dozens of previously unseen photos from Debbie's personal collection, Unsinkable is a poignant reminder that there is light in the darkest times. It is a revealing portrait of a woman whose determination is an inspiration.