Book picks similar to
Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman by Soon Ok Lee
north-korea
nonfiction
biography
memoir
Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret
F. Howard Taylor - 1932
But at his heart, he loved the Chinese people and learned through his misfortunes to trust God completely. 'HUDSON TAYLOR'S SPIRITUAL SECRET' is a stirring biography that challenges you to live a life of faith.RUNNING TIME ⇒ 7hrs. and 16mins.Public Domain (P)2011 christianaudio.com
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
Immaculée Ilibagiza - 2006
But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.
The Tears of My Soul
Kim Hyun Hee - 1993
What they found was Kim Hyun Hee, an idealistic young woman who had been transformed by her country into an obedient killing machine. The Tears of My Soul is her poignant, shocking, and utterly compelling story. Kim Hyun Hee grew up in a country obsessed by the loss of South Korea, an Orwellian world where right and wrong, good and evil, slavery and freedom meant nothing but what the North Korean Communist Party said they did. At sixteen, she was singled out by the Party for her intelligence and beauty and given special training in languages. At nineteen she was honored to be chosen for the North Korean Army's secret and elite espionage school. There she was trained to kill with everything from her hands and feet to grenades and assault rifles, enduring years of grueling physical and psychological conditioning designed to make her an effective and utterly obedient tool of the Party's spy masters. And in 1987, at age twenty-five, she was sent on the mission that would, she was told, reunify her divided country forever. Kim and her control agent, a man she considered her spiritual father, were captured only hours after the explosion. They were provided with suicide capsules, but hers failed and, for the first time in her life, Kim was outside the control of her masters. After more than a year of soul-wrenching questioning and deprogramming by the South Korean police, Kim realized the full enormity of her crimes, made a full confession, and waited for execution. But in a remarkable decision that sparked national outrage, the South Korean president gave her a full pardon, declaring that she was as much a victim of North Korea as the passengers. Kim Hyun Hee has devoted the rest of her life to atoning for the 115 lives lost on flight 858.
My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story
Latifa - 2001
With painful honesty and clarity, Latifa describes her ordered world falling apart, in the name of a fanaticism that she could not comprehend, and replaced by a world where terror and oppression reigned.
The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
Somaly Mam - 2005
For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia. Trapped in this dangerous and desperate world, she suffered the brutality and horrors of human trafficking—rape, torture, deprivation—until she managed to escape with the help of a French aid worker. Emboldened by her newfound freedom, education, and security, Somaly blossomed but remained haunted by the girls in the brothels she left behind.Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life and tells the story of her awakening as an activist and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of these girls. She has orchestrated raids on brothels and rescued sex workers, some as young as five and six; she has built shelters, started schools, and founded an organization that has so far saved more than four thousand women and children in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Her memoir will leave you awestruck by her tenacity and courage and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.
Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis
Douglas Gresham - 1988
S. LewisThere has probably never been a less likely couple: she, an American divorcee and the mother of two young boys; he, an Oxford don and confirmed bachelor who inhabited an eccentric household with his brother, a retired Royal Army major. Yet the relationship of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, portrayed in this moving autobiography by her son Douglas Gresham, was destined to become of the most deeply moving love stories of our time.
The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun
Paul Hattaway - 2000
This is the gripping story of how God took a young, half-starved boy from a poor village in Henan province and placed him on the front line for Jesus, in the face of impossible odds. Instead of focusing on the many miracles or experiences of suffering, however, Yun prefers to focus on the character and beauty of Jesus. Interspersed with his personal account are contributions from his wife, Deling, made mostly during her husband's frequent periods of imprisonment. You will remember where you were the first time you read this life story. It's a watershed book that will turn the reader to prayer and praise. It deserves comparison with past classics such as Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand, or the Life of Watchman Nee.
Choosing to SEE
Mary Beth Chapman - 2010
Together they began Show Hope, a nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for the world's most vulnerable children by providing financial assistance to families wishing to adopt, as well as increasing awareness of the orphan crisis and funneling resources to orphans domestically and internationally. Mary Beth serves as president of Show Hope and is a speaker for Women of Faith 2010 with her husband. She is also coauthor with Steven of the Shaoey and Dot series of children's picture books. Mary Beth and Steven have six children: Emily, Caleb, Will Franklin, and adopted daughters Shaohannah Hope, Stevey Joy, and Maria Sue, who is now with Jesus. The Chapmans live in Tennessee.www.MaryBethChapman.comEllen Vaughn is a bestselling author and inspirational speaker. Her recent books include It's All About Him with Denise Jackson (wife of Alan Jackson), which debuted at #1 on the New York Times nonfiction list. She is also coauthor with Chuck Colson of Being the Body. In addition to her nonfiction work, Vaughn is an award-winning novelist. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband, Lee.
Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
Sujatha Gidla - 2017
While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life—how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
Maria Augusta von Trapp - 1949
But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold.Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.Now with photographs from the original edition.
Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World's Most Repressive Country
Mike Kim - 2008
Mike Kim, who worked with refugees on the Chinese border for four years, recounts their experiences of enduring famine, sex-trafficking, and torture, as well as the inspirational stories of those who overcame tremendous adversity to escape the repressive regime of their homeland and make new lives. One of the few Americans granted entry into the secretive "Hermit Kingdom," Kim came to know the isolated country and its people intimately. His North Korean friends entrusted their secrets to him as they revealed the government's brainwashing tactics and confessed their true thoughts about the repressive regime that so rigidly controls their lives. Civilians and soldiers alike spoke of what North Koreans think of Americans and war with America. Children remembered the suffering they endured through the famine. Women and girls recalled their horrific experiences at the hands of sex-traffickers. Former political prisoners shared their memories of beatings, torture, and executions in the gulags. With the permission of these courageous individuals, Kim now shares their stories and recounts his dramatic experiences leading North Koreans to asylum through the six-thousand-mile modern-day underground railway through Asia. His unflinching narrative exposes the truth about North Korea, stripping away the last veils that still shroud this brutal dictatorship.
The Devil in Pew Number Seven
Rebecca Nichols Alonzo - 2010
In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him--with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined. Refusing to be driven away by acts of intimidation, Rebecca's father stood his ground until one night when an armed man walked into the family's kitchen . . . And Rebecca's life was shattered. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and seek personal revenge, it would be Rebecca. Yet The Devil in Pew Number Seven tells a different story. It is the amazing true saga of relentless persecution, one family's faith and courage in the face of it, and a daughter whose parents taught her the power of forgiveness.
Jesus Land: A Memoir
Julia Scheeres - 2005
For these two teenagers - brother and sister, black and white - the 1980s were a trial by fire.In this memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence - high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere - under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe. This brutal, prison-like "Christian boot camp" demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins - sins that few of them are aware of having committed. Julia and David's determination to make it though with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice. Jesus Land is, on every page, a keenly moving ode to the sustaining power of love, and rebellion, and the dream of a perfect family.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Barbara Demick - 2009
Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them. Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.
The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist
Dorothy Day - 1952
This inspiring and fascinating memoir, subtitled, “The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist,” The Long Loneliness is the late Dorothy Day’s compelling autobiographical testament to her life of social activism and her spiritual pilgrimage.A founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and longtime associate of Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day was eulogized in the New York Times as, “a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality.” The Long Loneliness recounts her remarkable journey from the Greenwich Village political and literary scene of the 1920s through her conversion to Catholicism and her lifelong struggle to help bring about “the kind of society where it is easier to be good.” (Description from Amazon.)