Book picks similar to
Burn My Shadow: A Selective Memory of an X-Rated Life by Tyler Knight
nonfiction
memoir
porn
gender-and-sexuality
Where Are You Really From?: Kola Kubes and Gelignite, Secrets and Lies - The True Story of an Extraordinary Family
Tim Brannigan - 2010
Unwilling to have an abortion or to have the baby adopted, Peggy came up with an audacious plan to keep her child. When Tim was born, hospital staff smuggled him into St Joseph's Baby Home and told the rest of the Brannigan family that the baby had been stillborn. One year later, Peggy adopted Tim and brought him to live with her family in the Falls Road area of Belfast. It was 1967.Told here for the first time, this is Tim's extraordinary story, describing in vivid detail what it was like growing up black in Belfast during the Troubles in the 1970s and 80s, his five-year stint in jail for hiding weapons on behalf of the IRA, his coming to terms with the true circumstances surrounding his birth, and his desperate attempts to trace the father who abandoned him. Where Are You Really From? is a fascinating and powerful memoir about one man's struggle to establish his own identity and a moving tribute to the woman who risked everything to keep her son.
Stronger: Courage, Hope, and Humor in My Life with John McCain
Cindy Mccain - 2021
The Big Book of Porn: A Penetrating Look at the World of Dirty Movies
Seth Grahame-Smith - 2005
And the first dirty motion picture was screened just a few months later. Adult movies are nearly as old as cinema itself. "The Big Book of Porn" celebrates this controversial art form in all its timeless glory from the stag films of the 1920s and the Super 8 reels of the 50s to the VHS boom of the 80s and the interactive DVDs of Tomorrow. Chapters include: Know Your Classics: The twenty-five most important adult films of all time, including Debbie Does Dallas, Deep Throat, and an X-rated musical version of Alice in Wonderland. Great Moments in Porn History: From the first on-screen kiss to the invention of the silicone breast implant, these are major events that defined modern-day adult films. The Pantheon of Porn: These mini-bios of mega-stars like Seka, Linda Lovelace, and Marilyn Chambers are filled with surprising trivia. It s A Porn World, After All: We travel around the world from Australia and Canada to Germany and Japan to watch the best of international porn. Make Your Own Porno: All you need is a video camera, a willing partner, and these simple pointers ( Tell a story, Start with a bang, Parody a real film title whenever possible ). And that s just the beginning. You ll also find a glossary of unfamiliar terms, a catalog of favorite porn genres, tons of classic stills and posters, interviews with porn pioneers, the 300 goofiest porn titles of all time (Edward Penishands, Juranal Park, Oklahomo!), and much, much more."
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Alex Haley - 1976
It took ten years and a half a million miles of travel across three continents to find it, but finally, in an astonishing feat of genealogical detective work, he discovered not only the name of "the African"—Kunta Kinte—but the precise location of Juffure, the very village in The Gambia, West Africa, from which he was abducted in 1767 at the age of sixteen and taken on the Lord Ligonier to Maryland and sold to a Virginia planter.Haley has talked in Juffure with his own African sixth cousins. On September 29, 1967, he stood on the dock in Annapolis where his great-great-great-great-grandfather was taken ashore on September 29, 1767. Now he has written the monumental two-century drama of Kunta Kinte and the six generations who came after him—slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lumber mill workers and Pullman porters, lawyers and architects—and one author.But Haley has done more than recapture the history of his own family. As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 25,000,000 Americans of African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. But Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all people and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.
On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star
John Dickerson - 2006
of photos.
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah - 2016
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
Further Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star
Rick Wakeman - 2009
What do Postman Pat, Tommy Cooper, Norman Wisdom and George Best have in common with being abandoned in a Costa Rican jungle after a severe bout of flatulence? Indeed, how are they also connected to trying to buy an Australian brewery just to get a beer, owning twenty-two cars, an American soccer team and a Swiss mail-order pornography company?The common feature is of course a certain Richard Wakeman.The Further Adventures of a Grumpy Old Rock Star takes you, the privileged reader, on a trip of absurd excess, a cultural car crash of side-splitting hilarity and an unforgettable glimpse (again) into the life of one of Britain's most legendary showmen, rock stars and all-time great raconteurs.
An Unseemly Man: My Life as a Pornographer, Pundit, and Social Outcast
Larry Flynt - 1996
He is this century's most ardent advocate of First Amendment rights, a man whose landmark Supreme Court cases are studied by every law student in America. He is the founder and publisher of Hustler magazine, a journal often described as tasteless, crude, scatological, and gynecologically explicit - to which he would reply, "Good!" For Flynt, tastelessness is "a necessary tool in challenging preconceived notions in a world where people are afraid to discuss their attitudes, prejudices, and misconceptions." Born in the hills of Kentucky, in the poorest county in America, Flynt became a teenage runaway, an underage recruit in both the army and the navy, a bootlegger, a scam artist, a bar owner, the proprietor of a string of go-go clubs, an evangelical Christian, an atheist, and eventually a millionaire pornographer and publisher. A prodigious sexual athlete, Flynt was shot down in his prime by an assailant's bullet and paralyzed from the waist down. Wheelchair bound and racked by years of searing pain, he became a pain-medicine junkie and habitue of America's courtrooms. Persecuted by the self-righteous Charles Keating, prosecuted by ambitious district attorneys, sued by moral crusaders like Jerry Falwell, and hounded by the government, Flynt forged a blazing trail through the American legal system. Remarkably, Larry Flynt has never told his story before. This highly personal and reflective account will surprise everyone, offend a few, and entertain many.
And Still I Rise
Maya Angelou - 1978
An ode to the power that resides in us all to overcome the most difficult circumstances, this poem is truly an inspiration and affirmation of the faith that restores and nourishes the soul. Entwined with the vivid paintings of Diego Rivera, the renowned Mexican artist, Angelou's words paint a portrait of the amazing human spirit, its quiet dignity, and pools of strength and courage. An ideal gift for a friend, lover, or family member, this special edition will be treasured by all who receive it.
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
Hanif Abdurraqib - 2019
Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as the rap group itself.Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels' shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end, the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.
Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
Melba Pattillo Beals - 1994
Board of Education.Throughout her harrowing ordeal, Melba was taunted by her schoolmates and their parents, threatened by a lynch mob’s rope, attacked with lighted sticks of dynamite, and injured by acid sprayed in her eyes. But through it all, she acted with dignity and courage, and refused to back down.
The Dirty Version: On Stage, In the Studio, and In the Streets with Ol' Dirty Bastard
Buddha Monk - 2014
ODB was one of the Clan’s wildest icons and most inventive performers, and when he died of an overdose in 2004 at the age of thirty-five, millions of fans mourned the loss. ODB lives on in epic proportions and his antics are legend: he once picked up his welfare check in a limousine; lifted a burning car off a four-year-old girl in Brooklyn; stole a fifty-dollar pair of sneakers on tour at the peak of his success. Many have questioned whether his stunts were carefully calculated or the result of paranoia and mental instability.Now, Dirty’s friend since childhood, Buddha Monk, a Wu-Tang collaborator on stage and in the studio, reveals the truth about the complex and talented performer. From their days together on the streets of Brooklyn to the meteoric rise of Wu-Tang’s star, from bouts in prison to court-mandated rehab, from Dirty’s favorite kind of pizza to his struggles with fame and success, Buddha tells the real story—The Dirty Version—of the legendary rapper.
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup - 1853
It is a slave narrative of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped in Washington, D.C., sold into slavery, and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana. He provided details of slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, as well as describing at length cotton and sugar cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.
I'm In the Band: Backstage Notes from the Chick in White Zombie
Sean Yseult - 2010
The band became a multiplatinum, two-time Grammy nominee with the release of their 1992 album, La Sexorcisto. But while most people will remember their bizarre look and macabre lyrics, what many failed to realize was that their lanky, high-octane bass player was a woman.I’m In the Band combines eleven years of tour diaries, flyers, and personal photos and ephemera to chart White Zombie’s rise from the gritty music scene of New York’s Lower East Side in the eighties to arena headliners during the nineties. It also shares the unlikely story of a female musician who won the respect and adoration of male metal musicians and fans. From 1985 to 1996, Sean Yseult was the sole woman not only in White Zombie, but in the entire metal scene.With I’m In the Band, Yseult has created both a coffee table book and a striking visual memoir. Her personal memorabilia offers fans a unique vantage on the life of a mega-band during rock’s last golden age.
Gift of Life
Henri Landwirth - 2009
He started the Give Kids the World foundation andDignity U Wear charity.