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Daughter in Retrograde: A Memoir
by Courtney KerstenWhen she isn't eavesdropping on family gossip or gazing at taxidermy squirrels in smoky dives, Courtney Kersten charts the uncertainty of her midwestern homeland by looking to the stars and planets. As a teen she had plunged deep into the worlds of signs, symbols, and prophecy. But as her mother—her traveling companion into these spheres—lies dying, Kersten must learn to navigate without the person who always lit the way. Their last journey together, to swim in a Wisconsin lake, is a bittersweet, darkly comic, poignant climax to this transformative memoir.
Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and Whore: The Story of a Woman Who Decided to be a Puta (Latin America in Translation)
by Gabriela LeiteIn the early 1970s, while living at home with her conservative middle-class family and studying at the University of São Paulo, Gabriela Leite decided to become a sex worker. From her first client in a tiny room in downtown São Paulo to the launch of an exuberant clothing line designed for sex workers in Rio de Janeiro thirty years later, Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and Whore tells the fascinating story of Leite’s bold and unique life in her own words. After helping to organize Brazil’s first protests by sex workers against police brutality, she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she quickly became ensconced in the city’s storied red-light district. From there, Leite built a national network of politicized sex workers, worked for HIV/AIDS prevention, and participated in Brazil’s robust new civil society after its return to democracy in 1985 following a twenty-one-year military dictatorship. Insistent on advocating for the sex worker’s comprehensive human rights, Leite pioneered an irreverent grassroots Latin American feminism, which critiqued moral hypocrisies and Christian conservatism while affirming pleasure, joy, and agency. Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and Whore also includes a foreword by artist and activist Carol Leigh.
Daughter, Mother, Me: How to survive when the people in your life need you most
by Alana Kirk'In life women can have many labels: daughter, single girl, wife, career woman, mother. I had worn them all and, while life was hectic, I was the one in control. Then four days after the birth of my third daughter, my mum had a massive stroke and, just like that, everything changed.Over the time to come - what I call 'the Sandwich Years' - I found myself both grieving for and caring for my beloved mum, supporting my dad, raising my three young daughters, while trying to get my career back on track. The cracks began to show. I discovered that, sometimes, having it all, means doing it all and that, amid the maelstrom of need, I had lost the label I had started out with: me.'Daughter, Mother, Me is the heartfelt, inspirational story of the bond between a mother and a daughter and how one woman - through caring for the person she had relied on the most - finally found herself.
Daughter of Apartheid
by Lindi TardifIt’s been two decades since the fall of apartheid, a quarter century since the liberation of Eastern European states, five decades since the death of American “Jim Crow,” and seventy-plus years since the beginning of the emancipation of the African states. Freedom has advanced, yet there are some Black people in South Africa, the United States, and other parts around the globe who question if it has advanced far enough and are embittered. <p><p> I am a Black woman born to the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. My family suffered the slights of apartheid--petty and grand--as well as the poverty, degradation, street violence, lack of opportunity, and other ills of the system. <p> Twenty years old when apartheid gave way to the Rainbow Nation, I have lived about half my life under that system. Those who came before me knew only separation and oppression, while those who followed were born to the idea that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it”. My generation--perhaps it’s not really a generation, but rather a seven- to ten-year cohort--knows both. Therefore. My generation has a unique perspective on what happened then as well as what is happening now, on transitioning from restriction to freedom, on recognizing and celebrating progress, on pushing through negatives to embrace forgiveness, hope, and humanity, and on understanding the importance of choice. <p> In telling my story, as well as the stories of some of my friends and teachers, I share my perspective on the issues I have grappled with--including choice, identity, forgiveness, and humanity--with those who are wrestling with similar issues in the United States, my adopted home country, and in South Africa, the country of my birth. Deprivation and marginalization are, after all, as hurtful and debilitating in inner city Baltimore as they are in Soweto, and making a deliberate decision to move forward in the face of either, or both, is always powerful, no matter what your address or particular circumstances.
The Daughter of Auschwitz: A heartbreaking and incredible true story of courage, resilience and survival
by Tova Friedman Malcolm BrabantThe harrowing, moving and poignant account of one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz: a girl who was only five years old when she was sent to an extermination camp, and was one of the few people who entered a gas chamber and lived to tell her story.'I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.'With a special foreword by Sir Ben Kingsley.'Every so often a book arrives that demands to be read' John Humphrys'An unforgettable and deeply moving story' Jeremy Bowen'I read this book with gratitude and urgency' Fergal Keane '[A] vividly written and compelling story' Lindsey HilsumAN INCREDIBLE STORY OF COURAGE, RESILIENCE AND SURVIVAL Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was five when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale. As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited.In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it is in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's thorough research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about one of the worst ever crimes against humanity.
The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
by Tova Friedman Malcolm BrabantA powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz. <p><P>"I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf." Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. <p><p>After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. <p><p>During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale. As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited. <p><p>In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it's in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's meticulous research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about the world's worst ever crime. <p> <b>New York Times Bestseller</b>
The Daughter of Auschwitz: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - a heartbreaking true story of courage, resilience and survival
by Tova Friedman Malcolm BrabantAn incredible story of courage, resilience and survival. 'I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.' Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale. As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited.In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it's in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's meticulous research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about the world's worst ever crime.(P) 2022 Quercus Editions Limited
Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography
by Benazir BhuttoDaughter of Destiny, the autobiography of Benazir Bhutto, is a historical document of uncommon passion and courage, the dramatic story of a brilliant, beautiful woman whose life was, up to her tragic assassination in 2007, inexorably tied to her nation's tumultuous history. Bhutto writes of growing up in a family of legendary wealth and near-mythic status, a family whose rich heritage survives in tales still passed from generation to generation. She describes her journey from this protected world onto the volatile stage of international politics through her education at Radcliffe and Oxford, the sudden coup that plunged her family into a prolonged nightmare of threats and torture, her father's assassination by General Zia ul-Haq in 1979, and her grueling experience as a political prisoner in solitary confinement. With candor and courage, Benazir Bhutto recounts her triumphant political rise from her return to Pakistan from exile in 1986 through the extraordinary events of 1988: the mysterious death of Zia; her party's long struggle to ensure free elections; and finally, the stunning mandate that propelled her overnight into the ranks of the world's most powerful, influential leaders.
Daughter of Dust
by Wendy WallaceLeila understands from early on that she is not part of normal Sudanese society. Her parents are unable to care for her, so she is banished to a strict orphanage, along with children born outside marriage. At school, Leila and her best friend Amal are called 'daughters of sin'. Her pretty sister, Zulima, is married off to a much older man, while the nannies say an abandoned girl is lucky to get an offer of marriage at all. At the age of ten, both Leila and Amal endure female circumcision. Suffering appalling prejudice, and thought to bring the 'evil eye', Leila remains outgoing and brave and manages to get an education. She goes on to marry, have four children, and divorce, yet even grown up she continues to know the stigma of being abandoned. Undaunted, Leila founds her own charity to help those shunned as outcasts. Yet her charity work makes her vulnerable in the ultra-conservative Islamic society of Sudan, but she continues to work tirelessly to dispel prejudice. This beautifully written, graceful memoir perfectly evokes the heat and colour of the North African desert and tells of the true friendships that are born out of adversity.
Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten
by Lady Pamela HicksA source of inspiration for the film Viceroy's HousePamela Mountbatten was born at the end of the 1920s into one of Britain's grandest families. The daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his glamorous wife Edwina Ashley, she was brought up by nannies and governesses as she was often parted from her parents as they dutifully carried out their public roles. A solitary child, she learned to occupy her days lost in a book, riding or playing with the family's animals (which included at different times a honey bear, chameleons, a bush baby, two wallabies, a lion, a mongoose and a coati mundi). Her parents' vast social circle included royalty, film stars, senior service officers, politicians and celebrities. Noel Coward invited Pamela to watch him filming; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. dropped in for tea and Churchill would call for 'a word with Dickie'.After the war, Pamela truly came of age in India, while her parents were the Last Viceroy and Vicereine. This introduction to the country would start a life-long love affair with the people and the place.
Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten
by Pamela HicksA source of inspiration for the film Viceroy's HousePamela Mountbatten was born at the end of the 1920s into one of Britain's grandest families. The daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his glamorous wife Edwina Ashley, she was brought up by nannies and governesses as she was often parted from her parents as they dutifully carried out their public roles. A solitary child, she learned to occupy her days lost in a book, riding or playing with the family's animals (which included at different times a honey bear, chameleons, a bush baby, two wallabies, a lion, a mongoose and a coati mundi). Her parents' vast social circle included royalty, film stars, senior service officers, politicians and celebrities. Noel Coward invited Pamela to watch him filming; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. dropped in for tea and Churchill would call for 'a word with Dickie'.After the war, Pamela truly came of age in India, while her parents were the Last Viceroy and Vicereine. This introduction to the country would start a life-long love affair with the people and the place.
Daughter of Empire
by Pamela HicksThis magical memoir about a singular childhood in England and India by the daughter of Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten provides a privileged glimpse into the lives and loves of some of the twentieth century's leading figures.Few families can boast of not one but two saints among their ancestors, not to mention a great aunt who was the last tsarina of Russia, a father admired by Grace Kelly, and a grandmother who was not only a princess but could also argue the finer points of naval law. As the younger daughter of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Pamela Hicks's childhood was an extraordinary whirlwind of British aristocracy, English eccentricity, Hollywood glamour, and political education. The King of Spain ordered the Ritz in Madrid to be surrounded by soldiers as Pamela's mother gave birth to her there--and laid her in a dog bed for a cradle. Her childhood pets included, at different times, a bear, two wallabies, a mongoose, and a lion. Her parents each had lovers who lived openly with the family. The house was always full of guests like Sir Winston Churchill, Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Duchess of Windsor (who brought her mother a cold cooked chicken as a hostess gift). During World War II she was sent to live on Fifth Avenue in New York City with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1947, her parents were appointed to be the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India, and Pamela developed her own relationships with Gandhi and Nehru. She served as a bridesmaid in Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Phillip and was at her side as lady-in-waiting when the young princess learned her father had died and she was queen. Vivid and engaging, well paced and superbly detailed, this witty, intimate memoir is an enchanting lens through which to view the early part of the twentieth century.
Daughter of Family G: A Memoir of Cancer Genes, Love and Fate
by Ami McKayWeaving together family history, genetic discovery, and scenes from her life, Ami McKay tells the compelling, true-science story of her own family's unsettling legacy of hereditary cancer while exploring the challenges that come from carrying the mutation that not only killed many people you loved, but might also kill you.The story of Ami McKay's connection to a genetic disorder called Lynch syndrome begins over seventy years before she was born and long before scientists discovered DNA. In 1895 her great-great aunt, Pauline Gross, a seamstress in Ann Arbor, Michigan, confided to a pathology professor at the local university that she expected to die young, like so many others in her family. Rather than dismiss her fears, the pathologist chose to enlist Pauline in the careful tracking of those in her family tree who had died of cancer. Pauline's premonition proved true--she died at 46--but because of her efforts, her family (who the pathologist dubbed 'Family G') would become the longest and most detailed cancer genealogy ever studied in the world. A century after Pauline's confession, researchers would identify the genetic mutation responsible for the family's woes. Now known as Lynch syndrome, the genetic condition predisposes its carriers to several types of cancer, including colorectal, endometrial, ovarian and pancreatic. In 2001, as a young mother with two sons and a keen interest in survival, Ami McKay was among the first to be tested for Lynch syndrome. She had a feeling she'd test positive: her mother's side of the family was riddled with early deaths and her own mother was being treated for the disease. When the test proved her fears true, she began living in "an unsettling state between wellness and cancer," and she's been there ever since. Intimate, candid, and probing, her genetic memoir tells a fascinating story, teasing out the many ways to live with the hand you are dealt.
Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult
by Lilia TarawaOne young woman’s true story of growing up in a repressive cult led by her charismatic grandfather, Hopeful Christian.In an idyllic valley in New Zealand, the Gloriavale Christian Community seemingly flourished. Founded by Lilia Tarawa’s grandfather, Hopeful Christian, Gloriavale was run according to an oppressive interpretation of fundamental Christianity and became a strictly controlled world of arranged marriages, religious control and spiritual abuse.Born into the cult that her grandfather had started, and surrounded by friends and family, Gloriavale seemed like paradise for Lila Tarawa at first. Her mother, Miracle, had grown up in there too and Lilia’s father managed a thriving moss export business, one of several companies owned by the community. As Lilia grew older, however, she began to see and experience the darker side of the cult, with its strict rules, tight control and shocking abuse. As Lilia and her family started to question Gloriavale’s beliefs and practices, Lilia was forced to make a desperate choice: stay with people she loved or flee to a world that she had always been told was evil.In Daughter of Gloriavale, Lilia Tarawa exposes the shocking world of the secretive cult and details her heart-wrenching journey to break free, find happiness and discover her own strength.
Daughter of Gloriavale: My Life in a Religious Cult
by Lilia TarawaOne young woman’s true story of growing up in a repressive cult led by her charismatic grandfather, Hopeful Christian.In an idyllic valley in New Zealand, the Gloriavale Christian Community seemingly flourished. Founded by Lilia Tarawa’s grandfather, Hopeful Christian, Gloriavale was run according to an oppressive interpretation of fundamental Christianity and became a strictly controlled world of arranged marriages, religious control and spiritual abuse.Born into the cult that her grandfather had started, and surrounded by friends and family, Gloriavale seemed like paradise for Lila Tarawa at first. Her mother, Miracle, had grown up in there too and Lilia’s father managed a thriving moss export business, one of several companies owned by the community. As Lilia grew older, however, she began to see and experience the darker side of the cult, with its strict rules, tight control and shocking abuse. As Lilia and her family started to question Gloriavale’s beliefs and practices, Lilia was forced to make a desperate choice: stay with people she loved or flee to a world that she had always been told was evil.In Daughter of Gloriavale, Lilia Tarawa exposes the shocking world of the secretive cult and details her heart-wrenching journey to break free, find happiness and discover her own strength.
Daughter of Good Fortune: A Twentieth-Century Chinese Peasant Memoir
by Chen Huiqin Shehong Chen Delia DavinDaughter of Good Fortune tells the story of Chen Huiqin and her family through the tumultuous 20th century in China. She witnessed the Japanese occupation during World War II, the Communist Revolution in 1949 and its ensuing Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Reform Era. Chen was born into a subsistence farming family, became a factory worker, and lived through her village s relocation to make way for economic development. Her family s story of urbanization is representative of hundreds of millions of rural Chinese.
Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes
by Leslie LiIn this powerful, touching memoir of a critically acclaimed Chinese-American writer, taste becomes the keeper of memory and food the keeper of culture when Nai-nai, her extraordinary grandmother, arrives from mainland China.Leslie Li’s paternal grandfather, Li Zogren, was China’s first democratically elected vice president, to whom Chiang Kai-shek left control of the country when he fled to Formosa in 1949. Nine years later, Li’s wife, Nai-nai, comes to live with her son’s family in New York City, bringing a whole new world of sights, smells, and tastes as she quickly takes control of the kitchen. Nai-nai’s tantalizingly exotic cooking opens up the heart and mind of her American granddaughter to her Chinese heritage—and to the world. Through her grandmother’s traditional cuisine Leslie bridges the cultural divide in an America in which she is a minority—as well as the growing gap at home between her rigid, traditional Chinese father and her progressive American-born mother. Interspersed throughout her intimate and moving memoir are the author’s personal recipes, most from Nai-nai’s kitchen, that add a delicious dimension to the work. A loving ode to family and food, Daughter of Heaven is an exquisite blend of memory, history, and the senses.
Daughter of History: Traces of an Immigrant Girlhood (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture)
by Susan SuleimanA photograph with faint writing on the back. A traveling chess set. A silver pin. In her new memoir, noted scholar and author Susan Rubin Suleiman uses such everyday objects and the memories they evoke to tell the story of her early life as a Holocaust refugee and American immigrant. In this coming-of-age story that probes the intergenerational complexities of immigrant families and the inevitability of loss, Susan looks to her own life as an example of how historical events shape our private lives. After the Nazis marched into Hungary in 1944, five-year old Susan learned to call herself by a Christian name, hiding with false papers in Budapest with her parents. While her relatives in the provinces would be among the 450,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz, Susan's close family survived and even thrived in the years following the war. But when the Communist Party took over Hungary, Susan and her parents emigrated to Chicago by way of Vienna, Paris, Haiti, and New York. In her adult life as a prominent feminist professor, she rarely allowed herself to think about these chapters of her past—but eventually, when she had children of her own, she found herself called back to Budapest, unlocking memories that would change the direction of her scholarship and career. At the center of this richly textured memoir is a little girl who grows up happy despite the traumas of her early years, surrounded by a loving family. As a teenager in the 1950s, she is determined to become "100% American," until a post-college year in Paris leads her to realize that her European roots and Americanness can coexist. At once an intellectual autobiography and a reflection on the nature of memory, identity, and home, Daughter of History invites us to consider how the objects that underpin our lives become gateways to our past.
Daughter Of The Queen Of Sheba
by Jacki Lyden''I am the Queen of Sheba, my mother announced to me in a regal voice''. She was wrapped in toga of bedsheets, with eye-pencil hieroglyphics drawn on her bare arms, a tiara on her head. I was twelve years old.' When she was well, Jacki Lyden's mother was a pretty but powerless suburban 60s housewife, very much under the thumb of a cruel doctor husband (Jacki's stepfather), but when she was gripped by the illness (later diagnosed as manic-depression) she got revenge for all the disappointments in her life. She became, among others, Marie Antoniette, dressed in Victorian bustiers, spent money she didn't have on fabulous cars and presents, painted slogans on the furniture and murals on the walls, went places she wouldn't normally have dared and - became someone she wanted to be. She frightened her three girls, but her bids for power fascinated and inspired them too. If Jacki's mother could escape to exotic places, so would she. In her 20s Jacki set out on her own impassioned journeys - she became a radio journalist, fearlessly reporting from war zones. But always her mother's fantasies remained a frustrating and compelling lure.
Daughter of the Border
by Roberta HamburghA memoir of three generations of women in the South Texas borderland that aims to expose readers to the experience of an Anglo girl growing up on the Texas Mexican border in that world of baked-in prejudice. Roberta Hambaugh grew up in Mirando City near the border and weaves the stories of her grandmother, mother, and herself into a tale exposing that world of bias and how that changed in her lifetime.
Daughter of the Boycott: Carrying On a Montgomery Family's Civil Rights Legacy
by Karen Gray HoustonIn 1950, before Montgomery, Alabama, knew Martin Luther King Jr., before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger, before the city's famous bus boycott, a Negro man named Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by a white police officer in a confrontation after he tried to board a city bus. Thomas Gray, who had played football with Hilliard when they were kids, was outraged by the unjustifiable shooting. Gray protested, eventually staging a major downtown march to register voters, and standing up to police brutality. Five years later, he led another protest, this time against unjust treatment on the city's segregated buses. On the front lines of what became the Montgomery bus boycott, Gray withstood threats and bombings alongside his brother, Fred D. Gray, the young lawyer who represented Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the rarely mentioned Claudette Colvin, a plaintiff in the case that forced Alabama to desegregate its buses. An incredible story of family in the pivotal years of the civil rights movement, Daughter of the Boycott is the reflection of Thomas Gray's daughter, award-winning broadcast journalist Karen Gray Houston, on how her father's and uncle's selfless actions changed the nation's racial climate and opened doors for her and countless other African Americans.
Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong's Rendezvous with American History
by Yunte HuangOne of the Atlantic's "Books to Get Lost in This Summer" Best Books of August 2023: New York Times Book Review, Christian Science Monitor, InsideHook, BookRiot, WNET AllArts, Arlington Magazine A trenchant reclamation of the Chinese American movie star, whose battles against cinematic exploitation and endemic racism are set against the currents of twentieth-century history. Born into the steam and starch of a Chinese laundry, Anna May Wong (1905–1961) emerged from turn-of-the-century Los Angeles to become Old Hollywood’s most famous Chinese American actress, a screen siren who captivated global audiences and signed her publicity photos—with a touch of defiance—“Orientally yours.” Now, more than a century after her birth, Yunte Huang narrates Wong’s tragic life story, retracing her journey from Chinatown to silent-era Hollywood, and from Weimar Berlin to decadent, prewar Shanghai, and capturing American television in its infancy. As Huang shows, Wong’s rendezvous with history features a remarkable parade of characters, including a smitten Walter Benjamin and (an equally smitten) Marlene Dietrich. Challenging the parodically racist perceptions of Wong as a “Dragon Lady,” “Madame Butterfly,” or “China Doll,” Huang’s biography becomes a truly resonant work of history that reflects the raging anti-Chinese xenophobia, unabashed sexism, and ageism toward women that defined both Hollywood and America in Wong’s all-too-brief fifty-six years on earth.
Daughter of the East: An Autobiography
by Benazir BhuttoBeautiful and charismatic, the daughter of one of Pakistan's most popular leaders -- Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged by General Zia in 1979 -- Benazir Bhutto is not only the first woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state, she achieved a status approaching that of a royal princess, only to be stripped of her power in another example of the bitter political in-fighting that has riven her country.From her upbringing in one of Pakistan's richest families, the shock of the contrast of her Harvard and Oxford education, and subsequent politicisation and arrest after her father's death, Bhutto's life has been full of drama. Her riveting autobiography, first published in 1988 and now updated to cover her own activities since then and how her country has changed since being thrust into the international limelight after 9/11, is an inspiring tale of strength, dedication and courage in the face of adversity.
Daughter of the Empire State: The Life of Judge Jane Bolin
by Jacqueline A. McleodThis long overdue biography elevates Jane Matilda Bolin to her rightful place in American history as an activist, integrationist, jurist, and outspoken public figure in the political and professional milieu of New York City before the onset of the modern Civil Rights movement. When Bolin was appointed to New York City's domestic relations court in 1939 for the first of four ten-year terms, she became the nation's first African American woman judge. Drawing on archival materials as well as a meeting with Bolin in 2002, historian Jacqueline A. McLeod reveals how Bolin parlayed her judicial position to impact significant reforms of the legal and social service system in New York. Beginning with Bolin's childhood and educational experiences at Wellesley and Yale, Daughter of the Empire State chronicles Bolin's relatively quick rise through the ranks of a profession that routinely excluded both women and African Americans. McLeod links Bolin's activist leanings and integrationist zeal to her involvement in the NAACP and details her work as a critic and reformer of domestic relations courts and juvenile placement facilities.
Daughter of the Ganges
by Asha MiroA moving and emotional story about one girl's adoption While growing up in an Indian orphanage, Asha Miró dreamed of someday being adopted. Her wish finally came true, but only at the misfortune of another. When Asha was six, a Catalan family was in the process of adopting twins but one of the children suddenly fell ill and died. This twist of fate led the family to adopt Asha instead. Leaving a life of poverty behind, Asha was given a second chance. Twenty-one years later, Asha takes a heart-wrenching trip back to India to uncover her native roots. Full of unexpected encounters, this adventure informs and touches Asha beyond her expectations. She visits her old orphanage, speaks with her former caretakers, explores the land that she might not have ever left, and comes to form a more solid identity. Yet one trip is not enough. Eight years later she returns. This time she journeys to the small rural village where she was born. As well as uncovering the details behind her adoption, she finds the only living member of her immediate Indian family: a sister she never knew she had.