Cultural Memoir

An extraordinarily vivid and beautifully written first novel exploring the hidden world of the geisha. Memoirs of a Geisha is a rare and utterly engaging experience. The extraordinary tale of Sayuri, a young girl who grows up to become an acclaimed geisha, it spans a quarter of a century, from...

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her.

Alex Oberholzer verbrachte seine ersten zwölf Lebensjahre im Kinderspital. Affoltern am Albis bei Zürich, in einer hermetisch abgeschlossenen Welte und ohne Kontakt zu den Eltern. In knappen, berührenden Episoden erzählt der Autor vom Leben mit Behinderung, von Kusiosem und den prägenden Erlebnissen seiner ganz besonderen Kindheit und Jugend. "Erinnere ich mich zurück, so tauche ich ein in ein gigantisches Wechselbad der Gefühle. Von Schmerz, Qual und Ungerechtigkeit über Gleichgültigkeit und Langeweile bis hin zu grenzenlosem Glück, Euphorie und Triumph.

Middle class, middle aged, multicultural mother of millennial sons, Sudha lives a ‘squeezed middle’ life in Wimbledon. As she navigates her career, family and returning to India as a NRI (Non-Resident Indian), she is prompted to investigate her own sense of home and place in the world. Evening Conversations is a warm-hearted monologue inspired by Sudha’s banter with her dual-heritage (Pakistani/East African Indian) millennial sons who have grown up in leafy Wimbledon while her life has spanned three continents. She invites her boys to ‘crack open a cold one’ and share their views on life.

One of the first personal narratives written by an ex-slave, this is also one of the few written by a woman. Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was enslaved, along with her family, in North Carolina under a ruthless master who sexually harassed her. After several failed escape attempts, and several years of hiding, she finally made her way North to freedom, where she was eventually reunited with her children. The book was published in 1861.

In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake". Activating multiple registers of "wake" - the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness - Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation.

“A gorgeous memoir about mothers, daughters, and the tenacity of the love that grows between what is said and what is left unspoken.”—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk If our family stories shape us, what happens when we learn those stories were never true? Who do we become when we shed our...

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and co-writer of In the Heights tells her lyrical story of coming of age against the backdrop of an ailing Philadelphia barrio, with her sprawling Puerto Rican family as a collective muse. “Quiara Alegría Hudes is in...

To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race", putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: Young Black men are an endangered species.

"Colorful, vivid storytelling.... for anyone looking for a road to reinvention." —Kristin Newman A soul-stirring memoir from Colombian immigrant and travel journalist Nikki Vargas, whisking us through the countries that brought her new love, self-discovery, and the inspiration to launch the...

¡Hola Papi! columnist John Paul Brammer’s Authentically Mexican is the hilarious and heartfelt story of his Mexican American family in diaspora, exploring his heritage and identity through six meaningful meals.

Vir Sanghvi's has been an interesting life - one that took him to Oxford, movie and political journalism, television and magazines - and he depicts it with the silky polish his readers expect of him. In A Rude Life, he turns his dispassionate observer's gaze on himself, and in taut prose tells...

Bestselling author and renowned professor Mary Karr offers a master class in the essential elements of great memoir—delivered with her signature wit, insight, and candor. Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of...

Abridged Edition Curated Selections from the definitive, career-spanning collection of writing from Anthony Bourdain, assembled for the first time and read by Tony with Dion Graham, Kimberly Witherspoon, Kaleo Griffith, David Colacci, and Chris Patton. Anthony Bourdain represented many things to...

Read by the Author A deeply reported and personal exploration of identity, resilience, and belonging from one of the most influential Spanish-language journalists in the world, Essential offers a nuanced, urgent portrait of what it means to be Latino in today’s America and the contradictions...

'I loved this book. What a joy to read a craftsman so clearly in love with his craft' SIMON JENKINS 'A wonderful read' DOUGALD O'REILLY 'Literary prize juries need look no further for a worthy winner' MAX HASTINGS 'In a world of AI, steel and concrete, books like this have never felt more...

Grey’s Anatomy meets One L in this psychiatrist’s charming and poignant memoir about his residency at Harvard. Adam Stern was a student at a state medical school before being selected to train as a psychiatry resident at one of the most prestigious programs in the country. His new and...

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Endlessly entertaining... Good, rollicking stuff, and a delight to read... Sir Kingsley Amis is surely one of the funniest men alive' Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes...

“A painfully beautiful memoir….Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive.” —E. L. Doctorow A revered, many times honored (George Polk, Peabody, and Emmy Award winner, to name but a few) journalist, novelist, and playwright, Roger Rosenblatt shares the...

Beginning with Jesus' birth, Ken Bailey leads you on a kaleidoscopic study of Jesus throughout the four Gospels. Bailey examines the life and ministry of Jesus with attention to the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, Jesus' relationship to women, and especially Jesus' parables. Through it all, Bailey employs his trademark expertise as a master of Middle Eastern culture to lead you into a deeper understanding of the person and significance of Jesus within his own cultural context.