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...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

It was the beginning of 1976 and life was good. White South Africans danced along to Queen and ABBA. There was huge anticipation of the pending All Black rugby tour in July–and at last South Africa had TV! And then came the Soweto student uprising in June. It was the end of normal, setting in motion a series of events that culminated in the negotiated settlement of 1994. MAX DU PREEZ, born and raised in a conservative Afrikaner Christian Nationalist family, witnessed the first stones thrown on 16 June–and the first shots fired–as a young newspaper reporter.

Rompiendo mitos y revelando estafas que has creído toda tu vida. Prepárate para sorprenderte y cuestionarlo todo. Porque después de esto, ya no vas a ver el mundo igual.

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...

¡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.

Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belong. What she discovers is vastly different. The Kingdom is a world apart, a land of unparalleled contrast. She finds rejection and scorn in the places she believed would most embrace her.

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.

The Outsider is a no-holds-barred memoir by the original bad boy of tennis, Jimmy Connors. Connors ignited the tennis boom in the 1970s with his aggressive style of play, turning his matches with John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg, and Ivan Lendl into prizefights. But it was his prolonged dedication to...

"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...

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...

Born and raised in Hawai‘i by a father whose ancestors are indigenous to the land and a mother from the American South, Jessica Machado wrestles with what it means to be “local.” Feeling separate from the history and tenets of Hawaiian culture that have been buried under the continental imports of malls and MTV, Jessica often sees her homeland reflected back to her from the tourist perspective—as an uncomplicated paradise. Her existence, however, feels far from that ideal. Balancing her parents’ divorce, an ailing mother, and growing anxiety, Jessica rebels.

'You could call him Paddington,' Adam said, casually, 'Don't name him! I said, as if this was self-evident. Names turn situations into responsibilities. When Mirelle Radley set off for Peru with her cousin Adam, hoping to heal her broken heart, she didn't expect to meet someone who would change...