Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

The Complete Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi · 352 pages

From inside front cover: The story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a ... loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a coutnry plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trails of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming -- both sweet and terrible; and, fina

Brown Girl Dreaming

Jacqueline Woodson · 368 pages

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.

Little White Duck : A Childhood in China

Na Liu, Andres Vera Martinez · 108 pages

The world is changing for two girls in China in the 1970s. Da Qin - Big Piano - and her younger sister, Xiao Qin - Little Piano - live in the city of Wuhan with their parents. For decades, China's government had kept the country separated from the rest of the world. When their country's leader, Chairman Mao, dies, new opportunities begin to emerge Da Qin and Xiao Qin soon learn that their childhoo

The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston · 209 pages

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is Kingston's disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother's "talk stories." Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors - tales that clash puzzlingly with the

The Dark Child

Camara Laye · 188 pages

"The Dark Child is a ... memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea, a place steeped in mystery. Laye marvels over his mother's supernatural powers, his father's distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood. ... More than the autobiography of one boy, this is the universal story of sacred traditions struggling against the encroachment of a mod

Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child

Elva Trevino Hart · 236 pages

Autobiography. Latino/a Studies. BAREFOOT HEART is a vividly told autobiographical account of the life of a child growing up in a family of migrant farm workers. Elva Trevino Hart was born in south Texas to Mexican immigrants and spent her childhood moving back and forth between Texas and Minnesota, eventually leaving that world to earn a master's degree in computer science/engineering. This is a

Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi · 216 pages

A long-standing bestseller by Japan's most popular TV personality, also well known for her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

The Heart of a Woman

Maya Angelou · 280 pages

Maya Angelou has fascinated, moved, and inspired countless readers with the first three volumes of her autobiography, one of the most remarkable personal narratives of our age. Now, in her fourth volume, The Heart of a Woman, her turbulent life breaks wide open with joy as the singer-dancer enters the razzle-dazzle of fabulous New York City. There, at the Harlem Writers Guild, her love for

The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · 320 pages

The Texas refinery town of Leechfield, perched on the swampy rim of the Gulf, is famous for mosquitoes and the manufacture of Agent Orange - a place where the only bookstores are religious ones and the restaurants serve only fried food. A handful of the Leechfield oil workers gather regularly at the American Legion Bar to drink salted beer and spin long, improbable tales. They're the Liars' Club.

The House on Mango Street

Sandra Cisneros · 110 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic, acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for he

Persian Girls

Nahid Rachlin · 304 pages

"This lyrical and disturbing memoir by the author of four novels (Foreigner, etc.) tells the story of an Iranian girl growing up in a culture where, despite the Westernizing reforms of the Shah, women had little power or autonomy. As an infant in 1946, Rachlin was given to her mother's favorite sister, a widow who had been unable to conceive, and was lovingly raised among supportive widows who too

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

Nujood Ali, Delphine Minoui · 188 pages

"I'm a simple village girl who has always obeyed the orders of my father and my brothers. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today I have decided to say no." Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There sh

Birds, Beasts, and Relatives

Gerald Durrell · 250 pages

Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is the second volume of the autobiographical Corfu Trilogy by naturalist Gerald Durrell. The trilogy describes his childhood spent on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. This follows My family and Other Animals and concludes with The Garden Of The Gods

You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

Phoebe Robinson · 285 pages

A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson. Being a Black woman in American means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities. Robinson uses her trademark wit to explore examine our cultural climate and skewer our biases with humor and heart.

Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within

Elif Shafak · 267 pages

The author recounts her effort to balance her writing career and her parenting responsibilities, describing her battle with postpartum depression, her views on prominent women authors, and the many roles she embraced throughout her journey.

In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom

Qanta A. Ahmed · 454 pages

The decisions that change your life are often the most impulsive ones. 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 belo

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Jung Chang · 544 pages

"Jung Chang vividly evokes China's sights, sounds, and smells to create what must be one of the grimmest, yet most perceptive accounts of growing up middle-class in the maelstrom that has swept China since the 1920s." - Back cover.

Out of Egypt: A Memoir

Andre Aciman · 339 pages

Set in luxuriant cosmopolitan Alexandria, this richly colored memoir chronicles the exploits of a flamboyant Jewish family from its bold arrival in Egypt at the turn of the century to its defeated exodus three generations later. In elegant and witty prose, Andre Aciman introduces us to the Olympian figures who shaped his life: Uncle Vili, the strutting daredevil, by turns soldier, salesman, Itali

Bound Feet & Western Dress

Pang-Mei Natasha Chang · 215 pages

Translated from the spanish edition of Seix Barral Editorial: > *Bound feet & Western dress* narrates the story of an exceptional woman born in 1900 and deceased in 1988, who not only overcame difficult situations in the strict environment of traditional China, but also managed to develop her education and obtain relevant position in the banking and commerce fields. > This life symboli

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali · 353 pages

"Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.--From publisher description."--From source other than the Library of Congress

Do They Hear You When You Cry?

Fauziya Kassindja, Layli Miller Bashir, Fauziya Kasinga · 518 pages

The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life

Jasmin Darznik · 330 pages

The author relates a wrenching hidden story of her family's true origins in Iran: her mother's troubled history of abuse and neglect, and a daughter, Sara, whom she was forced to abandon in order to escape that life.

My Life in France

Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun

A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey

Leila Ahmed · 318 pages

Leila Ahmed grew up in Cairo in the 1940s and '50s in a family that was eagerly and passionately political. Although many in the Egyptian upper classes were firmly opposed to change, the Ahmeds were proud supporters of independence. But when the Revolution arrived, the family's opposition to Nasser's policies led to persecutions that would throw their lives into turmoil and set their youngest chil