Showing 1–30 of 30 books
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Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine
Picking up where Tasting the Sky left off, Balcony on the Moon follows Ibtisam Barakat through her childhood and adolescence in Palestine from 1972-1981 and chronicles her desire to be a writer. Ibtisam finds inspiration through writing letters to pen pals and from an adult who encourages her to keep at it, but the most surprising turn of all for Ibtisam happens when her mother decides that she would like to seek out an education, too. This memoir is a touching, at times funny, and enlightening look at the not often depicted daily life in a politically tumultuous area.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2017
- ISBN: 9780374302511
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Becoming Unbecoming
It's 1977 and Una is 12. Other kids are into punk or ska, but Una is learning to play "Mull of Kintyre" by Wings on the guitar, and she thinks it's a really good song. There's another song, chanted on the terraces by Leeds United fans. It might not have made it on to Top of the Pops, but the boys all sing it on the walk home from school: "One Yorkshire Ripper . . . There's only one Yorkshire Ripper . . . One Yorkshire Ri-pper . . ." A serial murderer is at large in West Yorkshire and the police—despite spending more than two million man-hours hunting the killer and interviewing the man himself no less than nine times—are struggling to solve the case. As this national news story unfolds around her, Una finds herself on the receiving end of a series of violent acts for which she feels she is to blame. Unbecoming explores gender violence, blame, shame, and social responsibility. Through image and text Una asks what it means to grow up in a culture where male violence goes unpunished and unquestioned. With the benefit of hindsight Una explores her experience, wonders if anything has really changed and challenges a global culture that demands that the victims of violence pay its cost. -
Being Jazz: My life as a (Transgender) Teen
Jazz Jennings recounts growing up trans, becoming a national spokesperson, and role model.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2017
- ISBN: 9780399554643
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The Bride was a Boy
The heartwarming transgender love story, based on true events! Drawn in the style of diary comics with an upbeat, adorable flair, this is a charming tale about Chii, a woman assigned male at birth. Her story starts with her childhood and follows the ups and downs of exploring her sexuality, gender, and transition -- as well as falling in love with a man who's head over heels for her. Now they want to get married, so Chii's about to embark on a new adventure: becoming a bride!- Nonfiction, Graphic Novel, Memoir
- Great Graphic Novels for Teens 2019, Rainbow Book List - Graphic Novels 2019
- ISBN: 9781626928886
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Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir
When a psychic reveals that her father, long believed dead, is still alive, Nicole struggles with her identity and personal relationships with family, friends and lovers.- Nonfiction, Graphic Novel, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Graphic Novels 2014
- ISBN: 9780547615592
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Coal to Diamonds
Beth Ditto, feminist punk lead singer of Gossip, shares her journey from humble and troubled beginnings in Arkansas to a member of a world-renowned band.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9780385525916
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Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir
In this inspiring memoir, Cyndi Lauper shares her trials and successes, including her escape from a traumatic home life, her rise in the music industry, and her critical work as a gay rights activist.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9781439147856
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Dare to Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey
Growing up on the Aegean Coast, Ozge loved the sea and imagined a life of adventure while her parents and society demanded predictability. Her dad expected Ozge, like her sister, to become an engineer. She tried to hear her own voice over his and the religious and militaristic tensions of Turkey and the conflicts between secularism and fundamentalism. Could she be a scuba diver like Jacques Cousteau? A stage actress? Would it be possible to please everyone including herself? In her unpredictable and funny graphic memoir, Ozge recounts her story using inventive collages, weaving together images of the sea, politics, science, and friendship. -
Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond
Lilly Ledbetter shares her inspiring journey from underpaid, mistreated factory employee to Supreme Court plaintiff, nationally renowned speaker and namesake of the Fair Pay Restoration Act- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9780307887924
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A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival
Emotionally riveting and eye-opening, A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is the incredible story of a young woman, an international crisis, and the triumph of the human spirit. Melissa Fleming shares the harrowing journey of Doaa Al Zamel, a young Syrian refugee in search of a better life. Doaa and her family leave war-torn Syria for Egypt where the climate is becoming politically unstable and increasingly dangerous. She meets and falls in love with Bassem, a former Free Syrian Army fighter and together they decide to leave behind the hardship and harassment they face in Egypt to flee for Europe, joining the ranks of the thousands of refugees who make the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean on overcrowded and run-down ships to seek asylum overseas and begin a new life. After four days at sea, their boat is sunk by another boat filled with angry men shouting threats and insults. With no land in sight and surrounded by bloated, floating corpses, Doaa is adrift with a child's inflatable water ring around her waist, while two little girls cling to her neck. Doaa must stay alive for them. She must not lose strength. She must not lose hope.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Alex Awards 2018, Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2018
- ISBN: 9781250105998
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How I Discovered Poetry
- Nonfiction, Poetry, Memoir
- CSK Book Awards - Author - Honor 2015
- ISBN: 9780147510051
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How to Be a Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much
Ellis, a playwright and journalist, reflects on how the heroines of classic novels have shaped her life and her ideas about gender roles, ideas of womanhood, and feminism.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2016
- ISBN: 9781101872093
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I am a Bacha Posh: My Life as a Woman Living as a Man in Afghanistan
Raised as a boy, Ukmina makes the brave choice to live as a man and later becomes an advocate for the rights of women in Afghanistan.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2015
- ISBN: 9781629146812
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In My Father's Country: An Afghan Woman Defies Her Fate
Escaping gender oppression and political strife, Saima immigrates to the US as a teen. Saima later ventures back to Afghanistan as an interpreter and offers a fascinating perspective on Afghan customs including a provocative analysis of gender issues.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9780307884947
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Keeping Hope Alive: One Woman: 90,000 Lives Changed
Dr. Hawa Abdi, the first female gynecologist in Somalia has saved, housed, and provided free education to thousands of Somali women.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2014
- ISBN: 9781455503766
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Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age
At nine years old, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh watched from her home in New Jersey as two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. That same year, she heard her first racial slur. At age eleven, when the United States had begun to invade Iraq and the television was flooded with anti-Muslim commentary, Amani felt overwhelmed with feelings of intense alienation from American society. At thirteen, her family took a trip to her father's native homeland of Jordan, and Amani experienced firsthand a culture built on pure religion, not Islamic stereotypes. Inspired by her trip and after years of feeling like her voice as a Muslim woman was marginalized and neglected during a time when all the media could talk about was, ironically, Muslim women, Amani created a website called MuslimGirl. As the editor-in-chief, she put together a team of Muslim women and started a life dedicated to activism. This is the extraordinary account of Amani's journey through adolescence as a Muslim girl, from the Islamophobia she's faced on a daily basis, to the website she launched that became a cultural phenomenon, to the nation's political climate in the 2016 election cycle with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. While dispelling the myth that a headscarf makes you a walking target for terrorism, she shares both her own personal accounts and anecdotes from the “sisterhood” of writers that serve as her editorial team at MuslimGirl. Amani's honest, urgent message is fresh, timely, and a deeply necessary counterpoint to the current rhetoric about the Middle East.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2018
- ISBN: 9781501159503
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My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family
Author Zach Wahls is the teen whose eloquent speech to the Iowa House Judiciary Committee on behalf of same-sex marriage went viral on YouTube in early 2011. Now, in chapters titled for the Boy Scouts virtues, Zach tells the story of his life as the son of two lesbian women.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult/ Crossover Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9781592407132
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Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with his Sexuality
On the day thirteen-year-old Joe Schwartz came out at school, his mother came home to find him in the bathroom, having attempted suicide. With Joe's help, his father weaves together the family's story and the statistics behind the failure of schools to protect students who are gender variant.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult/ Crossover Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9781592407286
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Rapture Practice: My One-Way Ticket to Salvation: A True Story
In this memoir, Aaron Hartzler recounts his Christian evangelical upbringing; that means no TV, no movies, no drinking and no dating. As Aaron begins to discover who he is, he must also navigate the expectations of his very conservative family, and the larger community.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Teen Nonfiction 2014
- ISBN: 9780316094658
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Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition
In an honest and unique voice, Katie Rain Hill opens up about growing up, struggling with depression, family, love, and undergoing gender reassignment.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2015
- ISBN: 9781481418232
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Saving Alex: When I Was Fifteen I Told My Mormon Parents I Was Gay, and That's When My Nightmare Began
Alex Cooper tells the true story of her time in an unlicensed conversion program and the fight to live openly gay in her conservative surroundings.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2017
- ISBN: 9780062374608
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Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible--like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you--writer and humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but. From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, and then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism and never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny and wring tears out of a story about diarrhea. With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss--and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2017
- ISBN: 9780316348409
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Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen
Seventeen-year-old Arin Andrews describes the struggles he faced being perceived as a girl growing up, and how things changed for him that he experienced once he began his transition in this humorous and sometimes heartbreaking memoir.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2015
- ISBN: 9781481416757
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Sweet Tooth
What's a sweets-loving boy growing up gay in North Carolina in the eighties supposed to think when he's diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? That God is punishing him, naturally. Sweet Tooth is Tim Anderson's uproarious memoir of life after his hormones and blood sugar both went berserk at the age of fifteen.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2015
- ISBN: 9781477818077
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Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir
With the help of new friends, feminist zines, and the punk scene, tomboy Liz Prince discovers that her problem is not who she is, but society's restrictive gender roles. -
Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran
The first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Ebadi tells her story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves. For years the Islamic Republic tried to intimidate Ebadi, but after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, the censorship and persecution intensified. The government wiretapped Ebadi's phones, bugged her law firm, sent spies to follow her, harassed her colleagues, detained her daughter, and arrested her sister on trumped-up charges. It shut down her lectures, fired up mobs to attack her home, seized her offices, and nailed a death threat to her front door. Despite finding herself living under circumstances reminiscent of a spy novel, nothing could keep Ebadi from speaking out and standing up for human dignity. But it was not until she received a phone call from her distraught husband—and he made a shocking confession that would all but destroy her family—that she realized what the intelligence apparatus was capable of to silence its critics. The Iranian government would end up taking everything from Shirin Ebadi—her marriage, friends, and colleagues, her home, her legal career, even her Nobel Prize—but the one thing it could never steal was her spirit to fight for justice and a better future. This is the amazing, at times harrowing, simply astonishing story of a woman who would never give up, no matter the risks. Just as her words and deeds have inspired a nation, Until We Are Free will inspire you to find the courage to stand up for your beliefs.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2017
- ISBN: 9780812998870
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We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out
Across the U.S. student activists are exposing a pervasive cover-up of sexual violence on college campuses. Every day more survivors come forward. But other survivors choose not to. We Believe You elevates the stories the headlines about this issue have been missing--more than 30 experiences of trauma, healing and everyday activism, representing a diversity of races, economic and family backgrounds, gender identities, immigration statuses, interests, capacities and loves. More than 1 in 5 women and 5 percent of men are sexually assaulted at college, a shocking status quo that might have stayed largely hidden and unaddressed but for the two authors of We Believe You. In 2013, Annie E. Clark and Andrea L. Pino, then 23 and 20, building on the work of earlier activists, outed themselves as assault survivors and filed a federal complaint against the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) for mishandling such crimes; within a month, the U.S. government began to investigate UNC. Within a year, dozens of colleges were under federal investigation. But Clark and Pino rightly see themselves as two among many. Students from every kind of college and university--large and small, public and private, highly selective and less so?are sounding alarms and staking claims to justice by filing complaints, by pressing charges, and by simply living beyond the effects of assault and the betrayals of their schools. A sampling of their voices speak out in this book.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2017
- ISBN: 9781627795333
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When We Were Outlaws: a Memoir of Love & Revolution
Lesbian activist and reporter for the L.A. Free Press and editor of the Lesbian Tide, Jeanne Cordova, brings the social upheaval and excitement of the 1970s to light in this memoir.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Rainbow Book List - Young Adult/ Crossover Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9781935226512
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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
A memoir of personal and natural discoveries, Strayed shares her story of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Oregon as a solo woman.- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2013
- ISBN: 9780307592736
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You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain
A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson. Phoebe Robinson is a stand-up comic, which means that, often, her everyday experiences become points of comedic fodder. And as a black woman in America, she maintains, sometimes you need to have a sense of humor to deal with the absurdity you are handed on the daily. Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: she's been unceremoniously relegated to the role of "the black friend," as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she's been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel ("isn t that . . . white people music?"); she's been called "uppity" for having an opinion in the workplace; she's been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. the. time. Now, she's ready to take these topics to the page and she s going to make you laugh as she s doing it. Using her trademark wit alongside pop-culture references galore, Robinson explores everything from why Lisa Bonet is "Queen. Bae. Jesus," to breaking down the terrible nature of casting calls, to giving her less-than-traditional advice to the future female president, and demanding that the NFL clean up its act, all told in the same conversational voice that launched her podcast, "2 Dope Queens," to the top spot on iTunes. As personal as it is political, "You Can't Touch My Hair" examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases with humor and heart, announcing Robinson as a writer on the rise."- Nonfiction, Memoir
- Amelia Bloomer List - Young Adult Nonfiction 2018
- ISBN: 9780143129202