Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

A carefree memoir of growing up during the golden age of VHS and video rental stores in the 1980s. This humorous nostalgia trip rewinds to an era of chunky plastic tapes, horror movie sleepovers, and rewinding woes. Relive the magic of discovering cinema through the blurry analogue footage, cheesy effects, and garish cover art of the VHS generation.

Undershaw was the Surrey home of Arthur Conan Doyle between 1897-1907. Built lovingly for his wife Touie to help treat her ongoing battle with tuberculosis, Arthur created a haven for his wife and family. It was here he wrote The Hound of The Baskervilles, brought Sherlock Holmes back to life in "The Empty House", and entertained guests such as writer J.M. Barrie, illustrator Sidney Paget, renowned actor William Gillette, and more.

Long accused of racism and “white flight”, the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.

Born in Britain, Saira Shah was inspired by her father's dazzling stories to rediscover the now lost life their forebears knew for 900 years within sight of orchards, snow-topped mountains, and the minarets of Kabul. This is Saira, part sophisticated and sensitive Western liberal, part fearless (even fierce) life-gulping Afghan, falling in love with her ancestral myth, chasing Afghanistan.

When I was in my early twenties, a friend asked me to take the Correctional Officer test. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. For 5 years I walked through the valley of the shadow of death in a prison and I didn't fear evil. A detailed account of my day-to-day inside one of the most dangerous prisons in the United States and I lived to tell about it.

In late-1940s Long Branch, a historic but run-down Jersey Shore resort town, in a neighborhood of Italian, Black, and Jewish families, Robert Pinsky began his unlikely journey to becoming a poet. Descended from a bootlegger grandfather, an athletic father, and a rebellious tomboy mother, Pinsky was an unruly but articulate high school C student, whose obsession with the rhythms and melodies of speech inspired him to write.

In this multi-biographical history of a family in India, Shantaben enters an arranged marriage at age 14. Before she can join her husband in Africa, she must serve his family for several years. Arriving in Kenya, Shantaben dreams of having her own family. But she finds no community, no support, and no medical resources. Their first year together claims the life of their child and nearly ends Shantaben’s. Sustained by her culture and faith, she survives.

A generation of 20th-century Americans knew him as a gentle, stoop-shouldered old black man who loved plants and discovered more than a hundred uses for the humble peanut. George Washington Carver goes beyond the public image to chronicle the adventures of one of history's most inspiring and remarkable men.

Romance, biografia, argumento cinematográfico, 'O selvagem da ópera' tem como protagonista o compositor Antônio Carlos Gomes, autor de O Guarani e de outras óperas hoje esquecidas, como a Fosca, Salvator Rosa, Maria Tudor e Lo Schiavo. Acompanhando sua trajetória em capítulos breves, Rubem Fonseca leva o leitor à segunda metade do século XIX, revelando desde os bastidores da Corte no Rio de Janeiro, na qual o jovem e talentoso músico ganha os favores do imperador-mecenas e de sua amante, a condessa de Barral, até sua conquista do mundo operístico italiano.

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana, a 30-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a White mother and a Black father, the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King, her life was charged with its own drama long before she married.

Songs in the Night is a heartfelt story of a family’s struggle to survive through the early seventies in the backwoods of Oregon. Having become discouraged with what they called “the establishment,” Cat and Sandy return to the land in much the same way their ancestors did. They build a home with no electricity or running water that can only be reached by foot during winter, but they love their little home nestled beneath towering Ponderosa pines and incense cedar.

Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny that pulses with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa's revolution to the days of Prohibition in California.

Vince Copley was born on a government mission into poverty in 1936. By the time he was 15, five of his family had died. But at a home for Aboriginal boys, he befriended future leaders Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty and Gordon Briscoe. They were friendships that would last a lifetime. In The Wonder of Little Things, Copley tells his story with humour, humility and wisdom. Written with his friend Lea McInerney over many cups of tea, it is an Australian classic in the making, a plain-speaking account of hardship, courage and optimism told without self-pity or big-noting.

This is the story of a man who searched his conscience, decided that the American Dream should be colorblind, and then set out to change the rules. Part memoir, part history lesson, and part road map, Creating Equal tells how a Black man fought against affirmative action in California and Washington, D.C.

Through Donna Edwards-Hawthorne's personal life story, she intends to remind you that your hope will be the light in all the darkness. Having grown up in Jamaica, Donna narrates her tell-all tale about all the hardships in her childhood life, aiming to inspire you towards an attitude of never giving up. Why not be your biggest supporter and make it through life's darkest days instead of putting yourself down and struggling? After all, it will only be you sticking up for yourself till the end of time—no one else.

At the historic Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Anita Hill spoke out courageously about workplace sexual harassment. Now she turns to the topic of home. As our country reels from the subprime mortgage meltdown and the resulting devastation of so many families and communities, Hill takes us inside this “crisis of home” and exposes its deep roots in race and gender inequities, which continue to imperil every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream. In this period of recovery and its aftermath, what is at stake is the inclusive democracy the Constitution promises.

As the 20th century was ending and the millennium approached, a new ethnic category was invented in the South. The Melungeons were born thrashing and squawling into the American consciousness. They were a tri-racial clan hidden away in the hills and hollers of Lower Appalachia with a genetic predisposition to six fingers and Mediterranean diseases and an unsavory reputation for moonshining, counterfeiting and secret cults.

Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks’s politics and years of activism. She shows listeners how this civil rights movement radical sought—for more than a half a century—to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.

In this poetic and inspiring memoir, one of America’s most revered actresses uses the imagery of flowers and the art of Ikebana to depict the unique creative bond that she has had with her mother throughout the years - and how, together, they are facing her mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Plug was one of a family of eight children living in the rural Green Oak community between Oberlin and Kinder in Allen Parish, Louisiana. Many of the people in. Green Oak spoke both French and English. Some older people of the Hebert and Thibodeau families only spoke French. Although English was the language spoken in church and school, most people had to learn some French for social and economic reasons.