Childhood Memoir

She looked like the responsible one. Inside, she was silently falling apart. Some girls get to be children. Others are handed emotional responsibilities before they even know what peace feels like. If you grew up keeping the adults okay, swallowing your needs to avoid chaos, or being praised for “maturity” that was really just survival—you were never alone. And it was never your fault. This book is for the daughters who became emotional caregivers long before they were ready. With soft, piercing honesty, She Raised Herself in a House Full of Adults explores the wounds left by ...

With poignant prose and a deeply authentic personal story, this harrowing account exposes the stark and painful realities of childhood abuse, painting a heart-breaking picture of the lasting pain and fear that it inflicts on its victims. Spanning 30 years, in this coming-of-age memoir, author Christina Vitagliano recounts in vivid detail the frightening nights spent when her father loomed in the doorway of her bedroom, along with the psychological toll that the relentless familial abuse took on her psyche.

"This is more than a charming Irish memoir. The voice of a spirited young girl sets the perfect tone to deliver Irish history, the determination of a family to make their way into another country, and the importance of music." - The New York Times best selling author Jacqueline Sheehan. "A splendid read." - Oliver P. Rafferty, Professor of History, Boston College. A richly evocative memoir of resilience, ambition, and music that traces the extraordinary journey of John and May O’Carroll - Irish independence fighters who, after years of periodic imprisonment, began anew in Depression-era ...

This moving memoir opens a door into the life of a young girl growing up in a psychoanalytic household. It offers insight into not only the expectations of girlhood in upper-class New York in the 1950s, but also the burgeoning psychoanalytic community at that time with particular focus on the brilliant Gregory Zilboorg. Caroline Zilboorg draws on her memories of growing up in a what she calls ‘a psychoanalytic household’, and on a wealth of privately held scrapbooks and photographs. She recounts pivotal experiences from her birth in New York City in 1948 through the death of her father ...

Celebrated journalist Lauren St. John "bears witness to a remarkable story" ( Publishers Weekly) in this striking memoir of her African childhood. In the 1970s St. John lived on a Rhodesian farm that should have been paradise. But the specter of war hung over the land, filling every day with peril and uncertainty.

J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.

These five stories, written and read by Gerald Durrell himself, are taken from his books Birds, Beasts and Relatives and Fillets of Plaice. They were recorded on Jersey in 1985 and are used by kind permission of the Estate of Gerald Durrell.

A true story that pulls at your heartstrings and stays with you as it leaves its mark!This powerful and touching story provides a picture of family life when a parent is in the military. It's a true story that gives children comfort in realizing they are not alone as they struggle with their emotions. Hopefully, the story will guide parents and children to talk openly about difficult situations. Every military family will feel a connection, and smile at the discovery that with discussion comes healing. It is all about the love that brings us together. Carolyn Watkins' books build confidence...

Offering a nuanced and transformative take on immigration, multiculturalism, and America's role on the global stage, The Newcomers follows and reflects on the lives of 22 immigrant teenagers throughout the course of their 2015-2016 school year at Denver's South High School. Unfamiliar with American culture or the English language, the students range from the ages of 14 to 19 and come from nations struggling with drought, famine, or war.

Young Mendel, from age four to 14, tells in vivid detail the wretched journey in cramped cattle cars through frigid Russia, the indignities of being forced labor, the shame of begging for bread just to survive, and death of those closest to him. The family's plight includes abandonment, hunger, and separation (and later remarkable twists of fate and reunion) quite unlike other Holocaust stories.

This is a powerful memoir of a young girl, growing up in the tumultuous revolutionary Iran in the mid 80’s, which sadly, once again we are witnessing these days the horrendous arrest and executions of many young men and women in Iran. The author chronicles her early childhood with her Bibi (grandmother) as well as her imprisonment at the age of eighteen on trumped-up political charges. During her brutal incarceration in the women’s cell block of the Shiraz Adelabad Prison in the southern Iran, she was tortured and made to live in harsh over-crowded conditions among many other young ...

Orlandito "Dito" Montiel grew up wild in the streets of Astoria, Queens, pulling pranks for Greek and Italian gangsters and confessing at the church of the Immaculate Conception, gobbling hits of purple mescaline and Old English, sneaking into Times Square whore houses, and at times getting near much graver trouble. Entering adulthood in the 80s, he escapes into the underground and punk cultures of Manhattan.

Pat Conroy's memoirs and autobiographical novels contain a great deal about his life, but there is much he hasn't revealed to readers and listeners - until now. My Exaggerated Life is the product of a special collaboration between this great American author and oral biographer Katherine Clark, who recorded two hundred hours of conversations with Conroy before he passed away in 2016. In the spring and summer of 2014, the two spoke for an hour or more on the phone every day. No subject was off limits, including aspects of his tumultuous life he had never before revealed.

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture.

The author recounts the simple adventures of his life as a young boy growing up during the Second World War and the brief postwar years, before society burst out of the past into the 1950s. Living in Worcester, Massachusetts, in central New England, he experienced the simplicity of a life which now seems quaint and austere. Rationing, delivery men in horse driven carts, the constant threat of diseases now conquered, and most of all, the companionship of friends at play in that pre-television era marked those bygone days. The world seemed to consist of mainly Irish Catholics, and for the ...

What do you get when you cross a mischievous six-year-old boy, a hatchet, a pet lizard and the oft repeated question, what happens to a lizard when it loses its tail? Or, what is a mother to do when, as she exits the store with a basket full of groceries, she looks up to see her blue station wagon rolling across the parking lot with four little kids, screaming at the tops of their lungs, trapped inside? In Little Heathens, author Ron Bay, Jr. takes us on a delightful and hilarious journey of adventure, innocence, and discovery through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. Join Ron as he ...

Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.

A simple car accident changed the path of six-year-old Sean Rogers’ life forever. His single mother checked into the hospital as a vibrant young woman and checked out as a full-blown opioid addict. From that day forward, Sean’s life became a silent nightmare of abuse, neglect, chronic hunger, and slow, helpless withdrawal from everything and everyone he loved.

Buried beneath the weight of insecurities and a hunger for acceptance, one woman's life becomes an electrifying tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. In a world where deceit and desire collide, she is thrust into a labyrinth of lies and chaos that transforms her into the very monster she has always feared. From Forbidden desires to shattered vows, Black Sheep, White Lies an unflinching exploration of resilience, takes you on a heart-stopping journey of power plays and toxic love.

Do you ever feel controlled by your life? Is it hard for you to release anger from the past? Are you just surviving and calling it living? Face your fears and their message! Each experience is perfectly aligned for your purpose, peace, and freedom. Listen and trust. Your life lessons will guide you. * * * In her memoir, Lynn Balter shows how she transformed unimaginable traumas into a triumphant life of compassion, purpose, and philanthropy. Her life story illustrates the important lessons she learned while surviving and thriving after childhood trauma, sexual assault, divorce, addiction, ...