Childhood Memoir

What makes a boy tick? Has our view of boys evolved as society has changed? Is boyishness in the genes or learned after birth? John Redwood shares with the reader his experiences as a young boy growing up in post War Britain when boys were told to be boys. With an unusually long memory of childhood stretching for him back into the pram he takes us through what it felt like to be a baby then a boy responding to the adult world around him. Sitting on a chair was an exercise in mountaineering. Trying those first steps instead of crawling fast around the floors were dogged by fears of falling ...

In his first memoir, Josh Widdicombe tells the story of a strange rural childhood, the kind of childhood he only realised was weird when he left home and started telling people about it. From only having four people in his year at school, to living in a family home where they didn't just not bother to lock the front door, they didn't even have a key. Using a different television show of the time as its starting point for each chapter, Watching Neighbours Twice a Day... is part-childhood memoir, part-comic history of '90s television and culture.

PG-Rated Version (The original, unedited version is also available.) "Go Out and Play and Don't Come Home until it's Dark." Growing up in the 70's wasn't easy. No internet or smartphones, video games or HDTV -- nothing but time to kill and the endless potential of a summer day. Only parental threats and a newly-developed sense of right and wrong could steer Johnny Virgil and his two younger brothers away from trouble...or directly into it. Join Johnny on this hilarious and irreverent romp through his childhood as he recounts the stories that made him what he is today - an unimportant cog in...

For all the roads we choose to travel, and even those we don't, Fred Rogers has an observation, a story, some insights to share. Whether you're facing graduation, a new job, a new baby, marriage, any change in your life, expected or not, the wisdom that Mister Rogers offers can contribute mightily to the grace with which you handle the change. It all comes down to knowing we're valuable, and that we're worthy of that value. As Fred would say, "You don't have to be anything more than who you are right now."

This compelling memoir takes listeners through the eyes of a child surviving World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland. As a nine-year-old, the author witnessed his father being herded into a truck - never to be seen again. He, his mother, and sister fled to Warsaw to live in disguise as Catholics under the noses of the Nazi SS, constantly fearful of discovery and persecution. A sobering reminder of the personal toll of the Holocaust on Jews during World War II, this book is a harrowing portrait of one child’s loss of innocence.

"I learned about conflict from my parents." So begins Christina McKenna's haunting memoir of her lonely early life. Recounting scenes from her childhood in Ulster, she paints a memorable and poignant picture of violence and oppression with her uncaring father and protective mother, whose retaliation to her husband's penny-pinching came in the form of a secret yellow dress. Her formative years and her foray into the world, which begin with the daily trudge to and from school, are peopled by a troupe of bizarre and unforgettable characters dancing in and out of her life, filling her with awe ...

From Abuse to Awakening—A Journey of Rebirth and Redemption. "This is the story of how a broken boy found the strength to become unbreakable." "From Alphonse to Antaeus," Formerly "If Not For The Love Of Others," is more than a survival story. It's a metamorphosis. Born into pain, scarred by trauma, and haunted by near-death experiences, Alphonse lived a life few could imagine. But through ten brushes with death and a lifetime of torment, something changed. He became Antaeus, a man forged by suffering, not broken by it. This raw, unflinching autobiography holds nothing back. It explores ...

Vinnie Curto was born in East Boston, Massachusetts, on July 10, 1955. His father Jimmy Curto was a raving, sick, alcoholic homosexual. Vinnie’s father and his drunken friends sexually abused young Vinnie, frequently raping him and performing other deviant sexual acts on him, while his mother Loretta stood by and let it happen.

When the Bible talks about the third- and fourth-generational curse, that's so true. If the curse is not broken by you, then who will stop it dead in its tracks? Fierce Wholeness: Finding Myself After Childhood Emotional Trauma is Robin's story—in all of its raw and messy but authentic and beautiful transparency—as she seeks to repair the dam that had been busted, the riverbed that had been washed away, the landscape that had been obliterated by her family of origin. Listeners who grew up in the clutches of the branches of emotional abuse will be empowered by Robin's story.

Reeves gives us her authentic account of growing up around the Montana town of Jardine which, today, is a virtual ghost town. Her stories are sometimes funny, as when she tells about a runt pig miraculously waxing fat after eating the crankcase oil from of a Model T Ford. Sometimes they're shocking, like "the worst day" in her life when her brother blew off his hand hammering a dynamite cap. Another brother almost died from eating carbide powder cookies he made. This kid had an unusual childhood, growing up by a dying silver mining town bordering Yellowstone Park.

Do you like a corn dog? This book is about my childhood memories.

She wrote the truth they told her to forget. Ayanna has been quiet long enough. It started on her eighth birthday. A hallway. A family who looked the other way. Now in her twenties, Ayanna is finally ready to speak the truth they tried to erase. Some Girls Drown is a powerful, emotionally charged novel based on true events. It follows one woman’s fight to reclaim her voice after a childhood spent shaped by silence, and the betrayal of those who should have protected her. This is a story of fury, memory, and the love we fight hardest to find: our own. For readers of Girl A, My Dark Vanessa...

When Claire Hoffman's alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven - Iowa - to live in Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire's mother, Transcendental Meditation - the Maharishi's method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life - was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart.

Mary MacLeod's mother died in childbirth when Mary was five, an event that marked for the child a "before time" - a lost joyful time - and after. She was shunted from one relative to another while her father coped with his grief. He married again only nine months later, perhaps to have a mother for his child, but her new mum, harsh and withholding of her love, quickly exerted complete control over her thoughts and deeds, with her father oblivious.

After a normal, healthy, full-term pregnancy, Margaret Moore's parents Anne and Terrence were shocked as a prolapsed umbilical cord left their daughter unable to breathe on her own. Margaret, nicknamed Meg, was not expected to live through the night and began to breathe on her own by the next day—a phenomenon that medical personnel deemed a miraculous recovery. Meg came home with a physical disability Cerebral Palsy and permanent dependence on others for help with feeding, dressing, hygiene, and transfers to and from her wheelchair and walker.

Wise and embodied, fearless and necessary, Being (Sick) Enough is both a wild awakening and a love letter to your whole self: the pains and suffering, joys and brightness, and vital connections that hold each of us as we navigate what it means to be here, like this, right now.

At nine years old, D. Watkins has three concerns in life: picking his dad’s Lotto numbers, keeping his Nikes free of creases, and being a man. Directly in his periphery is east Baltimore, a poverty-stricken city battling the height of the crack epidemic just hours from the nation’s capital. For 30 years, Watkins is forced to safeguard every moment of joy he experiences or risk losing himself entirely. Now, for the first time, Watkins harnesses these moments to tell the story of how he matured into the D. Watkins we know today.

Recently hailed as "the greatest cabaret artist of [V's] generation" in The New Yorker, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond makes a brilliant literary debut with this staggeringly candid and hilarious novella-length memoir. With a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and news that V's first lover from childhood has been imprisoned for impersonating an undercover police officer, Bond recalls in vivid detail coming of age as a trans kid. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond was further confused when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly. Their trysts went on for years, and made Bond acutely aware of sexual power and vulnerability. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LGBTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly entertaining.

In this memoir of a lost America, Hal Borland tells the story of his family's migration to eastern Colorado as homesteaders at the turn of the twentieth century. On an unsettled and unwelcoming prairie landscape, the Borlands build a house, plant crops, and eke out a meager existence. While life is difficult—and self-reliance is necessary with no neighbors for miles—the experience brings the family close and binds them closer to the terrible and beautiful natural patterns that govern their lives.

Fans of Augusten Burroughs and Jo Ann Beard will enjoy this kaleidoscopic, universal memoir in which Elissa Altman explores the tradition, religion, family expectations, and the forbidden that were the fixed points in her Queens, New York, childhood. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1970s Queens to present-day rural New England, Treyf captures the collision of youthful cravings and grown-up identities. It is a vivid tale of what it means to come to yourself both in spite and in honor to your past.