Family Culture

As a working mother whose livelihood as a poet-lecturer depended on travel, Camille T. Dungy crisscrossed America with her infant, then a toddler. As they travel, Dungy is intensely aware of how they are seen, not just as mother and child but as Black females. With a poet's eye, she celebrates the particular in the universal, such as a child's acquisition of language and what to pack in a diaper bag.

During the last three decades of the 20th century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. The family values agenda created a bond between evangelicalism and political conservatism. Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians.

Cary, a middle-aged Chinese American, was brought up to believe that children should shed blood for their parents. Confucius says so: filial piety is a sacred duty that requires extreme sacrifice on the part of the young. Thus when Cary’s parents become too old and feeble to live on their own, she doesn’t hesitate to take them in. With the blessing of her Caucasian husband, Steve, she dives into caregiving with enthusiasm. But the more Cary tries to please her parents, the crabbier they become. Baba fights with Mami, and Cary with both; sibling rivalry fuels the fire, and Steve is fed ...

A promise kept is like the twinkling stars in the night sky...a constant reminder of something important that makes you who you are. Can nine-year-old Tutti keep a promise - and a secret? Her family’s life may depend on it. This is the true story of what the Lichtensterns endured under the Nazis. Told by Tutti’s daughter, Heidi, and filled with historical documents, it vividly recreates how one family conquered fear and heartbreak to survive.

Amber Brown is one very excited third grader. She is going to visit her Aunt Pam in London! Amber is all set for the best vacation ever - until she gets the chicken pox! Amber Brown is itchy and bored. Is her vacation ruined?

In ordinary times, Tola lives in an apartment in Lagos, Nigeria, with her clever sister, Moji; her sporty brother, Dapo; and bossy Grandmommy. Tola is so happy! But news of a new virus—and a lockdown too—sends Moji away in one direction and Dapo in another. Then, when Grandmommy can no longer go out to work, Tola goes instead. She works for the wealthy Diamond family and makes new friends among the household staff. But even the wealthy have problems—and only Too Small Tola is big enough to solve them.

Joanne Meadows is a successful lawyer. Since her school crush moved away for college, she hasn’t been able to fall in love with anyone else. Having settled into single life, she is chosen as Silver Ridge’s Valentine’s Day queen. Then, to her utter shock, so is Pete McDonald as King! Pete moves back to Silver Ridge after an ugly divorce. When he’s chosen as Valentine’s Day king and his first love is named queen, he’s too shy to tell her how he feels. His ex-wife’s arrival doesn’t make his situation any better as she fiercely fights to win him back. Will Joanne and Pete ...

Part memoir, part popular science, and part social commentary, Bottled Up probes breastfeeding politics through the lens of Barston’s own experiences as well as those of the women she has met through her popular blog, The Fearless Formula Feeder. Incorporating expert opinions, medical literature, and popular media into a pithy, often wry narrative, Barston offers a corrective to our infatuation with the breast. Impassioned, well-reasoned, and thoroughly researched, Bottled Up asks us to think with more nuance and compassion about whether breastfeeding should remain the holy grail of good parenthood.

Things aren’t looking good for 14-year-old Mehrigul. She yearns to be in school, but she’s needed on the family farm. The longer she’s out of school, the more likely it is that she’ll be sent off to a Chinese factory...perhaps never to return. Her only hope is an American woman who buys one of her decorative vine baskets for a staggering sum and says she will return in three weeks for more. Mehrigul must brave terrible storms, torn-up hands from working the fields, and her father’s scorn to get the baskets done. The stakes are high, and time is passing. A powerful intergenerational story of a strong, creative young artist in a cruelly oppressive society.

"Lost Samba" unfolds the captivating saga of a family navigating the cultural and societal tides of post-war in the unexpected setting of Rio de Janeiro. Born to an odd couple - Rafael, a Polish Jew with the scars of the Holocaust, and Renée, a vibrant Englishwoman - the author's tale is one of identity, belonging, and coming of age against the backdrop of Brazil's transformative decades. In the glitter of 1950s Copacabana, a foreign boy discovers a Brazil far beyond his parents' Eurocentric views. Through interactions with Brazilian everyday people and the streets' vibrant life, he ...

Angel has just lost her father, and her mother's grief means she might as well be gone, too. She's got a sister and a grandmother to look out for, and a burgeoning consciousness of the unfairness in the world - in her family, her community, and her country. Set against the backdrop of the second Philippine People Power Revolution in 2001, the contemporary struggles of surviving Filipina "Comfort Women" of WWII, and a cold winter’s season in the city of Chicago is the story of a daughter coming of age, coming to forgiveness, and learning to move past the chaos of grief to survive.

J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir about his life growing up in Ohio as the child of a working-class family with roots in Appalachia. Vance uses his experiences in a dysfunctional family to talk about the problems with what he calls hillbilly culture. He says that hillbilly culture is mired in laziness, drug use, and learned helplessness. Hillbillies claim to be committed to hard work, but Vance believes they actually refuse to work at available jobs, miring them in poverty.

Ah-Mei and her French grandmother, Nainai, share a rare bond. Maybe it’s because Ah-Mei is the only girl grandchild. Or maybe it’s because the pair look so much alike and neither resembles the rest of their Chinese family.

A collection about mothers and daughters, children lost, unborn, grown up, grown apart, and the dissonance between lovers. It exposes the silences in families and the parts of ourselves we rarely reveal. A daughter asks her mother to shut up, only to shut her up for good; an exhausted wife walks away from the husband who doesn't understand her; on holiday, lovers no longer understand each other away from home. The underlying themes of loneliness, secrets, family and displacement and also the desire to belong to someone, to some place intertwine these stories.

Stan Paregien began collecting family history and photos in about 1970. He and his wife, Peggy, became frequent visitors to county court houses, history centers, and cemeteries in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Then, as he acquired home computers and better access to internet resources, he spent countless hours of the day and night doing genealogical research far and wide. He published his work in 1974. That was a 118 page collection titled, A Paregien History. Thirty-two years after that, having collected a mass of information and photos, he self-published Paregien ...

Rilla is Anne and Gilbert Blythe’s youngest daughter, an excitable 15-year-old who is unaware of how the world works, and is only interested in having fun. But the world is on the brink of a global war, and soon Rilla’s family and life are turned upside down, as several of her brothers enlist in the army and are sent to fight overseas. The book follows Rilla’s life through the duration of World War I, as she grows up quickly from the responsibilities put on young women in this time.

Raised in a world of wild beasts, craven spirits, and noble souls, Neb dominates everyone around him. Only in love does he meet a force he cannot resist. His wife bears two sons who take opposite paths. Neb's curse follows both. Clans across the land await the future. Through the eyes of three alien worlds, so does the watching universe. One extended family traverses the course of history through Aram, Ishtar, and Neb in a world of wild beasts, craven spirits, and noble souls. Generations later, in the first century AD, Aram’s descendant, Georgios battles a world of dark secrets, ...

This book is a true story of a most amazing kitten that was swept away during a hurricane and found her way back home six weeks later to teach her family about hope, spirituality, and the true spirit of survival.

"Always remember you are the son of two proud nations," Elan's parents tell him when he turns 13. After celebrating his Bar Mitzvah in San Francisco, Elan, with his Jewish father and Native American mother, travels to New Mexico, where he takes part in a Pueblo manhood ceremony. Based on a true story.

Returning to the beach cottage, a cottage named Scallop, where she has always celebrated her birthday is a special occasion for Alice Rice. Who will see the first dolphin this time? The first pelican? What will have changed? Stayed the same? And will this be the year she finally finds a junonia shell?