Memoir Essays

In his essay about the life of Irish writer John McGahern, Tóibín reveals the tones of melancholy and amusement within both art and the artist. In his extraordinary essay on his cancer diagnosis, Tóibín unpicks the word 'battle', and illuminates the distress, horror and blankness of his experiences. From the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists, to the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances and tied up with dictators and politics, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as in Marilynne Robinson's fiction.

Yvonne Orji has never shied away from being unapologetically herself and that includes being outspoken about her faith. Known for interpreting Biblical stories and metaphors to fit current times, her humorous and accessible approach to faith leaves even non-believers inspired and wanting more. The way Yvonne sees it, God is a Sovereign Prankster. When she meditates on her own life - complete with unforeseen blessings and unanticipated roadblocks - she realises it's one big testimony to how God tricked her into living out her wildest dreams.

This honest and laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays tells the story of one woman's work-life, which spans four countries and dozens of jobs ranging from chasing bears out of campsites in Yosemite National Park, to serving popcorn in a pot-smoke filled cinema in Canada, to researching digital literacies in a British university. These essays cover workplace topics we're all familiar with: bat-shit crazy bosses; boring, mundane, "bullshit jobs;” annoying office drama.

This was Alan Clark’s first volume of diaries and the only one that he recorded. As such it is a unique and historical record and reminder of the man and his work. To hear Alan Clark reading the book in his marvelously rich voice adds immeasurably to the pleasure of these informative and entertaining diaries. The recording covers two Parliaments and constitutes the most outspoken and revealing account of British politics ever written.

A revelatory collection of essays on the DeafBlind experience, and a manifesto on the power and untapped potential of touch. Born Deaf into an ASL-speaking family and blind by adolescence, John Lee Clark learned to embrace the possibilities of his tactile world. He is on the frontlines of the Protactile movement, which gave birth to an unprecedented tactile language and a way of life based on physical connection.

When Trisha Low moves West, her journey is motivated by the need to arrive “somewhere better” - someplace utopian, like revolution; or safe, like home; or even clarifying, like identity. Instead, she faces the end of her relationships, a family whose values she has difficulty sharing, and America’s casual racism, sexism, and homophobia. In this book-length essay, the problem of how to account for one’s life comes to the fore - sliding unpredictably between memory, speculation, self-criticism, and art criticism, Low seeks answers that she knows she won’t find.

David Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer living with his Upper West Side family in the age of JFK and Sputnik, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his meticulous father and the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother.

“During one of the texting sessions that became our habit over the period I now think of as both late and early in our relationship, my mother revealed the existence of someone named Janis Jerome.” So begins Michelle Orange’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of maternal legacy - in her own family and across a century of seismic change. Jerome, she learns, is one of her mother’s many alter egos: the name used in a case study about her mother’s midlife choice to leave her husband and children to pursue career opportunities in a bigger city.

En el año 1974, la artista serbia Marina Abramovic colocó alrededor de su cuerpo setenta y dos objetos divididos en dos categorías: objetos de placer y objetos de dolor. Luego invitó al público a que los usase sobre sucuerpo, transformándose, de esta manera, en otro objeto más. El fin era observar el comportamiento humano ante la indefensión. Cuentan que Abramovic estuvo a punto de perder la vida. Al fin y al cabo, lo fácil siempre fue hacer daño. Al fin y al cabo, lo difícil siempre es amar.

For legendary literary critic Michiko Kakutani, books have always been an escape and a sanctuary, the characters of some novels feeling so real to her childhood self that she worried they might leap out of the pages at night if she left the book cover open. In Ex Libris, she offers a personal selection of more than 100 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, with passionate essays on why each has had a profound effect on her life.

When Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions: why wasn't she going with friends? Wouldn't it be incredibly lonely? The North route is better! Was it safe for a woman? The Southern route is the way to go! You should bring mace! And a common one...why? But Abbi had always found comfort in solitude and needed space to step back and hit the reset button.

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions: What does it mean to belong, and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country?

Marion Winik is esteemed for bringing humor and wit to that most unavoidable of subjects: death. At last, Winik's critically acclaimed, cult favorites Glen Rock and Baltimore Book of the Dead have been carefully combined in their proper order, revealing more clearly than ever before the character hidden throughout these stories: Winik herself.

A powerful and provocative collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society’s most charged, politicized, and intractably polar spaces - between Black and White, rich and poor, thin and fat.

Author Lucy-Anne Holmes has spoken to women from around the globe, ranging in age from 19-75, as they reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings during sex. The result is an incredible compendium of true disclosures that are funny and sad, shocking and tender. Women on Top of the World will be a provocative collection of female voices. It promises to contribute to the changing way women are now talking about their sexuality, and their journeys toward self-discovery.

Chapters from My Autobiography is a collection of twenty-five pieces of autobiographical work published by American author Mark Twain in the North American Review between September 1906 and December 1907. Rather than following the standard form of an autobiography, they comprise a typically Twain-esque collection of rambling anecdotes and ruminations.

自分のことが嫌いだったオンナ・青木さやかが、こじれた人生を一つ一つほどいていく。生きることの意味を追い求めるヒューマンストーリー。

The eight business maharajas profiled here are among Asia's most powerful industrial tycoons. Their combined turnover runs into billions of rupees, and between them they employ some 650,000 people, while indirectly affecting the lives of millions more. Sip a cup of tea, drive to work, listen to music, build a house and the chances are that in these and a myriad other ways you are using products that they manufacture or market. By any yardstick, the achievements of these men would rank among the great business stories of our time. How did these men build their enormous empires?

In the three decades that Nobel prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk has devoted himself to writing fiction, he has also produced scores of witty, moving, and provocative essays and articles. He engages the work of Nabokov, Kundera, Rushdie, and Vargas Llosa, among others, and he discusses his own books and writing process. We also learn how he lives, as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking, describes his relationship with his daughter, and reflects on the controversy he has attracted in recent years.

Dream Pop Origami is a beautiful, ambitious, interactive, and engrossing lyrical memoir about mixed-race identity, love, travel, AAPI masculinities, and personal metamorphosis. This experimental work of creative nonfiction examines, celebrates, and complicates what it means to be Asian & white, Nisei & hapa, Midwestern & Californian, Buddhist & American at the same time.