Self Biography

In 1990, while serving a sentence in San Quentin for armed robbery, Jarvis Jay Masters was implicated as an accessory in the murder of a prison guard. A 23-year-old Black man, Jarvis was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. While in the maximum security section of Death Row, using the only instrument available to him—a ball-point pen filler—Masters's astounding memoir is a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit and the talent of a fine writer.

After going viral “reading” the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas finally knew who he was and where he was going. He was living his best life. But then everything changed. In this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas moves back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore (a place he never wanted to return, even to be buried) and behaving completely out of character.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination.

Emmy, Tony and Spirit Award-winning actress Sheryl Lee Ralph knows a thing or two about staying power in the capricious world of Hollywood. A seasoned professional who has taken the best lessons learned and used them to move her stellar career forward, she now shares them with you. If you are an aspiring diva in training, regardless of your career choice, much of what she says in DIVA 2.0, you'll find invaluable. These 12 lessons could help elevate your journey to greater heights. You'll get to go behind the scenes of stage, screen, and media to discover what a true Diva must know.

The international sensation that illuminates the experiences women are supposed to hide - from addiction, anger, sexual assault, and infertility to joy, sensuality, and love. In this dazzling debut, Emilie Pine speaks to the events that have marked her life - those emotional disruptions for which our society has no adequate language, at once bittersweet, clandestine, and ordinary. She writes with radical honesty on the unspeakable grief of infertility, on caring for an alcoholic parent, on taboos around female bodies and female pain, on sexual violence and violence against the self.

After 25 years of achieving what he thought were his dreams of being a headlining touring comedian and actor, Kyle Cease suddenly discovered that the belief that "when something happens, I will be happy" is a complete lie. With nothing more than an intuition, he decided to quit his stand-up career at its peak, and now - as a transformational comedian - he brings his one-of-a-kind self-help wisdom to sold-out audiences in his Evolving Out Loud Live stage show.

Discover strength and hope in the midst of chronic pain. Are you or a loved one grappling with the relentless weight of chronic pain? Do you find it challenging to see a glimmer of hope amidst the suffering? In "Hope When it Hurts: Where Chronic Pain and Faith Collide," find solace and inspiration in the heartfelt testimonies of those who have endured similar struggles and discovered divine purpose in their journey. Originally published as Letters from the Fold: Seeing God in a Season of Pain In this book, you'll discover: - Authentic Stories: Read deeply personal accounts from individuals ...

Bevy Smith was living what seemed like a glamorous dream as a fashion advertising executive, blazing a lucrative career for herself in the whitewashed magazine world. She jetsetted to Europe for fashion shows, dined and danced at every hot spot, and enjoyed a mighty roster of lovers. So it came as quite a shock to Bevy when one day, after arriving at her luxury hotel in Milan, she collapsed on the Frette bedsheets and sobbed. Years of rolling with the in-crowd had taken its toll. Her satisfaction with work and life had hit rock bottom.

New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.

The motivating host of one of the nation's largest leadership conferences offers a collection of inspirational and applicable life lessons through conversations with various high-profile people. One Question invites you to peer over the shoulder of a master interviewer with access to today's best and brightest as he delivers carefully crafted questions and collects answers guaranteed to surprise, challenge, and inspire.

Jim Morris is no stranger to big dreams. Since he was five years old, he passionately yearned to play baseball in the major leagues. However, despite all his hard work and determination, a series of unfortunate events and injuries scuttled his career before he was 25. Doctors told him he would never play again. Then at age 35 - after a string of highly implausible events and at an age when most players are retiring - Morris found himself on the mound as a relief pitcher for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Aisha Tyler, comedian, actress, cohost of CBS's The Talk, star of Archer, and creator of the top-ranked podcast Girl on Guy, serves up a spectacular collection of her own self-inflicted wounds. From almost setting herself on fire, to vomiting on a boy she liked, to getting drunk and sleeping through the SATs, to going into crushing debt to pay for college and then throwing away her degree to become a comedian, Aisha's life has been a series of spectacularly epic fails. And she's got the scars to prove it. Literally.

The spring of 2017 should have been the greatest time of Cat Marnell’s life. She was 34 and living the New York glamour life downtown, with a thriving career and a best-selling memoir. Instead, it was one of the worst. She’d gone through a protracted and traumatic breakup, nearly run out of money, and, during a month-long binge, "done something horrible" to herself that she couldn’t undo. Her troubles mounting, Marnell makes a radically simple choice: She decides to leave her problems behind.

"With humor and lyrical grace," Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh, and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

From being escorted off the Today programme (for saying what we were all thinking) to declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave; from Tales of the Unexpected to Graham Norton's sofa, she is our most loved and most outspoken national treasure. Oh Miriam! takes you inside both her head and her heart. Buckle up for the most irrepressible, hilarious and moving listen of 2023.

Leslie White knew she wanted more out of life - She found it in an unlikely place. Devastated from the loss of both parents to cancer nine months apart, Leslie vowed to change her life. She bought the neighbor’s old motorhome, found a job as a traveling histologist, and hit the road. But she found she could not trust the one person she was still holding onto.

An intimate and inspiring true story of love, loss, addiction, and redemption. Lisa’s life is high-glamour and high-octane, publishing bestselling books and walking the red-carpet at London movie premieres. But the reality behind the gloss is very different: she is stuck in an unhappy marriage, stressed out in a toxic job, and grieving for her parents. She begins to rely on alcohol to get her through it all and embarks on an illicit affair. Lisa leaves her husband, hoping to find absolution and happiness in a new relationship, but the world of dating for a 43-year-old is not what she ...

What happens when you realize you are an empath? You transform, just as the caterpillar breaks down in the cocoon. You shed your old ways, your old skin, and you recognize your bad habits and the toxic people in your life. You may go through an awakening of the soul. It feels big because it is big. It's life-changing. You are now the butterfly. Empaths have superpowers, and once you step into yours and embrace your gifts, you become who you were meant to be. You realize you are not "too sensitive" and don't need to "toughen up." You no longer feel exhausted, drained and, overwhelmed. You ...

A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multigenerational transformation from what is called Black to what is assumed to be White. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a "Black" father from the segregated South and a "White" mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of "Black blood" makes a person Black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations....

The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.