Women Memoirs

Award-winning Civil Rights advocate Mary Frances Berry sheds new light on the fight for reparations. Callie House, an ex-slave who led the fight, founded the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association in 1899. Defying conventions of race, class, and gender, Callie led the organization in an attempt to petition the government for the pension promised them as freedmen.

Antonieta Osornio was a rebellious young woman who fell in love and married very young. One day her husband challenges her, and Tony decides to jump out of a plane, and as a result of that experience, Tony becomes addicted to skydiving. From that moment on, her life turns into a series of adventures, escaping death on so many occasions, that ultimately lead her to become a source of inspiration and change for people with motor disabilities.

Memoirs of an American Woman in Arabia, Book 2 "Bismillah" is the second book in the series by Addison Ireland. Book 2 details Addison's life in Saudi Arabia being married to a Saudi man. In the beginning, life was good for them, but things changed after her mother in law passed away. Addison's jealous sister in laws create drama for her and falsely accuse her of things. Her husband attempts to solve some of the issues that are taking place with them, but ultimately, when Addison is offered a position as an English teacher at one of the elementary schools, she accepts. Teaching leads her to...

As a twenty-three-year-old singer and the soon-to-be wife of youth pastor Joshua Harris, nothing in Shannon Harris's secular upbringing prepared her to enter the world of conservative Christianity. Soon Joshua's bestselling book I Kissed Dating Goodbye helped inspire a national purity movement, and Shannon's identity became "pastor's wife." The Woman They Wanted recounts Shannon's remarkable experience inside Big Church—where she was asked to live within a narrow definition of womanhood for almost two decades—and her journey out of that world and into a more authentic version of herself.

Norah Vincent became an instant media sensation with the publication of Self-Made Man, her take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), Vincent spent a year and a half disguised as her male alter ego, Ned, exploring what men are like when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joined a bowling team, took a high-octane sales job, went on dates with women (and men), visited strip clubs, and even managed to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group.

Yiyun Li’s remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James. Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit.

If it weren’t for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010—and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later—she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone. Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time.

The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling” (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.

When Des woke up on April 16, 2018, the morning of the Boston Marathon, it was 39 degrees and raining, with high, gusty winds. The weather didn’t bother her. In fact, she thought it might be a blessing. She was far from peak form—recovering from illness and questioning her running future—and didn’t expect much of herself that day. But as she ticked off mile after mile in the brutal conditions, passing familiar landmarks on the course she knew and loved, something shifted. Opportunity unexpectedly presented itself. Des tapped into her inner strength and found a reason to race.

On June 5, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in the middle of the night by religious fanatic, Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. She was kept chained, dressed in disguise, repeatedly raped, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life.

Best known for her internationally, multi-million-copy bestselling novel Flowers in the Attic, Cleo Virginia Andrews lived a fascinating life. Born to modest means, she came of age in the American South during the Great Depression and faced a series of increasingly challenging health issues. Yet, once she rose to international literary fame, she prided herself on her intense privacy.

Women of Southie tells the story of six women who grew up in and, in most cases, still live in their beloved town of South Boston, a place most notably recognized as the home of organized crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger. But while Bulger might have been ruling the town with an iron fist, as depicted by Johnny Depp in Black Mass, what the town ought to have been recognized for are the brave women who ruled their own lives and their families with equally strong but far more beneficial hands. The stories of these women, ages 40 to 67, are filled with honest details.

Goldie Hawn's life is an ongoing tableau of stories, and she has a born knack for telling them. In this candid and insightful book, Goldie invites us to join her in a look back at the people, places, and events that have touched her. It is the spiritual journey of a heart in search of enlightenment.

The death of a sibling is unlike any other. Gloria Reuben's little brother died just before his 22nd birthday. Two decades later, her oldest brother, Denis, died two weeks short of his 60th birthday. In My Brothers' Keeper, Gloria bares her soul as she reveals the intimate details of her life at home as a young girl. How the death of her father when she was 12 shaped her view of love and life. How David's death was the impetus for her move from Canada to the United States. And how her brother Denis was her heart's twin in a multitude of ways.

What Remains begins with loss and returns to loss. A small plane plunges into the ocean, carrying John Kennedy, Anthony's cousin, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Carole's closest friend. Three weeks later Anthony dies of cancer. The summer of the plane crash, the four friends were meant to be cherishing Anthony's last days. Instead, Carole and Anthony mourned John and Carolyn, even as Carole planned her husband's memorial.

Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her 10 years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in 16 countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter. Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent - an impossible-to-pause record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion.

No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. At the time of her death in 1916, she was worth at least 100 million dollars, equal to more than 2 billion dollars today. A strong believer in women being financially independent, she offered valuable lessons for the present times. Abandoned at birth by her neurotic mother, scorned by her misogynist father, Hetty set out as a child to prove her value. Following the simple rules of her wealthy Quaker father, she successfully invested her money and along the way proved to herself that she was wealthy and therefore worthy.

A Year and Six Seconds opens on the winter day Isabel Gillies arrives in Manhattan, two young sons in tow, after her husband has left her; she's moving back in with her parents until she can figure out what to do next.

After over a decade of a comfortable, suburban life in the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania, but in a marriage in turmoil and edging ever closer to divorce, the logical thing for the Hamilton family to do, it seemed, was to move to a place where life was simple and without distraction. They sold off most of their belongings, packed what was left in the family minivan and began the long, arduous road trip across the northern United States, into western Canada and finally Alaska, where they drove to the end of the road to the bush village of Eagle, on the banks of the Yukon river. The ...

This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.