Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

First published in 1789, this autobiography of Olaudah Equiano comprises a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel tale, and spiritual journey. It recounts Equiano's time as a slave, and chronicles his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his freedom.

Aciman's story of Alexandria is the story of his own family, a Jewish family with Italian and Turkish roots that tied its future to Egypt and made its home there for three generations, only to find itself peremptorily expelled by the government in the early 1960s. It is the story of a fractious clan of dreamers and con men and the emotional price they would pay for exile, the story of a young boy's coming of age and his memories of the city he loved in his youth.

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died. She was in a car crash on the motorway turnoff to Detroit. For a few minutes, she was clinically dead. From the moment of her resuscitation, we follow a remarkable life, all the way up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar. Bernice’s family story begins in Sandersville, Georgia, with freedwoman Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1870. Her descendants survived Reconstruction, Jim Crow, joined the ‘great migration’, cried when Dr King was assassinated. Wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down through generations of women.

The mixed population is the fastest-growing group in the UK today, but the mainstream conversation around mixedness is stilted, repetitive and often problematic. At a time when ethnically ambiguous models fill our Instagram feeds and our high street shop windows, and when children of interracial relationships are lauded as heralding in the dawn of a post-racial utopia, journalist Natalie Morris takes a deep dive into what it really means to be mixed in Britain today.  

"A Life to Tell" is a profound and unvarnished memoir that chronicles a remarkable journey from the stark realities of a remote Albanian village to the vibrant opportunities of modern democracy. Through deeply personal recollections, the author. The author invites listeners into a world shaped by extreme deprivation, pervasive state control, and an unyielding quest for knowledge and self-determination.

‘If only my Cantonese parents weren’t so allergic to the word love…’ ‘A wonderfully heart-warming memoir from the bottom of the stomach. ’ Xiaolu Guo ‘A real and delightful surprise, full of smart thought and deft words – and also very funny.’ Ella Risbridger 'Poetic, delicious...

What does it mean to be Jew(ish) in 2020? Caught between tradition and modernity, between a Jewish family and a non-Jewish son, Matt Greene ponders the big questions concerning identity, religion, family and Seinfeld. When his son was born to a non-Jewish mother, Matt began to consider the upbringing he'd put behind him - the sense of not belonging, the forbidden foods, the holidays that felt more like punishments.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now. “This is the kind of history I wish...

An exuberant, hilarious, and profound memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that working for the post office saved his life, taught him who he was, gave him purpose, and educated him deeply about a country he loves but had lost touch with. Steve Grant was laid...

When his Los Angeles neighborhood was threatened by gangbangers, Stanley Tookie Williams and a friend formed the Crips, but what began as protection became worse than the original gangs. From deadly street fights with their rivals to drive-by shootings and stealing cars, the Crips' influence—and Tookie's reputation—began to spread across Los Angeles. Soon he was regularly under police surveillance, and, as a result, was arrested often, though always released because the charges did not stick.

The “brilliantly wry” (Lena Dunham) and “lovably awkward” (Mindy Kaling) New York Times bestseller from the creator of HBO’s Insecure. In this "delightfully deadpan" (Essence) bestseller named for her wildly popular web series, Issa Rae waxes humorously on what it’s like to be...

The stories of Sinti and Roma suffering in Nazi Germany are all too often lost or untold. In this haunting account, Otto shares his story with a remarkable simplicity. Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust.

A deeply felt meditation on race, sex and American culture - at once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac. The daughter of a successful paediatrician and a fashionable socialite, Margo Jefferson spent her childhood among Chicago's Black elite. She calls this society 'Negroland': 'a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty'. With privilege came expectation.

With chapters covering sexual and cultural identity, body hair, colourism and mental health, and a particular focus on the suffocating beauty standards South Asian women are expected to adhere to, Sharan Dhaliwal speaks openly about her journey toward loving herself, offering advice, support and comfort to people that are encountering the same issues.

What happens when a black detective goes undercover in the KKK? An extraordinary true story. In 1978, Ron Stallworth is the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department. In the local paper, he finds a classified ad for the Ku Klux Klan - and a PO box for interested enquiries. All he's expecting are some racist brochures and a few scraps of information about the white nationalist terrorists in his community. What he gets is a phone call inviting him to join the KKK. So he does. 

Warm, witty, imaginative.... This is a rich and winning book. The New Yorker Dust Tracks on a Road is the bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature s most compelling and influential authors. Hurston s...

Cairo, 1963: four years before her lone novel is finally published, the writer Enayat al-Zayyat takes her own life at age twenty-seven. For the next three decades, it's as if Enayat never existed at all. Years later, when celebrated Egyptian poet Iman Mersal stumbles upon Enayat's long-forgotten Love and Silence in a Cairo book stall, she embarks on a journey of reflection and rediscovery that leads her ever closer to the world and work of Enayat al-Zayyat.

This epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha.

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

Frederick Douglass, prominent abolitionist, civil rights activist, and reform journalist, was raised in the malicious system of slavery. His keen intellect as an anti-slavery crusader led some to question his past as a slave. To counter doubts about his life experience as a slave, Douglass wrote an autobiography providing full details of his life. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, is an emotional journey into the atrocious system of slavery, and the inspirational triumph against insurmountable odds.