GIRLZ N THE HOOD is the unsentimental, moving, and surprisingly humorous account of a girl and her ten siblings who grew up in one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Los Angeles. Marys mother was a fierce matriarch, a single mom who raised eleven children with the help of welfare checks and a firearm hidden in her bra. Drugs, guns, and pregnancies were everyday occurrences, but Mary and her siblings took it all in stride, spying on the grown-ups, playing in the streets, and helping to take care of the new babies when they were born. The dubious yet colourful cast of characters that came into their lives (the Jehovah Witnesses, the whores, the addicts, the "fathers"), and the never-ending series of hardships (the jail terms, the knife fights, the mental illness, and homicides), could not shake the core of the family. This is the story of Mary, but, even more so, its the story of her mother, a uniquely strong and extraordinary woman who was able to survive moments of pain and disappointment by laughing at the comedy of human missteps, miscalculations, and downright stupidity. This is also a story about race and of poverty and how, over time, it can wear you down and destroy you, because, although Mary got out okay, her sisters and brothers were not so lucky.

Girlz 'n the Hood: A Memoir of Mama in South Central Los Angeles

Biographies & Memoirs

Hill-Wagner, Dr. Mary

Community & Culture

Pact Press

As a child, Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop, along with her five brothers, was raised to revere the tribal legends of the Alsop and Roosevelt families. Her parents’ marriage, lived in the spotlight of 1950s Washington where the author’s father, journalist Stewart Alsop, grew increasingly famous, was not what either of her parents had imagined it would be. Her mother's strict Catholicism and her father's restless ambition collided to create a strangely muted and ominous world, one that mirrored the whispered conversations in the living room as the power brokers of Washington came and went through their side door. Through it all, her mother, trained to keep secrets as a decoding agent with MI5, said very little. In this brave memoir, the author explores who her mother was, why alcohol played such an important role in her mother’s life, and why her mother held herself apart from all her children, especially her only daughter. In the author’s journey to understand her parents, particularly her mother, she comes to realize that the secrets parents keep are the ones that reverberate most powerfully in the lives of their children.

Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies

Winthrop Alsop, Elizabeth

Leaders & Notable People

"...This memoir will burrow down deep into your heart, finding its own place of comfort there. I dare you to be able to put it down." --Noley Reid, author of Pretend We Are Lovely Find a Place for Me is a memoir about facing a marriage's last act--a spouse's death--as a couple united in mind and holding hands. Deirdre and Bob are married eleven years and have two young children when forty-three-year-old Bob is diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS determines the journey their marriage will now take, but Bob and Deirdre are resolute in how they will traverse their remaining months as a couple. Chronicling Bob's illness, Find a Place for Me is also the love story of a happy marriage filled with humor, honesty, and essential conversations. In this moving, tragic, and surprisingly funny book, Deirdre and Bob raise a glass to love and the life each of them has left while learning how to lovingly say goodbye.

Find a Place for Me

Fagan, Deirdre

Professionals & Academics

Through vignettes, essays, snapshots, portraits, and poems, Music in the Halls reveals the inner workings of a high-poverty District of Columbia Public School. In it, Jankowski brings to light the visceral and emotional nature of childhood poverty and trauma and how it not only impacts a student' s ability to learn but also how it restricts their ability to live a full life. Uncovering the interwoven worlds of children and their parents, teachers and administrators, and the DCPS bureaucracy-- all residing in close proximity to the nation' s capital-- Music in the Halls is not simply a tale of hard knocks; it is an exploration of how one man' s understanding and compassion can be transformed and expanded to encompass and embrace this world.

Music in the Halls: The Heart and Heartbreak of Teaching at a High-Poverty School in Washington, DC

Jankowski, Bernard

Arts & Literature

According to editor Laraine Herring, " Speculative memoir is an umbrella genre in which the questions of the memoirist' s book are addressed through speculative elements, which may include ghosts, metaphors, what-ifs, imaginative scenarios, and fantasies. It is memoir focused more on the possibilities of the internal world than the facts of the external world." Speculative has long been accepted in the domain of fiction, but speculative is not in conflict with a lived experience or the story of a life. Speculative essays empower us to claim all of ourselves and our moments-- not just the ones the patriarchy or dominant culture wants to reinforce. This powerful collection of seventeen women' s essays grapples with themes of loss, individuation, abuse, authenticity, and identity through speculative elements. Perhaps they will also help you remember parts of your own heart and give you new language to express your singular, magical lives.

Becoming Real

Literature & Fiction

Literary