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2019., Adult, Ballantine Books Call No: Bio C311a Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: A celebrated journalist, bestselling author, and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he collapsed in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker at age twenty-seven, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence--1,936 items in total. What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father's writings contain the answers to the questions of how to move forward in life and work without your biggest champion by your side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigour, and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her, but to the many who served alongside him? In All That You Leave Behind, David Carr's legacy is a lens through which Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, relationship fails, and toxic relationship with alcohol. Featuring photographs and emails from the author's personal collection, this coming-of-age memoir unpacks the complex relationship between a daughter and her father, their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, and the powerful sense of work and family that comes to define them.
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By Knott, Helen2023., Alfred .A. Knopf Canada Call No: NEW IND Bio K72b Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: When matriarchs begin to disappear, there is a choice to either step into the places they left behind, or to craft a new space. Helen Knott's debut memoir, In My Own Moccasins, wowed reviewers, award-juries, and readers alike with its profoundly honest and moving account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and survival. Now, with her highly anticipated second book, Knott exceeds the highest of expectations with a chronicle of grief, love, and legacy. Having lost both her mom and grandma in just over six months, forced to navigate the fine lines between matriarchy, martyrdom, and codependency, Knott realizes she must let go, not just of them, but let go of who she thought she was. Woven into the pages are themes that touch on mourning, staying sober through loss, and generational dreaming. Charted with poetic insights, a sprinkle of sass, humour, and heart, crossing the rivers and mountains of Dane Zaa Territory in Northeastern British Columbia and the cobbled streets of Antigua, Guatemala, this is a journey through pain on the way to becoming.
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c2008., WLU Call No: Bio G685g Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Series Title: Life writing series
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[2015], Adult, Harper Avenue Call No: 616.550 U79b Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The story begins on St. Stephen's Day, 2010, in St. John's, NL, when the author gives birth to a baby girl named Sadie Jane who has a shock of snow-white hair. After three months of medical testing, Sadie is diagnosed with albinism, a rare genetic condition where pigment fails to form in the skin, hair and eyes. She is visually impaired and faces a lifetime indoors. A journalist and folklore scholar accustomed to processing the world through other people's stories, Emily is drawn to understanding her child's difference by researching the cultural beliefs associated with albinism worldwide.
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[2015], Adult, Crown Archetype Call No: Bio R622r Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Joan Rivers said some outrageous things to her audiences as a comedian--but they were nothing compared to what she said and did in private. But her love for her daughter knew no bounds. Now Melissa Rivers shares stories and anecdotes about growing up in the Rosenberg-Rivers household with the woman who raised her."--From publisher.
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2011., Farrar, Straus and Giroux Call No: 306.8742 H755b Edition: 1st American ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library
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2011., Sourcebooks Edition: eBook ed. Summary Note: On his 81st birthday, without explanation, Karen Alaniz's father placed two weathered notebooks on her lap. Inside were more than 400 pages of letters he'd written to his parents during WWII. She began reading them, and the more she read, the more she discovered about the man she never knew and the secret role he played in WWII. They began to meet for lunch every week, for her to ask him questions, and him to provide the answers. And with painful memories now at the forefront of his thoughts, her father began to suffer, making their meetings as much about healing as discovery.
![Breaking the code [eBook] : a father's secret, a daughter's journey, and the question that changed everything.](/Library/images/~imageCT81697.JPG "Breaking the code [eBook] : a father's secret, a daughter's journey, and the question that changed everything.")
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2011., General, Random House Canada Call No: 968.91 F965c Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness tells the story of the author's mother, Nicola Fuller. Nicola Fuller and her husband were a glamorous and optimistic couple and East Africa lay before them with the promise of all its perfect light, even as the British Empire in which they both believed waned. They had everything, including two golden children - a girl and a boy. However, life became increasingly difficult and they moved to Rhodesia to work as farm managers. The previous farm manager had committed suicide. His ghost appeared at the foot of their bed and seemed to be trying to warn them of something. Shortly after this, one of their golden children died. Africa was no longer the playground of Nicola's childhood. They returned to England where the author was born before they returned to Rhodesia and to the civil war. The last part of the book sees the Fullers in their old age on a banana and fish farm in the Zambezi Valley. They had built their ramshackle dining room under the Tree of Forgetfulness. In local custom, this tree is the meeting place for villagers determined to resolve disputes. It is in the spirit of this Forgetfulness that Nicola finally forgot - but did not forgive - all her enemies including her daughter and the Apostle, a squatter who has taken up in her bananas with his seven wives and forty-nine children. Funny, tragic, terrifying, exotic and utterly unself-conscious, this is a story of survival and madness, love and war, passion and compassion.
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-- Memoir of miracle cures and other disasters.2020., Adult, Viking Canada Call No: Bio M425d Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "A daughter's tender and funny memoir about a mother who defies convention (but doesn't defy cancer). When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Rachel Matlow is concerned but hopeful. It's stage one, so her mom will get surgery and everything will go back to normal. But growing up in Rachel's family, there was no normal. Elaine, an alternative school teacher and self-help junkie, was never a capital M 'Mommy'--she spent more time meditating than packing lunches--and Rachel, a tomboy who played hockey and chess and felt a profound sense of disappointment in the girls' shoe department, was no ordinary daughter. When Elaine decides to forgo conventional treatment and heal herself naturally, Rachel is forced to ponder whether the very things that made her mom so special--her assertiveness, her non-compliance, her belief in being the author of her own story--are what will ultimately kill her. As the cancer progresses, so does Elaine's conviction in doing things her way. She assembles a dream team of alternative healers, gulps down herbal tinctures with every meal, and talks to her cancer cells. Anxious and confused, Rachel is torn between indulging her pie-in-the-sky pursuits (including a mother-daughter ayahuasca trip) and pleading with the person who's taking her mother away. A daughter's poignant tribute to her eccentric mother and a reckoning with her fatal choices, Dead Mom Walking is a testament to the power of stories--to both delude and delight--and a celebration of family in all its dysfunctional splendor."--
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2007., W.W. Norton Call No: Bio A355m Availability:1 of 1 At Your LibraryClick here to watch Summary Note: The beloved author of Little Women was torn between pleasing her idealistic father and planting her feet in the material world. Now, Louisa May Alcott's name is known universally; yet, during her youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson--an eminent teacher, lecturer, and friend of Emerson and Thoreau. Willful and exuberant, Louisa flew in the face of all her father's theories of child rearing. She, in turn, could not understand the frugal life Bronson preached, which reached its epitome in the failed utopian community of Fruitlands. In a family that insisted on self-denial and spiritual striving, Louisa dreamed of wealth and fame. At the same time, like most daughters, she wanted her father's approval. This story of their tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters.--From publisher description.
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2009., General, Key Porter Books Call No: Bio M551m Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: This book chronicles Menziesœs transformative journey with her mother as words fail and the very nature of communication is redefined. Family dynamics among sisters and brothers come to the fore as the roles and responsibilities of the parent shift to the children: from moving their mother to a seniors' residence to signing a medical power of attorney to the matriarch's physical decline, to her safe passage into death. Menzies and her siblings experience growing old--and growing up--in touching and heart-wrenching ways.
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2020., Random House, Inc. Edition: eBook ed. Connect to this eBook title Summary Note: "...A searing, brilliantly-written memoir about a destructive and cunning mother; reads like a novel..." --Margaret Atwood via Twitter In this award-winning memoir, two sisters reckon with the decline and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and with the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty. When her elderly mother is hospitalized unexpectedly, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to their parents' ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, they are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years their mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home. Rearranging their lives to be the daughters they were never allowed to be, the sisters focus their efforts on helping their father cope with the unending manipulations of their mother and encounter all the pressures that come with caring for elderly parents. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favorite phrase during their childhood was: "I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it." Set against the natural world of the Canadian foothills ("in winter the cold will kill you, nothing personal"), this memoir--at once dark and hopeful--shatters precedents about grief, anger, and family trauma with surprising tenderness and humor.
![The erratics [eBook] : a memoir](/Library/images/~imageCT101307.JPG "The erratics [eBook] : a memoir")
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Ã2015., Crown Publishers Call No: Bio B163b Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: The author pieces together the story of her absent father's life, beginning with his advancements in isolating the biochemical root of manic depression, which he then began to suffer from himself, leading to years of institutionalization and confinement.
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c2012., Adult, Tightrope Books Call No: Bio B531h Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Tumbling into adulthood as the world falls into post 9-11 madness, Samantha Bernstein vividly depicts a generation raised in the ruins of Baby Boomer idealism. The daughter of a hippie mom ground down by life in a relentless film industry, and an absent, famous poet father, Samantha enters her twenties outraged by the legacies of her predecessors. In emails chronicling five years, she writes toward a vision that reconciles history with the possibility of an ethical and hopeful future. Creating collectives that are at once joyous and politically engaged, the characters in this memoir accept loss, acknowledge fear, and fight cynicism. Exultant and poignant, caustic and tender, Here We Are Among the Living invites readers to look carefully at the world -- to believe the choices we make matter, and that to love is the most important choice of all."--Provided by publisher.
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Ã2018., General, Dey St., an imprint of William Morrow Call No: Bio A431h Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your LibraryRead an article by the author from the Psychology Today website. Summary Note: Actress and playwright Tina Alexis Allen's audacious memoir unravels her privileged suburban Catholic upbringing that was shaped by her formidable father, a man whose strict religious devotion and dedication to his large family hid his true nature and a life defined by deep secrets and dangerous lies. The youngest of thirteen children in a devout Catholic family, Tina Alexis Allen grew up in 1980s suburban Maryland in a house ruled by her stern father, Sir John, an imposing, British-born authoritarian who had been knighted by the Pope. Sir John supported his large family running a successful travel agency that specialized in religious tours to the Holy Land and the Vatican for pious Catholics. His daughter Tina was no sweet and innocent Catholic girl. A smart-mouthed high school basketball prodigy, she harbored a painful secret: she liked girls. When Tina was eighteen her father discovered the truth about her sexuality. Instead of dragging her to the family priest and lecturing her with tearful sermons about sin and damnation, her father shocked her with his honest response. He, too, was gay. The secret they shared about their sexuality brought father and daughter closer, and the two became trusted confidants and partners in a relationship that eventually spiraled out of control. Tina and Sir John spent nights dancing in gay clubs together, experimenting with drugs, and casual sex, all while keeping the rest of their family in the dark. Outside of their wild clandestine escapades, Sir John made Tina his heir apparent at the travel agency. Drawn deeper into the business, Tina soon became suspicious of her father's frequent business trips, his multiple passports and cache of documents, and the briefcases full of cash that mysteriously appeared and quickly vanished. Digging deeper, she uncovered a disturbing facet beyond the stunning double-life of the father she thought she knew. As a star on WGN television series "Outsiders," actress/playwright/author Tina Alexis Allen most recently starred as Shurn, a force to be reckoned with in the clash-of-cultures drama rooted in coal mining Kentucky.
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2009., Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill Call No: Bio W449f Edition: 1st ed. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: A moving and insightful look at life in the shadow of a legendary figure Orson Welles and an immensely entertaining story of growing up as his daughter in the unreal reality of Hollywood, enhanced by Welles Feder's collection of many never-before-seen family photographs.
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2015., Adult, Random House Canada Call No: Bio F965l Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "Looking to rebuild after a painful divorce, Alexandra Fuller turns to her African past for clues to living a life fully and without fear. A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of her own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and the family she left behind in Africa. This memoir begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Fuller's delicate balance--between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage--irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia--elephant attacks on the first date, sick with malaria on the wedding day--Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes. Fuller soon realizes that what is missing from her life is something that was always there: the brash and uncompromising ways of her father, the man who warned his daughter that "the problem with most people is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live." Fuller's father--"Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode" as he first introduced himself to his future wife--was a man who regretted nothing and wanted less, even after fighting harder and losing more than most men could bear. Fuller threads panoramic vistas with her deepest revelations as a fully grown woman and mother. After spending a lifetime waiting for someone to show up and save her--she discovered that, in the end, we all simply have to save ourselves. Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972, she moved with her family to a farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) southern Africa, leaving for America in her mid-20s. In 1994, she moved to Wyoming. She is the author of Don't let's go to the dogs tonight: an African childhood, Scribbling the cat: travels with an African soldier, and Cocktail hour under the tree of forgetfulness"--Provided by publisher.
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By Lui, Elaine2014., Random House Canada Call No: Bio L952l Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Most people think Iœm exaggerating at first when I talk about the Chinese Squawking Chicken. But once they actually spend some time with her, they understand. They get it. Right away. Sheœs Chinese, she squawks like a chicken, she is totally nuts, and I am totally dependent on her.When Elaine Lui was growing up, her mother told her, Why do you need to prepare for the good things that happen? Theyœre good. They wonœt hurt you. My job is to prepare you for the hard times, and teach you how to avoid them, whenever possible.· Neither traditionally Eastern nor conventionally Western, the Squawking Chicken raised her daughter drawing on Chinese fortune-telling, feng shui blackmail, good old-fashioned ghost stories, and shame and embarrassment in equal measure. And despite years of chafing against her motherœs parenting style, Elaine came to recognize the hidden wisdomand immeasurable valuein her rather unorthodox upbringing.Listen to the Squawking Chicken lays bare the playbook of unusual advice and warnings used to teach Elaine about hard work (Miss Hong Kong is a whore·), humility (I should have given birth to a piece of barbecue pork·), love and friendship, family loyalty (Whereœs my money?·), style and deportment (Donœt be low classy·), finding oneœs own voice (Walk like an elephant, squawk like a chicken·) among other essentials. Along the way, Elaine poignantly reveals how her mother earned the nickname Tsiahng Gai· or squawking chicken· growing up in Hong Kong, enduring and rising from the ashes of her own hard times.Listen to the Squawking Chicken is a loving mother-daughter memoir that will have readers laughing out loud, gasping in shock, and reconsidering the honesty and guts it takes to be a parent.
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-- Lives of mothers and daughtersc2001., McClelland & Stewart Call No: Bio M968L Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library
