Search Results: Returned 6 Results, Displaying Titles 1 - 6
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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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2022., Adult, Penguin Canada Call No: IND Bio C128h Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: Capturing the chaos and wonder of a precarious childhood, Cody Caetano, who wrote his memoir under the mentorship of Lee Maracle, delivers an unforgettable memoir about a family that tries to learn from the mistakes of past generations. It unspools a tangled family history with warmth, humour, and deep generosity. Caetano is a writer of Anishinaabe and Portuguese descent and an off-reserve member of Pinaymootang First Nation. Originally from Orillia, ON, he now lives in Toronto, ON.
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2014., General, HarperCollins Canada Call No: Bio P467n Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: "An utterly compelling tale of survival -- of nature, family and genetics. In the late 1960s, riding the crest of the counterculture movement, Cea's family left a comfortable existence in California to live off the land in northern Alberta. But unlike most commune dwellers of the time, the Persons weren't trying to build a new society -- they wanted to escape civilization altogether. Led by Cea's grandfather Dick, they lived in a canvas Teepee, grew pot, and hunted and gathered to survive. Living out her grandparents' dream with her teenage mother, Michelle, young Cea knew little of the world beyond her forest. She spent her summers playing nude in the meadow and her winters snowshoeing behind the grandfather she idolized. Despite fierce storms, food shortages and the occasional drug-and-sex-infused party for visitors, it was a happy existence. For Michelle, however, there was one crucial element missing: a man. When Cea was five, Michelle took her on the road with a new boyfriend. As the trio set upon a series of ill-fated adventures, Cea began to question both her highly unusual world and the hedonistic woman at the centre of it -- questions that eventually evolved into an all-consuming search for a more normal life. Finally, in her early teens, Cea realized she would have to make a choice as drastic as the one her grandparents once had made in order to get the life she craved. From nature child to international model by the age of thirteen, Cea's astonishing saga is one of long-held family secrets and extreme family dysfunction, all in an incredibly unusual setting. It is also the story of one girl's deep-seated desire for normality -- a desire that enabled her to risk everything, overcome adversity and achieve her dreams. Cea Sunrise Person now lives in Vancouver"--Provided by publisher.
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2017., General, Formac Publishing Company Limited Call No: BLK Bio B873t Availability:1 of 1 At Your LibraryRead a review from the Globe and Mail website. Summary Note: "Jade Brooks grew up in Halifax's Black community, one of eight brothers and sisters. She lived with her parents until Social Services intervened, placing her with relatives and then in foster care. Obviously gifted, she often excelled in school while she dealt with chaos in her personal and family life. When the first serious love of her life entered the picture, a classmate her own age, that relationship became the centerpiece of everything. Following a path many have taken before, pushed along by her abusive boyfriend, Jade found herself in the sex trade at the age of 15. She learned how to survive selling sex in the bars, clubs, strip clubs, and massage parlours of Montreal and Toronto. Gifted with the ability to recall details of personalities, events, and conversations, Jade offers readers an entry point into a world of young Afro-Canadians born into families where addictions, tangled personal relationships, social workers, and prison terms are everyday facts. Her narrative is grounded in a reality that will be unknown to many of her readers. Jade tells her story straight out, no holds barred, just as she remembers it. By doing so, she allows her readers to come to a far deeper appreciation of the circumstances that lead to the trafficking of young women in Canada today. Jade Brooks, now in her mid-twenties, lives with her family on Canada's west coast. As an advocate against human trafficking, Jade uses her life experiences to raise awareness and prevent young people from being coerced into the sex trade. She holds a college diploma in Community Services"--Provided by publisher.
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2017., General, Little, Brown and company Call No: Bio A374y Edition: First edition. Availability:1 of 1 At Your Library Summary Note: A searing, deeply moving literary memoir of poems and essays that reflect on the author's complicated feelings about his disadvantaged childhood on a Native American reservation with his siblings and alcoholic mother, from the critically acclaimed author of the 2007 semiautobiographical young-adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Family relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond with his mother Lillian was more complex than most. She plunged her family into chaos with a drinking habit, but shed her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything. She survived a violent past, but created an elaborate facade to hide the truth. She selflessly cared for strangers, but was often incapable of showering her children with the affection that they so desperately craved. She wanted a better life for her son, but it was only by leaving her behind that he could hope to achieve it. It's these contradictions that made Lillian Alexie a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent, complicated, and very human woman. When she passed away, the incongruities that defined his mother shook Sherman and his remembrance of her. Grappling with the haunting ghosts of the past in the wake of loss, he responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is filled with raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine, much less survive. A powerful, deeply felt account of a complicated relationship. Sherman Alexie is the author of The Business of Fancydancing: stories and poems and, most recently, Blasphemy, stories, and Face, poetry. One of his best-known books is The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of short stories. It was adapted as the film Smoke Signals (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay. Alexie lives with his family in Seattle."--Provided by publisher.
