My mother name me after Bob Dylan's Sara, his song of loss and bittersweet memory. The song could have set the tune for my life, with cries of Gypsy violin and harmonica. Instead it gave me solace, a sad music place where I felt at home. I wrote my memoirs after my real dad died. His death marked the end of the saddest era of my life. I was born to a teenaged drug addict and raised by a sadistic young man who I called "Dad," but he wasn't my dad. He was a bogey man.
After her 2001 suicide attempt, broadcast live on a Webcam, Pershall realized the need to heal her mind and body. She found a revolutionary cure, met a tattoo artist, and discovered the healing power of body modification.
My father tells it because he made it up. A little bedtime story of my origin. They are not really my parents, the people who I call Mum and Dad. Those are not my siblings, the kids who I know as my brother and sisters. ‘Rare is the memoir that is filled with such earnest faith, appreciation and true love for a childhood that was not easy or simple. Jessica Knight writes with the clarity, humour and depth as Jeanette Winterson, and there is not a smidgeon of self-pity in this book. I was deeply moved by Strange Little Girl, a resplendent book from a writer with a good heart but a wicked sense of humour.’ –Alice Pung, author of Unpolished Gem and One Hundred Days I am not really human. I am an alien from another planet in a far distant constellation. Jessica Knight grew up on a dairy farm in rural Victoria, her crib next door to where the cows were milked. It’s a loving Mormon household, a God-fearing home. While they don’t have very much, it’s their values and good humour that allows them to laugh at what scares them. All young Jessica wants is to be good and make her parents and her Heavenly Father happy. She cleans the house and helps out with her siblings; all the while being subjected to intensive medical tests and major surgeries. Doctors consider her a medical mystery. But what if you decide you want to be open about your fears? This is the story of how one young woman learned to move on from the life she was expected to have, embraced what she was scared of, and looked to her future with an open heart and mind. Maybe you don't need heaven, maybe you just need to find yourself.
A poignant account of international adoption and family describes a couple's experiences as they journey to the former Soviet Union and wade through a vast bureaucracy as they find their two new daughters, Natalie and Lana, reflecting on such issues as feelings of guilt over taking children away from their roots, the mystery of her daughters' earliest childhoods, and more. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
“A gripping and beautiful book about the power of love in the face of unimaginable loss.” --Cheryl Strayed For readers of The Bright Hour and When Breath Becomes Air, a moving, transcendent memoir of loss and a stunning exploration of marriage in the wake of unimaginable grief. As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter's trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it--that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation--and a book that will change the way you look at the world.
Twenty-seven-year-old Sarah The barge had it all - a loving boyfriend, an Ivy League degree, and a successful career - when her life was derailed by an unthinkable diagnosis: aggressive breast cancer. After surviving the grueling treatments - though just barely - Sarah moved to Portland, Oregon to start over. There, a chance encounter with an exhausted African mother and her daughters transformed her life again. A Somali refugee whose husband had left her, Hadhi was struggling to raise five young daughters, half a world a way from her war-torn homeland. Alone in a strange country, Hadhi and the girls were on the brink of starvation in their own home, "invisible" to their neighbors and to the world. As Sarah helped Hadhi and the girls navigate American life, her outreach to the family became a source of courage and a lifeline for herself. Poignant, at times shattering, Sarah The barge's riveting memoir invites readers to engage in her story of finding connection, love, and redemption in the most unexpected places.
Claudia Jones is missing. Her classmates are thinking the worst . . . or at least the weirdest. It couldn't be an alien abduction, right? None of Claudia's classmates at Blithedale High know why she vanished—and they're dealing with their own issues. Emily's trying to handle a life-changing surprise. Paula's hoping to step out of Emily's shadow. Nigel just wants to meet a girl who will laugh at his jokes. And Brett hardly lets himself get close to anybody. In Losing the Girl, the first book in the Life on Earth trilogy, Eisner-nominated cartoonist MariNaomi looks at life through the eyes of four suburban teenagers: early romance, fraying friendships, and the traces of a mysterious—maybe otherworldly—disappearance. Different chapters focus on different characters, each with a unique visual approach.
In a small and unknown place, there was a small and unknown store.The reason why it was called an unknown small place wasn't because it was really unknown, but because when the former glory gradually faded away, it had already been forgotten by everyone in a corner of their memories that might never be flipped back up.
