Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

LIL’ KIM: THE QUEEN BEE de Lil’ Kim

A fearless, inspiring, and refreshingly candid memoir by the Grammy-award winning rapper, multi-platinum recording artist, and cultural icon Lil’ Kim.

LIL’ KIM: THE QUEEN BEE
by Lil’ Kim
Hachette US, November 2021
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

When teenager Kimberly Denise Jones—better known as Lil’ Kim—burst on the hip-hop scene in the mid-nineties, no one was prepared for how she would shake-up the entire music industry. As the sole female member of the Notorious B.I.G.’s rap collective, Junior M.A.F.I.A., and an affiliate of Puff Daddy and the Bad Boy family, Lil’ Kim always stood out from the pack. But she was determined to make an even greater name for herself and emerged as a solo superstar. In 1996, she dropped her solo debut album, Hard Core, which topped the Billboard charts, went double-platinum, and is now widely considered to be one of the most influential rap albums of all-time. With her dynamic lyricism, her unflappable no-nonsense attitude, her iconic looks both on and off the red carpet, and her unapologetic sexuality, Lil’ Kim quickly established herself as a force to be reckoned with—and was crowned the Original Queen Bee.
Twenty-five years later, this Grammy award-winning superstar has released five studio albums, sold millions of records, topped the Billboard charts, performed all over the world, and remains at the top of her game. And yet few people ever knew about the hard work, hustle, and heartbreak that went into securing her place on the throne—until now. In this debut memoir, Lil’ Kim reveals everything that really went on behind-the-scenes of her legendary career, much of it for the very first time publicly. From her earliest rap beginnings growing up in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and her teenage years spent with the Notorious B.I.G. to her rise as a solo icon, Lil’ Kim not only blazed trails for women in hip-hop, but also inspired the careers of those who followed. However, life at the top hasn’t been easy, either. Lil’ Kim also talks about the hidden moments of her reign: her complicated high-profile relationships, the misogynistic industry she fought to change through sex positivity, the challenging double standards of self-image and beauty in the spotlight, and the momentous act of loyalty that ultimately landed her in prison.
A true page-turner from start to finish, The Queen Bee is every bit as fierce, empowering, and badass as the woman at the heart of this story—and firmly cements her legacy as a true feminist icon.

Kimberly Denise Jones is the female rap legend, better known as Lil’ Kim. She has sold more than 15 million albums and 30 million singles worldwide.

BECAUSE OUR FATHERS LIED de Craig McNamara

The story of a young man coming to terms with his father’s criminal legacy and forging his own path to peace.

BECAUSE OUR FATHERS LIED:
A Memoir of Truth and Family from Vietnam to Today
by Craig McNamara
Little, Brown, May 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Craig McNamara is “the son of the war’s architect,” Robert McNamara, who served as John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and was responsible for the continuation of the Vietnam War. This memoir reflects on Craig’s adolescent struggles to discern right from wrong amidst a flurry of political escalation from his own father and anti-war sentiments from his peers, and eventually, what led him to embark on a lifelong journey of anti-war protest.
It is an intimate picture of one father and son at pivotal periods in American history.
Before Robert McNamara joined Kennedy’s cabinet, he was an executive who helped turn around Ford Motor Company. Known for his tremendous competence and professionalism, McNamara came to symbolize “the best and the brightest.” Craig, his youngest child and only son, struggled in his father’s shadow. When he ultimately fails his draft board physical, Craig decides to travel by motorcycle across Central and South America, learning more about the art of agriculture and the pleasures of making what he defines as an honest living. By the book’s conclusion, Craig McNamara is farming walnuts in Northern California and coming to terms with his father’s legacy.

Craig McNamara is an American businessman and farmer serving as the president and owner of Sierra Orchards, a diversified farming operation producing primarily organic walnuts. McNamara is also the founder and president of the Center for Land-Based Learning. He is the only son of three children of the former United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. He graduated from UC Davis in 1976 with a degree in plant and soil science, and lives in Winters, California with his wife and three children. 

THE MYTH OF NORMAL de Gabor Maté & Daniel Maté

By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.

THE MYTH OF NORMAL:
Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
by Dr. Gabor Maté & Daniel Maté
Knopf Canada (Canada) / Avery (US), May 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health?
Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, THE MYTH OF NORMAL is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.

A renowned speaker and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress, and childhood development. Dr. Maté has written several bestselling books, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection, and Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It, and has coauthored Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. His works have been published internationally in nearly thirty languages.
Daniel Maté is a musical theater lyricist and composer whose work has been honored with the Edward Kleban Prize, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Grant, and the Cole Porter Award for Music and Lyrics. He is the producer and host of the YouTube program Lyrics to Go. With his father, Gabor, Daniel regularly co-leads the popular workshop Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children. He also runs a “mental chiropractic” service called Take a Walk with Daniel (walkwithdaniel.com).

THE GREAT MAN THEORY de Teddy Wayne

Teddy Wayne’s latest novel, Taxi Driver as told by Noah Baumbach, is scalding, uneasily comic, and full of pathos.

THE GREAT MAN THEORY
by Teddy Wayne
Bloomsbury, August 2022
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

THE GREAT MAN THEORY tells the story of a downwardly mobile, divorced, fortysomething dad named Paul. He is a writer and English lecturer who lives in the wealthy enclave of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and he doesn’t like what’s happening to the bubble in which he lives nor what’s happening politically in the outside world. He is under contract to write a manifesto for a small publishing house, essays whose resentment for the political priorities of the modern world are filled with his fury and stubbornly unheralded talent.
But then Paul’s tenuous grasp on a good life slips further, and the reader begins descent along with Paul. As his fortunes disintegrate, and as he tallies up grievances in the face of one pointedly contemporary humiliation after another, his focus on a notorious right-wing TV propogandist intensifies. In this deviously popular commentator’s bogus proclamations he sees the malignant influence that forms the core of our warped cultural standards.
Seeing his own prospects fade then vanish, Paul is determined to make a final stand that will, in his addled projections, somehow redeem and enlarge his small life: he will dramatize and make indelibly public the private injustices he has withstood. And he wishes to do so on this popular TV propagandist’s show.
In his fifth and most stylistically mature and provocative novel, Teddy Wayne has written a tightly wound, variously scathing, relentlessly absorbing social story about a form of desperation and exasperation-fueled radicalization (from the Left). With flare and layers of thwarted empathy, Teddy offers up a decidedly modern anti-hero who deserves an immediate, dubious place in the canon of disappointing maleness.

Teddy Wayne is the author of Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, and McSweeney’s.

THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORY OF A TERRIFYING WOMAN de Molly Lynch

A mother vanishes from her bed one night while her husband is asleep beside her, their six-year-old son in the next room.

THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORY OF A TERRIFYING WOMAN
by Molly Lynch
Catapult, February 2023
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Ada is from Montreal and has been living reluctantly in the American Midwest. Across the country and around the world, mothers have begun to spontaneously wander away from their homes. When Ada comes through the kitchen door two weeks later, filthy and slightly feral, the mystery of her absence intensifies. She has no memory of being gone at all.
THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORY OF A TERRIFYING WOMAN is an intimate portrait of Ada’s life in the lead-up to her disappearance—her small stresses and pleasures, her catastrophic, often absurd visions of the future as she listens to news stories about oppression and ecological collapse. She also feels drawn magnetically into a small patch of forest behind her son’s school, and she has a growing obsession with reports about a missing mother from nearby.
With Ada gone, Danny’s life loses its center. He goes through text messages and memories, recalling painful and passionate times with Ada, and her adverse relationship with the United States. But nothing, including the speculations of federal agents, provides an answer as to where Ada and the other mothers might be going.
Desperate to make sense of what happened to her after she returns, Ada imagines that she transformed into the forest itself. As the boundary between her imagination and experience blurs, the distance between her and Danny grows.
THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORY OF A TERRIFYING WOMAN is at once a play on ancient myths of metamorphosis, an allegory of motherhood at a time when the future is hard to see and easy to fear, and a love story riven by an unaccountable absence.

Molly Lynch is a Canadian writer living in Michigan. Her stories have been published in The Walrus, Joyland, The New Quarterly, Grain, and more. She has been a fiction finalist for the National Magazine Awards of Canada and the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. She received her MFA from Johns Hopkins and now teaches creative writing at the University of Michigan. This is her first novel.