Archives de catégorie : Memoir

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. 

IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT de Mary Louise Kelly

A meditation on work and parenting that focuses on the stage when your children are preparing to leave the nest. American broadcaster and journalist Mary Louise Kelly reckons with the compromises she has made – as most people have – while managing a busy life and career, and what it feels like now that the time she has left with her children at home is starting to run out.

IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT:
Thoughts on a Finish Line of Motherhood
by Mary Louise Kelly
Holt, late 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Can she get to her son James’s soccer game on Thursday? Nope. Mary Louise Kelly, co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered, has to be at the studio all afternoon, reporting the news. Drive carpool for Alexander next week? Not if she wants to be part of the press corps flying to Iraq with the Secretary of Defense. She has never been cavalier about these decisions. The bargain she has always made with herself is this: this time I’ll get on the plane, but next year, I’ll be there for the mom stuff.
Well, James and Alexander are now 17 and 15, and a new realization has overtaken her: in only one year, her older son will be leaving for college. The time for do-overs is over. There used to be years to make good on her promises; now, there are months, weeks, minutes.
Mary Louise Kelly is coming to grips with the reality every parent faces. Unlike your marriage or your job, childhood has a definite expiration date. You have only so many years with your kids before they leave your house to build their own lives. It’s what every parent is supposed to want, what they raise their children to do. But the effect of this on her and her husband will be immense. It is at best bittersweet, at worst, devastating. And it brings with it the enormous questions of what she did right and what she did wrong.
Mary Louise has become consumed by these thoughts. What’s she’s written is not a definitive answer – not for herself and certainly not for any other parent. But her questions, her issues, will resonate with every parent. And, yes, especially with mothers, who are judged more harshly by society and, more importantly judge themselves more harshly. What would she do if she had to decide all over again?
This is no political tract, there is no correct answer. But her thoughts as she faces the coming year will speak to anyone who has ever cared about a child. IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT is not a manifesto; it’s an examination that is moving, often funny, revelatory and immensely relatable.

Mary Louise Kelly has been reporting for NPR for nearly two decades and is now co-host of All Things Considered. She has also written two suspense novels, Anonymous Sources and The Bullet, and is the author of articles and essays that have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal among numerous other publications.

NOWHERE FOR VERY LONG de Brianna Madia

In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life.

NOWHERE FOR VERY LONG:
The Unexpected Road to an Unconventional Life
by Brianna Madia
HarperOne, April 2022

A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband. Nowhere for Very Long is her story of exploration—of the world outside and the spirit within.
Brianna knew her road would be the one less traveled from an early age. Rejecting the competitive and capitalistic path set out before her, she chose to seek a different version of happiness, a road scary, uncertain, and entirely her own. But pursuing a life of intention isn’t always what it seems. In fact, at times it was downright boring, exhausting, and even desperate—when the van overheated and she was forced to pull over on a lonely stretch of South Dakota highway; when the weather was bitterly cold and her water jugs froze beneath her as she slept in the parking lot of her office; when she worried about money, her marriage, and the looming question mark of her future. But she was living a life true to herself, come what may, and that made all the difference.
NOWHERE FOR VERY LONG is the chronicle of a woman learning and unlearning, from backroads to breakdowns, married to solo, and finally, from lost to found.

Brianna Madia is a writer, adventurer, and desert-dweller. For the last several years, she and her now three pups Bucket, Dagwood, and Birdie call her big orange van, Bertha, home. An avid climber, canyoneer, mountain biker, kayaker, and explorer, Brianna believes in moving against the grain, embracing her true self, and trying all the things that scare you.

MUDDY PEOPLE de Sara El Sayed

How do you find yourself without losing your family? A hilarious, heartwarming memoir about growing up, breaking the rules, negotiating culture, and becoming yourself in an Egyptian Muslim family, from a new Australian voice.

MUDDY PEOPLE: A Memoir
by Sara El Sayed
Black Inc. (Australia), August 2021

Soos is coming of age in a household with a lot of rules. No bikinis, despite the Queensland heat. No boys, unless he’s Muslim. And no life insurance, not even when her father gets cancer. Soos is trying to balance her parents’ strict decrees with having friendships, crushes and the freedom to develop her own values. With each rule Soos comes up against, she is forced to choose between doing what her parents say is right and following her instincts. When her family falls apart, she comes to see her parents as flawed, their morals based on a muddy logic. But she will also learn that they are her strongest defenders.

“With elegant lyricism, compelling urgency and a dark sense of humour, Muddy People by Sara El Sayed is an impressive debut memoir … El Sayed’s coming to voice reflects her journey of self-realisation, of understanding what it means to be a migrant millennial.” —Books+Publishing

Sara El Sayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She has a Master of Fine Arts and works at Queensland University of Technology. Her work features in the anthologies Growing Up African in Australia and Arab, Australian, Other, among other places. She is a recipient of a Queensland Writers Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2020 Queensland Premier’s Young Writers and Publishers Award. MUDDY PEOPLE is her first book.

THE SHAPE OF SOUND de Fiona Murphy

Blending memoir with observations on the healthcare industry, THE SHAPE OF SOUND is a story about the corrosive power of secrets, stigma and shame, and how deaf experiences and disability are shaped by economics, social policy, medicine and societal expectations.

THE SHAPE OF SOUND
by Fiona Murphy
Text Publishing Australia, April 2021

I am still unlearning the habit of secrecy. And yet, whenever somebody discovers that I am deaf, my body still reacts with churning terror. How do you build up a sense of robust pride when your body has taught itself to be fearful?
Fiona Murphy’s memoir about being deaf is a revelation.
Secrets are heavy, burdensome things. Imagine carrying a secret that if exposed could jeopardise your chances of securing a job and make you a social outcast. Fiona Murphy kept her deafness a secret for over twenty-five years. But then, desperate to hold onto a career she’d worked hard to pursue, she tried hearing aids. Shocked by how the world sounded, she vowed never to wear them again. After an accident to her hand, she discovered that sign language could change her life, and that Deaf culture could be part of her identity. Just as Fiona thought she was beginning to truly accept her body, she was diagnosed with a rare condition that causes the bones of the ears to harden. She was steadily losing her residual hearing. The news left her reeling. This is the story of how Fiona learns to listen to her body.

Fiona Murphy is a Deaf poet and essayist. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, Overland, Griffith Review and the Big Issue, among other publications. In 2019, she was awarded the Overland Fair Australia Essay Prize and the Monash Undergraduate Creative Writing Prize. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Richell Prize and highly commended by the Wheeler Centre Next Chapter program.