Archives de catégorie : Memoir

WHAT’S WRONG? d’Erin Williams

A gorgeously illustrated critique of how the American healthcare system fails women, people of color, and nonbinary individuals—perfect for fans of Invisible Women.

WHAT’S WRONG?
by Erin Williams
Abrams ComicArts, January 2024

WHAT’S WRONG? is author, illustrator, and scientific researcher Erin Williams’s graphic exploration of how the American healthcare system has failed both her and the rest of us. Focusing on poignant, raw, and complex firsthand accounts from four patients, plus Williams’ own personal story, this book addresses identifiable illnesses such as bladder cancer, alcoholism, postpartum depression, abuse, and endometriosis. More broadly, it peels back the layers on the invisible illnesses that come from trauma, often perpetuated by the broken healthcare system.
Western medicine, which is intended to cure illness and pain, often causes more loss, abuse, and suffering, especially for those Americans who do not fit within the narrow definition of “normal,” meaning white, male, and heterosexual. The book explores the many ways in which those receiving medical treatments are often overlooked, unseen, and doubted by their doctors due to their race, gender, and unconventional social circumstances. Despite this, WHAT’S WRONG? remains a beautiful celebration of and declaration by those who were able to find various ways of healing and receiving care, ways where they were not just viewed as collections of parts to be taken apart and reassembled but as people.

Erin Williams is a writer, illustrator, and researcher living in New York. She is the author of Commute and co–author of The Big Fat Activity Book for Pregnant People and The Big Activity Book for Anxious People.

PARIS: The Memoir de Paris Hilton

Behind Paris Hilton’s meteoric rise from Upper West Side club kid to household name lies her self-proclaimed “superpower” of ADHD and a hidden history that traumatized and defined her. Shocking, funny, and surprisingly profound, PARIS is the deeply personal memoir of the ultimate It Girl and a stunning inside view of a pop culture phenomenon.

PARIS: The Memoir
by Paris Hilton
Dey Street/HarperCollins, March 2023

Until, in a revealing documentary, Paris Hilton disclosed that her childhood was shattered by two years of strip searches, isolation, beatings, restraint, and brainwashing within the now infamous “troubled teen industry,” Paris Hilton was simply the billionaire heiress America had watched grow up on television, on the internet, and in tabloids. But there was always more to Paris Hilton than met the eye. Yes, she is the media personality, DJ, entrepreneur, model, singer, actress, and icon beloved all over the globe. And yet…
PARIS is the story people have always wanted Paris Hilton to tell—the story of who she really is. In this revealing and thought-provoking book, Hilton will separate the creation from the creator, the brand from the ambassador, and show the woman who grew up with incredible privilege but was also trapped in a world of unreasonable expectation at a moment when young women were humiliated for sport in a gossip economy on steroids. PARIS recounts her perilous journey through pre-#METOO sexual politics with grace, generosity, and plenty of fun, rising above a series of heart-wrenching challenges to find healing, lasting love, and a life of meaning and purpose.
The parallel story arcs in Hilton’s braided narrative come to full bloom as a watershed portrait of the Aughts, challenging each of us to question our role in her story and her role in ours. The result is an intimate and unexpected memoir about persona and personification, the price of being young and disobedient, and the complexity of manifesting your dreams after watching part of yourself disappear.

Paris Hilton is the world’s most recognizable influencer and entrepreneur. Since starring in The Simple Life, Hilton has become the media expert, building a global empire as a DJ, entrepreneur, recording artist, philanthropist, actress, model, and author.

THE STRENGTH OF HOPE d’Abram Goldberg

One of the most uplifting stories you will ever read. Abram Goldberg is a beacon of joy and optimism, and a master of keeping perspective.

THE STRENGTH OF HOPE
by Abram Goldberg
with Fiona Harris
Affirm Press, September 2022
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

The day Abram and his mother arrived at Auschwitz death camp they both knew it would be her last. In their final moment together, Abram’s mum urged her nineteen-year-old son to ‘do everything humanly possible to survive, and tell people what happened here’. Then she was taken to a gas chamber and murdered. Abram had already endured and survived so much until that moment, but with his strength of hope, sometimes reduced to a flicker, he survived.
After liberation, Abram eventually found his way to Belgium, where he met the love of his life, fellow Auschwitz survivor Cesia. The young couple came to Australia, where that flicker of hope grew as bright as the sun, illuminating everything they touched and everyone who came into their sphere. Without bitterness and always with perspective, Abram has never forgotten his mother’s last words to him. And in their seventy-five years of marriage, Abram and Cesia have remained dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust and to living their lives to the fullest in tribute to its victims.
THE STRENGTH OF HOPE is full of wisdom, insight and daring, but at its heart it is a love story: for Cesia, for Australia and for life itself.

Abram Goldberg was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1924. Following the Nazi invasion, Abe and his parents were imprisoned in Łódź Ghetto. In 1944, Abe and his mother were sent to Auschwitz, where his mother was gassed upon arrival. Abe was sent to a series of camps before being liberated in 1945. Abe met his wife, Cesia, in 1946. They moved to Melbourne, Australia, in 1951, where they had two children and ran various restaurants including the iconic, Goldy’s. Abe has been volunteering at the Melbourn Holocaust Museum since 1984 and remains a member of the executive board. Abram was awarded an OAM in 2013.

THE FACE LAUGHS WHILE THE BRAIN CRIES de Stephen L. Hauser

A doctor’s powerful and deeply human memoir about the mysteries of the brain and his 40 year quest to find a treatment for multiple sclerosis.

THE FACE LAUGHS WHILE THE BRAIN CRIES:
The Education of a Doctor
by Stephen L. Hauser
‎ St. Martin’s Press, May 2023

Dr. Stephen L. Hauser is an acclaimed physician and neuroimmunologist who has spent his career performing cutting-edge research on multiple sclerosis (MS), a devastating brain disease that affects millions of people worldwide. His work has revolutionized our understanding of the genetic immunology and treatment of MS, and led to the development of B cell therapies―currently the only therapy in place for progressive MS patients.
THE FACE LAUGHS WHILE THE BRAIN CRIES is a riveting memoir that follows Dr. Hauser from his unorthodox upbringing among the colorful cast of characters responsible for his development into a tenacious and innovative researcher, to the life-changing medical breakthroughs he has made against extremely long odds. Along the way, readers will learn the incredible stories of many of his patients, whose bravery, strength, and optimism in the face of a debilitating illness were instrumental to the progress that has been made in the fight against MS. This heartwarming book, written in accessible prose and related with equal measures of humor, empathy, and excitement, is sure to inspire anyone who has faced a daunting challenge.

Stephen L. Hauser, M.D. is the Robert A. Fishman Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, and Director of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. A neuroimmunologist, his research has advanced our understanding of the genetic basis, immune mechanisms, and treatment of multiple sclerosis. Dr. Hauser has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, the John Dystel Prize and the Charcot Award for Multiple Sclerosis Research, and the Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Research.

ALMOST BROWN de Charlotte Gill

An award-winning writer retraces her dysfunctional, biracial, globe-trotting family’s journey as she reckons with ethnicity and belonging, diversity and race, and the complexities of life within a multicultural household.

ALMOST BROWN: A Memoir
by Charlotte Gill
Crown, June 2023

Charlotte Gill’s father is Indian. Her mother is English. They meet in 1960’s London when the world is not quite ready for interracial love. Their union, a revolutionary act, results in a total meltdown of familial relations, a lot of immigration paperwork, and three children, all in varying shades of tan. Together they set off on a journey from the United Kingdom to Canada and to the United States in elusive pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness—a dream that eventually tears them apart.
ALMOST BROWN is an exploration of diasporic intermingling involving parents of two different races and their half-brown children as they experience the paradoxes and conundrums of life as it’s lived between race checkboxes. Eventually, her parents drift apart because they just aren’t compatible. But as she finds herself distancing from her father too—why is she embarrassed to walk down the street with him and not her mom?—she doesn’t know if it’s because of his personality or his race. As a mixed-race child, was this her own unconscious bias favoring one parent over the other in the racial tug-of-war that plagues our society? ALMOST BROWN  looks for answers to questions shared by many mixed-race people: What are you? What does it mean to be a person of color when the concept is a societal invention and really only applies halfway if you are half white? And how does your relationship with your parents change as you change and grow older?
In a funny, turbulent, and ultimately heartwarming story, Gill examines the brilliant messiness of ancestry, “diversity,” and the idea of “race,” a historical concept that still informs our beliefs about ethnicity today.

Charlotte Gill is a bestselling and award-winning writer of fiction and narrative nonfiction. Ladykiller, her first book, was the recipient of the Danuta Gleed Award for short fiction. Eating Dirt, a tree-planting memoir, was a #1 national bestseller in Canada. Her work has appeared in Vogue and Hazlitt. Gill teaches writing in the MFA program in creative nonfiction at the University of King’s College and is the Rogers Communications Chair of Literary Journalism at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She lives in British Columbia, Canada.