Other books that might interest you

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  American Flygirl

  Susan Tate Ankeny

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  In 1932, Hazel Ying Lee, a nineteen-year-old American daughter of Chinese immigrants, sat in on a friend's flight lesson. It changed her life. In less than a year, a girl with a wicked sense of humor, a newfound love of flying, and a tough can-do attitude earned her pilot's license and headed for China to help against invading Japanese forces. In time, Hazel would become the first Asian American to fly with the Women Airforce Service Pilots. As thrilling as it may have been, it wasn't easy. 
   
   
   
  In America, Hazel felt the oppression and discrimination of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In China's field of male-dominated aviation she was dismissed for being a woman, and for being an American. But in service to her country, Hazel refused to be limited by gender, race, and impossible dreams. Frustrated but undeterred, she forged ahead and gave her all for the cause, achieving more in her short remarkable life than even she imagined possible. 
   
   
   
  American Flygirl is the untold account of a spirted fighter and an indomitable hidden figure in American history. She broke every common belief about women. She challenged every social restriction to endure and to succeed. And against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Hazel Ying Lee reached for the skies and made her mark as a universal and unsung hero whose time has come.

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  The Man Who Shook Mountains - In...

  Lesley Mofokeng

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  'This is a South African story of an unsung hero, a man forgotten by history – though not by me, nor by the people who knew and respected him …'
  When his grandfather gave sermons, he was 'capable of shaking mountains', a church leader tells journalist and author Lesley Mofokeng. 'Ntate Mofokeng pulled people towards God with the great and rare talent of a motivator.'
  In this revealing book, Mofokeng investigates the life of his grandfather, Mongangane Wilfred Mofokeng, a prominent Dutch Reformed Church evangelist. In the 1950s, as Black South Africans were being evicted from the cities to live in reserves and homelands, Mongangane set out to build a community at a dusty cattle post in the far North West province. There he managed to establish a resilient community that mostly lived outside the repressions of the apartheid regime. The journey takes the author from Johannesburg's Marabi-soaked townships of the 1930s to his childhood home of Gelukspan near Lichtenburg and then to rural Free State and the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. In what becomes a spiritual quest, he traces the inspirational footsteps of his ancestors and the legendary King Moshoeshoe.
  Mofokeng also explores the politics and history of the Dutch Reformed Church's Black constituency and uncovers why to this day it is called Kereke ya Fora – or 'Church of the French' – and its hymns are sung across denominations and in social spaces outside the church.

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  Fear Is Just a Word: Book...

  Alexander Pike

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  This content is an independent and unofficial summary created for informational and educational purposes only. It is not affiliated with, authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by the original author or publisher. All rights to the original work belong to its respective copyright holders. This summary is not intended to substitute the original book, but to offer a concise overview and interpretation of its main ideas. 
   
  Fear Is Just a Word is a gripping true story of defiance, resilience, and the quiet power of a voice that refused to disappear. Set in the heart of El Salvador’s brutal gang wars, this audiobook follows Karla—a young woman whose mother was murdered in cold blood—as she transforms from grieving daughter to fearless activist. 
  But this isn’t just a tale of crime and courage. It’s a profound exploration of how fear is used to control, and how it can be dismantled when faced with clarity, truth, and unrelenting persistence. 
  Through vivid storytelling and sharp insight, the author reveals how personal trauma becomes collective resistance—and how ordinary people can challenge even the most entrenched systems of violence. 
  If you’ve ever faced fear—in life, leadership, or your own internal battles—this audiobook will inspire you to name it, confront it, and move through it.

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  Free Fall - Writings on Voice...

  Dustin Beall Smith

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  A stirring literary collection that explores the human experience with wisdom and honesty, by award-winning author Dustin Beall Smith 
  In Free Fall, author and writing teacher Dustin Beall Smith delivers a powerful collection of personal essays, talks, short fiction, and poetry. With a broad range of subjects—from American culture and academia to desire, failure, love, and the impermanence of all things—Smith delves into the lived life. At the same time, he champions the importance of process over product, attention over intention, and implicit meaning over overt messaging. He infuses his writing with humor, risk, and raw emotion, using these elements to write honestly about teaching, learning, and letting go. 
    
  Told from first-, second-, and third-person perspectives—and in poetry that dives deep into life’s vicissitudes—Smith’s work embraces the power of writing in one’s true voice.

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  Womb to Tomb to Womb - Holy Longing

  Dawn Cogger

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  Dawn Cogger’s memoir, Womb to Tomb to Womb, provides fodder for life’s journey, a journey with unimaginable positive changes. Her story demonstrates how our life journey and its teachings are unique for each of us. Her life starts with sporadic Christian teachings, and contrary messages that belief in God is not acceptable, her behaviour often unacceptable. Her love of nature brings her solace and inspiration. She shares her hunger for prayer and a relationship with God. The bold, yet gentle book of life memories starts as a child, travails through her moments of desperation, to a seasoned woman, nurse, spiritual director and writer. It will touch your heart, inviting transformation. 
   
  Her memoir includes her struggle with the deaths of two young patients. She considered marriage to be a life-long commitment, and found it wasn’t. She went to therapy more than once. Dawn seeks and receives spiritual direction. She also walks the contemplative discernment process through the education of providing spiritual direction. As you witness her life, you’ll see her major losses turn into her gifts. Ageing and the virus COVID-19, at times seen as insurmountable challenges, bring about a grateful, inclusive, energized being. She shows the joys and woes of our lives have energy to foster: healing of a broken heart, a fulfilling relationship with God, and a life open to being true to our authentic selves.

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  A Hard Silence - One daugher...

  Melanie Brooks

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  "Melanie Brooks is that rare writer who can delve as deeply into the world of ideas as she can the pitted terrain of the human heart." Andre Dubus III, author of Such Kindness and Townie 
  "Quite simply, unforgettable." Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys 
  In the mid 1980s, Canada's worst public health disaster was unfolding. Catastrophic mismanagement of the country's blood supply allowed contaminated blood to be knowingly distributed, infecting close to two thousand Canadians with HIV. Among them was Melanie Brooks's surgeon father who, after receiving a blood transfusion during open-heart surgery in 1985, learned he was HIV positive. 
  At a time when HIV/AIDS was misunderstood and public perception was shaped by fear, prejudice, and homophobia, victims of the disease faced ostracism and persecution. Wanting to protect his family from this stigma, Melanie's father decided his illness would be a secret they'd all keep. They did not know that her father would live past that first year, but he did. And for ten years before his death in 1995, from the time she was thirteen until she was twenty-three, Melanie's family lived in the shadow of AIDS. She carried the weight of the uncertain trajectory of her father's health and the heartbreaking anticipation of impending loss silently and alone. It became a way of life. 
  A Hard Silence is an intimate glimpse into Melanie's memories of coping with the tragedy of her father's illness and enduring the loneliness and isolation of not being able to speak. With candor and vulnerability, she opens her grief wounds and brings her reader inside her journey, twenty years after her father died, to finally understand the consequences of her family's silence, to interrogate the roots of stigma and discrimination responsible for the ongoing secret-keeping, and to show how she's now learned to be authentic.

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