Other books that might interest you

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  Unruled Body An - A Poet’s Memoir

  Ani Gjika

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  In a searching and powerful debut memoir, award-winning poet and literary translator Ani Gjika tells a different kind of origin story by writing about the ways a woman listens to her own body, intuition, and desire. 
   
   
   
  Ani Gjika was born in Albania and came of age just after the fall of Communism, a time when everyone had a secret to keep and young women were afraid to walk down the street alone. When her family immigrates to America, Gjika finds herself far from the grandmother who helped raise her, grappling with a new language, and isolated from aging parents who are trying in their own ways to survive. When she meets a young man whose mind leans toward writing, as hers does, Ani falls in love—at least, she thinks it's love. 
   
   
   
  Set across Albania, Thailand, India, and the US, An Unruled Body is a young woman's journey to selfhood through the lenses of language, sexuality, and identity, and how she learns to find freedom of expression on her own terms.

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  The One Thing We've Never Spoken...

  Elfy Scott

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  An investigation into the failings of Australia’s mental healthcare system, grounded in a personal story of a mother–daughter relationship 
   
  Journalist Elfy Scott grew up in a household where her mother’s schizophrenia was rarely, if ever, spoken about. They navigated this silence outside the family home too; for many years, this complex mental health condition was treated as an open secret. 
   
  Over the past two decades, we have started talking more about common mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. But complex conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and psychosis have been left behind, as have many of the people who live with these conditions or who care for them. 
   
  Part memoir, part deep-dive investigation, The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About is filled with rage at how our nation’s public discourse, emergency services and healthcare systems continue to fail so many people. It is also a work of care, telling the little-heard stories of people who live with these conditions and work at the front lines of mental health. Above all, this timely, compelling book is informed by hope and courage, breaking down taboos and asking big questions about vulnerability, justice and duty of care. 
   
  ‘Expansive and generous … brimming with kindness, revelatory accounts and wit. The book itself is a thing of grace.’ Rick Morton 
   
  ‘Elfy brings empathy, reason and generosity to a book Australia so desperately needs.’ Zara McDonald 
   
  ‘Absorbing and mind-opening, this is panoramic in scope, while offering a deeply intimate portrait of fierce familial love and care.’ Benjamin Law

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  GööKA From the Village to the...

  Eng Peter NDUATI

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  Live life forwards but understand it by looking backwards. In the book, the author’s 21st-century daily experiences are mirrored in his village days. From the comfort of a ZOOM class, jog around the estate and make rare encounters. Walk with him through libraries, hit ( ) golf balls, visit the beach and learn a thing or two about hyenas, lions and leopards. 
  These experiences are made especially interesting with historical, social, scientific, and mathematical satire as the author seeks to fulfil his 10,000-step daily requirement for fitness, monitored by his new master, ‘Googlefit’. Whatever age or career, the experiences in this anthology of 24 stories make you reflect on your life and laugh or cry.

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  Fonda on Film - The Political...

  Nelson Pressley

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  As much coverage as Jane Fonda has elicited through the years, the stories often skim past her prime filmmaking core.  
  Fonda on Film spotlights the signature political films Fonda generated in the 1970s—Coming Home, The China Syndrome, 9 to 5, and more—that are still underappreciated even as Fonda endures as one of the world’s most admired and controversial performers.  
  This is a movie book about a mega-celebrity, an origin story voyaging through Fonda’s learning years in the 1960s and the calculated payoff of the 1970s. She emerged as a Hollywood scion challenged to prove herself while trying to rise above ingenue roles and sex-angst melodramas. Splitting time between the United States and France to stretch her range, Fonda broke through as the perky newlywed of Barefoot in the Park, the sci-fi pinup Barbarella, and the Oscar-winning star of the sleek Klute.  
  And then Fonda earned her activist stripes with the Vietnam vets’ Winter Soldier hearings and her alt-USO F.T.A. tour. She survived the “Hanoi Jane” flap and, by the mid-1970s, transformed into a singular star on an unparalleled moviemaking mission.  
  Fonda’s long post-Klute break ended with bold comeback hits—comedy and economic justice in Fun with Dick and Jane, high drama and political commitment with Julia. Over the following half decade, Fonda’s production company generated the purposeful movies that still underpin her actor-activist persona, including the groundbreaking Coming Home on Vietnam, the timely The China Syndrome on nuclear power and the still-relevant 9 to 5 on workplace equality. 
  Her more recent work protesting the Iraq War in 2005 and ringleading the 2019–20 Fire Drill Fridays campaigns on Capitol Hill illustrates Fonda’s political method—and how it guided her movie work.  
  Fonda on Film is a movie buff’s book, and a portrait of an iconic activist-artist bridging the gap between streets and screens.

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  The Underground Railroad Part 3

  William Still

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  Never before has the working of the Underground Railroad been so thoroughly explained. Here we have in complete detail the various methods adopted for circumventing the enemies of freedom, and told, as it is, with great simplicity and natural feeling, the narrative is one which cannot but make a deep impression. Thrilling incidents, heroic adventures and noble deeds of self-sacrifice light up every page, and will enlist the heartiest sympathies of all generous souls. It was eminently just that such a record of one of the most remarkable phases of the struggle against slavery should be prepared, that the memory of the noble originators and supporters of the railroad might be kept green, and posterity enabled to form a true conception of the necessity that called it into existence, and of the difficulties under which its work was performed. The labor of compiling could not have fallen into more appropriate or better qualified hands. The Philadelphia Inquirer  William Still is often called the Father of the Underground Railroad.  Over 14 years, he helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom in Canada.  Still was committed to preserving the stories of the bondmen and he kept careful records of the many escaped slaves who passed through the Philadelphia “station”.  The Underground Railroad was published in 1871 from Still’s records and diaries.  In bringing you these stories, Librivox volunteers are reading from the 1878 edition. (Summary by MaryAnn)Complete list of recordings comprising this book:The Underground Railroad, Part 1, The Underground Railroad, Part 2, The Underground Railroad, Part 3, The Underground Railroad, Part 4, The Underground Railroad, Part 5.

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  Blessed Are the Meek - From...

  Mary Webb

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  Mary Gladys Meredith was born on 25th March 1881 at Leighton Lodge in the village of Leighton, near Shrewsbury in Shropshire.  
  Mary was home-schooled by her father before being sent to a finishing school in Southport in 1895. Her longs walks in the countryside helped her develop a heightened sense of observation and description, of both people and places, which later infused both her poetry and prose. 
  When she was 20 she developed symptoms of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder that caused bulging protuberant eyes and throat goitre. This caused life-long ill health and was a possible contributor to her early death.  
  Mary was first published as a teenager when her brother sent to a local newspaper her poem on a recent rail accident.  Mary, who was in the habit of destroying her work was appalled though placated when she discovered that it had received some positive appreciation in readers letters. 
  1912 brought marriage to Henry Bertram Law Webb, a teacher. He supported her literary work which, in 1917, resulted in the publication of her novel ‘The Golden Arrow.’ 
  A few years later they acquired a property in London where, it was hoped, recognition of her literary talents would be more easily recognised.   
  Her 1924 novel, ‘Precious Bane’, won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse, the prestigious French literary prize awarded by an all-female jury. 
  Most of her poetry and various other works were only published after her death. 
  By 1927 her health was deteriorating and her marriage failing.   
  Mary Webb died on 8th October 1927 at St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.  She was 46.

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