Showing results for title "Black" in Biographies & Memoirs

A New Formation is not a book about football and racism. Jacobs and his co-contributors—including authors Musa Okwonga and Aniefiok Ekpoudom and sports broadcaster Jeanette Kwakye MBE—eschew the standard frameworks of trauma and oppression that are foisted upon Black narratives and seek to move beyond discussions of diversity, identity and representation. Featuring interviews with legendary players such as Ian Wright, Anita Asante and Andy Cole, they draw upon broader social and cultural history to examine Black footballers in contexts larger than themselves.

Jess enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduating from high school in 2001, and in 2004 she volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps' first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. Her platoon was tasked with recovering and processing the remains of fallen soldiers. With sensitivity and insight, Jess describes her job retrieving and examining the remains of fellow soldiers lost in combat in Iraq, and the psychological intricacy of coping with their fates, as well as her own.

In 1802, Richard Drake (1790-1857) at the age of 12, joined his uncle on a slaving voyage between Benin and Brazil. It was the beginning of his 50 years’ career as a slave trader. Revelations of a Slave Smuggler, published posthumously in 1860, tells his stories including those of journeys to the interior of Africa, slave hunts, gold prospecting in West Africa, his capture by an African tribe, lion hunting, marriage to an African woman, visits with African rulers, slave markets, and the West Indies trade.

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.

An international best seller, this is the extraordinary memoir of a German-Nigerian woman who learns that her grandfather was the brutal Nazi commandant depicted in Schlinder's List. When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, happens to pluck a library book from the shelf, she has no idea that her life will be irrevocably altered. Recognising photos of her mother and grandmother in the book, she discovers a horrifying fact.

For Michael Morrison, the police badge is his future: his ambition, his way out of poverty, his ‘American dream’. But once he puts on his uniform, the badge starts to mean something very different. Michael takes on a new identity – but not the one he expects. Inside the force, he faces racism and violence, and on the streets he’s surrounded by hostility. Michael is stuck in the middle, between being Black and being a police officer. And when a routine day at work goes wrong and his career is thrown into crisis, Michael is forced to pick a side. In this new, limited podcast series ...

John Robert Lewis was an American politician and civil-rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020 from pancreatic cancer. Lewis served as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966. This is his remarkable story!

The racist laws that prohibited interracial marriage and the long history of the fight against them is best told by the almost fairytale love story of the Richard and Mildred Loving. Complex legal arguments are reduced into plain language - empowering the reader to understand how the fight to defend human rights continues today. Richard and Mildred did enjoy a fairytale romance - at first. As children, their families were close friends and the marriage and birth of their children were celebrated as bringing everyone together as one big happy family. But then, at 2am one night, the Sheriff ...

Including letters and poems from over 20 phenomenal Black women from around the world, MVM is continuing to do the work of centering our trials and triumphs like only we can. MVM was intentional about being for, by, and about Black women.

After 30 years as a professor in the field of communication studies, Dr. Smith reminisces about some of his experiences and how his race and differently abled intersectionality have influenced documented encounters. As a Black and totally blind individual, he muses about how this distinction has both colored and shed light on what might have been innocuous or unremarkable encounters otherwise.

In Reggie Ford's bold reassessment of the Black experience in America, he demonstrates that a new understanding of PTSD is required. PTSD, or Perseverance Through Severe Dysfunction, as Ford defines it, underlines the darkness of mental illnesses and behaviors that impact young Black men and have plagued Black Americans for generations. But his reassessment is not doom and gloom. Instead, Ford implores that we turn pain into peace. Ford uses his own traumatic experiences to inform his call to action.

Despite her distinction and other more notable accomplishments, many people today are not familiar with the groundbreaking actress Dorothy Dandridge, even though she was among the most charismatic and beautiful actresses of the era. Her alluring nightclub acts set pulses pounding across the globe, and she was Hollywood’s first black leading actress. Sadly, all of it came at a high price.

Over a three-decade period that began in 1919, Oscar Micheaux wrote, directed, edited, produced, and distributed over 40 films nationally and internationally. These films usually featured all-Black casts. They spanned a silent film period and a talkie period (sound films). Given such a background and the period in American history into which he was born, Micheaux's achievements were extraordinary and his legacy is a study of survival, persistence, and bold determination to develop a new era in Black films.

Given his legacy, many Americans today believe Jackie Robinson was the first Black man to play in Major League Baseball, but that answer is wrong. As far back as the late 19th century, there had been professional baseball leagues that were every bit as segregated as any other aspect of society, but before that, there were, for a brief shining moment, teams of Black and White men playing with and against each other. One of the first Black men to play on such a team was Moses Fleetwood Walker, and he was the first who openly identified as Black.

Piper Kerman lebt glücklich mit ihrem Verlobten in Manhattan, als ihr eine Jugendsünde zum Verhängnis wird. Das Gericht verurteilt sie zu einer 15-monatigen Haftstrafe. Über die Zeit im Frauengefängnis, über Schikanen, bösartige Attacken, aber auch über Freundschaften und vor allem ihre toughen und warmherzigen Mitgefangenen schreibt sie ohne Selbstmitleid, humorvoll und sehr unterhaltsam.

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start.

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the gruelling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself. The result is a black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

The story of America's longest war is complicated and difficult to convey, unless you were there. Dennis Woods was there. By following his stories in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can sense the enormity of his combat experiences. Originally written for his daughter, Black Flag Journals is taken from the author's nine battle book journals. It covers his time from the fall of the Twin Towers through his last combat tour.

Lewis Black may not be the last angry man, but he is certainly the funniest. The celebrated political comedian, master of comedic angst, New York Times best-selling author and Daily Show regular is back to discuss life, politics and his new book about his least favorite holiday, Christmas. In I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas. Connie Chung is an Emmy Award-winning network television anchor and reporter whose career has spanned NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC.

Goalkeepers in trousers, proper division names, turf patterns, pixelated scoreboards and, of course, Saturday evening pink newspapers.... They were the gritty stardust that made football sparkle. Here, 50 such wonders are drawn together with evocative charm before they slip from memory forever. Dedicating a chapter to each wonder, Daniel Gray's pieces sound more like love letters than essays.