"Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and...

A memoir that examines rural poverty and the lingering strains of racism in the South by the author of Salvage the bones.

Angelou's fourth autobiographical volume proceeds from her departure from California with her son, Guy, through her early years in Harlem and the civil-rights movement, in London and Cairo and the breakup of her marriage.

In 2009, "New York Times" bestselling author Eloisa James took a leap that many people dream about: she sold her house, took a sabbatical from her job as a Shakespeare professor, and moved her family to Paris. "Paris in Love: A Memoir" chronicles her joyful year in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. With no classes to teach, no committee meetings to attend, no lawn to mow or cars to park, Eloisa revels in the ordinary pleasures of life--discovering...

When Reyna Grande's father leaves his wife and three children behind in a village in Mexico to make the dangerous trek across the border to the United States, he promises he will soon return from "El Otro Lado" (The Other Side) with enough money to build them a dream house where they can all live together. His promises become harder to believe as months turn into years. When he summons his wife to join him, Reyna and her siblings are deposited in...

"Bird Cloud" is the name the author gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and four hundred foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky. She also saw pelicans, bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ravens, scores of bluebirds, harriers, kestrels, elk, deer and a dozen antelope. She fell in love with the land, then owned by the Nature Conservancy,...

Zitkala-Sa finds that she can sing through her music, but also by writing stories and giving speeches and being an activist for Native American rights.

"Simple text and full-color photographs introduce readers to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Developed by literacy experts for students in kindergarten through third grade"--

The author describes her odyssey to Ghana in the 1960s, meant as a return to her African roots. Over a few years she transformed herself by learning to speak Fanti, dressing in Ghanian style and delving in politics. But after encountering racial prejudice and losing her son in a car crash, she returned to America.

In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor,...