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"Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in...
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This is the story of Condoleezza Rice-- her early years growing up in the hostile environment of Birmingham, Alabama; her rise in the ranks at Stanford University to become the university's second-in-command and an expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs; and finally, in 2000, her appointment as the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State.
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"One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the ever looming absence of her incarcerated father and the path we must take to both honor and overcome our origins. For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who...
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Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police...
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Medfield Memoirs for Adults - Critically Acclaimed
Natick-Morse Black History Month 2024
Wayland Library Staff Picks - Biography
Natick-Morse Black History Month 2024
Wayland Library Staff Picks - Biography
Description
Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls 'wildly undisciplined.' She casts an insightful and critical eye over her childhood, teens, and twenties -- including the devastating act of violence that was a turning point at age 12 -- and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. With candor, vulnerability, and authority, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when...
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Lakeside classics volume 96
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English
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The author was born into slavery in Virginia. Through her skill as a dressmaker she bought freedom for herself and her son in the 1850s and moved to Washington, D.C. There she opened a business and became a dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln during and after the Lincoln White House years.
11) Finding me
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Audie Awards
Dedham's Black History Month - Adult
Medfield Memoirs for Adults - Hollywood Stars
SOM Read-Alikes for The Woman in Me
Dedham's Black History Month - Adult
Medfield Memoirs for Adults - Hollywood Stars
SOM Read-Alikes for The Woman in Me
Description
This is Viola Davis' story, in her own words, and spans her incredible, inspiring life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her present day. Hers is a story of overcoming, a true hero's journey.
"In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and...
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In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop while taking graduate studies at Yale, marrying a white man from the north and bring him home to her family, adopting two babies from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays...
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"A revelatory account of the actions taken by the first president to retain his slaves in spite of Northern laws profiles one of the slaves, Ona Judge, describing the intense manhunt that ensued when she ran away."--NoveList.
"When George and Martha Washington moved from their beloved Mount Vernon in Virginia to Philadelphia, then the seat of the nation's capital, they took nine enslaved people with them. They would serve as cooks and horsemen, as...
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When Harriet Tubman was born a plantation slave in 1820, her parents hoped she could learn a trade and be spared from working in the fields. But because she defended a slave against an overseer, she became a field hand anyway. As she learned to survive in the woods and find her way by the North Star, she dreamed of freedom. When she was almost 30, she finally made her escape-but securing her own freedom wasn't enough. Risking life and limb, she became...
17) The women
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A New York Times Notable Book
Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother...
19) Harriet Tubman
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English
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Did you know that Harriet Tubman helped runaway slaves escape to freedom? She took them to Canada. Find out more in Harriet Tubman, a Historical Heroes book.
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A candid memoir filled with vivid anecdotes: Growing up in the South, navigating stand-up comedy's challenging early days, brushes with celebrities like Chris Rock and Whoopi Goldberg, and insights on Ghostbusters, Supermarket Sweep, The Daily Show. Revealing struggles as a tall Black woman in comedy.
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