Southern Memoirs

This compelling memoir describes Elsa van der Byl’s life in South Africa during apartheid, the transition to democracy, and the transformational period. As an educator, she worked with various cultural groups in the so-called homelands, experiencing student revolts, college closures, and being held hostage by students. Listeners are regaled with interesting incidents when, as choir director, Elsa promoted black cultural festivals and interaction with white institutions. Also interwoven are impartial political observations and coping with crime.

The extraordinary Legends of Snyder: A Black Heroic Magician, although still shrouded in mystery, has beneficial lessons and abiding human values of truth. Despite racial segregation and discrimination predominantly in the southern states in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, there were many other good and fascinating things happening as well.

In the late 1960s, Patsy Channing, a stunningly beautiful young woman, was suspended from the venerable Mississippi State College for Women for breach of conduct. The resulting scandal reached all the way to the Columbus courthouse, and the press ate it up. But Patsy's story starts long before that, living with a preoccupied and troubled mother in Memphis, Tennessee. Music becomes her ticket out and a vehicle for the one thing she covets most—a chance to be crowned Miss America. In Confessions of a Southern Beauty Queen, Julie Hines Mabus provides a peek into that world.

The Voyage of The Aegre is a dramatic true account of how a plan to sail a little fishing boat from the Highlands of Scotland down the coast to England turned into a trans-oceanic odyssey for Nick and Julie Grainger. It was the 1970s and their simple wooden boat was equipped with none of the aids modern yachts enjoy. Navigation was by sextant and compass, food cooked on a Primus, and weather forecasting by guesswork.

When you are born in the South you are different. And you always will be.

This intoxicating book by the author of The Revolution of Little Girls combines autobiography, reporting, and the dressed-up lies we call fiction. An underground classic since its initial publication, it is the wildly funny personal testament of Blanche McCrary Boyd, '60s radical and born-again Southerner, a lesbian with an un-PC passion for skydiving and stock-car racing, a graduate of Esalen and kundalini yoga who now takes her altered states "raw, like oysters".

Boxeadores que hace décadas llevaron la emoción de los cuadriláteros a generaciones de latinoamericanos. La lucha que libra la etnia wayúu contra los civilizados, cuyas intrusiones minan la cultura y las costumbres de la etnia. Un equipo de futbol conformado por travestis, dedicado a recaudar fondos para ayudar a homosexuales con problemas de adicción. La curiosa historia de un hombre que fue boxeador y paramilitar, que asegura poseer superpoderes y ser un protegido de los espíritus.

Una crónica que nos abre la puerta a la intimidad de los 365 días transcurridos desde la forzada renuncia de Evo Morales en noviembre de 2019 y su rescate clandestino hasta el regreso triunfante a su país en noviembre de 2020.

John Snyder's memoir of growing up the the Depression era south evokes a time gone by. It is written with affection and non-judgmental understanding of people dealing with hard times, sometimes with cruelty, sometimes with violence, including an unsolved case of arson that changed the author's life. In three parts, it is about early childhood among North Carolina mountaineers, living for a time with two eccentric aunts, and growing up on a sharecropper farm before the author went away to the University of Chicago.

From Curio Bay to Golden Bay, in Down South writer Bruce Ansley sets off on a vast expedition across the South Island, Te Waipounamu, visiting the places and people who hold clues to the south's famous character. Not so very long ago, the South Island had most of New Zealand's people and just about all of the money. Gold miners found fortunes in the hills and rivers, sheep barons straddled mountains, valleys and plains. Wealthy southerners ruled the government. Where now lies the South Island's golden fleece? And what is its future?

Award-winning journalist Javier Sinay investigates a series of murders from the nineteenth century, unearthing the complex history and legacy of Moisés Ville, the “Jerusalem of South America,” and his personal connection to a defining period of Jewish history in Argentina.

Una oportunidad singular de conocer parte de la historia reciente de Perú a través de la vida de un hombre, Lurgio Gavilán, que relata en primera persona su paso por Sendero Luminoso y luego por las Fuerzas Armadas. Por si fuera poco, el protagonista narra también su experiencia en el convento, con lo que reúne en estas páginas los tres actores clave de los últimos años en este país: Sendero Luminoso, Ejército e Iglesia. A través de este libro, cobra inusitada relevancia la autobiografía como género para presentar una realidad con profundidad.

Dos generaciones marcadas por las cicatrices de la guerra. Una lucha ya sin rumbo, ni sentido, cargada del ambiente hostil que causa la rutina del conflicto. La Guerra de los Mil Días marcó un momento en la historia colombiana, cargado de avaricia, ansias de poder, violencia y terror, que aún retumban en las páginas de esta novela.

Prohibition. Mobsters, murder, and mayhem. FBI agents. Cops, robbers, and worse. Sound like the background for a Hollywood epic? It's Ernest Marquez's latest very true story of the renowned gambling ships that anchored in Santa Monica Bay in the 1920s and 1930s. It's the story of Tony Cornero, the cockiest gangster who ever bootlegged a bottle of scotch, the man who helped found Las Vegas, and the smooth operator of the most glamorous gambling ship in the Pacific, the Rex.

When a squad of federal agents burst through her parents' front door, Victoria Fedden felt ill-prepared to meet them: She was weeks away from her due date, and her T-shirt wasn't long enough to hide her maternity undies. As for the question of how to raise a child when you've just discovered that your mother and stepfather have allegedly masterminded a pump-and-dump scheme? She was pretty sure that wasn't covered in What to Expect When You're Expecting.

Miami is not unique among American cities for having so many homicides. It is unique however, for having so many bizarre and exotic ones. The book describes twenty some homicides which range from the usual crimes of passion and mob hits to robberies gone-wrong and political assassinations.

Cova 312 é a história real de como as Forças Armadas mataram pela tortura um jovem militante político, Milton Soares de Castro, forjaram seu suicídio e sumiram com o corpo. Preso em 1967, Milton, integrante do primeiro e frustrado grupo de guerrilha pós-golpe de 1964, desapareceu sem deixar rastros. A guerrilha — que jamais aconteceu — teria início na serra do Caparaó, mas Milton foi preso e levado para a Penitenciária de Linhares, em Juiz de Fora, onde foi torturado e morto. Os militares forjaram documentos informando que ele havia se suicidado.

When I attended Jefferson Elementary School in Charlottesville in 1960, I was selected to recite the poem "The Path" by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the noted black poet. That poem captured the story of my life. I had no idea when I first learned it by memory and recited it many times before the class that it would later have such a direct and dramatic application to my life. I recited the words not knowing their true meaning back then, but I know what they mean now, and who would have imagined how appropriate they would be.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Edward Evan's South with Scott. Edward relates the details of Scott's fatal southern expedition, with special emphasis on those supporting the main push to the pole.

Sally, a beautiful young pregnant woman, came to the hospital supposedly for pre-term labor pains but delivered a fully mature, healthy boy. Her face, smiling with relief after the stress of delivery, quickly changed to apprehension. “Doctor, what will you tell my husband and family? Can you please tell them that the baby is premature?” She asked. “How can I?” Dr. Thomas replied helplessly. “The baby is fully grown and mature, as anyone can see.”