Affection and Estrangement

Affection and Estrangement
Author: Preston Mercer Browning
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1440171297

Focusing on race, religion, and class, author Preston M. Browning Jr. discusses life in the rural South as he experienced it in the 1930s and 1940s. With humorous touches and an eye for detail, this memoir provides not only snippets about the era but also the history of some of Virginia's oldest families. Born in 1929, Browning's childhood coincided with the Great Depression, and much of what he tells about his Culpeper, Virginia home communicates the ubiquitous poverty of the time. In addition, Affection and Estrangement: A Southern Family Memoir includes stories about relatives Browning remembers some quite eccentric, as well as ancestors from two distinguished Virginia families, the Cockes and the Cabells. He also examines the impact of the oftentimes harsh and punitive Calvinist piety of the time, with its emphasis on human depravity. Including sketches of more than twenty relatives and ancestors, Affection and Estrangement: A Southern Family Memoir shows how Browning's family shaped his emerging sense of self from his mother's aristocratic heritage to his father's business-oriented, middle-class background. This memoir pays tribute to those people ancestors, parents, relatives, teachers, clergymen, siblings, and friends who contributed so much to the formation of Browning and his character.

Affection and Estrangement: a Southern Family Memoir

Affection and Estrangement: a Southern Family Memoir
Author: Preston M. Browning Jr.
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2009-10-30
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1440171300

Preston Browning Jr. entered the world in 1929, a few months before the Crash and the onset of the Great Depression. In Culpeper, Virginia, Browning grew up amid the pervasive poverty of the times where he recalls being labeled by his father as the worlds worst grouch, led in song by Miss Lizzy Lovellwho banged on the piano at the local Episcopal church, and seated astride a cow who needed a lot of convincing to take him for a ride around the pasture beyond his house. With humor and exceptional detail, Browning shares a lively memoir that focuses on his coming-of-age journey and subsequent experiences in the rural South during the 1930s and 1940s, providing a compelling glimpse into how his family and others helped shape his emerging sense of self, his convictions, and his character. While providing snippets about the era and sketches of more than twenty relatives and ancestors that include an amusing retelling about his Uncle Sweets experiences at a hoochie-coochie show, Browning details the fascinating legacy of his Southern upbringing during a time when a struggle for racial, economic, and social justice prevailed in America. In this inspiring memoir, a Southerner reminisces about small-town Virginia before, during, and after the Great Depression through entertaining stories about his unconventional ancestors, his immediate family, and his own experiences.

Estranged

Estranged
Author: Jessica Berger Gross
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2017-07-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501101609

"To outsiders, Jessica Berger Gross's childhood--growing up in a 'nice' Jewish family in middle class Long Island--seemed as wholesomely American as any other. But behind closed doors, Jessica suffered years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her father, whose mood would veer unexpectedly from loving to violent. At the age of twenty-eight, still reeling from the trauma but emotionally dependent on her dysfunctional family, Jessica made the anguished decision to cut ties with them entirely. Years later, living in Maine with a loving husband and young son, having finally found happiness, Jessica is convinced the decision saved her life. Jessica breaks through common social taboos and bravely recounts the painful, self-defeating ways in which she internalized her abusive childhood, how she came to the monumental decision to break free from her family, and how she endured the difficult road that followed. Ultimately, by extracting herself from the damaging patterns and relationships of the past, Jessica has managed to carve an inspiring path to happiness--one she has created on her own terms. Her story, told here in a careful, unflinching, and forthright way, completely reframes how we think about family and the past."--

Estranged

Estranged
Author: Jessica Berger Gross
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2017-07-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1501101625

Jessica Berger Gross’s “gripping memoir about growing up in—and growing out of—a deeply dysfunctional, abusive family” (Glamour.com) redefines our understanding of estrangement and celebrates the ability to triumph over adversity. To outsiders, Jessica Berger Gross’s childhood—growing up in a “nice” Jewish family in middle class Long Island—seemed as wholesomely American as any other. But behind closed doors, Jessica suffered years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her father, whose mood would veer unexpectedly from loving to violent. At the age of twenty-eight, still reeling from the trauma but emotionally dependent on her dysfunctional family, Jessica made the anguished decision to cut ties with them entirely. Years later, living in Maine with a loving husband and young son, having finally found happiness, Jessica is convinced the decision saved her life. In her “unsentimentally courageous memoir” (Kirkus Reviews), one of Elle’s “Best Books of the Summer,” Jessica breaks through common social taboos and bravely recounts the painful, self-defeating ways in which she internalized her abusive childhood, how she came to the monumental decision to distance herself from her family, and how she endured the difficult road that followed. Ultimately, by removing herself from the damaging patterns and relationships of the past, Jessica has managed to carve an inspiring path to happiness—one she has created on her own terms. Her story, told here in a careful, unflinching, and forthright way, completely reframes how we think about family and the past. Estranged is “a memoir of love, abuse, despair, and hope…a reminder that any family can hide a secret and that many victims of abuse go their entire lives without speaking out about it” (Booklist).

Dog Flowers

Dog Flowers
Author: Danielle Geller
Publisher: One World
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2022-04-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1984820419

A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother’s life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family’s troubled history. “A candid and achingly fractured memoir of [Geller’s] mother, her family, her Navajo heritage and her own journey to self-discovery and acceptance.”—Ms. SHORTLISTED FOR: The Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, The Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Esquire, She Reads When Danielle Geller’s mother dies of alcohol withdrawal during an attempt to get sober, Geller returns to Florida and finds her mother’s life packed into eight suitcases. Most were filled with clothes, except for the last one, which contained diaries, photos, and letters, a few undeveloped disposable cameras, dried sage, jewelry, and the bandana her mother wore on days she skipped a hair wash. Geller, an archivist and a writer, uses these pieces of her mother’s life to try and understand her mother’s relationship to home, and their shared need to leave it. Geller embarks on a journey where she confronts her family's history and the decisions that she herself had been forced to make while growing up, a journey that will end at her mother's home: the Navajo reservation. Dog Flowers is an arresting, photo-lingual memoir that masterfully weaves together images and text to examine mothers and mothering, sisters and caretaking, and colonized bodies. Exploring loss and inheritance, beauty and balance, Danielle Geller pays homage to our pasts, traditions, and heritage, to the families we are given and the families we choose.

Done With The Crying

Done With The Crying
Author: Sheri McGregor
Publisher:
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
ISBN: 9780997352207

In this encouraging book, Sheri McGregor helps parents of estranged adult children break free from emotional pain and move forward in their lives. With the latest research, her own experience, and insight from more than 9,000 parents, McGregor covers the growing trend of estranged adults from loving families. Devastated parents can be happy again.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

Whistling Past the Graveyard
Author: Susan Crandall
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1476740046

"Fleeing her strict grandmother's home in 1963 Mississippi, 9-year-old Starla Claudelle becomes an unlikely companion to an African-American woman at whose side she learns harsh lessons about period segregation and family. By the RITA-winning author of Back Roads. 50,000 first printing."

When She Was White

When She Was White
Author: Judith Stone
Publisher: Miramax Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008-04-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781401309374

During the worst years of official racism in South Africa, the story of one young girl gripped the nation and came to symbolize the injustice, corruption, and arbitrary nature of apartheid. Born in 1955 to a pro-apartheid Afrikaner couple, Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. But when she was sent to a boarding school for whites, she was mercilessly persecuted because of her dark skin and frizzy hair. Her parents attributed Sandra's appearance to an interracial union far back in history; they swore Sandra was their child. Their neighbors, however, thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man. The family was shunned. And when Sandra was ten, she was removed from school by the police and reclassified as "coloured." As a teenager, Sandra eloped with a black man, and her parents disowned her. The young woman, who had only known the privileged world of the whites, chose to begin again in a poor, rural, all-black township, where life was a desperate, day-to-day struggle against poverty, illness, and a legal system designed to enslave. In this remarkable narrative, veteran journalist and author Judith Stone takes us on her own eye-opening journey as she and Sandra explore the mysteries of Sandra's past and piece together the fractured life of one of apartheid's many victims. As the devastating circumstances of Sandra's life are revealed, Stone comes to understand and admire her for the flawed -- yet enduring -- survivor she is.

The Most Influential Women in History: Over 100 Memoirs & Biographies

The Most Influential Women in History: Over 100 Memoirs & Biographies
Author: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 3204
Release: 2023-11-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

DigiCat presents to you this meticulously edited collection of memoirs, biographies and stories about the most incredible women in history, their lives and their legacies: Eighty Years and More by Elizabeth Cady Stanton Helen Keller: The Story of My Life Harriet Tubman, the Moses of Her People Reminiscences by Julia Ward Howe My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst The Autobiography of Mother Jones Sweeper in the Sky: The Life of Maria Mitchell Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography The Life of Florence Nightingale The Grimké Sisters Roswitha the Nun Marie de France Mechthild of Magdeburg Countess of Artois Christine de Pisan Agnes Sorel Alcestis Antigone Iphigenia Paula Catherine Douglas Lady Jane Grey Flora Macdonald Madame Roland Grace Darling Sister Dora Florence Nightingale Lucretia Sappho Aspasia of Pericles Xantippe Aspasia of Cyrus Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi Portia Octavia Cleopatra Mariamne Julia Domna Zenobia Valeria Eudocia Hypatia The Wife of Maximus The Lady Rowena Olga The Lady Elfrida The Countess of Tripoli Jane, Countess of Mountfort Laura de Sade The Countess of Richmond Elizabeth Woodville Jane Shore Catharine of Arragon Augustina Saragoza Charlotte Brontë... Marie Antoinette Sarah Siddons Mrs Grant Elizabeth Inchbald Elizabeth Hamilton Countess de Vemieiro Joanna Baillie Josephine Anne Radcliffe Miss Edgeworth Charlotte Corday Madame de Stael Madame de la Rochejaquelein Madame Recamier Mary Brunton Felicia Hemans Augustina Saragoza Charlotte Bronte Queen Anne Esther Johnson Esther Vanhomrigh Mary Astell Madame des Ursins Lady Grizel Jerviswoode Madame de Pontchartrain Elizabeth Halkett Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Madame du Deffand Phœbe Bentley Marquise du Chatelet Lady Huntingdon Flora Macdonald Madame Roland Grace Darling Sister Dora Maria Theresa Meta Moller Elizabeth Blackwell Lætitia Barbauld Hannah More Anna Seward Catherine Cockburn Elizabeth Berkeleigh...