How To Write An Autobiographical Novel

Author: Alexander Chee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 1328764419
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
Named a Best Book of 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time, among many others, this essay collection from the author of The Queen of the Night explores how we form identities in life and in art. As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as “masterful” by Roxane Gay, “incendiary” by the New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he’s sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing — Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley — the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack. Named a Best Book by: Time, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, New York Public Library, Boston Globe, Paris Review, Mother Jones,The A.V. Club, Out Magazine, Book Riot, Electric Literature, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, Paste, Bitch, Library Journal, Flavorwire, Bustle, Christian Science Monitor, Shelf Awareness, Tor.com, Entertainment Cheat Sheet, Roads and Kingdoms, Chicago Public Library, Hyphen Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, The Coil, iBooks, and Washington Independent Review of Books Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction * Recipient of the Lambda Literary Trustees' Award * Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography

Edinburgh

Author: Alexander Chee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544671872
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Book Description
From the best-selling author of How To Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee's award-winning debut is "One of the great queer novels . . . of our time."—Brandon Taylor, GQ Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean-American boy growing up in Maine whose powerful soprano voice wins him a place as section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys choir. But when, on a retreat, Fee discovers how the director treats the boys he makes section leader, he is so ashamed, he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, Fee’s best friend, is in line to be next. The director is eventually arrested, and Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself. Years later, after he has carefully pieced a new life together, Fee takes a job at a private school near his hometown. There he meets a young student, Arden, who, to his shock, is the picture of Peter—and the son of his old choir director. Told with “the force of a dream and the heft of a life” (Annie Dillard), this is a haunting, lyrically written debut novel that marked Chee “as a major talent whose career will bear watching” (Publisher’s Weekly).

The Queen Of The Night

Author: Alexander Chee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544106601
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 573

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, and others. The mesmerizing story of one woman's rise from circus rider to courtesan to world-renowned diva—"a brilliant performance" (Washington Post). The Queen of the Night tells the captivating story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role—her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? With epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details, Alexander Chee shares Lilliet’s cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals. “It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera.”—The New Yorker “Sprawling, soaring, bawdy, and plotted like a fine embroidery.”—NPR

The Air You Breathe

Author: Frances de Pontes Peebles
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735211000
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
"[A] glorious, glittery saga of friendship and loss... I read The Air You Breathe in two nights. (One might say I inhaled it.)." --NPR "Echoes of Elena Ferrante resound in this sumptuous saga."--O, The Oprah Magazine "Enveloping...Peebles understands the shifting currents of female friendship, and she writes so vividly about samba that you close the book certain its heroine's voices must exist beyond the page." -People The story of an intense female friendship fueled by affection, envy and pride--and each woman's fear that she would be nothing without the other. Some friendships, like romance, have the feeling of fate. Skinny, nine-year-old orphaned Dores is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when in walks a girl who changes everything. Graça, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy sugar baron, is clever, well fed, pretty, and thrillingly ill behaved. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça quickly bond over shared mischief, and then, on a deeper level, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. Music will become their shared passion, the source of their partnership and their rivalry, and for each, the only way out of the life to which each was born. But only one of the two is destined to be a star. Their intimate, volatile bond will determine each of their fortunes--and haunt their memories. Traveling from Brazil's inland sugar plantations to the rowdy streets of Rio de Janeiro's famous Lapa neighborhood, from Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood back to the irresistible drumbeat of home, The Air You Breathe unfurls a moving portrait of a lifelong friendship--its unparalleled rewards and lasting losses--and considers what we owe to the relationships that shape our lives.

The Best American Essays 2016

Author: Jonathan Franzen
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544812174
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 355

Book Description
The National Book Award–winning author compiles a “thought-provoking volume” of essays by Joyce Carol Oates, Oliver Sacks, Jaquira Diaz and others (Publishers Weekly). As Jonathan Franzen writes in his introduction, his main criterion for selecting The Best American Essays 2016 “was whether an author had taken a risk.” The resulting volume showcases authorial risk in a variety of forms, from championing an unpopular opinion to the possibility of ruining a professional career, or irrevocably alienating one’s family. What’s gained are essential insights into aspects of the human condition that would otherwise remain concealed—from questions of queer identity, to the experience of a sibling’s autism and relationships between students and college professors. The Best American Essays 2016 includes entries by Alexander Chee, Paul Crenshaw, Jaquira Diaz, Laura Kipnis, Amitava Kaumar, Sebastian Junger, Joyce Carol Oates, Oliver Sacks, George Steiner, Thomas Chatterton Williams, and others.

The Year in San Fernando

Author: Michael Anthony
Publisher: Hodder Education
ISBN: 1398342572
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
There have been many great and enduring works of literature by Caribbean authors over the last century. The Caribbean Contemporary Classics collection celebrates these deep and vibrant stories, overflowing with life and acute observations about society. This luminous book recounted through the eyes of the 12-year-old Francis, describes the year he spends, far away from home, in San Fernando. As his initial confusion gives way to increasing confidence and maturity, the open consciousness of the boy allows different times, events and places to co-exist. Over the course of one year, through Francis' eyes, we see the cycle of natural change and progression; the daily round of the market, showing the fruits of different seasons, the passage of dry season to rainy and back again to dry, the cane fires as the crop comes to an end, all symbolising the progression of the boy's year. And weaving in and amongst these mundane but intense experiences Francis feels his way to some understanding of adulthood.

The Intimate Critique

Author: Diane P. Freedman
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822312925
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
For a long time now, readers and scholars have strained against the limits of traditional literary criticism, whose precepts--above all, "objectivity"--seem to have so little to do with the highly personal and deeply felt experience of literature. The Intimate Critique marks a movement away from this tradition. With their rich spectrum of personal and passionate voices, these essays challenge and ultimately breach the boundaries between criticism and narrative, experience and expression, literature and life. Grounded in feminism and connected to the race, class, and gender paradigms in cultural studies, the twenty-six contributors to this volume--including Jane Tompkins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Shirley Nelson Garner, and Shirley Goek-Lin Lim--respond in new, refreshing ways to literary subjects ranging from Homer to Freud, Middlemarch to The Woman Warrior, Shiva Naipaul to Frederick Douglass. Revealing the beliefs and formative life experiences that inform their essays, these writers characteristically recount the process by which their opinions took shape--a process as conducive to self-discovery as it is to critical insight. The result--which has been referred to as "personal writing," "experimental critical writing," or "intellectual autobiography"--maps a dramatic change in the direction of literary criticism. Contributors. Julia Balen, Dana Beckelman, Ellen Brown, Sandra M. Brown, Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton, Suzanne Bunkers, Peter Carlton, Brenda Daly, Victoria Ekanger, Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, Shirley Nelson Garner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Melody Graulich, Gail Griffin, Dolan Hubbard, Kendall, Susan Koppelman, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Linda Robertson, Carol Taylor, Jane Tompkins, Cheryl Torsney, Trace Yamamoto, Frances Murphy Zauhar

Slaughterhouse 90210

Author: Maris Kreizman
Publisher: Flatiron Books
ISBN: 1250061121
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The perfect book for anyone with a Netflix account and a library card. "Smart, sharp, and hilarious, Slaughterhouse 90210 is the perfect pick-me-up and never-put-me-down book." - Jami Attenburg, bestselling author of The Middlesteins Slaughterhouse 90210 pairs literature's greatest lines with pop culture's best moments. In 2009, Maris Kreizman wanted to combine her fierce love for pop culture with a lifelong passion for reading, and so the blog Slaughterhouse 90210 was born. By matching poignant passages from literature with popular moments from television, film, and real life, Maris' work instantly caught the attention (and adoration) of thousands. And it's easy to see why. Slaughterhouse 90210 is subversively brilliant, finding the depth in the shallows of reality television, and the levity in Lahiri. A picture of Taylor Swift is paired with Joan Didion's quote, "Above all, she is the girl who 'feels things'. The girl ever wounded, ever young." Tony Soprano tenderly hugs his teenage son, accompanied by a line from Middlemarchabout, "The patches of hardness and tenderness [that] lie side by side in men's dispositions." The images and quotes complement and deepen one another in surprising, profound, and tender ways. With over 150 color photographs from some of popular culture's most iconic moments, Kreizman shows why comparing Walter White to Faust makes sense in our celebrity obsessed, tv crazed society.

Travels

Author: Michael Crichton
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307816494
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a deeply personal memoir full of fascinating adventures as he travels everywhere from the Mayan pyramids to Kilimanjaro. Fueled by a powerful curiosity—and by a need to see, feel, and hear, firsthand and close-up—Michael Crichton's journeys have carried him into worlds diverse and compelling—swimming with mud sharks in Tahiti, tracking wild animals through the jungle of Rwanda. This is a record of those travels—an exhilarating quest across the familiar and exotic frontiers of the outer world, a determined odyssey into the unfathomable, spiritual depths of the inner world. It is an adventure of risk and rejuvenation, terror and wonder, as exciting as Michael Crichton's many masterful and widely heralded works of fiction.

Baggage

Author: Alan Cumming
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 183885665X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Book Description
Baggage is the story of Alan Cumming’s life in Hollywood, taking us through the highs and lows of his career, from his struggle with mental health and failed relationships to encounters with legends (Liza! X Men! Gore Vidal! Kubrick! Spice Girls!). Cumming shows how every experience – each bad decision or moment of sensual joy – has shaped who he is today: a happy, flawed, vulnerable, fearless middle-aged man, with a lot of baggage. Startlingly honest, both poignant and joyous, Baggage shines a light on how to embrace the complicated messiness of life.