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Summer is a great time to unwind and consider the perfect TBR pile. Our vision? A lovely mix of fiction, nonfiction and memoir reads. If you’re apt to grab a book that increases your knowledge of the world and the people in it, the best nonfiction and memoirs coming our summer 2023 offer so much insight into different topics, and explores important themes, such as love, trauma, social inequality, family and the environment. Here are our most anticipated nonfiction books and memoirs of spring 2023.
Here’s the most anticipated memoirs of 2023>>
Moby Dyke by Krista Burton (6/6)
In 1987 there were still 206 lesbian bars around America. Now, there is less than a dozen. Creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes does a deep dive into the disappearances of once celebrated safe havens. Krista Burton travels to the few remaining bars to answer the questions of why this happened, and what has been lost in the process.
A Place for Us by Brandon J. Wolf (6/6)
Brandon Wolf grew up in rural Oregon, grappled by the loss of his mother and the ongoing homophobia and racism within his community. Moving to Orlando, he finally found a community where he felt he belonged, a safe space and a chosen family. When his new normal is shaken up by unimaginable tragedy, the chaos and pain involved gave Brandon a new power, the power of purpose. Turning this purpose into a transformative journey of healing, Wolf showcases the power of community and how there’s hope where there is compassion.
Pageboy by Elliot Page (6/6)
Elliot Page was on the brink of discovering himself as a queer person when the massively successful movie, Juno, came out. Forced to play the role of glossy, young starlet both on and off the screen, Elliot found himself suffocating. Where acting once had been an outlet for his imagination, it soon became a bitter reality, and Elliot felt those dreams of finding himself as a trans person become further out of reach, until enough was enough. With Hollywood behind the scenes and personal insights, Pageboy is a winding journey of what it means to be ourselves when society is trying to create a different version of us.
What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman (6/13)
First documented over thirty-thousand years ago, owls have been a source of fascination and intrigue for millennia. A symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight, owls reside on every continent but Antartica, but remain somewhat of a mystery to many scientists, for they are far more difficult to study due to their camouflage and nocturnal nature. Jennifer Ackerman brings a new light to owls with exciting research and her own field observations, examining why we are so beguiled by these beautiful birds.
Wedded Wife: A Feminist History of Marriage by Rachael Lennon (6/20)
In this insightful book, feminist curator Rachael Lennon explores the ideas of marriage, from the stone age to present day, and how it has evolved. Exploring the politics around proposals, the pressures to marry, taking a man’s name, and the business sides of marriage, Lennon provides a fascinating look at marriage’s troubling past and hopeful present.
Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen (7/4)
When Beth Nguyen was just eight months old, her family fled Saigon for America, leaving their mother behind. It wasn’t until Beth was nineteen that they would meet again, and over the course of her adult life, they’ve spent less than twenty-four hours together. Framed through a series of visits between mother and daughter, this memoir explores what it means to be a parent and a refugee, and finding belonging amongst the two.
Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe by Aomawa Shields (7/11)
Aomawa Shields always dreamed of being an astronaut. A year into her astrophysics PhD program, she felt discouraged by a while male professor and plagued with self-doubt, and eventually left astronomy to pursue acting. After a decade, a day-job at NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope pulled her back to the stars. The oldest, and only Black student in her PhD cohort, Shields was not going to let the voice of others, or herself, get in her way this time. She examines how the perfect placement of planets can create the miracle of life on Earth, while also examining the very life it creates – the human experience.
Red Closet: The Hidden History of Gay Oppression in the USSR by Rustam Alexander (7/22)
When Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws in 1934, a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recalls the lives and stories of those directly affected by these laws, including a man who wrote to Stalin, trying to save his lover from prosecution and a homosexual theatre student traveling to Moscow in search of a career, a fearless doctor in Siberia who treated gay men at his own risk, and a Soviet singer, hiding their sexuality.
The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear by Nat Segaloff (7/25)
When the movie The Exorcist came out in December 26, 1973, it was an instant legend. People stood outside in line for hours in wintery weather, audience members famously vomited or fainted, and decades later it still has the same tantalizing affect on some. From the real-life exorcism in 1949 Maryland that inspired William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel and then the movie it was based on, The Exorcist Legacy reveals the complete story of this cultural phenomenon.
Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping by Shane McCrae (8/1)
Shane McCrae was just three years old when his maternal grandparents stole him from his father. In an attempt to hide his Blackness, they took him to Texas, where they manipulated and controlled him under the guise of what was best. Raised to participate in his own disappearance, Shane never knew about his heritage, and that he came from a white mother and a Black father. His memories are unreliable, but he begins to piece together his identity on his own terms, and when he reveals the truth, he sets out to reunite with his father and find his place in the world.
The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin (8/8)
Lara Love Hardin is the perfect cul-de-sac housewife, but she’s got a dark secret. At least, she did. She is the least person people would expect, but she’s been funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors credit cards. Convicted of 32 felonies, she begins to learn the ins and outs of jail, it’s power systems, and it’s similarities to the old PTA life she was used to, and finds ways to heal unloved women. When she gets out, she becomes a successful ghostwriter, legally co-opting other’s identities and getting to meet the likes of Oprah. But shame itself can be a prison, and one that Hardin is still figuring out as she begins to see her worth.
Thin Skin: Essays by Jenn Shapland (8/13)
Jenn Shapland, diagnosed with extreme dermatological sensitivity, thin skin, has a keen sense of the barrier between herself and the world around her. She has a deep intrigue for the ways we are entangled with each other, and with our surroundings. Weaving historical research and interviews with her own stories of her life in New Mexico, Shapland examines the way capitalism creeps into our land, and our thinking.
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger (9/5)
Meg Kissinger grew up in Chicago in the ’60s, with seven other siblings and two loving parents. The Kissingers always radiated a playful and warm energy, but behind closed doors, the reality that was unfolding was much more dark. A mother who was heavily medicated due to anxiety and depression, a violent father, and children dealing with bi-polar and depression of their own, two of which end up taking their own lives. Hiding their trauma behind dark humor, the family had an unspoken rule: never talk about it. What manifested was a desire to expose our country’s flawed mental health care.
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