The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: a Hmong Child, her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

By Anne Fadiman

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997

Genres: nonfiction, social sciences, anthropology, cultural studies, medicine

ISBN: 9780374525644

Intended audience: Adult

Number of pages: 341 (including Notes, Bibliography, and Index).

Setting: Mostly set in Merced, CA, but also includes places where the Hmong have lived – including China, Laos, & Thailand, and other cities in the US.

Time period: Early to mid 1980’s (but the book also covers different times in the Hmong’s history – including America’s secret war in Laos)

 

Description: When Lia Lee, a Hmong child, was an infant, her older sister slammed the door on her way out.  Immediately afterwards Lia suffered her first epileptic seizure and Lia’s parents took her to the hospital.  Thus began a frustrating and strained relationship between Lia’s parents and hospital staff.  Language barriers and cultural expectations prevented Lia from getting the right care for her, leaving her in a tragic state of being.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

By Susan Cain

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Crown Publishers, 2012

Genres: Nonfiction, psychology, personality

ISBN: 9780307352149

Intended audience: Adult

Number of pages: 333 (including Notes and Index).

Setting: Various locations in the USA

Time period: Contemporary

Description:  Cain examines the differences between introverts and extroverts, including various roles played by both in society.  She also examines how culture influences temperament types for better and for worse and how Western culture undervalues introversion.

Just Kids

By Patti Smith

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Harper Collins, 2010

Genres: Nonfiction, autobiography, biography, memoir

ISBN: 9780066211312

Audience: Adults

Number of pages: 279

Settings: Mostly New York City – Manhattan & Brooklyn – but also Paris & Charleville, France & Camden, NJ

Time period: The bulk of the story is set between 1969 – 1978.

Description:  Patti Smith describes her life growing up in NJ and aspirations to become an artist.  At a young age she moves to New York City where she meets a kindred soul, Robert Mapplethorpe.  The heart of this book is about their journey together as friends, artists, and lovers.  They support one another and each other’s work until they are both firmly set on their own artistic pathways.

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution

By Sara Marcus

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Harper Perennial, 2010

Genres: Non-fiction, social sciences, feminism, women’s studies, popular culture

ISBN: 9780061806360

Intended audience: Adults

Number of pages: 367

Setting: Mainly set in Olympia, WA & Washington DC (but also includes other locations in the US and Europe)

Time period: 1989-1994

Description: Punk rock + young woman  + DIY + feminism = riot grrrl.  “In the beginning, someone told a girl to start a band” (p. 31).  The book describes how the bands Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy came into existence and how these bands and associated zines sparked  a riot grrrl movement across the county and world with girls creating bands and publishing their own zines.  The movement started in Olympia, WA but soon spread to Washington, DC and other areas around the US.  Once mainstream media became aware of riot grrrls, however, everything changed.  The book includes an extensive bibliography, notes, and index.

Nobody’s son: notes from an American life

By Luis Alberto Urrea

Place: Publisher & Year: Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998

Genres: Non-fiction, autobiography, memoir

Series: Camino del Sol

ISBN: 9780816518654

Audience: Adults

Number of pages: 189

Setting: Various locations in Mexico and the US,  including Tijuana and San Diego

Time period: late 1950s – 1990s

Description: Urrea describes key moments of his life in regards to growing up as a child of both the US and Mexico.  Written in a non-linear fashion, the book is divided into chapters which focus upon places and themes.

I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You

By Bill Green, Ben Peskoe, Will Russell, & Scott Shuffitt; Foreward by Jeff Bridges

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Bloomsbury, 2007

Genre: Non-fiction, social science, popular culture

ISBN: 9781596912465

Intended audience: Achievers

Number of pages: 237

Setting: USA, mostly California but also Louisville, Kentucky

Time period: Contemporary

Description: This book is a must read for any “Achiever”, or true fan, of The Big Lebowski.  Written by the folks who created Lebowski Fest, it is filled with trivia, interviews, and true life stories upon which parts of the movie were based, such as the real Little Larry.

Warriors Don’t Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High

By Melba Pattillo Beals

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Simon Pulse, c1995, 2007

Genres: Non-fiction, autobiography, memoir

ISBN: 9781416948827

Intended audience: Young adult

Number of pages: 226

Setting: Little Rock, Arkansas

Time period: 1950’s – most of the story takes place during the school year of 1957-58 (includes an epilogue from 1987 and an introduction from 2007).

Description: Three years after the US Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, Melba Pattillo was chosen to go to Little Rock, Arkansas’ Central High School.  She and eight other students became the Little Rock Nine; they were the first Black students to attend this previously all White school.  Every day of the school year, Melba faced some form of violence and hostility, transforming her from an everyday teenager to a warrior.  This is her story in her own words.

French Women Don’t Get Fat: the Secret of Eating for Pleasure

By Mireille Guiliano

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, c2005, 2007

Genres: Non-fiction, health & fitness, healthy living, women’s health, diet, nutrition

ISBN: 9781400042128

Intended audience: “Women throughout the developed world” (p. 7)

Number of pages: 264

Setting: France & USA

Time period: Written for the present, but includes narratives from various points in Guiliano’s life between the 1950’s and 2005.

Description: Written by a French woman who has lived and worked in the US for most of her life, this book examines the differences in culture between the two countries in relation to food, life, and pleasure.  Recipes are interspersed with personal narrative, observations, and much common sense.  This is not a diet book; it is a book about attaining a healthy relationship with food and enjoying oneself while doing it.

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

By Michael Pollan

Place: Publisher & Year: New York: Penguin Books, 2009

Genre: Non-fiction, health & fitness, healthy living, diet, nutrition

ISBN: 9780143116387

Intended audience: American adults

Number of pages: 140

Setting: USA

Time period: The era of obesity and processed “food-like substances”

Description: A practical guide for what and how to eat, written as a follow up to Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Following the Introduction, the book is divided into three sections based upon the key concepts from In Defense of Food – “Eat Food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Graphic Adaptation

Story by Michael Keller, Art by Nicolle Rager Fuller

Place: Publisher & Year: Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2009

Genre: Non- fiction, science, biography, history

Format: Graphic novel

ISBN: 9781605299488

Intended audience: Adult

Number of pages: 191

Setting: Earth

Time period: 1831 – 2006

Plot summary: This book is a graphic version of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species as well as a biography of Darwin and a history of evolutionary theory.  The book begins with Darwin having returned to England after travelling around the world on H.M.S. Beagle.  It depicts his life while working on his theory of natural selection; it also depicts his theory and the effects of it upon the current scientific understanding of life on Earth.