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1106 books match the query 'Memoirs' and 7 start with y

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Yazoo

Willie Morris

University of Arkansas Press, 2012

In 1970 Brown v. Board of Education was sixteen years old, and fifteen years had passed since the Brown II mandate that schools integrate "with all deliberate speed." Still, after all this time, it was necessary for the U.S. Supreme Court to order thirty Mississippi school districts--whose speed had been anything but deliberate--to integrate immediately. One of these districts included Yazoo City, the hometown of writer Willie Morris. Installed productively on "safe, sane Manhattan Island," Morris, though compelled to write about this pivotal moment, was reluctant to return to Yazoo and do no less than serve as cultural ambassador between the flawed Mississippi that he loved and a wider world. "I did not want to go back," Morris wrote. "I finally went home because the urge to be there during Yazoo's most critical moment was too elemental to resist, and because I would have been ashamed of myself if I had not." The result, Yazoo, is part reportage, part memoir, part ethnography, part social critique--and one of the richest accounts we have of a community's attempt to come to terms with the realities of seismic social change. As infinitely readable and nuanced as ever, Yazoo is available again, enhanced by an informative foreword by historian Jenifer Jensen Wallach and a warm and personal afterword on Morris's writing life by his widow, JoAnne Prichard Morris.

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Year of Plenty

A Family's Season of Grief

B.J. Hollars

University of Wisconsin Press, 2024

In November 2020, B.J. Hollars answered a call from his father-in-law while teaching. “When will you be home?” Steve asked. “I have news.”

So began the Hollars family’s year of plenty—a cancer diagnosis on top of the ongoing COVID pandemic, then feelings of falling short as parents, partners, and people. While Hollars traces his family’s daily devastations alongside his father-in-law’s decline, he recounts the small mercies along the way: birthdays, campfires, fishing trips, kayaking, and fireflies. As he, his wife, Meredith, and their three young children grapple with how best to say goodbye to the person they love, they are forced to reassess their own lives. How can we make the most of our time, they wonder, when time feels so short?

Written in vignettes and accompanied by photographs and family interviews, Year of Plenty provides a poignant and unflinching account of how death separates us not only from the people we love but from places and memories too. Hollars explores how death’s all-consuming weight has the potential to fracture—rather than strengthen—even those relationships we think we know the best. Ultimately, he cracks wide personal moments from his own life and allows the world to peer in.

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Year of the Pig

Hunting Feral Hogs

Mark J. Hainds

University of Alabama Press, 2011

Exploring the ecology, culture, and challenge of America’s most controversial wild hogs.

What happens when a conservation-minded forester decides to spend an entire year hunting feral hogs across ten states? You get a book that’s equal parts adventure, ecology, and laugh-out-loud grit. In Year of the Pig, Mark J. Hainds straps on rifles, bows, and even a knife (yes, really) to tackle one of North America’s most destructive invasive species. Along the way, he delivers unforgettable stories from Alabama swamps to Hawaiian volcanoes, mixing adrenaline with insight into why pigs are an ecological nightmare and a hunter’s dream.

In it real-world and armchair hunters will find:
• Authentic Adventures: Belly-crawling through privet thickets, stalking pigs in palmetto jungles, and chasing razorbacks in the Ozarks.
• Ecological Wisdom: Learn how hogs impact forests, farms, and fragile ecosystems—and why hunting them matters.
• Humor & Humanity: From near-misses to triumphs, Hainds’ candid storytelling will keep you grinning (and maybe craving barbecue).

Hunters seeking real-world thrills, conservationists fighting invasive species, outdoor enthusiasts who savor gritty tales, and anyone who enjoys a good laugh with their environmental education. Perfect for reading—or gifting to that friend who thinks “hog hunting” is just a Southern stereotype. Spoiler: It’s not.

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Yooper Talk

Dialect as Identity in Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Kathryn A. Remlinger

University of Wisconsin Press, 2019

Yooper Talk is a fresh and significant contribution to understanding regional language and culture in North America. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan—known as "the UP"—is historically, geographically, and culturally distinct. Struggles over land, labor, and language during the last 150 years have shaped the variety of English spoken by resident Yoopers, as well as how they are viewed by outsiders.

Drawing on sixteen years of fieldwork, including interviews with seventy-five lifelong residents of the UP, Kathryn Remlinger examines how the idea of a unique Yooper dialect emerged. Considering UP English in relation to other regional dialects and their speakers, she looks at local identity, literacy practices, media representations, language attitudes, notions of authenticity, economic factors, tourism, and contact with immigrant and Native American languages. The book also explores how a dialect becomes a recognizable and valuable commodity: Yooper talk (or "Yoopanese") is emblazoned on t-shirts, flags, postcards, coffee mugs, and bumper stickers.

Yooper Talk explains linguistic concepts with entertaining examples for general readers and also contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of dialect and identity in sociolinguistics, anthropology, dialectology, and folklore.

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You Can Crush the Flowers

A Visual Memoir of the Egyptian Revolution

Bahia Shehab

Gingko, 2021

Part visual history, part memoir, You Can Crush the Flowers is a chronicle of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its aftermath, as it manifested itself not only in the art on the streets of Cairo but also through the wider visual culture that emerged during the revolution. Marking the ten-year anniversary of the revolution, celebrated Egyptian-Lebanese artist Bahia Shehab tells the stories that inspired both her own artwork and the work of her fellow revolutionaries. Shehab narrates the events of the revolution as they unfolded, describing on one hand the tactics deployed by the regime to drive protesters from the street—from the use of tear gas and snipers to brute force, intimidation techniques, and virginity tests—and on the other hand the retaliation by the protesters online and on the street in marches, chants, street art, and memes. Throughout this powerful and moving account, which includes over one hundred images, Shehab responds to all these aspects of the revolution as both artist and activist. The result bears witness to the brutality of the regime and pays tribute to the protestors who bravely defied it.

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You, Me, and the Violence

Catherine Taylor

The Ohio State University Press, 2017

“Things puppets can do to us: charm, deceive, captivate, fool, trick, remind, amuse, distract, bore, repulse, annoy, puzzle, transport, provoke, fascinate, stand in for, kill.” In You, Me, and the Violence, Catherine Taylor ponders the nature of personal and political autonomy, focusing on the surprising juxtaposition of puppetry and military drones. In a book at once politically significant and narratively engaging, Taylor blends genres to question the roles of individuals within society and expose the gritty and emotional underpinnings of the seemingly mechanical process of a remote soldier.
From conversations with her own brother about his military experiences to Punch and Judy, from the original tale of Pinocchio to the radio chatter of soldiers in active drone operation, Taylor writes about family, power, and the “theater” of war in a voice both sly and sobering, heartbreaking and hopeful.

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Young Man From The Provinces

A Gay Life Before Stonewall

Alan Helms

University of Minnesota Press, 2003

An insider’s account of gay high society in pre-Stonewall New York City—now back in print!

Young, intelligent, and handsome, Alan Helms left a brutal midwestern childhood for New York City in 1955. Denied a Rhodes scholarship because of his sexual orientation, he soon became an object of desire in a gay underground scene frequented by, among many others, Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Marlene Dietrich. In this unusually vivid and sensitive account, Helms describes the business of being a sex object and its psychological and physical toll.

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