Must-Read Memoirs | August 2021

11 Aug 2021

Must-Read Memoirs | August 2021

If you are a fan of biography and memoir books, there are some amazing new books for you to add to your summer reading list! Our list of insightful new reads includes the work of Alexander Brilee, Simon Gjeroe, Charles N. Li, James Whiteside, Nichole Perkins, and Kat Chow. We hope you enjoy these inspiring new biography and memoir books!

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Made in China: A Memoir of Marriage and Mixed Babies in the Middle Kingdom

by Simon Gjeroe

Release Date: April 15, 2021

The insightful new memoir from Simon Gjeroe…“A fun and fascinating look at the intricacies of Chinese traditions surrounding pregnancy and birth, from nutrition to numerology. Simon Gjeroe offers a friendly helping hand to other foreigners attempting, like him, to navigate a path through a landscape of often perplexing cultural differences.” (Fuchsia Dunlop, author of Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China)

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Gay Escort and Client to Best Friends for Life

by Alexander Brilee

Release Date: May 10, 2021

A wonderful and heartfelt new memoir from Alexander Brilee…Their first meeting was in a hotel room in central London. Brian was looking for sex and Lee was looking for money, but each of them had a deeper need. Each needed a friend, a true friend. Brian needed a friend who would fulfill his physical needs but still would remain his friend. Lee needed a friend who would provide the financial support that he needed without making excessive demands and more importantly, would always show him respect. This memoir, which they wrote together, tells of the life of each man up to the time when they met and of how their lives changed afterward.

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The Turbulent Sea: Passage to a New World

by Charles N. Li

Release Date: August 17, 2021

An unconventional history of America’s 1960s from the perspective of a brilliant, quintessential outsider…A young teen escapes to America from Mao’s China in the early 60s and experiences the consequent culture shock of cruel racism, financial hardships, unexpected freedom, bewildering sexual mores, and the aching rejection and loneliness that so many immigrants face. Swept up in the 1960s antiwar movement in a pacifist and law-abiding way, Li is persecuted by the American law enforcement and immigration authorities.

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Center Center: A Funny, Sexy, Sad Almost-Memoir of a Boy in Ballet

by James Whiteside

Release Date: August 17, 2021

A daring, joyous, and inspiring memoir-in-essays from James Whiteside…Center Center is an exuberant behind-the-scenes tour of Whiteside’s triple life, both on- and offstage—a raunchy, curious, and unapologetic celebration of queerness, self-expression, friendship, sex, creativity, and pushing boundaries that will entertain you, shock you*, inspire you, embolden you . . . and maybe even make you cry.

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Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be

by Nichole Perkins

Release Date: August 17, 2021

A witty and candid personal history from Award-winning Author Nichole Perkins…Pop culture is the Pandora’s Box of our lives. Racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, inclusion, exclusion, and hope – all of these intractable and unavoidable features course through the media we consume. Examining pop culture’s impact on her life, Nichole Perkins takes readers on a rollicking trip through the last twenty years of music, media, and the internet from the perspective of one southern Black woman.

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Seeing Ghosts

by Kat Chow

Release Date: August 24, 2021

For readers of Helen Macdonald and Elizabeth Alexander, an intimate and haunting portrait of grief and the search for meaning from a singular new talent as told through the prism of three generations of her Chinese American family. Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to reclaim and tell your family’s story: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? The result is an extraordinary new contribution to the literature of the American family and a provocative and transformative meditation on who we become facing loss.

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