Títulos en Culturales y regionales

Entre mythe et réalité, le monde souterrain saumurois étonne par sa richesse, sa diversité, son mystère. Ce patrimoine fragile fut abandonné puis oublié jusqu'à ce que des passionnés lui apportent une véritable renaissance. Dans l'univers insolite des galeries d'extraction ouvertes par les perreyeurs, des caves et habitations troglodytiques de Saumur et sa région, suivez quelques habitants des lieux et quelques spécialistes choisis, jusqu’à l'étrange rencontre de la noble confrérie des Amateux et Respectueux du Monde Souterrain.

Le 31 août 1934, quatre jeunes savants - avec à leur tête le jeune Paul-Émile Victor - s'installent pour l'hiver à Tassiussak, minuscule bourgade qui sert de "capitale" aux Ammassalimiout, le peuple qu'ils ont décidé de rencontrer au Groenland. Grâce à sa liaison avec Doumidia, une jeune Esquimaude, Paul-Émile Victor apprend très vite la langue inuit et se fait raconter les histoires autochtones. Nourri de cette culture et marqué par le traumatisme constitutif de l'histoire des esquimaux que sont les grandes famines de 1882-1883, il collecte les récits qui composent "La Grande Faim" en hommage au peuple qu'il fut le premier et le seul à si bien connaître.

Cet enregistrement réalisé par l'association Paroles, Images et Sons présente un corpus rare de témoignages des petites gens du monde paysan : ouvriers agricoles, petits exploitants ou domestiques de ferme enregistrés par les praticiens de la méthode Freinet entre les années 1960 et 1980. Un diaporama unique sur la France rurale de la Belle Époque à l'Entre-deux guerres, celle d'avant l'électricité, l'exode rural et la mécanisation.

Award-winning journalist and host of Black Enterprise Business Report Caroline Clarke’s moving memoir of her surprise discovery of her birth mother - Cookie Cole, the daughter of Nat King Cole - and the relationship that blossomed between them through the heartfelt messages they exchanged on hundreds of postcards. A heartfelt, inspiring tribute to both Caroline’s adoptive parents and her biological mother, Postcards from Cookie illuminates the enduring power of love to shape and guide our lives.

Problem Child is the unbelievably true story of Terrell Carter, an American musician and actor who grew up in Buffalo, New York, in a dysfunctional family, each member crazier than the next. And the Problem Child is the only one in the story who may, or may not, actually have a problem. An emotional journey of trials and revelations, with a huge secret at its core, this story may force you to laugh - just to keep from crying.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published in 1845; it is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by the famous author and former slave Frederick Douglass. The book includes two introductions by well-known abolitionists: a preface by William Lloyd Garrison, and a letter by Wendell Phillips, both confirming the veracity of the account and the literacy of its author. It is generally considered to be the most famous of a number of abolition narratives written by former slaves in the same era.

A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multigenerational transformation from what is called Black to what is assumed to be White. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a "Black" father from the segregated South and a "White" mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of "Black blood" makes a person Black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations....

If you're Irish American or African American or Eastern European Jewish American, there's a rich literature to give you a sense of your family's arrival-in-America story. Until now, that hasn't been the case for Chinese Americans. From noted historian Mae Ngai, The Lucky Ones uncovers the three-generational saga of the Tape family. It's a sweeping story centered on patriarch Jeu Dips' (Joseph Tapes') self-invention as an immigration broker in post-gold rush San Francisco, and the extraordinary rise it enables.

In an era of stark racial injustice and decisive action, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to the struggle for change, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at age 19. Through his eyes, we see the courage of a generation that stood up to injustice, their political triumphs and tragedies, and the unforgettable legacy of Black Power.  

Austin Clarke is a distinguished and celebrated novelist and short-story writer. His works often center around the immigrant experience, of which he writes with humor and compassion, happiness and sorrow. In ’Membering, Clarke shares his own experiences growing up in Barbados and moving to Toronto to attend university in 1955 before becoming a journalist. With vivid realism he describes Harlem of the ’60s, meeting and interviewing Malcolm X and writers Chinua Achebe and LeRoi Jones.

As the US occupation of Iraq rages, novelist Mortada Gzar, a student at the University of Baghdad, has a chance encounter with Morise, an African American soldier. It’s love at first sight, a threat to them both, and a moment of self-discovery. Challenged by society’s rejection and Morise’s return to the US, Mortada takes to the page to understand himself. In his affecting memoir, Mortada interweaves tales of his childhood work as a scrap-metal collector in a war zone and the indignities faced by openly gay artists in Iraq with his impossible love story and journey to the US.

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known, a new one opened. As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal”, Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost....

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

Quincy Troupe's account of his friendship with Miles Davis is a revealing portrait of a great musician and an intimate study of a unique relationship. It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author's own development, both artistically and personally. A keen and critical observer, Troupe captures and conveys the power of Miles' presence, the mesmerizing force of his personality, and the restless energy that lay at the root of his creativity.

Say the word Israel today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers' dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws listeners into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era.

I’m a 22-year-old black introvert who overthinks everything, can’t get a date, yet somehow managed to graduate from Harvard. Though our stories may not be the same, the universal themes explored in this poignant and personal literary collection - love, identity, hope, social justice, and coming of age - bond us together. Timestamp: Musings of an Introverted Black Boy is many things: It’s one black boy’s journey through college and into adulthood. It’s a compilation of intimate musings, short and long. It’s an anthology of reflections linked to distinct moments in time.

In this often violent but always introspective memoir, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy tells his much anticipated story of struggle, survival, and hope down the mean streets of New York City. For the first time, he gives an intimate look at his family background, his battles with drugs, his life of crime, his relentless suffering with sickle-cell anemia, and much more.

Sarfraz Manzoor was two years old when, in 1974, he emigrated from Pakistan to Britain with his mother, brother, and sister. Sarfraz spent his teenage years in a constant battle, trying to reconcile being both British and Muslim, trying to fit in at school and at home. But it was when his best friend introduced him to the music of Bruce Springsteen that his life changed completely. Both a tribute to Springsteen and a story of personal discovery, Greetings from Bury Park is a warm, irreverent, and exceptionally perceptive memoir about how music transcends religion and race.