Today’s “Best of 2009″ list includes biographies and memoirs, and was contributed by Rick Roche. What do you think? Do you agree with Rick’s choices? What were your favorite memoirs and biographies of 2009?
Genre/Subgenre: Life Stories/Biographies/Change-Makers and Activists
Tracy Kidder–Strength in What Remains.
Deogratias, a medical student and Tutsi from Burundi who fled his country in 1994, returned to his country in the company of journalist Tracy Kidder long after the genocide had ended. Kidder profiles a young man who may hold the key to reconciliation in this inspirational biography.
Genre/Subgenre: Life Stories/Historical Biography
Raymond Arsenault–The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America.
Marian Anderson was as important a civil rights figure as boxer Joe Louis, baseball star Jackie Robinson, and seamstress Rosa Parks. Raymond Arsenault recounts Anderson’s efforts to sing where blacks had been banned by Jim Crow laws in this historical biography.
Genre/Subgenre: Life Stories/Biographies/Sports Biographies
Larry Tye–Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend.
While baseball fans and many teammates worshiped Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige, managers often wanted him off the team. He broke almost every team rule without regret, as owners often paid manager-imposed fines for him. Sports writer Larry Tye recounts the career of one of baseball’s most talented and colorful figures in this investigative biography.
Genre/Subgenre: Life Stories/Memoirs/Overcoming Adversity
Myron Uhlberg–Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love.
Myron Uhlberg was born the hearing son of two deaf parents at a time when deaf people were at best ignored and at worst considered undesirables. Readers will run through most of their emotions reading this inspiring memoir.
Genre/Subgenre: Life Stories/Memoirs/Coming of Age/Self Discovery; Life Stories/Relationships/All in the Family
Adam Langer–My Father’s Bonus March.
Novelist Adam Langer always wondered why his father spoke about writing a book about the Bonus March, an effort to get money to World War I veterans, yet never wrote the book. In this very personal memoir that should resonate with readers, he recounts his search for the elusive secret to his father’s dream.
Rick Roche is a librarian at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library in Western Springs, Illinois. He is the author of Real Lives Revealed: A Guide to Reading Interests in Biography (published in 2009) and can be found online at http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/.
There seems to be two types of nonfiction for children and young adults: the books kids need to write reports for school and books that can be read for pleasure the same way adults read nonfiction. It’s often hard to find the latter although more librarians are putting out lists of good nonfiction for the younger set.
Thanks for the great suggestion, Venta! It’s always great to hear about great YA nonfiction titles–they don’t get much attention.
For young adults, I would suggest Phillip Hoose’s, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. His biography of Claudette Colvin provides a firsthand glimpse of the Montgomery bus strike of the 1950s and one teenager’s active role in the civil rights movement. In her own words, Colvin describes how she was arrested for not giving up her bus seat to a white woman nine months before Rosa Parks did the same. However, Colvin had a different experience from Parks. She was a teenager; she had no connection to the active civil right movement in Montgomery in the 1950s; and she stood up for herself before anyone in Montgomery, black or white was ready for it. This is a well researched account of the little known events prior to the monumental steps of Rosa Parks. Colvin is given her proper place within the civil right movement. The author interviewed Colvin and other people working toward justice in Montgomery during this turbulent time.