Coming of Age by Deborah Beatriz Blum
The true coming of age story of Margaret Mead — one of the heroines of the twentieth century — that reveals events and relationships she hid from the world during her lifetime and beyond.
Song of Praise for a Flower by Fengxian Chu and Charlene Chu
Song of Praise for a Flower by Fengxian Chu and Charlene Chu
By Fengxian Chu
With Charlene Chu
For nearly two decades, this manuscript lay hidden in a Chinese bank vault until a long-lost cousin from America inspired 92-year-old author Fengxian Chu to unearth it.
“Song of Praise for a Flower” traces a century of Chinese history through the experiences of one woman and her family, from the dark years of World War II and China’s civil war to the tragic Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and beyond. It is a window into a faraway world, a sweeping epic about China’s tumultuous transformation and a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting story of a remarkable woman who survives it all and finally finds peace and tranquility.
Chu’s story begins in the 1920s in an idyllic home in the heart of China’s rice country. Her life is a struggle from the start. At a young age, she defies foot-binding and an arranged marriage and sneaks away from home to attend school. Her young adulthood is thrown into turmoil when the Japanese invade and ransack her village. Later her family is driven to starvation when Mao Zedong’s Communist Party seizes power and her husband is branded a ‘bad element.’
After Mao’s death in the 1970s, as China picks up the pieces and moves in a new direction, Chu eventually finds herself in a glittering city on the sea adjacent to Hong Kong, worlds away in both culture and time from the place she came from.
Sweet Melissa Ignorance is not Bliss by Susan Segovia-Munoz
Sweet Melissa Ignorance is not Bliss by Susan Segovia-Munoz
Heroin Addiction-The Lifestyle-The Recovery
I’m not a celebrity or a model. I’m not rich or famous. I’m a hooker, a hustler and a junkie. It’s not like I chose this lifestyle but something inside of me took over my entire being. I became reckless and out of control. I wanted to party and get high. I needed excitement. I thrived on it. I wanted to fit in somewhere. I wanted to belong and most of all I wanted someone to love me. Little did I know, that what I left behind would be the one thing that I longed for the most. At 18, I left the love and security of my family for a nightmare of drug addiction and crime. Struggling on the streets of Los Angeles and too ashamed to go back home, I submitted to a subculture of misfits that held me captive in more ways than one. Would I ever find my way out out this self-produced nightmare??? Was I destined to live my life in hell??? Only time would tell…
