Teacher by Gabbie Stroud

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

A powerful and moving memoir about how the current system is letting down children and parents, and breaking dedicated teachers. Devastating, heart-breaking, enraging.  'Gabbie's story needs to be shouted from the rooftops. She very eloquently shows us why and how education needs to change... Teac her made me laugh and cry. I loved it!' - Kathy Margolis, former teacher and activist. Watching children learn is a beautiful and extraordinary experience. Their bodies transform, reflecting inner changes. Teeth fall out. Knees scab. Freckles multiply. Throughout the year they grow in endless ways and I can almost see their self-esteem rising, their confidence soaring, their small bodies now empowered. Given wings. They fall in love with learning. It is a kind of magic, a kind of loving, a kind of art. It is teaching. Just teaching. Just what I do. What I did. Past tense. In 2014, Gabrielle Stroud was a very dedicated teacher with over a decade of experience. Months later, she resigned in frustration and despair when she realised that the Naplan-test education model was stopping her from doing the very thing she was best at: teaching individual children according to their needs and talents. Her ground-breaking essay 'Teaching Australia' in the Feb 2016 Griffith Review outlined her experiences and provoked a huge response from former and current teachers around the world. That essay lifted the lid on a scandal that is yet to properly break - that our education system is unfair to our children and destroying their teachers. In a powerful memoir inspired by her original essay, Gabrielle tells the full story: how she came to teaching, what makes a great teacher, what our kids need from their teachers, and what it was that finally broke her. A brilliant and heart-breaking memoir that cuts to the heart of a vital matter of national importance. ...Show more

Calypso by David Sedaris

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

'Unquestionably the king of comic writing . . . Calypso is both funnier and more heartbreaking than pretty much anything out there' Hadley Freeman, Guardian If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso . You'd be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself. With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny - it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's writing has never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future. This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumour joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet - and it just might be his very best. ...Show more

Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

Damien Cave: (New York Times bureau chief in Sydney & friend of Bookoccino) "This debut from a former Queensland judge's associate breaks the silence around sexual assault and all the ways Australia's court system tries to silence victims. If you're wondering why Australia's #metoo movement hasn't gained more momentum, this memoir will add some clarity."   A well-established legal doctrine that a defendant must 'take their victim as they find them'. If a single punch kills someone because of their thin skull, that victim's weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime. But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his 'victim' as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done? Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Queensland District Court as a bright-eyed judge's associate. Two years later she was back as the complainant in her own case. This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland-where justice can look very different, especially for women. The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story. Bri Lee has written a fierce and eloquent memoir that addresses both her own reckoning with the past as well as with the stories around her, to speak the truth with wit, empathy and unflinching courage. Eggshell Skull is a haunting appraisal of modern Australia from a new and essential voice.  ...Show more

Waiting for Elijah by Kate Wild

$35.00 AUD

Category: Memoir

Some witnesses to the shooting say otherwise, though, and this act of aggression doesn't fit with the sweet, sensitive, but troubled young man that Elijah's family and friends knew him to be. The shooting devastates Elijah's family and the police officer alike. So what happened in that Armidale laneway - and how could it have been avoided? Waiting for Elijahis the culmination of journalist Kate Wild's six-year investigation - an investigation that not only seeks to answer these questions, but also poses some vitally important ones of its own- Why is it still taboo to talk about mental illness in our society? Is it fair to expect police to be first responders in mental health crises? If the community insists this job belongs to police, how can these interactions be improved? Written with clear-eyed compassion and a compelling narrative drive, Waiting for Elijahis an account of a tragedy that didn't have to happen. It is also an intense, forensic deconstruction of the extended legal proceedings that followed, and a heartbreaking portrait of a family's grief. ...Show more

Unfollow: Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper

$32.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

'For anyone who enjoyed Hillbilly Elegy or Educated, Unfollow is an essential text' - LOUIS THEROUX 'A beautiful, gripping book about a singular soul, and an unexpected redemption' - NICK HORNBY As featured on the BBC documentary, 'The Most Hated Family in America' It was an upbringing in many ways norm al. A loving home, shared with squabbling siblings, overseen by devoted parents. Yet in other ways it was the precise opposite: a revolving door of TV camera crews and documentary makers, a world of extreme discipline, of siblings vanishing in the night. Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in the Westboro Baptist Church - the fire-and-brimstone religious sect at once aggressively homophobic and anti-Semitic, rejoiceful for AIDS and natural disasters, and notorious for its picketing the funerals of American soldiers. From her first public protest, aged five, to her instrumental role in spreading the church's invective via social media, her formative years brought their difficulties. But being reviled was not one of them. She was preaching God's truth. She was, in her words, 'all in'. In November 2012, at the age of twenty-six, she left the church, her family, and her life behind. Unfollow is a story about the rarest thing of all: a person changing their mind. It is a fascinating insight into a closed world of extreme belief, a biography of a complex family, and a hope-inspiring memoir of a young woman finding the courage to find compassion for others, as well as herself. ...Show more

Displaced - A Rural Life by John Kinsella

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

John Kinsella's memoir of his rural life takes us deep into the heart of what it means to belong and unbelong. The joys and travails of childhood, adult addictions, missteps and changing directions are acutely captured in poignant and poetic detail. While centred on Jam Tree Gully in rural Western Austr alia the memoir also moves between Ohio, Schull and Cambridge, mixing regionalism with an international sense of responsibility. What will strike the reader are the detailed observations of daily life, the engagement with topography and flora and fauna that embody the author's conviction that 'all is in everything and that every leaf of grass is vital'. In his most intimate prose work to date, Kinsella never shies from writing about the violence and intolerance of those scared of difference, and the ways in which his ethics have sometimes been met with disdain or outright hostility. But with nuance and humour he also celebrates rural community and its willingness to lend a hand. At once tender, urgent and intelligent, Displaced is ultimately a call to personal action. 'We all have choices to make.' It argues through it vivid accounts of small acts of living for the values of pacifism, veganism, environmentalism and justice for First Nations peoples - the principles we just might need to heal our world.Praise for John Kinsella's writing 'Kinsella's work is magnificent, raw; the words coming together in form and shape to evoke the essence of the moment in time he is creating.' Blue Wolf Reviews 'Kinsella can see into the heart of the country, and the evidence of these taut, complex stories is that what he sees there is both ferocious and unresolved.' The Australian ...Show more

Things We Didn't Talk about When I Was a Girl by Jeannie VANASCO

$19.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

Precipitated by the #MeToo movement, Jeannie confronts her rapist for closure - an incredibly moving memoir for our times. Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is a memoir about Jeannie Vanasco's friendship with the man who sexually assaulted her fifteen years ago when they were nineteen years old. With the election of Trump and the rise of the #MeToo movement, recurrent nightmares of the incident that plagued her as a girl have returned. As a means of processing her conflicted feelings, she resolves to face her trauma head-on. Through interviews with the perpetrator - transcripts of which are included in the book - and wide-ranging research, Jeannie's compelling memoir explores how the incident impacted both of their lives, while examining the culture and language surrounding sexual assault and rape. Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is a necessary contribution to the #MeToo discussion and a springboard for other women to share their stories. AUTHOR: Jeannie Vanasco is the highly acclaimed author of My Father's Glass Eye. Her writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, and the New Yorker. She lives in Baltimore where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Towson University. ...Show more

Will by Will Self

$35.00 AUD

Category: Memoir

Will Self is one of Britain's most famous and infamous contemporary writers, a public intellectual known for his sardonic worldview, his logophilia, and his wide-ranging interests, from psychogeography to socialism to hard drugs. His novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and been translated into over twenty languages. In Will, his first ever memoir, he turns his attention fully to his own self. A brilliant literary work, Will echoes the best of Self's fiction, reminding us how the personal is always historical, and reflecting that personal history through a psychedelic prism. Will spins the reader from Self's childhood in a North London suburb to his mind-expanding education at Oxford, to a Burroughsian trip to Morocco, an outback vision in Australia, and, finally, a nightmarish turn in rehab. From an attempt to score as a teenager by buying a pastry breakfast for a user-dealer friend in lieu of payment (Self also considers buying a banana to rob a chemist's to get his fix), to his university years, fueled with literature but also with "heroin, hashish, cocaine, grass and amphetamine"; to his experiments in sex, identity, and his first relationships, Self takes us on a tour of his young life, letting us inside one of the best minds of our generation. Whether discussing pharmacology: "there's nothing remotely euphoric about methadone: it just makes you feel as if you're buried up to your waist"; religion: "God is great . . . Gear is great . . . Therefore: gear is God . . ."; or economics: "the best things in life are free--while the worst retail at a tenner a bag," Self's mordant humor and vivid writing make this book one of the most powerful depictions of the allure and power of hard drugs ever written. It is also a technicolor portrait of the strangenesses of family, the transcendence of art, and the defiant quest for self-expression in a rule-filled world. Will is an addiction memoir like none before, powerfully bringing to the page the peerless euphoria of getting high, and simultaneously offering a pitiless examination of the lows that follow, a karmic cycle that leads back to the author's own lack of . . . will. Both kunstlerroman and confessional, Will is a tale of excess and degradation, an exploration of the wild experiences that have formed the basis of Self's incandescent fictions. ...Show more

Who Am I, Again? by Lenny Henry

$32.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

Sir Lenny Henry is one of the UK's best-loved comedians with a career spanning over forty years. Here he writes about his youth for the first time. A child of the Jamaican diaspora, Lenny Henry was one of seven children in a boisterous, complicated family. With honesty, tenderness and a glorious sense of humour, he conducts a jam session of memories - growing up in the Black Country, puberty, school, friendship, family secrets and unashamed racism. With his mother's mantra of 'H'integration' echoing in his ears, Henry set out on a glittering career - but at every stage wondering: Am I good enough? Is this what they want? Who am I, again? This book answers those questions. ...Show more

Out There by Kerri Sackville

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover

$24.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family. Richard Glover's favourite dinner party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?'. It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts and failed dreams. And there was Richard himself, a confused teenager, vulnerable to strange men, trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted, the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past - but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds - even if they are only flesh wounds.Part poignant family memoir, part rollicking venture into a 1970s Australia, this is a book for anyone who's wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet. The answer: 'No'. There is always something stranger out there. 'Both poignant and wildly entertaining' - SYDNEY MORNING HERALD'A new classic ... a breathtaking accomplishment in style and empathy' - THE AUSTRALIAN'Heartbreaking and hilarious ... I couldn't put it down' - SUN-HERALD'Engrossing and extremely funny' THE SATURDAY PAPER'Not since UNRELIABLE MEMOIRS by Clive James has there been a funnier, more poignant portrait of an Australian childhood.' - AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW'Richard Glover has done the miraculous he's made ordinary family life extraordinarily entertaining' - AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS'Sad, funny, revealing, optimistic and hopeful' - Jeanette Winterson ...Show more

Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird

$32.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

A beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness - the 'light within' that Julia Baird calls 'phosphorescence' - which will sustain us even through the darkest times. Over the last decade, we have become be tter at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them?And more than that, when our world goes dark, when we're overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom? In the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and a disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most - finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies, a planet in peril - how do we find, nurture and carry our own inner, living light - a light to ward off the darkness? Absorbing, achingly beautiful, inspiring and deeply moving, Julia Baird has written exactly the book we need for these times. ...Show more