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... Teacher m ade 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

My Country: Stories, Essays & Speeches by David Marr

$39.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

David Marr is the rarest of breeds- one of Australia's most unflinching, forensic reporters of political controversy, and one of its most subtle and eloquent biographers. In Marr's hands, those things we call reportage and commentary are elevated to artful and illuminating chronicles of our time. My Co untry collects his powerful reflections on religion, sex, censorship and the law; striking accounts of leaders, moralists and scandalmongers; elegant ruminations on the arts and the lives of artists. And some memorable new pieces. 'My country is the subject that interests me most and I have spent my career trying to untangle it's mysteries.'-David Marr. ...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

Out There by Kerri Sackville

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

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

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

I Know This to Be True: The Guiding Principles of Nelson Mandela by Sello Hatang; Verne Harris

$17.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

A unique insight into the qualities, routines and disciplines of Nelson Mandela, revolutionary anti-apartheid leader and first president of a democratic South Africa (1994-99).

Small Steps: A Physio in Ethiopia by Julie Sprigg

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

This heartfelt memoir and travel story is about an idealistic young woman forced to confront the limitations of how much difference she can make in a country rich in culture but stark in its deprivations. Julie Sprigg spent three years in Ethiopia, volunteering at a convent clinic and then teaching the first physiotherapy cohort to ever graduate from Gondar University. In Ethiopia she falls in love, and learns as much about herself as she does about this complex, magnificent country and its people. ...Show more

Guinea Pig in White Wine Sauce by Alan Rochford

$29.99 AUD

Category: Memoir

Alan Rochford was living the dream when he started Stone Cottage, an idyllic French restaurant nestled in the Adelaide Hills. He had everything going for him apart from experience, money, and the first idea about what he was doing. After two years and one divorce, he began to see the funny side, fed on an endless diet of characters and occurrences so crazy that you couldn’t make them up. Australia’s answer to Basil Fawlty, Alan serves up a degustation of lip-smacking anecdotes, from his side-line in snail trading across the French countryside, to the time two customers got a touch too ‘intimate’ in the middle of his dining room. Guinea Pig in White Wine Sauce is the tale of one man trying to keep his head in the certifiably insane world of fine dining. ...Show more