Tag Archives: Memoir

In My Hands Today…

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They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl’s Fight for Freedom – Ahed Tamimi, Dena Takruri

“What would you do if you grew up seeing your home repeatedly raided? Your parents arrested? Your mother shot? Your uncle killed? Try, for just a moment, to imagine that this was your life. How would you want the world to react?”

Ahed Tamimi is a world-renowned Palestinian activist, born and raised in the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, which became a center of the resistance to Israeli occupation when an illegal, Jewish-only settlement blocked off its community spring. Tamimi came of age participating in nonviolent demonstrations against this action and the occupation at large. Her global renown reached an apex in December 2017, when, at sixteen years old, she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who refused to leave her front yard. The video went viral, and Tamimi was arrested.

But this is not just a story of activism or imprisonment. It is the human-scale story of an occupation that has riveted the world and shaped global politics, from a girl who grew up in the middle of it . Tamimi’s father was born in 1967, the year that Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and he grew up immersed in the resistance movement. One of Tamimi’s earliest memories is visiting him in prison, poking her toddler fingers through the fence to touch his hand. She herself would spend her seventeenth birthday behind bars. Living through this greatest test and heightened attacks on her village, Tamimi felt her resolve only deepen, in tension with her attempts to live the normal life of a daughter, sibling, friend, and student.

In My Hands Today…

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Heartstrong – Ellidy Pullin, Alley Pascoe

‘If not with you, then for you.’

‘It was a perfect Wednesday morning when Alex ‘Chumpy’ Pullin kissed his partner, Ellidy, goodbye to go spearfishing. Most days Ellidy would go to the beach too, but that day she didn’t. Later, there was a knock at the door. A man had been found unconscious on the ocean floor. It was Chumpy.

From that moment, Ellidy’s world stopped. There was deep grief, disbelief and then the gradual realisation that this was real. Life was forever changed. Ellidy’s partner of eight years, a World Champion snowboarder, a man of energy and music, was gone. And so was the life they had built together and the dream of the child they had been trying for. In the hours that followed a suggestion was made, did Ellidy want to harvest Chumpy’s sperm and try for the baby they both wanted so deeply? There was a ticking clock and the need to speak to family and friends. They had thirty-six hours before it would be too late. Family, friends, lawyers and doctors helped to give Ellidy the chance to keep a small part of Chumpy alive.

Sorrow meant it took Ellidy a number of months to be strong enough to start IVF. The first round didn’t work. But the second did.

In My Hands Today…

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The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing – Lara Love Hardin

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: She is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns jail is a class system with a power structure somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes, and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,” showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. She must learn to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.

In My Hands Today…

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The Hungry Season: A Journey of War, Love, and Survival – Lisa M. Hamilton

As combat rages across the lush highlands of Vietnam and Laos, a child is born.

Ia Moua enters life at the bottom of her world’s social order, both because she is part of Laos’s Hmong minority and because she is female. But when brutal communist rule upends her life and strips Ia of all she loves, this young girl resolves to chart her own defiant path.

With ceaseless ambition and an indestructible spirit, Ia builds a new life for herself and, before long, for her children, first in the refugee camps of Thailand and then in the industrial heartland of California’s San Joaquin Valley.

At the root of her success is a simple growing rice just as her ancestors did. When she gains power and independence, however, Ia must confront all that she left behind—and find a place in her heart for those who left her.

Meticulously reported over seven years and written with the intimacy of a novel, The Hungry Season is an unforgettable tale about hard-won survival and the nourishment that matters most.

In My Hands Today…

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The Resilience Project: Finding Happiness through Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness – Hugh van Cuylenburg

Hugh van Cuylenburg was a primary school teacher volunteering in northern India when he had a life-changing realisation- despite the underprivileged community the children were from, they were remarkably positive. By contrast, back in Australia Hugh knew that all too many children struggled with depression, social anxieties and mental illness. His own little sister had been ravaged by anorexia nervosa.

How was it that young people he knew at home, who had food, shelter, friends and a loving family, struggled with their mental health, while these kids seemed so contented and resilient? He set about finding the answer and in time came to recognise the key traits and behaviours these children possessed were gratitude, empathy and mindfulness.

In the ensuing years Hugh threw himself into studying and sharing this revelation with the world through The Resilience Project, with his playful and unorthodox presentations which both entertain and inform. Now, with the same blend of humour, poignancy and clear-eyed insight that The Resilience Project has become renowned for, Hugh explains how we can all get the tools we need to live a happier and more fulfilling life.