Recommendations based on "The Half of It"

A memoir from singer-songwriter Madison Beer, chronicling the past decade of her life spent in the spotlight—the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens that you won’t see on social media.Discovered at twelve years old, Madison Beer was one of the first artists to have her entire life documented online. Over the past decade, she has navigated the spotlight as a child, through her teenage years, and now as a young woman in her twenties.In The Half of It, Madison pulls back the curtain to show the behind-the-scenes of her journey, from reckoning with mass hate online and the time her private pictures were leaked, to battling suicidal thoughts while making her highly acclaimed debut album, Life Support, and her recovery since then. This memoir is an honest and unflinching account of self-love, mental health, and advocacy from one of the fastest-rising musical voices and most influential social media presences of her generation. It hammers home the point, more striking and urgent than ever, that no matter how close the internet may make us feel to people, we truly don’t know the half of it.

One of the most beloved Christian autobiographies of modern times, Joni highlights the unforgettable story of a young woman's courageous struggle to find hope after a broken neck left her completely paralyzed.On a hot July afternoon, Joni Eareckson Tada's life was dramatically altered in a split second. A reckless dive into shallow water took an athletic young woman from health and success to life as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. In the forty-five years since the release of this book--which has more than five million copies in print in over forty languages--Joni's earnest struggle to find hope has resonated with millions of readers around the world. The hard-earned truths she shares in this special edition reveal the power of God's love to transform, as well as the triumph of faith over pain and suffering.Joni's message has inspired people facing all types of challenges, helping them overcome their own limitations with a determined smile. In this updated edition, you will discover how to stay satisfied in God through disappointment and affliction. Filled with practical insights, Joni will help you find hope in every hardship.This commemorative 45th anniversary edition features updated photos, as well as an all-new afterword in which Joni describes her current battle against two different cancers, her daily struggle with chronic pain, and the joys of leading a global outreach to people living with disability.

The actress discusses her personal quest into the realm of higher consciousness, detailing her extraordinary search for meaning and added dimension for her life and the impact of that investigation on her relationships

The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir—wise, complex, smart, funny—a version of the American experience different from anything we’ve readGabourey Sidibe—“Gabby” to her legion of fans—skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels’s acclaimed movie Precious. In This Is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she’s played onscreen. With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex “talker.” And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside “a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment.”Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight (“If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself,” she writes, “would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?”). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different, and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true.

James Baldwin used to tell Nina Simone, "This is the world you have made for yourself, now you have to live in it." Simone has created for herself a world of magnificent peaks. Often compared to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, Simone is known as one of the greatest singers of her generation. She has recorded forty-three albums, ranging from blues to jazz to folk, and her hits like "I Loves You, Porgy," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," "I Put a Spell on You," and "Mississippi Goddam" have confirmed her as an enduring force in popular music. Her song "Young, Gifted, and Black" became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement and thrust her beyond international stardom into the center of activism. But such worlds as Simone's are not without their grim valleys: disastrous marriages, arrest and the threat of imprisonment, mental breakdown, poverty, and attempted suicide. She has survived these trials and continues to perform throughout Europe and the United States. With undiminished passion and in her unconquerable voice, this is Nina Simone's powerful memoir of her tempestuous life.

FINALIST FOR THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR 'An exquisite exploration of disability, identity and the human capacity to do (and be) more than we've ever dreamed' Time 'Gorgeously, vividly alive' New York Times 'Challenges the unspoken social taboos about the disabled body, unpacking myths of beauty and our complicity in upholding those myths' Lit Hub Born with sacral agenesis, a visible congenital disability that affects her stature and gait, Chloé Cooper Jones had always found solace in what she thought of as 'the neutral room' - a dissociative space in her mind that offered her solace and self-protection, but also kept her isolated. When she became pregnant (disproving her doctor, who had assumed it impossible), something necessary in her started to crack, forcing her to reckon with her defensive positionality to the world and the people in it. This prompted an odyssey across time and space as Chloé - while at museums, operas, concerts and sporting events, and in the presence of awe-inspiring nature - reconsidered the consciousness-shifting power of beauty. A book of the year for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, BuzzFeed, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Vulture, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and New York Public Library

"A chilling account." New York Times SHORTLISTED - Prime Minister's Literary Awards, Non-Fiction 2018 This is a story of Jelena Dokic's survival. How she survived as a refugee, twice. How she survived on the tennis court to become world No. 4. But, most importantly, how she survived her father, Damir Dokic, the tennis dad from hell. Jelena was a prodigious talent, heralded as Australia's greatest tennis hope since Evonne Goolagong. She had exceptional skills, a steely nerve and an extraordinary ability to fight on the court. Off it she endured huge challenges; being an 'outsider' in her new country, poverty and racism. Still she starred on the tennis court. By 18, she was in the world's top 10. By 19, she was No. 4. The world was charmed by her and her story – a refugee whose family had made Australia home when she was eleven years old. Jelena has not told a soul her incredible, explosive story in full – until now. From war-torn Yugoslavia to Sydney to Wimbledon, she narrates her hellish ascent to becoming one of the best tennis players in the women’s game, and her heart-breaking fall from the top. Her gutsy honesty will leave you in awe. Her fight back from darkness will uplift you. Most of all, Jelena's will to survive will inspire you. _______________________________________________ PRAISE FOR UNBREAKABLE "A study in what truly makes a champion." Herald Sun "Unbreakable has the gut-wrenching quality of a Greek myth: a daughter torn between loyalty to her family and her need to break free in order to survive." The Sydney Morning Herald "A book you will think about for hours after finishing it, and perhaps shed a tear while reading it." Townsville Bulletin

A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life.Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from the author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures. 'Every writer is at least two beings: the one who lives, and the one who writes. Though everything written must have passed through their minds, or mind, they are not the same.' Raised by ruggedly independent, scientifically minded parents - entomologist father, dietician mother - Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec. This childhood was unfettered and nomadic, sometimes isolated (on her eighth birthday: 'It sounds forlorn. It was forlorn. It gets more forlorn.'), but also thrilling and beautiful. From this unconventional start, Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat's Eye to the Orwellian 1980s Berlin where she wrote The Handmaid's Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel. As we travel with her along the course of her life, more and more is revealed about her writing, the connections between real life and art - and the workings of one of our greatest imaginations.

A memoir from singer-songwriter Madison Beer, chronicling the past decade of her life spent in the spotlight--the ups, the downs, and the in-betweens that you won't see on social media. Discovered at twelve years old, Madison Beer was one of the first artists to have her entire life documented online. Over the past decade, she has navigated the spotlight as a child, through her teenage years, and now as a young woman in her twenties. In The Half of It, Madison pulls back the curtain to show the behind-the-scenes of her journey, from reckoning with mass hate online and the time her private pictures were leaked, to battling suicidal thoughts while making her highly acclaimed debut album, Life Support, and her recovery since then. This memoir is an honest and unflinching account of self-love, mental health, and advocacy from one of the fastest-rising musical voices and most influential social media presences of her generation. It hammers home the point, more striking and urgent than ever, that no matter how close the internet may make us feel to people, we truly don't know the half of it.