A Book About Things I Will Tell My Daughter

"I love the shit out of my daughter. I want to change the world, with words. This started as affirmations for Lilah, which turned into prayers, which turned into love letters, which turned into essays, which turned into poems, which then turned into all of the above.This has been written in the same vein as Claudia Rankine's Citizen, for context. I wanted to write something that could document my experience as a single father, a single Black father, raising a soon-to-be 2-year-old Afro-Latina in the 45th era. I wanted her to know me, and know herself, with the hope that it would help fathers learn their own daughters, and learn themselves, too." -Joel L. DanielsJoel l. Daniels is a storyteller, born and raised in the Bronx. He was the recipient of the Bronx Council of the Arts BRIO Award for poetry, and his work has been featured in the Columbia Journal, Café.com, The Boston Globe, CNN Money, The Towner, Fatherly, Thought Catalog, Philadelphia Printworks, The Smoking Section, Blavity, Huffington Post, BBC Radio, RCRD LBL, URB, BRM, AllHipHop, The Source, RESPECT, and HipHopDX.He's spoken/performed at the Apollo Theater, Joe's Pub, Rockwood Music Hall, Columbia University, Lehman College, City Tech, The National Black Theater, NYU, Webster Hall, Pianos, and Brooklyn Bowl.

A warm and witty memoir of motherhood (or what you meant to say but were too busy parenting ...) Every middle-aged woman wants to say in a firm, clear, loving voice to every young woman: 'I have been you. But you haven't been me, yet ... You should listen.' Liberated from the daily minutiae when her daughter left home, Michele A'Court suddenly found the time she'd never had as a parent -- to think about being a parent. Mostly, she spent the time wondering if she'd told her daughter everything she needed to know -- such as how to store ginger, get rid of bloodstains, calculate GST, stop your tights snagging, the meaning of feminism ... that sort of thing. So she began to make a list. The list became a hit solo comedy show. And then the list kept getting longer. So now it has become a book. A funny, wise, honest and maybe even useful book. Turns out I raised a determined young woman with her own very clear ideas about how to live her life. Who saw that coming? I blame the mother.

A "diverse group of women--from Madeleine Albright To Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Dr. Susan Love to Whoopi Goldberg and more...reflect on the best advice and counsel they have given their daughters either by example, throughout their lives, or in character-building, teachable moments between parent and child."--Book jacket.

The award-winning author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day reminisces on the art of balancing family, politics and a writing career during her pre-fame years in the 1970s and 1980s, tracing her rise from a small-time columnist and her friendships with such notables as Richard Pryor, Avery Brooks and Jesse Jackson.

A charming and heartwarming true story for anyone who has ever longed for a place to belong. “Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me is a witty romp through the classic novel; a visit to the magical shores of Prince Edward Island; and a poignant personal tale of love, faith, and loss. And it all started with a simple question: “What’s an orphan?” The words from her adopted daughter, Phoebe, during a bedtime reading of Anne of Green Gables stopped Lorilee Craker in her tracks. How could Lorilee, who grew up not knowing her own birth parents, answer Phoebe’s question when she had wrestled all her life with feeling orphaned—and learned too well that not every story has a happy ending? So Lorilee set off on a quest to find answers in the pages of the very book that started it all, determined to discover—and teach her daughter—what home, family, and belonging really mean. If you loved the poignancy of Orphan Train and the humor of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, you will be captivated by “Anne of Green Gables,” My Daughter, and Me. It’s a beautiful memoir that deftly braids three lost girls’ stories together, speaks straight to the heart of the orphan in us all, and shows us the way home at last.

In this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, Natalia Ginzburg explores both the mundane details and inescapable catastrophes of personal life with the grace and wit that have assured her rightful place in the pantheon of classic mid-century authors. Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. "A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.' — The New York Times Book Review

Look out for Julie's new book, The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters. From the author of Friendkeeping and Love at First Bark, one woman's hilarious, bittersweet account of growing up in a family of career-shunning, dependence-seeking women and her journey to a state of twenty-first-century self-reliance. Julie Klam was raised as the only daughter of a Jewish family in the exclusive WASP stronghold of Bedford, New York. Her mother was sharp, glamorous, and funny, but did not think that work was a woman's responsibility. Her father was fully supportive, not just of his wife's staying at home, but also of her extravagant lifestyle. Her mother's offbeat parenting style-taking Julie out of school to go to lunch at Bloomingdale's, for example-made her feel well-cared-for (and well-dressed) but left her unprepared for graduating and entering the real world. She had been brought up to look pretty and wait for a rich man to sweep her off her feet. But what happened if he never showed up? When Julie gets married to a hardworking but not wealthy man-one who expects her to be part of a modern couple and contribute financially to the marriage-she realizes how ambivalent and ill-equipped she is for life. Once she gives birth to a daughter, she knows she must grow up, get to work, and teach her child the self-reliance that she never learned. Delivered in an uproariously funny, sweet, self-effacing, and utterly memorable voice, Please Excuse My Daughter is a bighearted memoir from an irresistible new writer.

In the tradition of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, acclaimed novelist David Chariandy's latest is an intimate and profoundly beautiful meditation on the politics of race today. When a moment of quietly ignored bigotry prompted his three-year-old daughter to ask "what happened?" David Chariandy began wondering how to discuss with his children the politics of race. A decade later, in a newly heated era of both struggle and divisions, he writes a letter to his now thirteen-year-old daughter. David is the son of Black and South Asian migrants from Trinidad, and he draws upon his personal and ancestral past, including the legacies of slavery, indenture, and immigration, as well as the experiences of growing up a visible minority within the land of one's birth. In sharing with his daughter his own story, he hopes to help cultivate within her a sense of identity and responsibility that balances the painful truths of the past and present with hopeful possibilities for the future.