New memoirs ...

ON BEING HUMAN by Jennifer Pastiloff is an inspiring memoir geared to adults and filled with motivational ideas from her well-liked yoga workshops. She conveys her thoughts with a very personal, upbeat tone in almost three dozen chapters with titles like “Rewrite Your Story,” “Doing and Undoing Pain,” “All Very Normal,” and “I Got You.” Pastiloff is nearly deaf but writes about the importance of listening deeply and affirming others. Her chapters do tend to jump around a bit, and the stories of her life experience will likely appeal more to her middle-aged peers, as perhaps summarized best by the Publishers Weekly review: “Readers feeling stuck in their lives will devour this inspiring story of a woman finding her way.”  Her book is subtitled “A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard,” and Pastiloff says, “At the end of my life, when I say one final What have I done?, let my answer be, I have done love.” 

BROKEN PLACES & OUTER SPACES by Nnedi Okorafor is a shorter work, but it, too, “shows that what we think are our limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths.” In her life story, Okorafor describes how an operation left her paralyzed from the waist down, a challenge that ultimately “ignited … passion for storytelling and the transformative power of the imagination.” BROKEN PLACES & OUTER SPACES garnered starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly for its award winning (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy) author. This new title might work quite well as a summer read for students in Creative Writing and/or Senior Writers Seminar, with an added bonus that some takes place in Chicago. Look for a copy on our shelves soon.