When Libby grows up she swears to herself to never pick up a drink to not end up like her Dad, but when she is seventeen she finds herself living the same life she hated her father for having. Maybe she is her father's daughter after all.

PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styron’s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron’s parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all “a high priest at the altar of fiction,” Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family’s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styron’s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation’s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace.

For so long, she ignored the voice inside of herthe voice of her inner child, the one who had seen too much and understood too little. She buried her cries beneath layers of anger, denial, and pain, convincing herself that her wounds were insignificant, that they were nothing compared to the suffering of others. But she was wrong. Now, shes finally started to listen. Finally started to hear the echoes of that little girl who was once too afraid to speak, and as she does, she realizes that her voice was hers too. This is her attempt to unravel the tangled web of her past, to face the struggles that have haunted her for years, and to give that child the voice she was never allowed to have. These diary entries are her way of making sense of it allof the battles shes fought, the trauma shes endured, and the hope that, somehow, she might still find a way to heal. This is her story, and its time it is told.

What do you wear to meet your father for the first time? In 2004, Hannah Pool knew more about next season's lipstick colors than she did about Africa: a beauty editor for The Guardian newspaper, she juggled lattes and cocktails, handbags and hangouts through her twenties just like any other beautiful, independent Londoner. Her white, English adoptive relatives were beloved to her and were all the family she needed. Okay, if I treat it as a first date, then I'm on home turf. What image do I want to put across?...Classic, rather than trendy, and if my G-string doesn't pop out, I should be able to carry the whole thing off. Contacted by relatives she didn't know she had, she decided to visit Eritrea, the war-torn African country of her birth, and answer for herself the daunting questions every adopted child asks. Imagine what it's like to never have seen another woman or man from your own family. To spend your life looking for clues in the faces of strangers...We all need to know why we were given up. What Hannah Pool learned on her journey forms a narrative of insight, wisdom, wit, and warmth beyond all expectations. When I stepped off the plane in Asmara, I had no idea what lay ahead, or how those events would change me, and if I'd thought about it too hard I probably wouldn't have gotten farther than the baggage claim. A story that will "send shivers down [your] spine," (The Bookseller), My Fathers' Daughter follows Hannah Pool's brave and heartbreaking return to Africa to meet the family she lost -- and the father she thought was dead.

Serene Park has a troubled upbringing. Growing up in an abusive household, she does everything she can do to break the shackles around her. Quickly comes the realization that letting go of past demons isn't easy at all and she finds herself at war with her past, again.

a collection of poems