Foster care was Schwartzen Precil's home since he was one years old. He endured many extreme hardships including an encounter with the criminal justice system as a teenager. He used that obstacle as an opportunity to start over. Despite a traumatic childhood, Schwartzen remained hopeful as he developed a resilient spirit. Through the game of basketball, he enhanced his leadership skills which earned him college scholarship. After graduation, he went on to empower and inspires youth and young professionals with his story as he searched for his long lost family. "Many people struggle with acceptance, identity, and emotional instability their entire lives. I decided to stop blaming others and take full responsibility. I became my own hero." -Schwartzen Precil

When Tricia wakes up in a strangers home after a car accident, she doesnt expect to be captivated by the man and his sons. Clayton had been alone, raising his sons after his wifes death. He can not believe how this woman has opened up his heart.

Now in paperback--from the author of the acclaimed Whoredom in Kimmage, a moving, controversial, and supremely intelligent memoir of a bright and vulnerable teenager's hellish summer job. In 1978, Rosemary Mahoney, an aspiring young writer of seventeen, wrote her personal idol Lillian Hellman inquiring whether the famed woman of American letters might need domestic help for the summer. When Hellman responded affirmatively, Mahoney imagined an idyll on Martha's Vineyard of mentoring and friendship. But in reality Mahoney's summer unfolded into an exquisite and grueling exercise in humiliation at the hands of the acerbic Hellman and her retinue of celebrated acquaintances. By turns heartbreaking and uproariously funny, A Likely Story portrays the coming-of-age of a brilliant and troubled young woman--a universal tale of illusions shattered and an object lesson in the often misdirected search for heroes.

A memoir by a disability rights activist Such a Pretty Girl is Nadina LaSpina's story—from her early years in her native Sicily, where still a baby she contracts polio, a fact that makes her the object of well-meaning pity and the target of messages of hopelessness; to her adolescence and youth in America, spent almost entirely in hospitals, where she is tortured in the quest for a cure and made to feel that her body no longer belongs to her; to her rebellion and her activism in the disability rights movement. LaSpina’s personal growth parallels the movement’s political development—from coming together, organizing, and fighting against exclusion from public and social life, to the forging of a common identity, the blossoming of disability arts and culture, and the embracing of disability pride. While unique, the author's journey is also one with which many disabled people can identify. It is the journey to find one's place in an ableist world—a world not made for disabled people, where disability is only seen in negative terms. La Spina refutes all stereotypical narratives of disability. Through the telling of her life’s story, without editorializing, she shows the harm that the overwhelming focus on pity and on a cure that remains elusive has done to disabled people. Her story exposes the disability prejudice ingrained in our sociopolitical system and denounces the oppressive standards of normalcy in a society that devalues those who are different and denies them basic rights. Written as continuous narrative and in a subtle and intimate voice, Such a Pretty Girl is a memoir as captivating as a novel. It is one of the few disability memoirs to focus on activism, and one of the first by an immigrant.

The author began teaching a course on whiteness more than fifteen years ago. After teaching various race relations courses for some 35 years, it dawned upon me that the emphasis was on the wrong variable. Whiteness contributed to many social problems but much greater stress was placed on blackness. From early college where was on race practically no emphasis was placed on whiteness. As I researched and thought about it, I could see that whiteness was a larger descriptive and explanatory variable than had been given attention. Having to write my own text and other materials for the class, the present work is continuing emphasis on trying to understand why and how whiteness became such a trying and problematic subject.

Fight for your dreams, even if it means breaking a few rules. "A wonderful baseball story." – Miranda Kenneally, author of Catching Jordan "This one’s sure to be a home run with readers!" – Katy Upperman, author of Kissing Max Holden "A strong female protagonist and a swoon-worthy romance, all woven together with wit and charm." – Cheyanne Young, author of The Last Wish of Sasha Cade Ryan Russell has life perfectly planned. She’s going to take over her family’s team, the Buckley Beavers, and become one of the only female General Managers in minor league baseball. Then Sawyer Campbell shows up, and Ryan’s carefully laid plans are thrown a major curveball. Sawyer is far more charming than the arrogant jocks she usually manages, though fraternizing is against every rule in the Beaver’s handbook. But after figuring out the desperate state of the team’s finances, Ryan will have to take risks in order to save her future. She teams up with Sawyer, using his star power to draw in sponsors. But the more time she spends with him, the harder it becomes to play by the rules. Is his partnership the key to saving the Beavers, or a distraction she can’t afford?