Author:
Language: English
Summary: For anyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. Continue reading “Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In”
Author: Daniel Barenboim
Language: English
Summary: A Life in Music reviews five decades of the rich and uniquely varied musical life of Daniel Barenboim. A child prodigy as a pianist and a virtuoso conductor of symphonies and opera, he has known and worked with many of the most distinguished and exciting musicians of the 20th century, not least his own wife Jacqueline du Pré. With memories of music heard and performed, and thoughtful examinations of global influences and professional inspiration, A Life in Music offers a profound window to the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest musicians. Continue reading “A Life in Music”
Author: Bill Moody
Language: English
Summary: The Jazz Exiles chronicles the expatriate movement of American jazz musicians during the post-World War II era. While the term exile normally conjures up images of ousted Third World leaders or deposed kings, it is as much a part of the jazz vocabulary as improvisation or Birdland.
Like the American writers of the 1920s who went to Europe and became Gertrude Stein’s “lost generation, ” jazz musicians from the United States also made the Atlantic crossing at a steadily increasing rate until many of the major names in jazz lived or worked almost exclusively abroad. Continue reading “The Jazz Exiles: American Musicians Abroad”
Author: Wyclef Jean, Anthony Bozza
Language: English
Summary: Musician, producer, and actor, Wyclef Jean describes growing up in Haiti so poor, he actually ate dirt. Coming to New Jersey at nine, Jean was bullied throughout school for his Haitian background. Music became his refuge: spirituals at church, where his harsh father was a preacher; jazz and band music in school; and, later, rap and hip-hop with his friends. Continue reading “Purpose: An Immigrant’s Story”
Author: Aeham Ahmad
Language: Italiano
Summary: Un giovane suona il pianoforte in mezzo a una strada bombardata. Suona per i suoi vicini, soprattutto per i bambini, per distrarli dalle atrocità della guerra: un’immagine che ha fatto il giro del mondo diventando un simbolo della catastrofe in Siria, ma anche dell’inestinguibile volontà dell’uomo di opporsi in ogni modo alla distruzione. Il suono di quello strumento ha raggiunto e commosso milioni di persone nel mondo su YouTube.
Continue reading “Il pianista di Yarmouk”
Author: Miral al-Tahawy
Language: English
Summary: The Tent is a beautifully written, powerful, and disturbing novel, featuring a host of women characters whose lives are subject to the will of a single, often absent, patriarch and his brutal, foul-mouthed mother. Told through the eyes of a young girl, the lives of the Bedouin and peasant women unfold, revealing the tragedy of the son-less mother and the intolerable heaviness of existence.
