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Sonja Livingston

A memoir of growing up poor and hungry in 1970s western New York: “Like an American version of Angela’s Ashes.”—Kathleen Norris, New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk
 
When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through. 
 
 One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western New York that remain relatively hidden from the rest of America. From an old farming town to an Indian reservation to a dead-end urban neighborhood, Livingston and her siblings follow their nonconformist mother from one ramshackle house to another on the perpetual search for something better. Along the way, the young Sonja observes the harsh realities her family encounters, as well as small moments of transcendent beauty that somehow keep them going. While struggling to make sense of her world, Livingston perceives the stresses and patterns that keep children—girls in particular—trapped in the cycle of poverty.
 
 Informed by cultural experiences such as Livington’s love for Wonder Woman and Nancy Drew and her experiences with the Girl Scouts and Roman Catholicism, this lyrical memoir firmly eschews sentimentality, offering instead a meditation on what it means to hunger and showing that poverty can strengthen the spirit just as surely as it can grind it down.
 
 “[A]n absolutely astonishing debut…harrowing and hilarious.”—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times-bestselling author of With or Without You
 
 “Livingston reveals the daily challenges poverty-stricken young children face.”—Booklist
 
 “Weaves together a child’s experience of not belonging, the perilous ease of slipping into failure, and the deep love that can flow from even a highly troubled parent.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of The Accidental Buddhist

University of Georgia Press

Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction Series

Ghostbread

Paisley Rekdal

An attack in a grocery store parking lot launches an examination of the Vietnam War’s dark legacy—by the author of The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee.

The Broken Country uses a violent incident that took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2012 as a springboard for examining the long-term cultural and psychological effects of the Vietnam War. To make sense of the shocking and baffling incident—in which a young homeless man born in Vietnam stabbed a number of white men purportedly in retribution for the war—Paisley Rekdal draws on a remarkable range of material and fashions it into a compelling account of the dislocations suffered by the Vietnamese and also by American-born veterans over the past decades. She interweaves a narrative about the crime with information collected in interviews, historical examination of the arrival of Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s, a critique of portrayals of Vietnam in American popular culture, and discussions of the psychological consequences of trauma. This work allows us to better understand transgenerational and cultural trauma and advances our still complicated struggle to comprehend the war.

 “A moving and often gripping meditation on the fallout of war, from violence and racism to melancholy and trauma.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Refugees

 “Assembling a remarkable range of materials and testimonies, she shows us both the persistence of war’s trauma and how we might more ethically imagine those it harms.”—Beth Loffreda, author of Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder

 “A compact, thoughtful debut addressing violence, immigrant identity, and the long shadow of the Vietnam War…. A poignant, relevant synthesis of cultural studies and true-crime drama.—Kirkus Reviews

The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam