Biographies & Autobiographies
Title
Biographies & Autobiographies
Collection Items
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Memory Babe : A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac
Biography of Lowell, Massachusetts native, poet, and author, Jack Kerouac, widely known as a founding participant in the 20th century USA literary culture that came to be called the "Beat Movement," or the "Beat Generation." Kerouac's life from birth to early death; from Lowell, to New York, to San Francisco, to Denver, to Tampa and St. Petersburg, and back again. The cultural, interpersonal, and geographic contexts for his poetry and writings of autobiographical fiction. Anecdotes and aspects of his public and private lives, and where these lives changed and converged. Well-known for the biographer's extensive use of archival materials and interviews with Kerouac's contemporaries. -
"Wednesday's Child" : Excerpts
Some selections from Waterville, Maine, native Rhea Coêté Robbins's memoir, "Wednesday's Child." -
Among My Souvenirs
Memoirs of a priest from the St. John River Valley, Maine and New Brunswick, who was born in the first decade of the 20th century and spent most of his late life preaching in the Roman Catholic parishes of northern Maine.Tags Alberta, Allagash ME, Baker Lake ME, Bangor ME, Calais ME, Chisholm ME, Community: Customs and Social Life, Ellsworth ME, Emigration and Immigration, Exploration and Colonization, Family, Farming and Agriculture, Fort Fairfield ME, Fort Kent ME, Frenchville ME, Grand Isle ME, Greenville ME, Limestone ME, Lincoln ME, Livermore ME, Madawaska ME, Maine, Michigan, Millinocket ME, Minnesota, Native Americans, New Brunswick, North Dakota, Oquossoc ME, Orono ME, Personal History: Biography and Oral History, Presque Isle ME, Québec, Rangeley ME, Religion, Rockwood ME, Rumford ME, Saskatchewan, St. Francis ME, St. Lawrence River Valley, St. Zacharie ME, Stratton ME, Wallagrass ME, Youth -
The Girl from Peyton Place: A Biography of Grace Metalious
A biography of the New Hampshire author, Grace Metalious, whose works include "Peyton Place," "The Tight White Collar," and "No Adam in Eden."
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A Place Called Spruce Knoll
A book of short, autobiographical stories from a native of Old Town, Maine, and a resident of Gouldsboro. The subjects of her stories take a lot of their value from the author's longtime and current home, "Spruce Knoll." Paradis King is also the author of the memoir, "Growing Up On Academy Hill" (2002). -
Growing Up On Academy Hill: Remembering My French-Canadian-American Papa
Biography of a father from his daughter's point of view, set in the context of Old Town, Maine, in the first half of the 20th century. From the author: "'Growing Up On Academy Hill' honors [King's] father who encouraged all six of his children to finish high school, a not-so-common achievement for those hard times. Recalling his ideology Annette wrote: 'My father was born with an inexhaustible desire to feel the earth passing through his fingers, to smell newly plowed fields warmed by sunlight. Every spring he pointed joyfully to new beginnings, and with enthusiasm taught us the basics of all beauty. From one corner of a small piece of land to the other, we observed as children, life through his eyes.' A brother's thoughts: 'We were not from a very touchy-feely" kind of family. However, our parents were not unloving, it was simply an unspoken love that was shared. I never heard Papa say, "I love you" to my mother, my sisters, or me. I never saw Papa kiss Mama. Yet the feeling of love was pervasive when I was a child.'" -
American Ghosts
A memoir from prose writer David Plante. An exploration of identity with respect to language, the power of Catholic traditions, and the pull of sex, moving with the author from his Providence, Rhode Island, hometown through Europe and back again. From Publishers Weekly: "Haunted by the visible and invisible spirits of his life, Plante embarks on a remarkable journey of self-discovery. Traveling through a past littered with the ghosts of his ethnic lineage (French Canadian), his family heritage, his sexuality and his writing life, he searches to make sense of his spiritual longings and his physical desires." -
Wednesday's Child
Memoir of a Franco-American woman who grew up "down the Plains" in Waterville, Maine. Winner of the 1997 Maine Chapbook Award.
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Ten Going on Twelve
Biography of a Franco-American girl growing up in Southern Maine at the beginning of the twentieth century.
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It Stops with Me : Memoir of a Canuck Girl
From Touch Art Books: "This story with its bold contrasts of good and bad, love and hate, inextricably connected, is situated in the context of the bigger history of French Canadian and Indian people amid mainstream American culture from the mid 1950s to the edge of the 21st century....Touchette’s story is rooted deep in the past in her parents', grandparents', and great-grandparents' experiences. Rooted in a changing, dying culture, and a community with a complex history, her mixed heritage held good and bad. With coal black eyes, Indian hair, French language, and woman-centered culture, she inherited a legacy of oppression and denial overshadowed by the powerful influence of the Catholic Church. But Touchette chose a different legacy for her children and the seven generations to follow that connected her to 5000 years of Jewish traditions, and milleniums of Native American spirituality." Also from Touch Art Books: "A visionary American painter examines an eventful life that spans fifty years, several cultures -- French Canadian, Indian and Jewish, and diverse places -- from Wellesley College, New York's Lower East Side, and Soho, to Indian Country, Navajo Nation and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Stories of families -- their agony and blessings, shame and pride, destruction and creation -- with brilliant illustrations, demonstrate the depth and resiliency of the human spirit, and make the personal, universal. Original." -
Visions of Kerouac
Biography of Jack Kerouac published in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts.
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Use My Name: Jack Kerouac's Forgotten Families
From ECW Press: "With this fascinating new book, Jim Jones debunks many of the myths surrounding the life and times of Jack Kerouac. Jones concentrates on those whose lives were most affected by Kerouac: daughter Jan Kerouac, wives Edie Parker, Joan Haverty, and Stella Sampas, as well as nephew Paul Blake Jr. 'Use My Name: Jack Kerouac's Forgotten Families' takes its title from advice given to Jan during her second and final meeting with Jack, who encouraged her to profit from the surname she shared with the famous author of 'On the Road.' Sadly, not one of these individuals so closely tied to Kerouac seems to have benefited from the connection, as Jones discovers in his in-depth interview with Jan. She discusses at length her 15 months as a prostitute, her own divorces, her hospitalization, and her life as an author, including a wild European book tour for [her novel] 'Baby Driver.' Although Kerouac is one of the most 'biographied' American writers of our time, Jones offers a new perspective on the King of the Beats and his generation, one in which formerly marginalized figures in the Kerouac storyparticularly womenbecome strong, central characters. He also exposes the cut-throat wheeling and dealing that has plagued the Kerouac estate and that continues today as the various players do battle over the legacy of one of the counterculture's biggest idols." -
Jack Kérouac : Essai-Poulet / A Chicken Essay
Un livre comme essai sur les rélations entre la vie et la littérature de Jack Kerouac - son écriture et son héritage - avec des réactions de l'auteur. -
I Had a Father: A Post-Modern Autobiography
From Library Journal: "This unusual memoir focuses on the author's attempt to understand his dead father. Blaise, a prize-winning novelist and director of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, combines fragments of memories, mostly concerned with locations, as he circles around the story of his difficult, much-married father, a French Canadian/American traveling salesman." -
Little Canuck : The Adventures of an Immigrant Boy from Québec
Self-published memoir about life in Québec, and life after Québec. From iUniverse: "Michel learns that his father is dying. This news precipitates a nostalgic journey into the past-a childhood spent on a dairy farm in French Québec. As a sensitive boy secluded from the world, Michel wavers between forbidden exploits and heartbreaking tribulations. Catholic school is a culture shock, but it's the huge pumpkin-shaped teacher with a bad temper who terrorizes his brain most. On the farm, his young life abounds with fun and danger-mad bulls, dynamite sticks, runaway darts, lethal ice cubes, and hazardous farm equipment. After struggling with a dismal economy, his family is forced to abandon their home. They desert their isolated farmhouse and move into a cockroach-infested apartment in an English-speaking city one mile from the seductive United States border. There, Michel copes with bullies, Russian spies, and ghosts. 'Little Canuck' recounts the humorous, and at times, heartrending memoirs of a young boy on his journey through a colorful landscape of emotion. Along the way, young Michel uncovers the mysteries of female anatomy, and learns poignant truths about mortality. His most profound lessons are not learned at school.
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As I Live and Dream
Autobiographical collection of essays that chronicle a Franco American's family life in western Maine in the first half of the twentieth century. Includes one chapter on the history of Rumford, Maine. -
My Life on the Line : Recollections of a Childhood Spent in the Maine-New Brunswick Border Country during the Great Depression
Memoirs of a Northern Maine woman growing up during the Great Depression, with family straddling the rural and agrarian borderland of Maine and New Brunswick. Memories of her great-grandmother and extended family from working on a New Brunswick farm in the summers of her youth. The tensions between her French Canadian Catholicism and the Presbyterianism of her New Brunswick relatives. Memories of her family and life in Island Falls, Maine. Parts of her search for her French lineage. Illustrated in black and white photograph. -
Ferdinand Gagnon : Biographie, éloge funeèbre, pages choisies
Des écritures et un oraison funièbre d'un homme treès significatif au mouvement survivance aux Etats-Unis, un fondateur de la presse franco-américaine dans la Nouvelle Angleterre au dix-neuviième sieècle, et rédacteur ancien de la publication, Le Travailleur. Contient une briève introduction biographique écrit par Josephat Benoit.Tags Acculturation and Assimilation, Burlington VT, Champlain NY, Community: Customs and Social Life, Concord NH, Essay, Ethnicity and Collective Identity, Fall River MA, Journalism, Language and Linguistics, Lewiston ME, Lowell MA, Maine, Manchester NH, Massachusetts, Montréal QC, New England, New Hampshire, Providence RI, Québec, Southbridge MA, Vermont, Woonsocket RI, Worcester MA -
Prairie Roses : La Petite Soeur Tells About Her Family
Memoirs spanning the period from 1901 to 1945, focusing on stories of the author's family throughout the midwestern United States during that period. -
Destination Madawaska : Biographie de Charles Terrieau, pionnier acadien
From the author: "The book is a biography of Charles Theriault, first francophone settler in 1821-1823 of the lower Madawaska River in present-day St-Jacques. The book presents a brief history of the Acadian migration before the time of Charles' trail-blazing in the wilderness of the Madawaska territory. The territory at that time was a no-man's land' that included much of northern Maine from Houlton and all of Madawaska county and parts of Victoria and Restigouche counties of northwestern New Brunswick. At that time, the territory was claimed by the United States as being part of the new state of Maine and was also claimed by England as being part of the new colony of New Brunswick. The dispute was settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 which chose the St-John River as the international boundary separating the United States and New Brunswick. The book presents the genealogy of the greater Thériault family in the St-John Valley showing that the population of all Thériaults until 1900 came from three branches of the Acadian family; one which migrated from the lower St-John to St-Basile around 1790 and two branches which had migrated from Acadia to Kamouraska, QC in 1759 and later migrated to the various Madawaska settlements between 1820 and 1860." -
As Luck Would Have It
The autobiography of a northern Maine native. Begins with his early life in Aroostook County and continues through his many years of service in the United States Army, bringing him and his family throughout the world - Ethiopia, Iran, and elsewhere - for most of his adult life. -
Tom Plant : The Making of a Franco-American Entrepreneur, 1859-1941
Critical biography of Tom Plant, leader in the shoe industry of New England near the turn of the twentieth century, situated in the Bath, Maine, area. Refutes and diversifies the stereotypical notion of the French Canadian immigrant worker experience in New England. Introduction written by Jacques Ferland, University of Maine Professor of History. -
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L'enclume et le couteau : The Life and Work of Adelard Coté, Folk Artist
Biography of Adelard Coté, Southern Maine artist and sculptor of wood. Includes pictures of his art, interviews, and a critical observation of his work as a part of Franco-American folklore. Also includes a brief history of French-Canadian immigration to Biddeford, Maine. -
Jim : L'histoire de Jim Caron jeune homme, racontée par lui-même (à 101 ans) (texte et audio)
L'histoire de Jim Caron, 101 ans, tel que raconté à Milton, New Hampshire, et rédigé par Julien Olivier. Sa famille, son travail dans les bois et dans le moulin, son école, and sa vie apriès son immigration aux Etats-Unis. Du texte: "Jim Caron m'a raconté son histoire par un jour bien froid et ensoleillé, dans la maison en campagne ou il vit depuis deux ans. Avant ca, it habitait seul, dans un petit chambre à Somersworth, New Hampshire. Maintenant, à Milton, encore au New Hampshire, il demeure avec une famille qui l'a adopté comme leur pé-pière: la mière, le pière, leurs deux fils et la petite fille que Jim aime tout, un chat et les animaux dans la grange....Il est content avec eux....C'était le 21 janvier 1977. Jim avait cent et un ans et quinze jours..."Tags Augusta ME, Berwick ME, Dover NH, Emigration and Immigration, Family, Labor History, Lake Winnipesaukee NH, Language and Linguistics, Manchester NH, Merrimack River Valley, Mills and Mill Work, NMDC, Personal History: Biography and Oral History, Rochester NH, Somersworth NH, Waterville ME, Youth -
Unveiling Kate Chopin
Biography of the author of "The Awakening." From University Press of Mississippi: "In 'Unveiling Kate Chopin,' Emily Toth, the foremost authority on Chopin's life and works, creates a sharply revealing portrait of a modern woman in a Victorian world. Born in St. Louis in 1850, Kate O'Flaherty was raised by wealthy, feisty widows and educated by brilliant nuns. She endured a mysterious 'outrage' committed against her by Union soldiers in her teens and suffered what moderns now call a 'loss of voice.' But she survived to become a lively, dangerously clever social observer." -
The Cows Are Out!: Two Decades on a Maine Dairy Farm
From Islandport Press: "Family dairy farms are disappearing in Maine and with them, a way of life. Trudy Chambers Price has captured the daily joys and struggles of the family farm in a way that ensures this Maine way of life will not be forgotten....Price and her husband raised two sons and hundreds of cows on Craneland Farm in Central Maine. The work was never-ending and exhausting, but also exhilarating and rewarding. In this bittersweet memoir of two decades of dairy farming, Chambers writes of the daily trials of haying, cow breeding and milking against a backdrop of gentle and entertaining rural life. She introduces kind neighbors, eccentric neighbors, visiting city folk and loveable pets. 'The Cows Are Out!' is a tribute to hard-working family farmers and to an important part of Maine's historical and cultural heritage." -
Le Bon Pière Zénon (1870-1940)
La biographie de Monseigneur Arthur Décary, dit le Révérend Pière Zénon Décary: un prêtre qui a servi les églises catholique romain du Maine. ècrite comme hagiographie moderne, avec l'attestation populaire dans lettres publiques pour sa sainteté, ainsi que quelques descriptions de certains miracles. -
Kerouac: A Biography
Seminal biography of native of Lowell, Massachusetts, Franco American, novelist, and poet, Jack Kerouac. Republished in 1994. Written by Ann Charters, who worked with Kerouac during the final three years of his life. In her writing of this book, Charters was assisted by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and other contemporary artists close to Kerouac and essential to the Beat Movement in art, literature, and broader Americana. -
Priest: A Tale of Repressed Identity: How I Became a Catholic Priest
Autobiography of a New Hampshire man and his "search for personal identity" through ethnicity and religion, in and out of the lifestyle of a Roman Catholic Priest. From the back cover: "Maurice Fillion was five when his father died. Singled out by priests and nuns while in grade school as a promising candidate for the Catholic priesthood, he entered a minor seminary at age 13, then moved into a religious novitiate and on to a major seminary. By the time he was ordained a priest at 25 he had spent half his life in cloistered living, segregated from the outside world..." -
Vows : The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son
The biography of a Catholic nun and a Catholic priest in Boston, Massachusetts - their work and their faith, their marriage and their family - written by their son. Moves through the author's youth and his own unique relationship with faith and doctrine. An intimate and intimately-told story of religion in America, especially Catholicism, during and after the social upheavel of the middle twentieth century. From Free Press: "'Vows' is a compelling story of one family's unshakable faith that to be called is to serve, however high the cost may be. Peter Manseau's riveting evocation of his parents' parallel childhoods, their similar callings, their experiences in the seminary and convent, and how they met while tending to the homeless of Roxbury, Massachusetts, during the riot-prone 1960s is a page-turning meditation on the effect that love can have on profound faith." -
Lewis Barttro : A Vermont Franco-American in the Civil War, Born Louis Berthiaume
Brief biography of a French Canadian who fought in the American Civil War as a volunteer from Richmond, Vermont. Concludes with a brief ancestry of his family extending into 17th century France, as well as a list of his descendants now dispersed across the United States. -
The Bridging of Two Cultures
Subtitled, "How One Family of French Canadian Descent, Without Compromising Its Heritage, Learned to Live and Cope in the Border Village of Derby Line, Vermont in the First Half of the Twentieth Century." Biography of the Morin family of Derby Line. Descriptions of a rural American community and the family's negotiation of it with a cultural strength partly unfamiliar to their surroundings. -
Up from Maple Street
Memoirs of a Vermont teacher. The story of his French Canadian family living in St. Johnsbury, Vermont in the middle twentieth century. From Ecko House Publishing: "This book tells of a French Canadian family rising out of poverty and achieving the American Dream. The setting is St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Felix, the Dad, is a hot dog vendor on the hilly streets while Mom is a stay at home mom raising eight children. The American Dream is reached through hard work, perseverance and especially education. Part of the book deals with interesting anecdotes at various schools in Vermont in which the author spent 36 years as a teacher and school administrator." -
Crossing the Divide : Representations of Deafness in Biography
An exploration of the lives and texts of three francophone biographers, each struggling in her own way through the difficulties of deafness. Includes a segment on Franco American author Corinne Rocheleau-Rouleau. From Gallaudet University Press: "This remarkable volume examines the process by which three deaf, French biographers from the 19th and 20th centuries attempted to cross the cultural divide between deaf and hearing worlds through their work. The very different approach taken by each writer sheds light on determining at what point an individual's assimilation into society endangers his or her sense of personal identity." -
Before All Dignity Is Lost : The Living and Dying of an AIDS Victim
The life of a young man after graduating college, his battle with AIDS, and his friendship with a mentor and former professor, Norman Beaupré, as read through a chronological series of personal letters. From the author's website: "What would you do if you suddenly discovered you had AIDS? What would you think? 'Before All Dignity Is Lost' is the epistolary story of a young man who suffers through the ignominy of AIDS and dies from it at age 34. This is a true story based on real letters." -
Inside Peyton Place : The Life of Grace Metalious
Biography of Manchester, New Hampshire author Grace Metalious. Famous for her novel "Peyton Place" and its various film adaptations. Emily Toth is also the biographer of novelist Kate Chopin.
From University Press of Mississippi: "The juicy biography of the scandalous novelist who lifted the lid off a New England town...Grace Metalious, an unpretentious housewife from the wrong side of the tracks, had written an explosive bestseller. From a ramshackle cottage in a small New England milltown, she zoomed to national stardom. She met movie stars, famous writers, and the hangers-on who gravitate to those who achieve sudden wealth. She partied with the glamorous; she traveled; always a generous friend, she entertained lavishly. It was a Cinderella dream. But it did not last....Grace refused to be confined by the fifties' notions of a woman's place. In her struggle to find herself, she lifted the lid off sex and violence, power and powerlessness, truth and hypocrisy, and became known as the Pandora in Blue Jeans. 'If I'm a lousy writer,' she said, 'then an awful lot of people have got lousy taste.'...Emily Toth has given us a complete and sympathetic portrait of Grace: the idealistic young scribbler, the partier, the sometimes reluctant wife and mother. Tracing the television shows, the films, the Peyton Place sequels and later novels, Toth shows Grace plagued by periods of self-doubt and loneliness, striving desperately and feeling pressured to create another 'hit.'"
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Little Pine to King Spruce : A Franco-American Childhood
Memoirs of Fran Pelletier. His family and his youth in rural Maine. Growing up in small town America. From the back cover: "Fran Pelletier is a rare and wonderful storyteller. He Grew up in Milford, Maine, in the 1930s....Pelletier remembers all the details in a series of stories that beg to be read aloud and shared. Authentically small-town American, yet spiced by his French-Canadian heritage, these stories will resonate in communities throughout New England." -
Nous sommes un peuple étrange
Un essai par l'auteur des romans "The Family" et "The Country," et aussi les mémoires, "American Ghosts." Il viens de Providence, Rhode Island. Partie d'une collection sur la culture française d'Amérique. Au début du texte, Plante se demande, "quelles sont les influences de mes origines sur ce que j'écris?" Donc, il utilise son arbre de famille, les routes culturelles de ses aieux, la religion, et la langue à expliquer son rélation à écriture, le contenu de ses œuvres, et les raisons pour sa "maniière de décrire" particuliere comme écrivain bilingue. Il situe ses logiques dans certaines situations personnelles ou la différence culturelle l'apporta des apercus uniques de ses préoccupations en tant que personne d'héritage français, canadien, ou nord-américain aux Etats-Unis. -
Pas de gêne : L'histoire d'Omer Marcoux, violoneux et sculpteur
Une histoire de la vie artistique et communautaire d'un homme franco-américain de New Hampshire. Racontée par lui-même, M. Marcoux - bûcheron, sculpteur, musicien, ami - comme vu dans les contes qui se présentent dans ses entrevues avec l'écrivain du texte. 10 chapitres, illustrée par photos et dessins en noir et blanc. Traductions de quelques phrases idiomatiques. -
Legacy : A Biography of Rev. Armand "Spike" Morissette, O.M.I.
The life of Father Armand Morissette - better known as Father Spike - Catholic priest of Lowell, Massachusetts. Father Spike was widely known for his compassion and ease of friendship, as well as for his community activism and ahead-of-the-curve political and theological views. Stories and memories of the Lowell native from his birth in 1910 to the book's publication in 1985. Includes his schooling, service as chaplain to the French Navy, his relationship with Jack Kerouac, and the breadth of his participation in public life. Appended with interviews with Father Spike, as well as a selection of several of his speeches. -
A Stigmatist : Marie-Rose Ferron
An impassioned tribute to Marie-Rose Ferron, or "Little Rose," of Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Little Rose is revered in local Catholic mysticism for her experience of the stigmata - the miraculous appearance of the wounds of Christ on her body - and the piety with which she led her short life. This book shares the story of Rose and the Ferron family through recollections, second-hand accounts, and historical research. A unique portrayal of the Franco American community of Woonsocket through the lens of its devout religiosity around the time of the Sentinellist Affair. Features the community's remembrances, its prayers, the phenomena it attributes to Rose, etc. Strangely crafted, with each chapter filled by often disconnected events related in single paragraphs separated by title headers. -
Snow Man
A profile of Boston and New York social activist, Urbain Ledoux. Ledoux, known as "Mr. Zero," was an early advocate for the homeless and jobless of the United States. His parents emigrated from Quebec to work in Connecticut and Maine in the 19th century. This biographical, editorial piece sits among others in a volume dedicated to American public figures of the 1920s. -
Odyssey of Love
A biography of Westbrook, Maine, native, Sister Marie Ange Larrivee, a nun in the Order of the Presentation of Mary. Stories that take us from her youth in Westbrook, through her Canadian religious education, all the way to her travels in Europe and her experiences of World War II in France. From a Rumford, Maine, author. -
A Is for Allagash : A Lumberjack's Life
Stories from the Allagash, Maine, of old. Told in 26 parts - one part for a salient word corresponding to each letter of the alphabet. Written from the recollections of a longtime Allagash resident. Interlocked portraits of his family and life there, set together in the manner of memoir. Illustrated in photos and color paintings of local settings. From the father of northern Maine fiction writer, Cathie Pelletier (a.k.a., K.C. McKinnon). -
Chére Ma-Ma
Remembrances of a French Canadian family in New Hampshire, or the biography of a Canadian immigrant mother as written by her American daughter. Family life, work, and prayer in rural New England. Presented as if in flashback, with the story beginning as the daughter attempts to communicate with her aged and ill mother in a nursing home. Constructed in short vignettes pertinent to the mother's life as mother, each section set out with a descriptive header. Includes some poems from the author. From the book jacket: " 'Chére Ma-Ma' (Dear Mom) is a true story which tells of the determination and perseverance of a French Canadian woman, Mathilda (Bourassa) Charest, who raised a family of twelve children, and how she survived the everyday circumstances of truth in poverty, especially so, during the country's Depression; and her love of God through the Catholic faith." -
Quebec to New England : The Life of Monsignor Charles Dauray
Biography of a priest who emigrated to New England from Quebec and became an instrumental figure in the Providence, Rhode Island, Roman Catholic diocese. His early life in Canada, his movement to the United States on account of illness, and his lifelong attention to Rhode Island's Roman Catholics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His pastoral leadership of Most Precious Blood Parish in Woonsocket. From Bruce Humphries, Inc., Publishers: "The career of Monsignor Charles Dauray is actually the history of the French-speaking population of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, from 1872 to 1931." -
Man in the Middle
Short personal essay written by a journalist from Maine. Reflections on leaving Maine early in life, eventually for New York City, and returning for his retirement. His early commitment to mastering English in spite of his home French, and both the personal and the more general, historical issues that this choice and language loss raised for him upon his return. Arguments bolstered by events surrounding the mispronunciation of his French name, the cultural insensitivity he still finds in his home state, and the attempts of others to reckon with discrimination toward French cultures in Maine. First published serially in Le FAROG Forum , in three parts. Later included in a 1970s collection of materials entitled, "Franco American Resources in Education" developed by Claire Bolduc. As part of this collection, the essay is followed by six discussion questions related to issues raised by the author. -
Entre Amis
Collection de lettres envoyées par P. Louis Lalande, S.J., à son ami Arthur Prévost, du Québec, du Canada, des fois aux États-Unis, et d'ailleurs. Rend une chronique de la vie du prêtre et de sa relation avec son ami. Publiée sept ans apriès la mort de M. Prévost.
<br/><br/>Contient une piièce décrivant l'émigration canadienne-française en Nouvelle-Angleterre et de la croissance dans ce lieu de la communauté francophone et catholique. (pp. 62-67) -
Thank you, Georgette : My 26 Years in the Legislature
Memoirs and selected speeches of a Maine state legislator from the city of Lewiston. Contains commentary on some of the campaigns, issues, actors, and events significant to Bérubé and her career in Maine politics between 1970 and 2000. Some of her accomplishments as the first woman representative of her city, and one of the longest-serving of any Maine legislator. Contains the following chapters: Name's Georgette Remarks to Rotary International and Canadian Visitors 10/29/93 Growing Up In Lewiston Political Campaigns Issues and Programs Partisanship/Personalities Legislation GOVERNMENT Pot Pourri Random Thoughts Remarks On Key IssuesTags Auburn ME, Augusta ME, Business and Economics, Gender and Sexuality, Government and Politics, Greene ME, Leeds ME, Lewiston ME, Lisbon ME, Livermore ME, Maine, Minot ME, Northern Ireland, Orono ME, Personal History: Biography and Oral History, Québec, Sabattus ME, South Africa, Turner ME, Wales ME -
Once in a Lifetime : Tribute to a Friend and Companion in a World War II Experience
Illustrated brief memoir of northern Maine women religious moving about France during World War II. The events leading up to, and the sequence of, a five-day journey from their Paris convent to a safe haven in St. Etienne. Written soon after the death of Sr. Josephine Theriault, by her friend, in honor of her and the war experience they shared together with Sr. Geraldine Violette. -
Kerouac : The Definitive Biography
Recent historical biography of Lowell, Massachusetts writer, Jack Kerouac. Based largely on primary sources. Written by an independent scholar whose childhood and later life was also spent in Lowell. -
My Maine Summer
Memories of a childhood summer in the author's hometown of Van Buren, Maine, with one week spent on a vacation in Portland. Focuses on friendship, family, and baseball. -
Girls of Tender Age : A Memoir
Memoir of a woman growing up in the immigrant city of Hartford, Connecticut in the 1950s. Her French Canadian and Italian relatives, her childhood, early adulthood, and the processes of recollecting them. Divided into five parts: Mortality; Brain Jog; the Quest; What Goes Around...; The Future Is Now; followed by notes and acknowledgements. Alternates between stories from the life of the author, her friends and relatives, and the murder of a childhood friend by a Hartford serial child abuser named Robert Malm. The author's efforts at retelling the story of Malm's life, trial, and Connecticut execution, and their intersection with her life.Tags Community: Customs and Social Life, Connecticut, Death and Disaster, Emigration and Immigration, Family, Gender and Sexuality, Hartford CT, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Italy, Language and Linguistics, Personal History: Biography and Oral History, Polish Americans, Québec, Religion, Vermont, Violence, Youth -
My Time Is Your Time : The Story of Rudy Vallee
Memoirs of twentieth-century singer and musician, Rudy Vallée. Co-authored. Stories from his early life in Westbrook, Maine, and his college years in New Haven, Connecticut. Events along his rise to stardom, and the varieties of entertainment he participated in while in the public eye. -
Vagabond Dreams Come True
Original autobiography of twentieth-century singer and musician, Rudy Vallée, who was born in Island Pond, Vermont and spent his youth in Westbrook, Maine. His early life, time at the University of Maine and Yale University, and his early music career. His travels and successes, and some of his thoughts on fame. -
Brothers and Heroes : A Chronicle of Military Service of Six Americans
Military stories and individual histories of the military duties of six Augusta, Maine brothers - Armand, Laurent, Paul, Jean, William, and Louis Lambert. Written by the family's youngest son, George. Narrative covers enlistment periods and active duty between 1941 and 1988. Appendices contain diary entries, court proceedings, individual chronologies of service, individual stations of duty, photographs, bibliography, and other information. -
Poetry and the Landscape of Epiphany
Short autobiographical essay on the elements of cultural heritage evident in the author's family history and youth; the persistence of a French Canadian "communal sensuous self," the impact of one's environments, and recognizing one's heritage beneath evolving shapes of assimilation in America. Includes a translation of Anne Hébert's "Castle Life." Republished in "The Maine Reader: The Down East Experience from 1614 to the Present," with a brief introduction to Maine Franco American history, local photographs, and the poem, "To My Brother." -
Hello to Springtime
Memoirs of the author's youth as an American transplant in Ottawa, under the quirks and guise of his fainthearted mother and musician father. Childhood, schooling, religion, and observations on family life in Ontario during the era of the first World War. -
My Last Million Readers
Autobiography of famed newspaperman, Emile Gavreau. His youth in the first decade of the twentieth century in New Haven, Connecticut, and among family in Montréal. A family's pervasive Catholicism; an early attachment to reading; intimate portraits of his father. His early work for the New Haven Journal-Courrier, later for the Hartford Courantaround the time of World War I, and at the beginning of the New York Daily Graphic. -
When We Were the Kennedys : A Memoir from Mexico, Maine
Memoir from Mexico, Maine native and author of fiction, Monica Wood. Recalls the period of the author's youth around the time of the sudden death of her father. Her family's experience of the loss of its breadwinner in the 1960s. The shape of her 1963 mill-centered community and the diversity of people who inhabited it; portraits of the power of religion and industry among people in the towns of Rumford and Mexico. President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination - and the widowhood of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - recounted in light of the disruptive passing of the author's father earlier that same year. -
Memory Babe : A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac
Biography of Lowell, Massachusetts native, poet, and author, Jack Kerouac, widely known as a founding participant in the 20th century USA literary culture that came to be called the "Beat Movement," or the "Beat Generation." Kerouac's life from birth to early death; from Lowell, to New York, to San Francisco, to Denver, to Tampa and St. Petersburg, and back again. The cultural, interpersonal, and geographic contexts for his poetry and writings of autobiographical fiction. Anecdotes and aspects of his public and private lives, and where these lives changed and converged. Well-known for the biographer's extensive use of archival materials and interviews with Kerouac's contemporaries. -
Journal d'un bibliophile
Témoignage autobiographique d'un homme à Manchester, New Hampshire et sa relation avec les livres. Son accumulation à vie de milles de livres de "Canadiana" et "Franco-Americana," et les histoires qui l'accompagnent, vers leur lieu de repos à l'Association Canado-Américaine. Sa vie comme collectionneur de livres. Comprend aussi des lettres et des articles de journaux relatifs à la Collection Lambert. Note: La Collection Lambert réside maintenant à Saint Anselm College à Manchester, New Hampshire. -
Becoming a Man : Half a Life Story
Autobiography and coming-out narrative of Paul Monette, an Andover, Massachusetts writer. Monette recounts twenty-five closeted years of alienation and invisibility, explorations of his sexual identity, and observations on the sexual prejudice and violences around him. Growing up working-class in Massachusetts; his ill younger brother; stints at prep-school and Yale in the 1960s; time spent in England; a return to Massachusetts. Written during the battle with AIDS that eventually claimed the author's life. Winner of the 1992 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Republished in 2004. -
Holeb : The Way I Remember It
Memoir compiled from early twentieth-century stories of the author's youth, growing up in a large Canadian immigrant family in the townships of Brassua and Holeb, Somerset County, Maine. Rural family life in northwestern Maine - sporting, housing, schooling, work, and community. -
The Voice Is All : The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
Biographical portrait of Jack Kerouac, with uniquely heavy emphasis on the suggested influence of his French Canadian heritage - and the French language - on the style and content of his creative works. Written by a Kerouac contemporary and former friend. Covers from Kerouac's early life and those of his parents, to 1951, shortly after the publication of his first novel, The Town and the City. -
Bird Cloud : A Memoir
Narrative of the discovery and inhabiting of the author's homestead along Wyoming's North Platte River. Memoirs from the author's youth and family life, relatives, their cultures and their mobility. Her youth across New England. Historical, archaeological, and genealogical portraits of her family, her various regions, and their people woven throughout. Vivid descriptions of natural life in the rural United States that add to several chapters on the processes of architecting, building, and getting acquainted with her Wyoming home - Bird Cloud - and its own histories. From the author of "The Shipping News," "Accordion Crimes," and several other notable works of fiction.Tags Acculturation and Assimilation, Art and Architecture, Connecticut, Ethnicity and Collective Identity, Family, Genealogy, Geography, Maine, Montréal QC, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Personal History: Biography and Oral History, Rhode Island, Saratoga WY, Travel and Movement, Vermont, Willimantic CT, Wyoming -
Spoons' Spoons : The Life and Times of Theodore Edouard "Spoons" Michaud
Biography of Eddie "Spoons" Michaud, renowned musician from Old Town, Maine. Stories of his life, times, family, and friends from 1923 to the present. Includes black and white photographs of Michaud throughout his life, both with and without his namesake instrument - the spoons - as well as select representations of maps of Maine towns. -
Inside, Looking Out
Memoir of famed television soap opera writer and playwright, Harding Lemay. From his tumultuous early youth - one of thirteen children - on a New York farm along the Canadian border, to his lonely escape to New York City at the age of 17 and the friends who find him there. His later military training and participation in World War II in Europe. Back to Manhattan to one failed and one successful marriage, and to live and work among books: in libraries, with publishing executives, and finally as a writer. His persistent love of books and struggles with language.