Calvin C. Johnson Junior’s story shines a spotlight on the issues within the American criminal justice system, yet is story is also one of self-discovery.  Together Johnson and Dr. Greg Hampikian write of a travesty with honesty and integrity.  Even though this story has a happy ending, don’t expect it to read like a novel.  It deals with heavy topics that are handled without ever forgetting there are real people involved.  The authors don’t attempt to paint Johnson as a hero or a victim.  They portray him as a human complete with flaws.  At time he will infuriate you and at others touch your heart deeply.  Telling someone’s truth as it really was is a difficult job, but Johnson and Hampikian shine in Exit to Freedom.

 Maya Angelou continues her life story in Gather Together In My Name.  She candidly describes her experiences being a young mother, experimenting with the temptations life presents, and her mistakes.  Through it all the reader grows from her experience alongside her.  Another page turning examination of the experience of life written with boldness, beauty, and simplicity.

 Maya Angelou pours her heart and soul into the pages of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.  She opens a window into her life that leaves the reader feeling voyeuristic and inspired at that same time.  Spanning her life from her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas to the birth of her son when she’s sixteen I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings leaves the reader anxious for the next book of Ms. Angelou’s life.  You can feel the dirt on your feet, smell Sunday dinner, and feel the silence of Angelou’s self imposed muteness.  Maya Angelou has a way with words captures the reader’s imagination.

Leap of Faith is first and foremost a love story, maybe not in the conventional sense but a love story nonetheless.  Queen Noor, born Lisa Halaby, sets the stage for the reader to understand her perspective by describing her childhood in the United States as well as her early adulthood.  The real intensity of the book begins when she meets King Hussein.  She describes her reactions throughout the beginning of the relationship in a way that immerses the reader in her moments of confusion as well as her moments of joy.  She gives the reader an inside look into her experience becoming royalty as well as her perception of world events and Jordan’s place in the world.  She talks of the deceptions that are prevalent in world politics and the games politicians play.  She describes her struggles to find her place as Queen in a country where she wasn’t born or raised as well as to balance her role as Queen with becoming a mother figure to her husband’s children and to raise the children they had together.  Leap of Faith is a beautifully written memoir that provides insight into the workings of government, politics on the world stage, Jordanian culture, the combining cultures, and the merging of families.

Slaves in the Family chronicles the history of the Ball family form 1698 to modern times.  Ball explores his ancestor’s ownership of slaves and the treatment of slaves.  In his journey to learn more about his family, he discovers family members who are descendents of this ancestor’s slaves.  He also describes how this discovery affected him and how the lives of his family and the lives of the families of the slaves his ancestors owned are still affected by slavery and other racially motivated injustices.  Slaves in the Family puts a human face to the history of racial relations in the United States in the way that a teacher in a classroom or a textbook never could.