It's been said that values are caught more than taught. When Polly Shivers was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, she quietly maintained, "Well, we're supposed to bloom where we are planted." Mama's words matched her actions. She knew that her six children would repeat what she did more than what she said. An orphan, adopted into her forever family as a toddler, Mama's life permeated gratefulness. Mama knew what loneliness felt like, and she invested in the lives of others, reaping great benefits. Snapshots of twelve of the many lessons learned from my Mama are encapsulated here, along with journal entries from both Mama and the author, Joan Walker Page, number five. Be inspired as you read the priceless pieces of this family's life, lovingly put together.

This heartwarming memoir explores the complex and multifaceted life of the author's mother, Renza Bryant. Through her example, support, and guidance, Renza Bryant inspired and empowered others. Johnson describes her mother as a guiding light, a champion, and a woman who profoundly impacted her and everyone she met. Her mother’s leadership, humility, accomplishments, and deep commitment to her community are highlighted. Woven into the narrative as the author explores her mother's remarkable life is a journey through Jamaican culture, offering the reader a chance to learn about her country. Details

This book started out as an advice-and-answer column for the young adult women at church. I was amazed and humbled by their insights and questions about life. We decided to keep a dialogue going through e-mails they aptly named "Mama Said," and I became their MamaInResidence. Sections of a few of their letters and my responses are included in the book. In the months I didn't receive questions, I wrote stories about my experiences as fillers. In another discussion, a young lady commented that the Bible wasn't relevant to today's issues, only "the old times," with no bearing on our lives. I hoped to debunk that notion with stories infused with scripture and a skosh of mother wit. It also occurred to me that these stories could help other Christians spark conversations about how God's Word is working through their everyday experiences too in very real and practical ways they just hadn't thought about yet.

My stories are about many things. My love cats and kittens. I realized there were many stray cats around. Sometimes they just wander, from house to house. They hunted mice, in the hay barn. Cats wander like free spirits. We gave them nick names. Sassy kitten she was gray. They played, on the porch. I named a few like gray boy, snowball and Mama Cat. I would rock, on the porch trying to play with them. Every cat had a bowl. There was one brave kitten. I named her, Cindy kitten. There fore “Cindy kittens’ Adventures” were born. Hope my stories about Cindy kitten and her friends, make you smile. Cindy kitten has more adventures for you. Enjoy reading my stories, until our next adventure.

Millions of viewers of Tony Brown's Journal, the longest-running series on PBS, know Tony Brown as an advocate for self-reliance and self-enrichment. Now, in his most personal book yet, he introduces us to the woman who brought him up and taught him the seven core values he lives by to this day: reality, knowledge, race, history, truth, patience, and love. What Mama Taught Me states that only by understanding one's place in the world can one become free in mind and spirit, which is the path to true success. Brown argues that by following other people's rules, we betray ourselves and our desires, resulting in a vicious cycle of disconnection, unhappiness, and spiritual death. Enhanced by the homespun storytelling he heard as a child, this is Brown's personal recipe for achievement, imparting values that provide a blueprint for reaching success and happiness -- on one's own terms.

Trash, Allison's landmark collection, laid the groundwork for her critically acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina, the National Book Award finalist that was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "simply stunning...a wonderful work of fiction by a major talent." In addition to Allison's classic stories, this new edition of Trash features "Stubborn Girls and Mean Stories," an introduction in which Allison discusses the writing of Trash and "Compassion," a never-before-published short story. First published in 1988, the award-winning Trash showcases Allison at her most fearlessly honest and startlingly vivid. The limitless scope of human emotion and experience are depicted in stories that give aching and eloquent voice to the terrible wounds we inflict on those closest to us. These are tales of loss and redemption; of shame and forgiveness; of love and abuse and the healing power of storytelling. A book that resonates with uncompromising candor and incandescence, Trash is sure to captivate Allison's legion of readers and win her a devoted new following.

Working-class women are the majority of women in the United States, and yet their work and their culture are rarely visible. Calling Home is an anthology of writings by and about working-class women. Over fifty selections represent the ethnic, racial, and geographic diversity of working-class experience. This is writing grounded in social history, not in the academy. Traditional boundaries of genre and periodization collapse in this collection, which includes reportage, oral histories, speeches, songs, and letters, as well as poetry, stories, and essays. The divisions in this collection - telling stories, bearing witness, celebrating solidarity - address the distinction of "by" or "about" working-class women, and show the connections between individual identity and collective sensibility in a common history of struggle for economic justice. The geography of home, identity, parents, sex, motherhood, the dominance of the job, the overlapping of private and public worlds, the promise of solidarity and community are a few of the themes of this book. Here is a chorus of working class women's voices: Sandra Cisneros, Barbara Garson, Meridel Le Sueur, Tillie Olsen, Barbara Smith, Endesha I. M. Holland, Mother Jones, Nellie Wong, Agnes Smedley, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Sharon Doubiago, Carol Tarlen, Hazel Hall, Margaret Randall, Judy Grahn, and many others! The aesthetic impulse is shaped by class, but not limited to one ruling class. What connects these writers is a collective consciousness, a class, which rejects bondage and lays claim to liberation through all the possibilities of language. Calling Home is illustrated with family photographs as well as images of working women by professional photographers.

I love my Mama and decided to honor her by showing not only myself but also others that during life’s adversities, sicknesses, deaths, and financial struggles, our past does not determine our future! Mama was 4.11 ft. tall and had been married multiple times, had multiple boyfriends, and even multiple one-night stands. Mama was shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle, had long thick hair, and had a pretty skin tone. She had skin like a baby and it was soft as cotton. Her eyes were shaped like a diamond and they slightly protruded in a sexy way. However, her blessing of beauty was sadly also a curse. Her struggles in life growing up in Why Not, Mississippi with a 5th-grade education and the loss of her mom, caused Mama to go through some trying times and struggles. Due to Mama’s struggles, Mama made choices that had temporary sex, but permanent consequences. Mama was ashamed of the path she took in life, selling sex as a financial means to provide for her children but she took the STONES she had in life and turned them into gems. One of those gems she created was me. Although I struggled with some of the same mistakes as Mama, I resisted the things that I could and obeyed most of Mama’s lessons. Mama helped me to triumph and become the successful entrepreneur I am today. Both our stories will be shared in this book and I hope this book will be a revelation for some and transformational for many. Who knew that Papa being A Rolling Stone had a domino effect that sometimes made Mama a Rolling Stone too!

My mother had Alzheimers for the last decade of her life. This is her story, and it is my story. The stories are inseparable. It is our story, our duet, our song.

The dramatic and colorful autobiography of a Black woman born in 1909 in rural Alabama. A rare first-person account of life in the twentieth-century South, He Included Me weaves together the story of a black family—eight children reared in rural Alabama, their mother a schoolteacher, their father a minister—and the emerging self-portrait of a woman determined, like her parents, to look ahead. Sarah Rice recalls her mother’s hymn of thanks—“He Include Me”—when God showed her a way to feed her family, and hears again her mother's quiet words, “It's no disgrace to work. It's an honor to make an honest dollar,” spoken when her children were embarrassed that she took in white people’s laundry. Rice speaks, finally, of the determination, faith, and pride that carried her through life. In a document that spans more than three-quarters of the twentieth century, He Included Me presents the voice of a single woman whose life was rich in complexity, deep in suffering and joy; yet it also speaks for the many black women who have worked and struggled in the rural South and always looked ahead. “In the oral tradition of Theodore Rosengarten’s All God’s Dangers…It’s a moving story that reveals a hidden corner of American life.”—New York Times “Viewing her life with a sharp intelligence, always frank, compassionate, and informed by a deep religious faith, Rice offers an autobiography that often reads with the narrative sweep of a novel.”—Library Journal “A unique contribution to a growing history of African American women.”—Atlanta History