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IF LAST FALL's memoirs traded on the name - brand appeal of Trudeau, Black, MacKenzie, and Mowat, this spring's non - fiction bends toward unknown voices telling true - life stories. Personal experience and self - help is everywhere, shaping a highly eclectic list that bypasses the universal for the particular, the national for the regional. From Nova Scotia cuisine to Alaskan cruises, this spring's list recognizes diversity.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Of the many stories that will be told this season, Knopf Canada's Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl ($24.50, May) is sure to appear on must - read lists everywhere. The candid story of a young girl's coming of age in Somalia, as told to Virginia Lee Barnes and Janice Boddy, it was an instant hit at the Frankfurt Book Fair last fall.
Coping with physical adversity is the theme of several new titles, including Dennis Kaye's Laugh, I Thought I'd Die (Penguin, $25.99, Jan.), the story of Kaye's struggle with Lou Gehrig's Disease; Dan Gawthrop's Affirmation: The AIDS Diary of Dr. Peter (New Star, $16.95 pa., March), based on Dr. Peter Jepson - Young's 1990 - 92 CBC TV segments about his life with AIDS; and Ferne SherkinLanger's experience with Crohn's disease in If This is a Test, Have I Passed Yet? (Macmillan, $14.95 pa., April).
Painful family struggles are highlighted in Denise Chong's Concubine's Children: Portrait of a Family Divided (Penguin, $27.99, April), the history of three generations of a family separated between war - plagued China and the Chinatowns of Canada. Several titles deal with incest, including John Andrews's Not Like Dad: One Man's Story of Recovery from Incest (Macmillan, $17.95 pa., Feb.); Ellen Prescott's Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey: A Mother's Struggle to Save Her Children from the Nightmare of Sexual Abuse (Douglas & McIntyre, Dollartba, Mar.); and Toronto Star reporter Judy Steed's Our Little Secret: Confronting the Epidemic of Child Sexual Abuse in Canada (Random, $26.95, April).
Cultural memoirs include poet and literary critic Doug Fetherling's Travels by Night: A Memoir of the Sixties (Lester, $22.95, April); arts czar Mavor Moore's Reinventing Myself (Stoddart, Dollartba, May); and, on the biography side, American music journalist Victoria Starr's All You Get is Me: The Real Story of k.d. lang...