In Education of a Felon, the reigning champion of prison novelists finally tells his own story. The son of an alcoholic stagehand father and a Busby Berkeley chorus girl, Bunker was-at seventeen-the youngest inmate ever in San Quentin. His hard-won experiences on L.A.'s meanest streets and in and out of prison gave him the material to write some of the grittiest and most affecting novels of our time. From smoking a joint in the gas chamber to leaving...

When Victor Villaseñor stood at the podium and looked at the group of teachers amassed before him, he became enraged. He had never spoken in public before. His mind was flooded with childhood memories filled with humiliation, misunderstanding, and abuse at the hands of his teachers. With his heart pounding, he began to speak of these incidents. To his disbelief, the teachers before him responded to his embittered recollection with a standing ovation....

Adeline Yen Mah tells the story of her childhood as an unwanted, unloved "bad luck" child of an affluent Chinese family. Based on the memoir "Falling Leaves."

A Chinese American woman tells of the Chinese myths, family stories, and events of her California childhood that have shaped her identity.

The adopted daughter of Jane Fonda describes her youth in 1970s Oakland, California, her daunting prospects in the face of her dysfunctional family, and the ways in which a structured home life enabled her eventual reconnection with her biological family.

The author details his immersion in a world of hardcore drugs, revealing the mental and physical depths of addiction, and the violent relapse one summer in California that forever changed his life, leading him down the road to recovery.