Dinara Tengri

When I was a little girl, my favourite singer of all time was Michael Jackson. For my fifth birthday, I requested my aunt who worked at the radio to play one of MJ: s songs for me. That song may or may not have been The Way You Make Me Feel but this is where my memory deceives me.  What I remember vividly is me and my friend going to the kitchen because we were too shy in the company of all the relatives and then dancing our faces off. This is the earliest memory I have of myself dancing. I'm a 90’s kid and Michael Jackson with his dazzling outfits, his electrifying dance moves, and his in-you-face, larger-than-life stage persona became one of the symbols of my own childhood, and my introduction to the Western pop culture. June 25 th , 2009 is a day that has long ago made its way into the history books. The news of the sudden passing of the King of Pop literally broke the Internet, and the media circus that followed, not to mention the legal charges against MJ: s per...

Title: The Princess Diarist Author: Carrie Fisher Year of Publishing: 2016 Published by: Blue Rider Press Source: I bought it The Princess Diarist   is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie. When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager. With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what de...

Title: Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison Author: Piper Kerman Year of publishing: 2010 Published by: Spiegel and Grau Language: English/Swedish I read the Swedish edition, by Norstedts.   With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424 — one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of accepta...