After watching her grandfather and uncle hang her mother from a wooden rafter in their small Korean hut for conceiving a honhyol–a mixed-race child, author Elizabeth Kim was left at a Christian orphanage in postwar Seoul. Soon after she was adopted by a childless Fundamentalist pastor and his wife in the United States. Unfamiliar with Western customs and language, but terrified that she would be sent back to the orphanage, Kim trained herself to be the perfect child. But just as her Western features doomed her in Korea, so her Asian features served as a constant reminder that she was an outsider in this all-white environment.

After escaping her adoptive parents’ home, only to find herself in an abusive marriage, Kim finally makes a break for herself and her daughter by running away –something own mother could not do for her. Elizabeth Kim is now a journalist and resides in California.

“…Ten Thousand Sorrows tells one of the most harrowing stories I have ever encountered in print; it is a book that must be read by anyone serious about memoirs, the Asian-American experience, or what it means to be a woman in the twenty-first century…” –Sapphire, author of Push

John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, has spent most of his life in public service. His exploits, his dedication to family and friends, and his rock-ribbed traditional values have made John Glenn a true American icon. In his memoir, written with biographer Nick Taylor, he tells the story of his unique life.

In the following excerpt, Glenn takes us into the early days of NASA, where he first served as a backup pilot for astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom and helped refine some of the initial cockpit and control designs for the Apollo program.

In 1962 Glenn finally piloted spacecraft himself, the “Friendship 7″, on the first manned orbital mission of the United States. Then came several years in international business, followed by a twenty-four-year career as a U.S. senator–and in 1998 a return to space for his remarkable Discovery mission at the age of seventy-seven.

Listen to Glenn read an excerpt from the BDD Audio release of “John Glenn: A Memoir.”