Recommended Reading: Memoir

A memoir that examines rural poverty and the lingering strains of racism in the South by the author of Salvage the Bones.

In this unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.

The first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court tells the story of her life before becoming a judge in an inspiring, surprisingly personal memoir.

The author describes the threats and emotional abuse she endured from white students and adults along with her fears of endangering her family as she committed to being one of the first African American students to integrate the public school.

In this memoir of his early life, the celebrated scholar and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives a portrait of a vanished America. Born in 1950, he grew up in Piedmont, a West Virginia town perched on the side of a hill in the Allegheny Mountains. Through Gates's memories and portraits of the people in his early life, he conveys a deep sense of and longing for the extended family and close community.

Memoir from Aaron Dixon who founded the Seattle, Washington, chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, discussing his radicalization and the legacy of Black Power.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up--a place where slavery's legacy felt astonishingly close.

A moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss.

Coming to terms with his family's emigrant experience and their town's history, the "homeless" Shadid finds home and comes to understand the emotions behind the turbulence of the Middle East.

The first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court tells the story of her life before becoming a judge in an inspiring, surprisingly personal memoir.

In this memoir, the author takes us through his life growing up in Kenya. Then in 2002, a writing prize comes through, and the door is opened for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning all along.

Azar Nafisi's tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women's lives in revolutionary Iran.

Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and a single mother of three, recounts her life as a political activist, feminist, and environmentalist in Kenya.

On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since.

From Anchee Min, the author of the internationally bestselling memoir "Red Azalea"--The eagerly awaited sequel, in which she comes to America to find her way, her voice, and her love.

A journey into one of the most fascinating minds alive today, Tammet has savant syndrome, a rare condition that gives him almost unimaginable mental powers.

Proulx shares how she came to be living in a house surrounded by wilderness and how she came to be one of the great American writers of her time.

The author describes the circumstances of her rape as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, the arrest and trial of her attacker, and her struggle to reclaim her shattered life.

A humorous memoir by a veteran hospitality employee that reveals what goes on behind the scenes of the hotel business.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran: of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life and of the enormous toll repressive regimes exact on the individual spirit.

The author continues the story of her life, discussing her move from Iran to Vienna in 1984, her feelings of alienation in the foreign country, and her return home where she starts college, falls in love, and questions whether she can continue to live in the repressive society.

A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a women's prison.

A memoir about the author's experiences as the son of Vietnamese immigrants describes how he learned his tragic ancestral history and the impact of the Vietnam War on his family while visiting their homeland years later.

In her attempt to escape the poverty and the suffocating brand of Mormon religion at home, Ingrid Ricks recounts a trip with her divorced dad, traveling throughout the Midwest. It felt like freedom from her controlling mother and authoritarian stepfather but it came with its own disappointments and dysfunctions.

The memoir of a young woman who at age 15 was living on the streets but survived to make it to Harvard.

Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become a world-renowned chef. This book is his love letter to food and family.

Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her thoughtful and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life.

Telling her own story with the same lyricism, compassion, and eye for lush detail she brings to her fiction, coupled with the candor and humor she is known for in her personal essays, Kate Moses leavens each tale of her coming-of-age in Cakewalk with a recipe from her lifetime of confectionary obsession.

The chef of New York's East Village Prune restaurant presents an account of her search for meaning and purpose in the rural New Jersey home of her youth.

Shares challenging life lessons the author learned from women cooks including Alice Waters, Rachael Ray, and Marcella Hazan, on a journey marked by painful relationships and alcoholism.

The author is star in the food world and the proprietor of one of the hottest restaurant serving Taiwanese street food. Huang relays growing up in suburban Orlando, Florida with his Taiwanese family, obsessing over football, fighting the all-American boys who called him a chink, selling drugs and idolizing Tupac. Through it all, his anchor was food which led to starting his own restaurant, bringing together a legacy stretching back to China and the shards of global culture he had melded into his own identity.

A jazz and blues poet-musician known as a spoken-word performer, Scott-Heron is often called the godfather of rap. This well-written and fresh memoir recalls Scott-Heron’s upbringing in Jackson, Tennessee, and New York City. - Booklist

A bold and unrestrained account of his life as a writer and a homosexual. Arenas, acknowledged as one of the great twentieth-century Cuban writers, tells of his life in Cuba and later in America.

Singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City including her time with Robert Mapplethorpe--the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.

Tom Hansen takes us into a land of desperate addicts, failed punk bands, and brushes with sad fame selling drugs during the Seattle grunge years.

Mock's coming-of-age memoir as a transgender teen follows her quest for identity, offering a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged, and transgender in America.

A father for ten years, a mother for eight, and for a time in between, neither, or both, Boylan explores parenthood, gender and how families are shaped.

Dan Savage recounts his family's campaign to convince him and his boyfriend, Terry, to get married, and explores how his family's attitudes towards gay marriage reflect those of contemporary American society.

Jennings tells of his impoverished Southern childhood, coming out during college, being forced to hide his sexuality in order to teach and finally coming out for a second time as part of a larger movement for justice.

A heartfelt memoir by the father of a gay teen, and an eye-opening guide for families who hope to bring up well-adjusted gay adults.

Beah tells how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

The author-illustrator traces his father's imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp through a series of disarming and unusual cartoons arranged to tell the story as a novel.

This sequel shows Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.

The former Secretary of Defense offers a candid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain tells what he learned from his grandfather and father, and how their example enabled him to survive his time as a POW. It is a story of three imperfect men who faced adversity and emerged with their honor intact.

When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette went to Bosnia-Herzegovina as peacekeeper, it became an impossible task that took a huge toll on the residents and peacekeepers. When the war ended, Doucette returned to Canada to deal with this nightmares and brutal flashbacks.

Buergenthal tells his astonishing experiences during and after WWII. Separated first from his mother and then his father he managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own.

A searing memoir of recovery and triumph by one of America's finest patriots, including a withering critique of the Bush administration's handling of 9/11.

Photojournalist Addario chronicles her experiences covering Afghanistan, before and after the Taliban reign, during the American invasion, and the civilian casualties, along with misunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War and the burned villages and countless dead in Darfur. As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys' club of a profession.

A powerful account of war and homecoming. The author served three tours of duty in the Middle East. His book immerses the reader in two realities: the terror, excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within with haunting memories that will not fade.

A frank and touching memoir about achieving the American Dream: his rise to the top, the power of a solid work ethic, his mother's painful death from cancer, the pitfalls of stardom, and a very personal take on what it means to be an American.

A one-handed pitcher who became one of the select few to pitch a no-hitter in Major League Baseball explains how he rose above his disability to excel at the sport he loved in high school, college, and adulthood.

Robinson reflects on his long career as a catcher in the Negro Leagues before baseball was integrated.

Explores why girls need and want to participate in sports, competition and individual achievement: it also reveals the obstacles they still face which disfigure their competitive spirit and limit their potential.

The story of a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s at the dawn of a glorious era in baseball.

Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home.

Ashe recounts his triumphs as a great tennis champion and his determined social activism to his ordeal in the face of death, a casualty of AIDS.

A bare-knuckled, tell-all memoir from Mike Tyson, the onetime heavyweight champion of the world--and a legend both in and out of the ring.

Murakami began running to keep fit and, after dozens of races, triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing.

The story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.

A candid and moving memoir about family, loss, and reconciliation from the headline-making goalkeeper for the U.S. women's national soccer team.

Ray Zahab was once a pack-a-day smoker. In his memoir, Zahab relays how, through dedication and persistence, he managed to achieve a level of fitness that allowed him to run in some of the world's toughest tests of endurance, including the crossing of the entire Sahara Desert on foot.

Jason Schmidt wasn't surprised when he came home one day from high school to find his father crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that happened since his father had been diagnosed with HIV. His memoir is funny and disturbing, full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn't seem to have one?

Memories of the author about her difficult childhood as the adopted daughter of an English mother with strong religious convictions, and her subsequent search for her biological mother.

Presents a true story of a boy who wanted to grow up with the Brady Bunch, but ended up living with the Addams Family.

Like the unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten Burroughs and Mary Karr, this graphic memoir of Bechdel's relationship with her father is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny.

Walls gives us a penetrating look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. The Walls children fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

An account of the author's childhood in a Texas oil town and of her family's struggles with cancer, madness, and alcoholism.

The son of a convicted bank robber and con artist describes their complicated relationship, relating how his father, while in jail, sent the author letters throughout his childhood and turned up in a Boston homeless shelter where the author was a caseworker.

In this graphic memoir, Small tells us of his journey from sickly child to cancer patient, to the troubled teen whose risky decision to run away from home at sixteen, with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist, will resonate as the ultimate survival statement.

Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads finally to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers. - Amazon

Memoir of an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, as she tries to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery.

Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through a mixture of cartoons, family photos, documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can

Leleux describes his East Texas boyhood and coming of age under the tutelage of his eccentric, bewigged, flamboyant, and knowing mother.

Sean Strub, founder of the groundbreaking POZ magazine, producer of the hit play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, and the first openly HIV-positive candidate for U.S. Congress, charts his remarkable life.

The author shares her lifelong battle with bulimia and anorexia, chronicling her secret life of bingeing and purging and her obsession with food and body image, substance abuse, and sex.

John Robison longed to connect with other people, but it was not until he was forty that an insightful therapist told him he had the form of autism called Asperger's syndrome. That understanding transformed the way Robison saw himself--and the world.

Jennifer Worth was twenty-two when she volunteered to spend her early years of midwifery training in London's East End in the 1950s. Coming from a sheltered background there were tough lessons to be learned. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying.

The author describes surviving the rare stroke to the brain stem that left him with locked-in syndrome. With his mind intact in a nearly totally paralyzed body, he was able to communicate only with his left eye.

David Fitzpatrick became so consumed by mental illness it sent him into a frenzy of cutting himself with razor blades. In this shocking and often moving book, he vividly describes the rush this act gave him, the fleeting euphoric high that seemed to fill the spaces in the rest of his life.

At 30, Ellen Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Terrified that medications would cause her to lose her creativity and livelihood, she began a struggle to find mental stability. Ellen found inspiration from the lives and work of other artist and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Sylvia Plath.

Journalist Caroline Knapp's powerful memoir of her twenty years as a functioning alcoholic. Knapp writes that she loved liquor the way she loved bad men and, like all tragic love stories, hers is a tale of seduction and betrayal, a testament to the alluring but ultimately destructive powers of addiction.