I love memoirs, usually by women. Usually not celebrities but sometimes I enjoy those too. Any suggestions?
Edited to also share some of my favorites!
The Liars Club,
The Glass Castle,
A Piece of Cake,
Wild,
Breaking Night,
I’m glad my mother died
by Ill-Detail54
31 Comments
Educated by Tara Westover
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Running Home by Katie Arnold
Brain On Fire by Susanah Cahalan
Hope by Amanda Berry
Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb
Edited because I misspelled author’s last name at first
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
The Chronology of Water by Lydia Yuknavitch
Seconding Wild and I’m Glad My Mother Died. Also really good: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
I really enjoyed Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
Just Kids by Patty Smith!
Another vote for the following:
*Educated,* Tara Westover
*Wild,* Cheryl Strayed
*Brain on Fire,* Susannah Cahalan
​
And a few that haven’t been mentioned yet:
*The Glass Castle,* Jeannette Walls
*Infidel* Ayaan Hirsi Ali
*My Stroke of Insight,* Jill Bolte Taylor
Born a Crime – Trevor Noah
Shrill
Braiding Sweetgrass
Girl, Interrupted
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya Angelou.
It’s stunning, and though a lot of harsh things happen in it, I found it profoundly empowering and ultimately, in the end, extremely uplifting. I’m not a young one, I just read it a few years ago, and couldn’t believe I had lived as long as I had without reading it.
What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo
Defiant Dreams by Sola Mahfouz
Toufah: The Woman Who Inspired an African #MeToo Movement by Toufah Jallow
We Were Dreamers by Simu Liu
Bossypants by Tina Fey. Found out we had an awful lot in common and it made me feel a lot better about myself and my life
Strong Female Lead- Fern Brady
A really honest memoir about her struggle with autism. Simultaneously interesting, heartbreaking, and hilarious.
*I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This,* Nadja Spiegelman
Memoir by the daughter of *Maus* creator Art Spiegelman. If Maus functions as a history of her patrilineal line her memoir is the history of her matrilineal one. Deals a lot with generational trauma and the work that goes into healing from it.
*Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness,* Catherine Cho
A terrifying story of post-partum psychosis and the author’s long journey to recovery from it.
*Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?* Seamus O’Reilly
A *fucking hilarious* memoir about the author’s loss of his mother at a young age and his father’s ensuing struggle to raise he and his TEN siblings in Ireland in the 80s and 90s as the IRA is a constant threat. This book sounds bleak but it is *fucking hilarious.*
*Fun Home,* Alison Bechdel
A cartoonist’s reckoning with her father’s sexuality and her own as well all the while processing his eventual suicide and discretions during life.
*Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,* Cailin Doughty
Memoir of the woman behind Ask a Mortician. She’s just a super good writer even if you aren’t into mortuary science.
*I Am, I Am, I Am,* Maggie O’ Farrell
Incredibly beautiful writing about the author’s 17 brushes with death.
*Dark Night: A True Batman Story,* Paul Dini
The creator and writer of Batman: The Animated Series tells the story of how while he was working on the show he was mugged and brutally assaulted and how the cartoon helped him overcome and understand what he went through. I’d reccomend it to anyone, fan of the series or not. This is a really important story and the art on it (it’s a graphic novel) is stunning.
The Choice by Dr. Edith Eger
Solito
When Breath Becomes Air
Try Crying in H Mart
Please read The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts! It’s about 63 year old poor farmer woman from Maine who rides her horse to California with nothing but her dog in the 50’s, it’s so good.
Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (one in a series)
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Prize-Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kaye Redfield Jamison. If you or someone you care about has been affected by mental illness– especially bipolar disorder– this book will change your entire perspective, or make you feel a lot less alone.
It’s a little strange, but Open by Andre Aggasi opened up my eyes to how athletes struggle with a lot of things just like us. Very good book
A beautiful memoir which needs to be rediscovered is ‘west with the night’ by beryl markham. Rated as one of the top 10 adventure memoirs of all time by National Geographic. Beryl was a girl who went her own way, becoming a bush pilot and living life on her own terms in the 20’s when the patriarchy was saying she shouldn’t. The book is the only book earnest Hemingway said he wished he’d written. She was a model for one of the characters in ‘out of Africa’. she only wrote one book and after you’ve read it, you’ll wish she wrote more.
A piece of cake by cupcake brown will help me break my family’s cycle of addiction.
I loved Glass Castle. Did you read Half Broke Horses? It tells the story of Jeanette Walls grandmother.
I agree with Educated, Born a Crime and several others people have mentioned. I haven’t seen these mentioned but they are very good too:
Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Poley
A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
Night by Ellie Wiesel
Ducks by Kate Beaton
Life as a Unicorn by Amrou Al Khadi
* *Women We Buried, Women We Burned* by Rachel Louise Snyder
* *A House in the Sky* by Amanda Lindhout
* *Men We Reaped* by Jesmyn Ward
* *Red Dust Road* by Jackie Kay
* *Hunger* by Roxane Gay
* *An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination* by Elizabeth McCracken
* *I Am Malala* by Malala Yousafzai
* *Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching* by Mychal Denzel Smith
* *Priestdaddy* by Patricia Lockwood
* *The Fact of a Body* by Alexandra Marzano-Lesnevich
* *I Am, I Am, I Am* by Maggie O’Farrell
* *Both/And* by Huma Abedin
* *Solito* by Javier Zamora
Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young is one of the most incredible stories of survival that I’ve ever read. She escaped the child sex cult The Children of God as a teenager, then joined the US Army and realized that she had just joined another cult. She’s now a Harvard educated expert on cults and group behavior. Her TT and IG are fascinating.
Viktor Frankl -Mans Search for Meaning.