100 Must-Read Memoirs by Bookriot

100 Works 381,048 Books 12,394 Reviews ½ 4.0
Work
One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing (2011) by Diane Ackerman
It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War (2015) by Lynsey Addario
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death (1997) by Jean-Dominique Bauby
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) by Ishmael Beah
Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2014) by Charles M. Blow
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000) by Anthony Bourdain
She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003) by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir (2015) by Carrie Brownstein
One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life; A Story of Race and Family Secrets (2007) by Bliss Broyard
Dry: A Memoir (2003) by Augusten Burroughs
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012) by Susannah Cahalan
Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship (2010) by Gail Caldwell
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991) by Jung Chang
Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (2013) by Jeff Chu
Between the World and Me (2015) by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone (2011) by Melissa Coleman
All Who Go Do Not Return: A Memoir (2015) by Shulem Deen
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion
Out of Africa (1937) by Isak Dinesen
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory (2014) by Caitlin Doughty
Life Itself: A Memoir (2011) by Roger Ebert
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) by Dave Eggers
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006) by Nora Ephron
The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran (2014) by Nazila Fathi
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School (2007) by Kathleen Flinn
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (2001) by Alexandra Fuller
Eat, Pray, Love (2006) by Elizabeth Gilbert
Girl in a Band (2015) by Kim Gordon
Autobiography of a Face (1994) by Lucy Grealy
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything (2013) by Chris Hadfield
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef (2011) by Gabrielle Hamilton
Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget (2015) by Sarah Hepola
Prairie Silence: A Memoir (2013) by Melanie Hoffert
Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (1942) by Zora Neale Hurston
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats (2012) by Kristen Iversen
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home (2009) by Rhoda Janzen
Negroland: A Memoir (2015) by Margo Jefferson
When Breath Becomes Air (2016) by Paul Kalanithi
Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? (And Other Concerns) (2011) by Mindy Kaling
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (2009) by William Kamkwamba
The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995) by Mary Karr
Girl, Interrupted (1993) by Susanna Kaysen
Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison (2013) by Piper Kerman
The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (2010) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell
Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite (2014) by Suki Kim
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007) by Barbara Kingsolver
On Writing (2000) by Stephen King
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1975) by Maxine Hong Kingston
Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir (2016) by Padma Lakshmi
Let's Pretend This Never Happened (2012) by Jenny Lawson
H Is for Hawk (2014) by Helen Macdonald
Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter (1997) by Adeline Yen Mah
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (1994) by Nelson Mandela
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (2015) by Sally Mann
West with the Night (1942) by Beryl Markham
What It Is Like to Go to War (2011) by Karl Marlantes
The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (1995) by James McBride
Angela's Ashes (1996) by Frank McCourt
Coming Clean: A Memoir (2013) by Kimberly Rae Miller
Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran (2005) by Azadeh Moaveni
Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968) by Anne Moody
Conundrum (1974) by Jan Morris
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir (2007) by Haruki Murakami
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003) by Azar Nafisi
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) by Barack Obama
The Long Goodbye: A memoir (2011) by Meghan O'Rourke
Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback (1966) by George Plimpton
Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice (2013) by Katherine Preston
Poor Your Soul (2016) by Mira Ptacin
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (2005) by Ruth Reichl
Hiroshima in the Morning (2010) by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's (2007) by John Elder Robison
Making Toast (2010) by Roger Rosenblatt
Do You Dream in Color? Insights From a Girl Without Sight (2012) by Laurie Rubin
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness (2007) by Elyn R. Saks
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading (2011) by Nina Sankovitch
Jesus Land: A Memoir (2005) by Julia Scheeres
Lucky (1999) by Alice Sebold
Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) by David Sedaris
Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America (1995) by Carolyn See
House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (2012) by Anthony Shadid
Devotion: A Memoir (2010) by Dani Shapiro
Daring: My Passages: A Memoir (1988) by Gail Sheehy
Just Kids (2010) by Patti Smith
My Life on the Road (2015) by Gloria Steinem
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) by Bryan Stevenson
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) by Cheryl Strayed
Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality (2012) by Jacob Tomsky
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (2001) by Loung Ung
Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin (1988) by Norah Vincent
The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005) by Jeannette Walls
Men We Reaped (2013) by Jesmyn Ward
Lonely: A Memoir (2010) by Emily White
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir (2010) by Neil White
Night (1956) by Elie Wiesel
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011) by Jeanette Winterson
Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage (2014) by Molly Wizenberg
I'm Down: A Memoir (2009) by Mishna Wolff
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013) by Malala Yousafzai

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